The stresses of August 20, 2006

It all started last night.

I had a great Shabbat. It's warm as hell in Israel, and yes, I think I was sweating for the entirety of Shabbat, but I went into town, davened Friday night at Shira Hadasha, and spent Shabbat with Josh, an amazing guy who'll be studying at Pardes with me. Then I got home, back to Har Hatzofim, and talked to my roommate, Andrew.

"Did you hear about August 22?"

"No, why? What's August 22?"

"Oh, just that Iran might nuke Jerusalem. On Tuesday."

I laughed it off as absurd, for a moment, then, in my typical obsessive manner, started googling like crazy. "August+22+Iran." "Nuclear+Iran+August." "Muhammed+Old+City." "Ahmadinejad."

So what did I find?

Mostly, I found information related to two sources; first, an article written by Princeton professor emeritus Bernard Lewis for the Wall Street Journal, and second, statements by leader of the Syrian Reform Party, Farid Ghadry. To sum up the following articles:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008768
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23533

It is entirely possible that Ahmadinejad's crazed, Jihadist mentality, his fear of militaristic retribution, and his forthright opinion that creating a global end-game scenario could very well lead to his doing something terrible in two days. In Jerusalem. Does Iran have nuclear capability already? What does a "multifaceted response" to the nuclear proposal mean? What is Ahmadinejad's "surprise"?

Yeah, so, I was up until 3 am googling like crazy. Sure, I kept rereading the same two sources, quoted numerous times by numerous bloggers and web journalists, but knowing that this speculation was based on limited sources did nothing to ease my mind. My roommate and I spent an hour discussing how a nuclear attack would affect the city, how great Iranian capability probably is, how widespread destruction would be, and what kind of longer lasting effects would come with such an attack. How good is their military? How accurate is their missile capability?

THIS WILL DRIVE YOU TOTALLY CRAZY.

So, finally, I got to sleep. For a moment, when I awoke, I sensed calm; then, my senses came to me, and the calm was erased. What was this dread that was sitting on my heart?

You'd think this was enough. I walked to class, sweating at 10 am, already driving myself crazy. I couldn't eat breakfast... I just wasn't hungry. When I get to class, though, rumor mills started. Not about Tuesday. Not about Iran. No, about us moving back to Haifa, on Thursday.

FOR ONE WEEK OF CLASS.

This is ludicrous. The rough plan, as long as it's approved, is to once again uproot the program, force students to once again repack all their belongings, trudge through a three or four-hour ordeal up to Haifa, arrange for all new rooms, and unpack, just to repack and move again one week later. Now, were I on vacation, hoping to really 'see and experience' Israel as my primary goal, maybe I'd prefer to spend a week in Haifa. As it is, I want to learn as much Hebrew as possible, in an enviroment and a program with the same goal in mind. I can't even begin to comprehend how so totally disrupting this program, with 5 school days left (including the final exam), will do anything but upset the learning process. Certainly, no final decision yet, but I've only been able to get the information I've gotten from endless e-mail requests of the faculty and staff. I'll be even more insulted if this decision is made unilaterally, especially after numerous July/August students, who have more than proved their dedication to the program, go unheard.

I'm livid.

On top of all this, I had a presentation today, that I was totally unprepared for. Nothing like giving an unmemorized presentation in an 86-degree classroom while you're running on 4 hours of sleep, no food, and the stress of nuclear attack. Somehow, talking about my experiences travelling in the UK lost their meaning. I trudged through it.

So, here I sit, with a stomach half-full of dried fruits and nuts, holding back fifteen-hour old tears and a weight in my stomach so heavy I can barely pick myself up. I'm having the worst day I've had in Israel, and probably the worst day I've had in the months before that. I never really had a terrible day in the Haifa process... in fact, I felt totally, emotionally removed from the situation. This immenent nothingness, this plague of unknowing... this is the worst. The worst.

Just so you know, there is a good chance that Andrew and I might make for Tel Aviv, or elsewhere, for Tuesday. Part of me would rather skip a day of class than, you know, face this whatever. I still haven't decided what I'm doing.

So, hopefully, G-d willing, it's nothing. Hopefully, this "multifaceted decision" that took two months to put together, an announcement that comes on the same day as Muhammed's ascent from the Temple Mount, will just be an announcement regarding Iran's nuclear future, and nothing more. G-d willing.

As always, as much love as I can give, I'm giving.