As Ready As We’ll Ever Be

When I’m home, I like to keep the radio on. In the morning, as I get ready, I listen to Israeli and international hits on Kan. In the afternoons, as I work at my laptop, I beam some high culture into the house with the classical station.

The song playing now, according to Shazam, is a piano sonata by Haydn. Sometimes I fantasize about becoming an aficionado. It seems like a neat thing to be — a sophisticated gay man who knows about composers and operas and goes to the symphony. Maybe there’s a book I could read. Or a class I could take. 

It’s easy to forget that I bought the radio in a fit of panic, worried about the slow march toward a war with Hezbollah in the north. 

That was a few months ago. A friend told me I should get a battery-powered radio, just in case. I went out and bought the thing, but I never bought batteries for it. If the power goes out, bye bye Haydn. 

My first round of prepping for the northern war was characterized by this kind of half-assedness. A battery-powered radio with no batteries, two six-packs of bottled water, and then I forgot about it. 

This time I’m determined to do a better job for my partner Yoav and myself. I want to be able to protect him. I want him to look at me like he’s Rose and I’m Jack from Titanic — strong, competent, trustworthy, prepared for anything. A survivor. 

Of course, Jack didn’t survive, but he’s still the kind of guy you would want around in an emergency. 

So, earlier today, I bought us a first aid kit, some LED lamps, and two more six-packs of water. I then went to the supermarket and filled up my backpack with canned goods. I’ve been hearing things. My barber told me it will start on Passover and will be like the apocalyptic war described in the book of Ezekiel. Someone on a podcast said it would start after the Rafah operation and would set Tel Aviv on fire. 

Still, I can’t quite picture what it will be like. I know that Hezbollah is a heavily armed and sophisticated fighting force. I know that they can strike us wherever we are. In short, I know that it will be worse than anything Hamas could muster — worse than anything I’ve ever known since moving to this country from the United States 10 years ago. 

I open up my Tanakh to the book of Ezekiel. “I will invade a land of open towns, I will fall upon a tranquil people living secure, all of them living in unwalled towns and lacking bars and gates …”

I slam the book shut. This isn’t helpful.

Instead, I call the municipal hotline to find out where the closest underground air raid shelters are located. When this thing goes down, I want to know what’s up. I don’t want to be who I was on Oct. 7 — bewildered, with tears in my eyes, hands clutching a shoehorn for self-defense, wondering if Hamas will make it to Tel Aviv — to our door.

The uncomfortable truth is that I can’t think about leaving, only preparing. Some of my American friends left after Oct. 7, but I couldn’t countenance the thought then and I can’t countenance it now. 

“Why don’t you just come back to America now?” a friend asked me on the phone last night. It’s a reasonable question, but one I couldn’t answer. I lied about having to go buy canned beans and got off the phone. The uncomfortable truth is that I can’t think about leaving, only preparing. Some of my American friends left after Oct. 7, but I couldn’t countenance the thought then and I can’t countenance it now. 

If Israel is at war, I need to be here. To be helpful? To witness the spectacle? To avoid feeling some deranged sense of wartime FOMO? All of that.

But what if Yoav wants to leave? Would I send him off without me? Perhaps then I really would be Jack, putting Yoav on the door — in this case a ship to Cyprus — while I stay, sinking down into the icy deep. 

Shutyot — nonsense — I’m catastrophizing. The sun is out. I can hear children downstairs playing in the park. Yoav and I will stick together. We’ll figure it out. 

Shazam tells me that the song coming out of the radio now is Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4. It’s beautiful. Perhaps this would be a good place to start my classical education — by diving into one composer and really exploring his work. Rachmaninov. Why not?

I jot down his name in the notes app and add “buy batteries for radio!” Other than that, it seems that I’ve at last gathered all the recommended items. 

In other words, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be for what comes next.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.