If Bombs Fall From the Sky

“Not even if bombs start falling from the sky,” my abuelito, a tall rabbi in a classic Latino guayabera, said as he redirected my  shocked eyes to the Torah before us. My bat mitzvah was in a week, and being a rabbi’s granddaughter came with the perks of unlimited Torah time. I composed myself, struck by the burden of what he was suggesting, that even under threat of death, I had to finish my parasha. I imagined the ceiling above me opening to the pink Caribbean skies and cartoon-esque bombs raining down on me and the congregation. I moved around a lot as a kid and didn’t get to spend as much time with my grandfather as I would have liked. That’s probably why that sentence has stuck with me as it has. I took it as a mandate. This is what commitment to Judaism looks like, even if bombs start falling from the sky.

My abuelito Chicole, was a beloved community leader in Colombia and the Dominican Republic. I’ve often felt the privilege of being his granddaughter as strangers’ eyes open wide at the sound of my last name.

When he passed away last year, I thought about that one sentence, which he surely never thought about after the fact. He passed away of natural causes in Israel, where it isn’t abnormal for bombs to fall from the sky and life to go on. I’ve turned that sentence into mantras, poems, and scribbles at the edge of my notebook, trying to find wisdom, the wisdom of a rabbi and a grandfather, trying to determine if this inheritance is real or fool’s gold.

The other night, one of my best friends texted me from Tel Aviv, “The Houthis just came to visit.” I struggled for words. Bombs are falling from the sky in our home. How do you comfort a people used to bombs? How do you comfort a people used to carrying on?

I’m still searching for the right words as bombs keep falling from the sky. Maybe the right words don’t exist. Maybe my abuelito knew that, too. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t speak of comfort. Not even if bombs start falling from the sky. But I refuse to carry on as if this is just the way things are. If this is my inheritance, then I hope to honor him by taking his words to mean that this is a fight to live beyond survival— to demand more than just endurance. To demand more from our leaders and ourselves.

Even if bombs start falling from the sky.