Ceasefire?

I’m sitting down to write after what feels like a lifetime packed into a couple of weeks.

I try to make sense of everything we lived through and scroll through my camera roll. Photos of a month and a half with both kids at home, moving only around our neighborhood and in and out of bomb shelters, surrounded by wonderful neighbors doing exactly the same.

The past weeks here have been heavy. There’s no other way to say it. Living in Israel often means living between extremes—and lately, the swings have felt especially sharp. Fear, tension, uncertainty… and then suddenly, a ceasefire. A pause. A breath. A meeting. A hug.

And with that breath, something shifts.

You forget how much energy it takes to live on edge until it’s gone. How your body holds it. How your mind never fully rests. And then one night, you get into bed—and you just sleep. No calculations. No “what if.” Just sleep. It almost feels surreal.

During this past week, people stepped back outside. Really outside. Not cautiously, not halfway—but fully. Streets filled again. Cafés buzzed. There was a kind of quiet excitement in the air, like everyone was remembering, at the same time, what it feels like to just be.

There’s something very specific about the way life returns here. It’s fast. Almost abrupt. One moment everything is suspended, and the next—it’s moving again at full speed. Work resumes. Deliveries go out. Messages get answered. Life insists on continuing.

At Hasod, we felt everything.

After a period where we couldn’t ship abroad, the skies opened again. And with that, so did something deeper—the ability to reconnect. To send love across distances that had suddenly felt much bigger. There’s something incredibly meaningful about packing a box right now. Knowing it’s not just a gift—it’s a gesture of presence. Of thinking of someone. Of showing up, even from far away.

And still, underneath this return to movement, there’s complexity.

Because even as cafés fill and packages ship, not everything is resolved. There’s a quiet understanding that this pause is just that—a pause. Many are still being called back to duty. Plans remain uncertain. Stability feels temporary.

And yet, people lean in anyway.

They meet. They build. They try.

There’s something deeply human in that. Maybe even uniquely Israeli—the ability to hold both things at once. The heaviness and the lightness. The fear and the joy. The interruption and the continuation.

I’ve had conversations with friends from abroad who find this rhythm hard to understand. How quickly things seem to “go back to normal.” But the truth is—it’s not really about going back. It’s about moving forward, even when forward isn’t clear.

There isn’t always space to process. No official pause. No moment where everything stops and says: this was hard. Life just… continues.

And somehow, we continue with it.

So here we are. In that in-between space again. Grateful for quiet nights. For open skies. For the ability to send and receive, to connect, to give.

Even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when it’s complicated.

We keep going.

And we keep sending love.