Getting around in times of turmoil: How to keep up morale in Israel during Iran war

In these sad, tempestuous, horrific times, for me at least, the sense of being in a helpless sitting duck position is highly frustrating and only serves to exacerbate feelings of doom and gloom. Besides, naturally, doing what we possibly can to stay safe and secure, we also need to try our best to stay on an emotional even keel so that when the bad news inevitably filters through, we can take it on board, regroup, and get back to life.

As an avid cyclist, I tend to adopt the mindset cheerily propagated by that irreverent chappie strapped to a cross along with the title character in the closing scene of Monty Python’s hilariously iconoclastic cinematic romp Life of Brian. As Brian bemoans his fate at the hands of the all-conquering Romans, Eric Idle breaks into a stirring rendition of the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” That ludicrously oxymoronic satirical approach may seem a philosophical stretch these days as we wake up to wailing sirens generally followed by explosions of varying volume levels, but in my humble opinion, it wouldn’t hurt.

Back to the human-powered two-wheeler line of thought and proactive take on our predicament, I am reminded of cycling-themed reflections on our corporeal existence. One such adage suggests that life is like riding a bicycle; if you don’t move, you fall over. Another, a little more in the sardonic line, posits that if you feel things are easy for you, that’s because you’re “over the hill.” Most cyclists tend to take a more positive, relaxed, and appreciative view of descents, especially if they have sweated their way up a challenging ascent, gasping for breath with leg muscles on fire, to earn the joyous payoff of the freewheeling downward turn. However, the proverbial point is duly taken.

Earlier this week, as I turned out of Moshav Mata in the Jerusalem Hills, made a right turn onto Route 375, and sped down the Ella Valley toward a health food shop in Beit Shemesh, my thoughts wandered back to last May. When my Holocaust survivor mom passed away at the end of 2023, at the age of 92, I decided to salute her life – and the basic fact that she brought me into this world – and combine my love for her with my cycling addiction.

I cycled my way across Europe, from my mother’s birthplace of Vienna to London, where she and the vast majority of the 10,000 or so mostly German and Viennese children, on the Kindertransport eve-of-WW II rescue operation, ended up. As I pedaled across Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands, before boarding a ferry to the UK and biking from the port town of Harwich to Liverpool Street train station in East London, I had plenty of time to observe my natural and human surroundings. 

At various junctures along the way, I observed children playing happily on a soccer pitch, or frolicking insouciantly in some field or playground. And why shouldn’t they? Why should it be any different? Or, riding into Nuremberg one Friday evening, passing by cafés and bars packed with people of all ages hanging out with their pals, sipping a beer, some other alcoholic beverage, or coffee, as they made the habitual seamless transition from their income-earning weekday activities into laid-back weekend mode.

Presumably, none of the parents of those gamboling youngsters considered even the slimmest of notions that their offspring might have to join the armed forces after graduating from high school, and subsequently find themselves embroiled in life-threatening battlefield scenarios. And none of the bar revelers had very much in the way of existential concerns on their minds, other than where to go for their summer vacation, what movie or TV show to catch over the two-day hiatus, or, possibly, how to pay their gas and electricity bills and keep up with their mortgage payments.

As I observed those commonplace, perfectly normal, Western European dynamics, as an Israeli making his way across former Nazi-controlled Europe, I felt as if I had entered some kind of parallel universe where very different rules of conduct and sentiments applied. And let’s not forget – although, as crisis follows crisis in these parts at an ever more dizzying pace, recent tragic events tend to rapidly drop off the short-term memory radar to be overtaken by the here-and-now challenges – this was while the war in Gaza was still raging and our hostages were still languishing in indescribably inhuman conditions.

So, how can we deal with all this abnormal normality? The constant sirens, the fearsome explosions, of missiles falling, or the IDF’s interception system doing its work but resulting in shrapnel dispersing all over the show?

Perhaps a little giggle here or there wouldn’t go amiss. One might permit oneself the odd bleakly comedic aside. Dark humor is, after all, a useful tool for managing life-threatening situations. Taking a leaf out of Viktor Frankl’s book might not be a bad move. In his much-lauded Man’s Search for Meaning, published just one year after the end of WW II, the late Austrian Holocaust survivor neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher, suggested that “Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.” The specific locations of that struggle to keep body and soul connected were Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, where Frankl lived for three years to the very best of his physical and emotional abilities.

While our predicament is undeniably grim, even at the height of this round of violence and madness, one assumes few would compare it with the experiences endured by concentration camp inmates. My exchanges over the past few days, with people in all kinds of situations, have more often than not featured some wry observation or downright comic interjection. When I’d collected all the goods I wanted at the Beit Shemesh health food store, I noticed the checkout guy had left his station, so I jovially chastised him – I was a regular customer, and we always shared a joke – for making me wait all of three seconds. “There’s definitely going to be a siren any minute, so I won’t be able to serve you,” he quipped.

