"Happ(ier)" Holiday! Faith under Fire - Reporter's Notebook

Hundreds of rocket alerts just "hit differently" as you're holding your one-year-old granddaughter through the booms, thuds and jets.

Photography in wartime Israel: trying to photograph my "Four Species" cluster as a pictorial souvenir while sitting in our festive Succot hut at the conclusion of the seven-day holiday when we are called upon by God to "Rejoice," and revel in our temporary dwellings.

No matter the present precarious, threatening, and despair-inducing national circumstances: several volleys of incoming rockets from the Iranian-backed terror proxy in Lebanon were fired over much of the Sea of Galilee area, the Lower Galilee, and the Bet Shean Valley as I type these words. Several Israelis were wounded—some seriously—in an earlier barrage at coastal Nahariya and Acco.

Hezbollah-rockets and the Iron Dome defensive interceptors launched at them repeatedly set off my Red Alert app, which kept popping up as I composed and snapped a few shots.

The environmental soundtrack here in the Galilee was provided by Israeli Air Force jets roaring overhead, a UAV (hopefully ours...) buzzing in the vicinity, and distant thumps of the aerial clashing steel rain over Haifa and the region, all reinforcing the sudden batch of visual alerts.

Since I'd - guiltily - missed out on the otherwise festive morning services due to a sudden anxiety attack and uncertainty, I braced myself internally and took the lulav - palm frond, hadass - myrtle twigs, aravah - willow sticks, and etrog - citron, brought them together as one and ritually shook them to the four compass points, and up, and down, symbolizing God's reign over all in the heavens and the Earth.

And that I had the cussed "ever-recovering reporter" sense and composure - despite it all - to jot down these thoughts.

Here's hoping for a Chag Sameach - Happy Holiday.

I'll expand on this essay as best I can after the next 24-hours.