Sorry it took me a day to post after the bombing yesterday–I’m in Ein Gedi right now and didn’t hear about it last night, but there wasn’t any internet available where I was then.

I’m OK, I’m here, I wasn’t there. But this one, I have to say, is really, really scary. Not only because people were hurt and lives were lost. That should be enough, and it is. And/but also because it wasn’t far from the Hebrew U campus, and if I hadn’t skipped out on ulpan this week (the last week; I decided to have some downtime a few days before it ended) I would have been around. (Tho she was probably actually targeting a bus stop, from what I’ve heard. I’ve gotten a lot of secondhand information, haven’t yet had time to read the paper.) It’s feeling more… personal… than ever.

And then, of course, there hadn’t been any bombs in Israel for months before the Beer Sheva bombing, and this is the first one in Jerusalem since I got there. And the reality of how this…mess, this terrible, horrible, painful mess–will be hanging over me this year is also kicking in a little. I know they’ve apprehended a number of bombers before anything happened in Jerusalem–I forget the number I heard, but a bunch since just Rosh Hashonah alone. But potential plans and actual execution–well, it’s harder to feel secure when you know they don’t catch everybody before it’s too late.

I have no great insights right now. This sucks and is hard. I am scared for myself and for this country and for all the people in this region and the whole world. This is no way for any of us to have to live. Any of us.

In the short run, I have a few more hours until my ride back to Jerusalem. I will have tomorrow to get ready for Yom Kippur, and I will go beat my breast and cry for all the things that are still out of whack between human beings and God.

And then, as they say around here, it’s business as usual, life goes on. I hope.