Band-aids \u2013 check. Bottled water \u2013 check. Tinned foods \u2013 wait. No sooner do I buy canned tuna, pickles, corn and peas and they\u2019re eaten. Need to refresh that one. Flashlight \u2013 check. Portable radio \u2013 check. Now, this is a cool one. While not available in the groovy colours of the 1970s \u2013 bought it in a staid brown \u2013 the small, palm-sized handheld radio conjures up fond memories of those catchy songs from Billboard\u2019s Top 10. Although the reason for the checklist is anything but fanciful. With\u00a0the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah threatening a major reprisal attack.<\/p>\n
In the Star Trek movie Wrath of Khan<\/i>, the Klingons said \u201crevenge is a dish best served cold.\u201d I can certainly attest to that. As can my more than 9.5 million fellow Israelis. It feels like an eternity since the ayatollahs promised mighty revenge for Israel\u2019s assassination of Hezbollah\u2019s military chief, Fuad Shukr, and Hamas\u2019s military chief, Mohammed Deif, and the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas\u2019s politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh. When Iran\u2019s authoritarian regime said at a place and time of their choosing, they weren\u2019t kidding. We are still waiting\u2026. Actually, I think the Klingons were probably quoting Pierre Ambroise Fran\u00e7ois Choderlos de Laclos, the 18th-century French novelist and army general who is credited with first analogizing revenge as a cold dish.<\/p>\n
Speaking of proverbs, I think its origin is Chinese, some claim Yiddish. Regardless, whoever said \u201cmay you live in interesting times\u201d was certainly cursing someone. Give me boring. Give me dull. Give me mundane. Give me monotonous. Give me colourless and bland. You can keep the gripping. The riveting.\u00a0<\/span>The fascinating. The stimulating. I just want to wake up to another simple day.<\/p>\n This waiting game is immensely stressful. It has the whole world on edge, with an alliance being built between Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Italy to thwart a second potential direct attack on my little shtetl. The first attack \u2013 of some 300 drones \u2013 was launched against Israel in April. We went to bed facing potential Armageddon and, thankfully, woke up able to just go to work, as Israel, with the help of its allies, knocked each drone out of sky before they reached Tel Aviv and Haifa.<\/p>\n Speaking of work, I am a self-confessed workaholic. And I find myself working even more during this very stressful period, where I fear my fate is out of my control. Will Iran attack? Where? And when? And how? No idea. No authority.\u00a0No power. Simply unable to influence, in any way. Whereas work, which I am pretty good at, gives me all those things. I am largely in control, able to influence within my environment. Work gives me a calming sense and, if nothing else, allows me to escape into my purchasing processes and contracts. This is my own industrial and organizational psychotherapy. As good an excuse as any for my wife, when she again finds me tapping away at my keyboard at all hours or in another early morning or late evening Teams meeting.<\/p>\n As for preparations, I find myself obsessed with buying bottled water, toilet paper and Ajax. The first couple of items, you probably understand. But floor cleaner? I think it\u2019s the Jewish mother in me. I don\u2019t want to leave behind a dirty home. Kind of like Golda from Fiddler on the Roof,<\/i> who insisted on sweeping their little Anatevka farmhouse before leaving. Although \u2013 and I say this loud and clear \u2013 we ain\u2019t\u00a0 <\/span>going nowhere!<\/p>\n Another quirk in dealing with the stress is that I love the music from the hippie generation. For the longest time after that dreadful Oct. 7, I wouldn\u2019t \u2013 couldn\u2019t \u2013 listen to music. I felt a very deep sadness. Maybe a type of mourning. But now, over the last few days, I find myself blaring my tunes. One of the first songs to pop up in my feed just after Iran\u2019s rulers made their threat of retribution was \u201cBad Moon Rising\u201d by Creedence Clearwater Revival. How foreboding can you get? \u201cI hear hurricanes a blowin\u2019. I know the end is comin\u2019 soon.\u2026 I hear the voice of rage and ruin. Don\u2019t go around tonight. Well, it\u2019s bound to take your life. There\u2019s a bad moon on the rise, alright.\u201d<\/p>\n And, I find myself listening again and again \u2013 at pretty high volume \u2013 to the dark and wonderful song by our own Edan Golan, \u201cOctober Rain,\u201d otherwise known to the world as \u201cHurricane\u201d: \u201cEvery day, I\u2019m losing my mind\u2026. Dancing in this storm, I\u2019ve got nothing left to hide….\u00a0 <\/span>Baby, promise me you\u2019ll hold me again.\u2026 I\u2019m still broken from this hurricane\u2026.\u201d And then, with hope: \u201cDon\u2019t have words. Just prayers. Even if it\u2019s hard to see, you always leave me one small light.\u201d<\/p>\n On another music note, I find myself chanting, to no one\u00a0in particular, that snappy little line\u00a0\u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.\u201d Now, why can\u2019t we come up with something as catchy? With an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin,\u00a0Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse,\u00a0Gene Simmons. Come on! And still, gornisht<\/i>, nothing. No wonder we\u2019re losing the global PR battle.<\/p>\n Please continue donating to\u00a0the war and revival\u00a0efforts. You may have given earlier, when hostilities first erupted and the Gaza war was headline news. Almost\u00a010\u00a0months later, war continues \u2013 on several fronts. Sderot and Metula \u2013 and maybe Tel Aviv and Haifa \u2013 are Israel\u2019s front line and Israel is the diaspora\u2019s front line. Am Yisrael chai (yeah, that\u2019s the extent of our solidarity anthem). Bring them home now!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Bruce Brown<\/b>, a Canadian-Israeli, made aliyah more than 25 years ago. He works in high-tech and is happily married, with two kids. He is the winner of a 2019 American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower Award for excellence in Jewish writing.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Band-aids \u2013 check. Bottled water \u2013 check. Tinned foods \u2013 wait. No sooner do I buy canned tuna, pickles, corn and peas and they\u2019re eaten. Need to refresh that one. Flashlight \u2013 check. Portable radio \u2013 check. Now, this is a cool one. While not available in the groovy colours of the 1970s \u2013 bought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[4330,22729,3036,22725,23440,9647],"class_list":["post-44857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-music","tag-oct-7","tag-wartime","tag-work"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}