When my husband and I told friends and family about the name we chose for our son, they repeated it once or twice and then muttered, “That’s a pilot’s name.”
We all understood that they weren’t referring to his becoming a hobby pilot, and the conversation seemed perfectly normal. As we watched our baby become a toddler and crawl around our house, we analyzed: Was he crawling likea fighter in the Golani or the Givati brigades?
Over the years, we have reminded him not to become spoiled by the food at home so that he won’t go hungry in the army.
But as he’s grown and the moment of his enlistment is just a few years away, it’s become harder for us to see him wearing olive-colored clothes, not to mention dressing up as a soldier.
Our experience would not be considered normal in the world but it is perfectly Israeli.
I don’t remember exactly when the fears started; maybe they are a normal mother’s fears. But I’ve never been only a mother. I’ve always been an Israeli mother who understands the path that awaits her three sons.
It seems that the fears have always been there — the dreams at night, the tightening in my chest when the names of fallen soldiers are announced — as I go about my day. As I prepare Shabbat dinner, I listen to the radio show “Mother’s Voice,” as mothers talk about their soldier children.
For us, Israeli reality demands a constant realignment, questioning, checking. We want our children to believe in the possibility of peace and to love their fellow human beings. And we want them to believe in the State of Israel and assume the responsibility to defend it.
As parents, we are ready to sacrifice our lives to defend our children. But I am beginning to understand that I will soon send my child to sacrifice himself to defend me, to defend us.
To be a mother to a child in Israel is to want him to be healthy and secretly hope that, at age 17, a small congenital defect will be found, something that will make him unable to join a fighting unit.
To be a mother in Israel is to encourage your child to join and give, and hope that he will end up in a safe rear unit.
To be a mother in Israel is to show off that your child has such a secret job in the army that you don’t know anything about it.
To be a mother in Israel is to sign an unwritten “contract” with the country that you will prepare your child as best you can and at age 18 he will give everything to his country.
To be a mother to a child in Israel is to be very proud that your son is volunteering in the “most combative” unit and to simultaneously repress the fact that “most combative” actually means “most dangerous.”
To be a mother in Israel means to send your child to give everything in a war and to hope that the war wouldn’t take anything from him.
To be a mother in Israel is to be torn between sacrificing your child for your nation and the almost uncontrollable urge to shout, “But this is my child!”
To be an Israeli mother is to not say all these things because you know that must repress your fears in order to continue.
Rakefet Ginsberg is Israel emissary and director of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center.
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