What is an Essential Service? |
It has been interesting to note what constitutes an essential service allowed to be open during this time of war. My synagogue is still limited to twenty congregants because only that many can access its saferoom. Schools and daycares are still shuttered. Last week, before the rules were changed allowing malls and cafes to minimally open, I discovered three interesting qualifiers as essential necessities – my shoe store, local toy store and my favorite bakery. And of course, since Operation Roaring Lion coincided with Purim, our local candy kiosks were open and fully stocked with gummy worms and chocolates, while our butcher had to ration his chicken drumsticks.
Today, as I emerged from our saferoom to the morning sun, I noticed another essential service that had been hard at work during our two-siren night.
From my eighth floor, I have a clear view of the main thoroughfare crossing through our city. Observing it has been a point of interest since the start of the war- the ebb and flow of traffic an excellent barometer of my fellow Modi’inites feelings on our national security.
As I looked out from my perch, I noticed that something familiar had returned and its return caused something to happen within my heart. Fluttering aloft each and every streetlamp was now an Israeli flag and there, right beneath the hill upon which the Iron Dome does its holy work, was parked a truck filled with blue and white. I took a few moments to watch that truck as it hoisted each newly pressed flag upon its pedestal.
The flag routinely goes up in the weeks before Passover juxtaposing the redemption of a nascent nation from Egypt with the emergence of our nascent State. However, this morning’s emergence of the blue and white seemed a bit premature.
And then I remembered that the flags had also gone up in the heavy days post October 7th.
At that time, every highway, every residential street, every porch had its blue and white talisman. The flag went with our soldiers to war, bolstered our spirits and then appeared, in too great numbers, to accompany our heroes on their final journeys home.
Through the seasons, the flags fluttered and waved, frayed by the elements and time but yet they remained, until one day, I am not sure when, they were no longer there.
Today, the flags returned.
So, while the opening of schools and synagogues, malls and cafés are critical, there is something else which must have been considered fundamentally essential.
That in between the two sirens of yesterday’s night a crew would work steadfastly to ensure that the first thing we saw when emerging from our saferooms was a piece of white fabric with blue stripes and a star – renewed and refreshed and ready to wave on.