Our time.

Author: ella_la

I have never thought that the word "war" could become a part of my life.
We live in "quiet" Ashkelon but in the North where a lot of my beloved people live; deadly rockets are flying in the sky.
One story about our difficult time has warmed my soul and made me feel better.

Our close relative from Maalot (a small town very close to the border with Lebanon) finally agreed to move away from there. It's a dire situation with public transportation in that area, so I offered her to take a taxi and compensate her for the fare. It turned out that there's a posting on the wall in her apartment building offering a free ride to anyone who wants to leave the dangerous area. Later on we learned that there's a guy called Roman who drives elderly people for free away from the northern towns. Our aunt said she needed a ride only to Tel-Aviv (roughly half way from Maalot to Ashkelon) where I could have picked her up and drives her further south. But he insisted to drive her all the way to the doors of our house in Ashkelon. That time he also drove three other elderly people - to Kfar-Saba, Rishon-le-Tsion and Rehovot, all of them to their final destinations. At three o'clock at night. And he went to his work in Petah-Tikva at 7 o'clock in the morning (he works as a technician).
Next day I called him to express my gratitude and admire
- But I didn’t do anything extraordinary.
- But you help people. And you are a part of some sort of organization?
- No, I do it all by myself.
- Are you religious?
- No...

Sometime long ago I was visiting one of Tsefat's art galleries and couldn't take my eyes away from a picture of Moshe Raviv (he is the only student of Kandinsky). The picture was called "Stairway to Heaven", the image with lots of different interpretations. I thought that the picture was about the fact that not every ascend is necessary a way up. You can spend the whole life climbing stairway that goes down.
That is exactly what is happening with those who pay too much attention to overt expressions that are part of every religion.
Roman Goltsman from Petah-Tikva is a very religious person to me He does not need to wear a yarmulka, go to the temple to pray or express any religious attributes.
His religion is something unquestionably genuine. Or maybe need to help someone is going to be a religion of the future?


translation by lesoto

link to the original post here

There were four sirens already after I posted the last post. Four rocket attacks.

Up until 2 p.m. there were 97 rockets that exploded on Israeli soil today, including 5 long-range missiles. As a reporter on TV Channel 10 put it "those rockets have range of 100-110 kilometers (60-70 miles)".

It is also expected that Prime Minister of Israel would declare of start of a big infantry offensive and expected number of casualties on our side.

And another siren starts wiling.

translation by lesoto

link to the original post here

My ear is hurting.

The rocket was flying so close to me and her metallic noise was so utterly poisonous so human body became filled with tragedy. The tragedy that this silly pipe with a diameter of 122 millimeters (half of one inch) causes. Then we heard dry, impossible to tolerate noise and wailing of cars that were parked nearby. I immediately reached for my camera. I wanted to get out and respond to this with the meanest photoflash.
Hmm... And how many photoflashes I should put here in my journal so I could have responded adequately to every rocket that exploded on my land?
Thousands, and thousands, and thousands...
No, let those stupid pipes of hatred to rest in our sand and our swamps without signs of remembrance.
I like much more to photograph poisonous sea creatures: orange, green, white and pink ones...
Five attacks, destroyed house and several wounded, not counting my ear that is hurting from this war. By the way, if the left ear is going deaf temporarily - what does it mean?
This is our everyday life. It's nothing really interesting to talk about.

translation by lesoto

link to the original post here

I went to Ulpan (language classes for new immigrants) with one of the fallen soldiers...
Another rocket attack in Haifa.
It looks like this horror has no end.

translation by lesoto

link to the original post here