The pace of life suddenly stopped.
I found myself in the heart of a busy Tel Aviv highway. I pressed the gas pedal, hoping to make it to the green light before it turned red and robbed me of more minutes in a city where there are no more minutes.
Then she arrived.
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As if out of nowhere, the traditional Israeli siren suddenly sounded. What the brake pedal couldn't do, the siren did. I slowed down and stopped my car.
It was a moving spectacle.
A huge traffic of vehicles suddenly stopped. The city seemed to freeze in place. On the sides of the road, pedestrians stood in poses reminiscent of the descriptions from A Stroke of Darkness. On the road itself, drivers stood by their vehicles in a silence that was exemplary and somewhat strange to the local culture. The traffic light turned green over and over again, but the typical Israeli driver pretended to be color blind. "If only traffic lights could talk," I chuckled.
I stood like them.
Maybe out of fear of desecration, maybe out of fear of desecrating the names of those who perished. Either way, I stood up. The thoughts that ran through my head didn't stop for a moment.
Freight trains - usually full of animals - are loaded with people on their last journey. Children are cruelly kidnapped from their parents. Parents are viciously torn from their children. An old Jew is thrown to the ground and humiliated more than the dirt he was thrown onto, with the sound of Satan laughing in the background. Long barbed wire fences surround living skeletons - as if they have the power to escape. As if the desire to escape beats within them. The asphalt road I stood on had never been blacker.
Half a minute of silence has passed. Half a minute remains.
I thought I would channel the situation that had arisen in order to learn a lesson. To learn the moral. What should I do now - should I turn pale from thoughts of the past or should I blush from the consciences of the future? Should I focus on the victims of the Holocaust who are no longer with us, or on the victims of the Holocaust who are still with us?
Then realization hit me.
One of our first leaders aptly defined our life here as a "horse galloping in war." That beast that gallops forward during a war as if there were no soldier in front of it with its sword drawn in its hand.
Our daily routine is racing and accelerating forward. Excuse me, sir, where to? – "Not really important.". why? – "Who cares?". some? – "Come on..."" how long? – "Now you've really gone too far with the questions.".
People are in a hurry. They rush. They run. They flock. They race. They grab everything that comes their way. They don't look away. Stopping, even for a second, will cause us to step in the footsteps of our friends, neighbors, and acquaintances – God forbid.
A minute of silence passed.
A few seconds would pass and life would return to its normal course. Another siren sounded, this time from an irritated driver. Well, they overtook him. Understandable. The rumble of engines filled the space. The run continued exactly where it had stopped a minute ago.
I hesitated to get into my car and continue driving, running. I looked at my watch in an effort to muster up just one more minute of standing in the middle of life. How I wanted to continue thinking, observing, becoming more efficient.
""God, I must now continue on my path" – I prayed silently – "but please, give me more such opportunities in my own personal race of life.".
This was my standing prayer.
