I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before, but I was afraid of the monsters in our basement.

And the ones in the attic.

I suppose that’s not unusual for children, but the embarrassing part is that my fear followed me into adulthood. Even after I was married, with children of my own and a mortgage to pay, if I couldn’t turn on the light before descending the five steps into our cluttered basement, I would hurry down, grab what I needed, and race back upstairs to safety with the speed of an Olympic sprinter.

The monsters weren’t confined to home. When the movie Jaws came out in 1975, I was so unnerved on the drive home that I kept checking the rearview mirror, half-expecting a predator of the deep to be closing in behind me.

If memory serves, I made it home unchewed.

Those were the monsters of my past. I suppose people are entitled to their phobias, no matter how irrational.

My grandchildren are growing up in the land of our ancestors—

the land flowing with milk and honey,

the land dubbed the Startup Nation,

a land with a storied past, a vibrant present, and, we pray, a luminous future.

But not a land without air-raid sirens.

Not a land where their fathers simply go to work and return home at night—where they don’t have to carry a gun and leave for hours or days or weeks at a time to protect us all.

Not a land without nightmares.

Real ones. Legitimate ones.

One of the little ones refused to go upstairs alone, afraid that a siren might sound and she would have to run to the shelter by herself.

Some of them sleep each night on mattresses crowding the floor of the shelter.

They are, no doubt, typical of the more than two million children who live here. None of us knows what fears may take root, silently accompanying them into the future. Yet we are a resilient people, and we have every reason to believe in the strength of the next generation—their capacity to endure, and to move forward.

We have monsters to the north. Monsters to the south. Monsters to the east. And the west does not always appear much kinder.

We came to Israel for the promise of a brilliant future—one that often feels so close we can almost touch it, the way our fingers wend their ways into the ancient crevices of the Kotel. 

We can smell it with the same intensity as when we pass the bakeries that line our streets, breathing in the wafting scent of fresh-baked bread. 

We can hear it in our raucous marketplaces, in the tapestry of music rising from our streets, and in the laughter echoing from playgrounds on nearly every corner.

Our children will inherit it. We have paid far too much for it to be otherwise. And we will continue to pay whatever is required to ensure that the Land of Israel fulfills its promise.

All we have to do is get past the monsters.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)