Little did he or I know. No more than five or six minutes later, I was cycling back home along Route 3855 – aka the well-named Kvish Hakikarot, or the “Traffic Circle Road;” there are eight of them strung along the road – at the foothills of the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood, when the sirens started wailing at an ear-piercing volume, followed by an almighty explosion. I literally almost fell off my bike but kept on pedaling.

That was really loud, and I suspected the neighborhood and, possibly, some of its residents, had taken on serious damage. My worst fears were confirmed when I first heard, then saw, at least 10 ambulances in quick succession speeding to the vicinity of the rocket landing. Car and truck drivers stopped by the side of the road, presumably to take some kind of shelter in case there were more Iranian projectiles on their way. I saw half a dozen members of an Orthodox family huddled tightly at a bus stop, although I couldn’t see how that would help. And the driver of an enormous semi-trailer truck, who’d also stopped, looked at me with disbelief, suggesting vociferously, in an unmistakable Arabic accent, that I join him and take cover behind the truck. I just smiled and pedaled onward to the Ella Valley and the long climb back to Mata.

A few minutes later, as the truck passed me, the driver gave me a friendly wave but still looked more than a little bemused at the idea of a lone cyclist out on the open road. A couple of minutes later, another driver sent a friendly, admiring honk and smile my way as he overtook me. That made a nice change from some of the less supportive hoots I sometimes get, generally from motorists who dish out similar treatment to other drivers whom they feel are slowing their progress. I’ve learned, over the years, not to take that personally.

AS I cycle on my ownsome, and generally without musical accompaniment, I get plenty of meditation time. In addition to great cardiovascular exercise, my rides offer me hours of downtime as thoughts pass through my head naturally and subconsciously invited, and images of past experiences surface unbeckoned.

On my way home from Beit Shemesh, I suddenly recalled how, during the Second Lebanon War, I’d accompanied internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter David Broza as he leapfrogged his way betwixt kibbutzim and moshavim near our northern border, performing for the locals in a selfless morale-boosting effort. After a few hours and four impromptu gigs, I had to get back home and was riding southward on Highway 2, near the southern reaches of Haifa, when I heard sirens indicating that Hezbollah was sending more rockets our way. Almost all the other drivers stopped, jumped out of their vehicles to take cover if any was available, or lie spread-eagled in some field. Aware that the rockets had, after all, limited range, I just floored it to try to get into safer climes as quickly as I could.

That line of thinking, that a moving object offers less of a target, kept me turning my 22-gear carbon-frame road bike’s pedals as I snaked my way homeward with – it must be said – far fewer motorized vehicles to deal with than in the regular commuter run of things. That, in turn, reminded me of a previous unhappy chapter with some positive reward. During the pandemic lockdowns, my fellow pedalers and I very much had the country’s highways and byways to ourselves, with far less traffic-generated pollution to inhale and the clearly audible joyous twittering of birds to regale us. I enjoyed some more of that mellifluous feathered friend chorus while replacing an inner tube on my bike’s rear wheel – flats are part and parcel of the cycling life – by the side of the road just before the steepest section of the Ella Valley. Other than three ambulances, screaming their way down to Beit Shemesh, there was little traffic, and the birds chirped merrily away while I tended to my carbon-framed seed next to a towering pine tree with anemones and cyclamens dancing in the chilly breeze.

Oh, earlier I caught a dab of seasonal cheer when I espied four nine- or 10-year-olds in Beit Shemesh in full Purim costume garb. They looked a little forlorn, standing in a group on the sidewalk of the main road, but they also looked intent on squeezing out something of the Purim spirit. I looked on in admiration and gratitude as I continued on my way to the store.

As I finished the roadside bicycle repair, I noticed a new WhatsApp message. It was from an Iranian friend I had met in Vienna some years ago, who lives in Germany. He wanted to know how I was doing and expressed concern over my welfare. Later that day, another Iranian friend, a Christian Vienna-based artist who’d suffered discrimination from the ayatollah regime in his country of birth, also WhatsApped me asking if I was all right. Interestingly, I also have several Austrian-born friends in Vienna, none of whom has been in touch over the past few days. Perhaps you have to have some feral politically motivated distress in your personal bio to more fully identify that among others and send out some empathetic signals.

My expat Iranian pals’ messages warmed the cockles of my heart and reminded me that when you get away from the politicians and their Machiavellian financial gain-seeking agendas, people are just people the world over. We all – the vast majority of us – just want to get on with our lives, make sure our offspring are healthy, well fed and clothed, and safe. We sustain our breadwinning efforts and, if at all possible, try to eke out some fun and/or restful leisure time. And, if we could make some sense out of the human condition in the process, that would be nice too.

In his follow-up release, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, Frankl wrote: “The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make.” That is a great source of encouragement and comfort in these trying times, and something I periodically mull over while pedaling my way around this traumatized beloved country.