By Noa Offek –
I don’t believe in statistics.
Let me rephrase — I have too much respect for potential scenarios to accept the flattened statistical version presented to the masses in goodwill and with a reassuring smile.
My grandparents have thirty seconds to get to a shelter when the siren goes off. But statistics do not mind my grandmother’s osteoporosis, and my grandfather’s cancer, and the seventeen-some stairs they need to go down to get to their basement. They always hear the interception on the way. Statistics also do not mind that my building’s stairwell is open to the sky, and it takes far too long to get to the shelter that we don’t even bother. With time, I developed a liking for strong, windowless walls over crowded shelters, and the knowledge, that statistically, I have a better chance of getting hit by a car than by a missile.
After about five or six wars, you learn to duck down and cheat on the numbers. Like anything unexpected in life, sirens rarely find you near a shelter, but anywhere else—in bed, in the shower, shopping, working, at a café.
The semantics always confused me; being in a shelter never felt sheltering. The sounds of bombs and interception, the crying children, and the math consideration – reinforced concrete against missiles – may not have fostered anxiety, but it did spawn but they did create hopelessness. Some days I understood my great-grandmother who never bothered to go to the shelter, because she preferred, as she said, ‘to die in bed.’ To me, this was far better than relying on four concrete walls and a roof while holding on to empty data.
It felt pathetic; the idea that a sense of safety relied on a room. I was not afraid, but I was still confined to one or another metaphorical shelter, and if I wasn’t
running, then I was relying on statistics.
When the wars became more frequent, I wanted to break free: to walk unafraid through the valley of the shadow of death; to jump into the Red Sea; to wade, neck-deep, in the river on my way to mount Moriya. The greatest people never ran to the shelter, they found safety in plunging into stormy waters, not because they did not acknowledge risks, but because they knew that safety did not reside in concrete walls or the realm of numbers. Walking hand in hand with God, it was never clear what awaited at the end of the valley, or in the deep waters, and whether they will make it out alive.
Safety did not mean living, it meant purpose: nothing was accidental; every missile had a target.
And it was far more reassuring to know that a hand was conducting what seemed to be a chaotic chain of events. I knew I would never find a sense of safety in a shelter, because for me, for these people, safety existed where faith was, and where there was faith, there was God. ‘I will fear no evil, for you are with me.’ I may not make it on time, I may become another figure in the ever-changing data. But the verses kept echoing, mantra-like: ‘For You are with me. You are with me. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall fear no evil.’ I shall never fear again.
Noa Offek is an MA student in the English Department at Bar Ilan University
