There is a specific kind of 3 a.m. that belongs only to Israel. Wednesday’s 3 a.m. was one of them. It began with two missiles over Jerusalem. Then, somewhere between night and morning, a ceasefire.

We opened an exhibition in late February called Shesh Acharei HaMilchama — Six After the War (As Soon as the War is Over). The title comes from Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, where two friends make a plan to meet “at six after the war.” The joke, if you want to call it that, is that “after the war” is not a time. It sounds like one. It has the grammatical structure of an appointment. But it is not a time. It is a wish dressed up as a coordinate.

In Israel the phrase became something else after 1967. Shesh acharei hamilchama. It entered the language as shorthand for the hinge moment — the impossible, longed-for, slightly........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)