Nahariya

October 7, 2023

I read the Facebook message from Elise before the dozen or so emails and texts I received about the massacre. So, I learned about October 7 not from news alerts, but from an old girlfriend I hadn’t seen in forty years. And I read her note all the way through, even paused for ten minutes, shutting my eyes, rolling the memories around my brain as I wrote my reply, before clicking on CNN, and moving from bittersweet nostalgia to the abject horror I would feel for—who knows how long? Maybe for the rest of my life. Here’s what Elise wrote:

Elephant,

How do I begin this correspondence? Do I offer condolences for the losses of your brothers and sisters in Israel, the babies, the grandmothers, the soldiers (especially the tank gunners)? Do I express my solidarity with Israel, with you, with your struggle during this most difficult and pivotal time? Do I repeat the now stale speech I recited to you before, when we first met, about the responsibility Germans of my generation feel to support Israel, and now I can add my deeply held conviction that this sacred responsibility extends to the next generation and the next?

Or do I simply tell you that even as a grandmother of three, twice married and divorced, facing retirement, surrounded by loved ones in the land of your fairytale nightmares, I think of you often and remember you with fondness. All of it, Elephant, all of it. But especially Nahariya. And I wonder, is this my arrogance, or my foolishly romantic imagination? Which is to say, I wonder if you even remember me?

Oh, and Elephant? I forgive you.

B’ahava,

Elise

Grandmother of three? That’s what jumped out at me after my first reading, and then lingered through subsequent analyses. Grandmother. “Are we really that old?” I asked myself. We are! Then, of course, there was this amazing sentence: I wonder if you even remember me. I recited it to myself three times. Then I closed my eyes.

1981-1982

I was assigned to the wrong unit. An odd mistake, especially for an army renowned for its competence. My IDF mobilization letter ordered me to report to the Seventh Armored Brigade. This was an elite unit. Some ten thousand Israeli teens suffered through a rigorous application process each year. Less than one hundred were accepted. You needed to demonstrate outstanding physical prowess, as well as exceptional intelligence, excellent health, and clear leadership potential. I was a weakling—5’8, 140 pounds—and an infection-prone asthmatic. I was...