There are soldiers on the front line and we pray for their well being, but there are other soldiers – these brave women are on the front lines, as they stand their post to deliver new Jewish babies into this world while there are missiles flying overhead. This is our story.
Driving to my evening shift on Friday, three hours before Shabbat, the sirens begin — a rising, wailing howl. I pull over to the side of the road and run, searching for cover.
By the time I arrive at the hospital, the conversations among the midwives are no longer about routine care. Instead, we compare how many alarms we each heard that day, how our children are coping and who has the luxury of a safe room at home.
Two women are in labor, waiting to meet their babies. I introduce myself and gently explain that I will stay with them — even if a siren sounds. Rachel, giving birth to her seventh child, begins to feel the urge to push just as another siren pierces the air. I try to steady the room, telling them that one day they will have an extraordinary story to tell their children.
Moments later, cries of fear give way to cries of joy as a beautiful baby girl is born and placed in her mother’s arms.
After the births, the new mothers are transferred two floors down — to a makeshift ward in the parking lot. Sixty women share a single bathroom. Bright curtains attempt to soften the harshness of the space, but the sounds of a geriatric ward and post-surgical patients blend uneasily with the cries of newborns.
At the end of my shift, after helping deliver two more babies, I drive home, hoping for a quiet road.
I think about the reality of life in Israel — where joy, pain and fear coexist in the same breath. And somehow, from that fragile mixture, we continue to build our faith that this is our home, our land and our destiny.
Rena Goldman is a registered midwife and registered nurse at the Mayanei Yeshua Hospital in the Orthodox City of Bnai Brak. Rena made aliyah with her family thirty five years ago from Los Angeles and has never looked back. contact renagoldman82@gmail.com
