Nail Polish in a War Zone: Keeping Our Sanity in a Time of Turmoil
In the midst of an ugly and hellish war zone, a soldier insists on retaining a relic of beauty, a relic of her normal life, a relic that reminds her that war doesn’t define her.
Sometimes one little detail in a news story makes your mind wander.
I read one such story this morning, about a female IDF soldier who was preparing for a military operation in Gaza. She was in an Armored Personnel Carrier, holding tightly to the vehicle’s bars so she wouldn’t be thrown sideways at every bump in the road.
The reporter noticed that the nails of the hand holding the bars had been carefully done.
“That’s my lifeline to sanity,” she told him. “For me, looking at the nail polish reminds me of a bit of sanity.”
What a contrast.
In the midst of an ugly and hellish war zone, a soldier insists on retaining a relic of beauty, a relic of her normal life, a relic that reminds her that war doesn’t define her.
None of us can compare our situations to an actual war zone, but we’re still confronted by the constant turmoil of a news cycle that thrives on conflict and bad news.
Even in our personal lives, many of us have to confront all kinds of turmoil connected to family, health, career, marriage and so on.
Conflict can be so all-consuming it can come to define us.
That’s why the nail polish resonated with me. It’s a sign of defiance. It’s a soldier who says, “I must fight this war, but I must remember that life is so much more than this.”
In the Jewish tradition, we have an ancient ritual that also reminds us of the beauty of life: Shabbat.
No matter how much conflict may exist in our lives, no matter how demoralized we may get by a constant stream of negative news, we know we have one day of the week to reconnect with our sanity and our humanity.
Tangy, bright and filled with irresistible umami flavor, turshi is the perfect complement to burgers, kebabs and chicken, as well as the perfect foil for eggs and salads.
On Purim, re-reading Persia, we stand at the intersection of the past and this very moment. May we merit not merely a temporary cessation of war, but true peace — the ultimate end of all conflict.
When future generations tell your story and mine, which parts will look obvious in hindsight? What opportunities will we have leveraged — and decisions made — that define our legacy?
For over half a decade, I had seen how the slow drip of antisemitism, carefully enveloped in the language of social justice and human rights, had steadily poisoned people whom I had previously considered perfectly reasonable.
Today, amid rising global antisemitism and uncertainty in the Diaspora, many Anglos considering aliyah are searching not only for housing but for belonging.
Their assumptions about the attack on Iran are based on a belief in the resilience of an evil terrorist regime, coupled with a conviction that Trump’s belief in the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance is inherently wrong.
As Bar Ilan University professor Joshua Berman engagingly and convincingly demonstrates in his “Echoes of Egypt” Haggadah, the process by which the Passover story took shape was as a polemic against the belief system and symbols of authority of Pharaoh and his people.
We may never know each other’s names. We may never meet. Yet for those minutes, across oceans, time zones, and screens, we share something deeply human.
This moment calls for moral imagination. For solidarity with the Iranian people demanding dignity. For sustained support of those who seek a freer future.
We are struggling on two fronts: we worry about friends and family, and we are preoccupied with our own “survival” on a trip extended beyond our control.
In the film, Leo Woodall plays Niki White, a gifted young piano tuner in New York whose heightened auditory abilities allow him to detect even the faintest mechanical sounds.
Neil Sedaka was born March 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Mac and Eleanor Sedaka. His father was Sephardic and his mother Ashkenazi; Sedaka was a transliteration of the Hebrew “tzedakah.”
Can you imagine what it’s like to read about a Persian prime minister seeking to destroy the Jews – as the Jewish army is finally fighting back with the American army against the Persian Jew-haters?
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.
Nail Polish in a War Zone: Keeping Our Sanity in a Time of Turmoil
David Suissa
Sometimes one little detail in a news story makes your mind wander.
I read one such story this morning, about a female IDF soldier who was preparing for a military operation in Gaza. She was in an Armored Personnel Carrier, holding tightly to the vehicle’s bars so she wouldn’t be thrown sideways at every bump in the road.
The reporter noticed that the nails of the hand holding the bars had been carefully done.
“That’s my lifeline to sanity,” she told him. “For me, looking at the nail polish reminds me of a bit of sanity.”
What a contrast.
In the midst of an ugly and hellish war zone, a soldier insists on retaining a relic of beauty, a relic of her normal life, a relic that reminds her that war doesn’t define her.
None of us can compare our situations to an actual war zone, but we’re still confronted by the constant turmoil of a news cycle that thrives on conflict and bad news.
Even in our personal lives, many of us have to confront all kinds of turmoil connected to family, health, career, marriage and so on.
Conflict can be so all-consuming it can come to define us.
That’s why the nail polish resonated with me. It’s a sign of defiance. It’s a soldier who says, “I must fight this war, but I must remember that life is so much more than this.”
In the Jewish tradition, we have an ancient ritual that also reminds us of the beauty of life: Shabbat.
No matter how much conflict may exist in our lives, no matter how demoralized we may get by a constant stream of negative news, we know we have one day of the week to reconnect with our sanity and our humanity.
We just need to remember the nail polish.
Shabbat shalom.
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