THE ART OF PARENTING IN A BOMB SHELTER
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THE ART OF PARENTING IN A BOMB SHELTER
The most important parenting moments in your life will not happen when you give speeches, or teach lessons and values at the Shabbat table. They won’t happen during a deep conversation with your child. They won’t happen when everything is calm. They happen when everything falls apart. When a child tests your limits, when your plans collapse, or when a siren goes off. Because in that moment, your children are not listening to what you say. They are studying who you are. לא תהיה שמיעה גדולה מראייה
If you don’t live in Israel, you cannot fully understand what it means to live in a world of sirens. A siren is not just a sound. It is an interruption of reality. Before it even begins, every phone in the house starts screaming alerts. You don’t know if it will come, but you already feel it coming. And then, it cuts through the air. You don’t hear it. You feel it. You have 90 seconds. Shoes. Kids. Door. Shelter. And then, quiet. Not peaceful quiet. The kind of quiet filled with breathing, with tension, with eyes scanning faces.
And then the boom. Sometimes distant. Sometimes not. The walls shake. You hold your children. And in that moment, every child in the room is asking one question: “Is everything okay?” But they are not asking with words. They are asking with their eyes, locked on you.
We live like this for weeks. No school. No routine. Just trying to keep a small apartment functioning from siren to siren. So the question becomes: How are we supposed to parent like this without going crazy? Isn’t parenting supposed to be built on routine? On calm? On structure? The answer is: No. Real parenting is revealed when there is no structure left. We tend to think that crisis interrupts chinuch. But the opposite is true. Crisis is chinuch. It is the moment your children finally see the real you. Not the “Shabbat version.” Not the “lecture version.” The real version. When your children are home all day, do they feel like they are ruining your schedule? Or do they feel like they are your life? When everything is falling apart, do they feel like a burden? Or do they feel held?
And it’s not just war. It’s when your teenager wakes up past 11:30 AM. Sits on the couch. On his phone. While you’re exhausted. And something inside you is boiling. Can you stay calm? Can you choose connection over criticism? Can you hold yourself back when everything in you wants to explode? That moment—That is chinuch. We look at crisis as interruption to chinuch. Quite the contrary, my dear Watson! Crisis is the revelation of you and your values! Because in those moments, your child’s brain is wiring itself. He is learning: “How do I respond to pressure?” “How do I treat people when I’m overwhelmed?” “What does strength look like?”
If a father, in a moment of crisis, turns outward, cares for others, stays grounded, holds up the emotions of his environment, that becomes the child’s lifelong blueprint, for all the sirens and disruptions, for the rest of his life. Not because he was told. Because he saw.
And this is not just what the child records. This is what Hashem records. כֹּ֚ה אָמַ֣ר יְקֹוָ֔ק זָכַ֤רְתִּי לָךְ֙ חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ “So says Hashem: I remember for you the kindness of your youth.” (Yirmiyahu 2:2) One understanding of this passuk is astonishing: Before leaving Egypt, most fathers did not survive. Eighty percent died in the plague of darkness. Families were broken. And yet, some fathers stepped forward, and adopted multiple families. Five families. Dozens of children. Don’t forget, each birth in Egypt brought six babies at a time. These adopting fathers walked into the desert, not knowing how they would feed even their own children, and took responsibility for many more. That is what those children saw. That is what they learned. And that is what Hashem remembers forever.
Now let’s bring it back. When you are in a bomb shelter, watching how your respond to the stress, to the fear, to the panic, your children are discovering something very uncomfortable: Are you worried and concerned about your world, or are you worried and concerned about the world of everyone else in the shelter with you? And this reveals to them something even more uncomfortable: Why did you bring them into the world? Was it because you wanted them, whoever they are? Or because having children fit into your life plan? When your routine is disrupted by them, are they destroying your life? Or are they your life?
This is where Torah parenting is fundamentally different. In Torah, there are only two real measures of success: How you live Torah. And how you raise your children to live Torah. Everything else, like money, honor, career: is all secondary. They are only valuable only if it supports those two. And that changes everything. Marriage is not built around romance. It is built around mission. A man is choosing the future mother of his children. A woman is choosing the future father of her children. Children are not an outcome of marriage. They are the purpose of marriage.
So why don’t we feel that? Why don’t we experience our children as our greatest gain? Because we live in the gap, not in the gain. We see what’s missing. What’s not working. What’s not ideal. And we lose sight of what we already have.
And this is where the Haggadah comes in. At the peak of the Seder night, after everything, we sing a strange song: אחד מי יודע — Who knows One? It sounds childish, and out of place. But it is one of the deepest moments of the night. Because after everything we’ve been through, we begin to count. Not what we lack. But what we’ve gained as a Nation. One G-d. Two tablets. Three forefathers. Four mothers. Five books of Torah. Six orders of Mishnah. Seven days of Shabbat. Eight days of Milah. And then: Nine months of Birth.
It is so strange. We don’t say תשעה ירחי הריון, nine months of pregnancy. We say תשעה ירחי לידה nine months of birth. Why? Because in Torah, those nine months are not a burden. They are not something to “get through.” They are part of the process of bringing life into the world. Allow me to explain.
When Pharaoh commanded Shifrah and Puah to kill the babies, they refused. And they explained: כִּֽי־חָי֣וֹת הֵ֔נָּה Usually translated: “They give birth quickly.” But חיות also means: they live. They live for their children. The reason why they can’t kill these babies is because כִּ֣י לֹ֧א כַנָּשִׁ֛ים הַמִּצְרִיֹּ֖ת הָֽעִבְרִיֹּ֑ת The Jewish women are not like the Egyptian woman! Their entire existence is tied to their children. A Jewish mother is not inconvenienced by motherhood. She is defined by it. We can’t kill these baby boys, because the mother’s will give up their lives for their kids!
And there nothing more Jewish, than a Yiddishe Mamme. Just like we don’t “have” six weekdays and one Shabbat, we have six days that lead toward Shabbat. שבעה ימי שבתא. Just like we don’t “have” eight days before a brit, we have eight days of preparation for a Milah, שמונה ימי מילה… So too, we don’t “have” children interrupting our lives. Pregnancy is not an interruption. Children are not an interruption. Our lives are built around them.
And nowhere is being a parent more revealed, than in a bomb shelter, when the parent holds on to the child, not because the kid deserves it, but because the kid is the kid that G-d gave me.
When everything external is stripped away,… when schedule, routine, honor, money, respect, obedience, household help, is taken away, what remains is the truth of what type of parent we are. And your children are watching. Not what you say. But who you are.
