We Will Rebuild Our Country, Our Society and Ourselves

A Day in the Life of an Israeli MOM: Ella Gan-Or
20/11/2023

Last week I visited my 94-year-old grandmother.

She can’t see very well, her hearing is heavily impaired and unfortunately her mind is not what is used to be either.

She is not aware of the situation (maybe that is a good thing), she does not understand that there is a war, she can’t hear the alarms and anyway – she does not have an safe room to go to.

So I was there with her, playing Remmikub, and wondered what she would say about this situation if her mind was clear? What interesting perspective would she share from her experience in this world?

Both my grandmothers and my grandfathers are holocaust survivors. Both of them lost everything in that war: their families, their communities, their childhood and the life and world they knew. It was all gone, everything changed.

They came to Israel, established a family, established the state of Israel. They created this country for us from nothing.

My grandfather (who passed away 6 years ago) used to say that Israel is the best country in the world! Whenever we were complaining about the government, about the cost of living, about the traffic on the roads of Israel – he would say: This is a dream come true! We have our own country, our own state, our own government we are lucky enough to complain about!
I remember he was so proud of us when we were soldiers. He was really excited even just seeing us wearing the IDF uniforms.

My grandparents had a different perspective on life, the perspective of people who lost everything, who saw their whole world destroyed, and despite everything rebuilt it.
I think if they could, they would tell us that now it hurts, that now everything seems lost and dark and the world as we knew it does not exist anymore. But this is only a transition period, and from this period we will grow into a new reality that will necessarily be better.

We will be different, we will change, but we will be stronger and more united. We will rebuild our country, our society and ourselves.