JEWISH WORLD / Hijacked by the war in Gaza

Everyone knows that we Israelis are made of steel. Stainless steel. Year after year, war after war, we resist the rust of our tears.

Mostly, we keep them locked away deep down inside ourselves so that we hardly even know they're there. Sometimes, when they do manage to well up to the surface, we flick them away with the back of our hands or rub them dry with toilet paper. And then we shine our faces with a special, locally made anti-corrosive cream, le divertissement. It keeps us tough, supple and glowing. It works on political blues, racial tensions, marital crises, and even getting fired doldrums. Day after day, day by day, we wake up, eat breakfast, step out into our lives, and fill them to bursting with distractions. And then we return home to share what's left of us with friends and family.

Unfortunately, when there's a war going on, le divertissement is grabbed up over the counter and is in extremely short supply. At times like these, many of us choose to concoct our own salves. The book club at my home one day last week should have been the ideal thing.

With the television news running in the background all day long like a painful ingrown toenail that you just have to live with, I prepared a gourmet meal as if it were just another ho hum day. Fresh tomato soup with homemade croutons topped with chopped parsley, a pomegranate-flecked salad with aragula leaves and a honey Dijon dressing, a sweet potato and onion quiche baked to perfection in an Ikea ceramic quiche dish, and an apple cake whose recipe has been passed down from Germans to Israelis to this American turned Israeli over three generations. My son, home from university to put a good 100 km between himself and stray Grad missiles, helped me grate the apples. They fell in a hopeless mound, their juice puddling on the plate. Occasionally he stopped to read the latest headlines on Ynet or to see NBA special shots online.

I hummed along with Joan Baez as she sang straight from her heart to me on my computer, remembering the good old days of "We Shall Overcome." I began to believe that maybe we would. I opened my china closet, wiped down my best china and arranged it on a lily white tablecloth. When my guests arrived, this new war was tucked away neatly inside my psyche. I was ready to entertain and to discuss the amazing stand-up words and story of The Book Thief. I had gone to bed with it for three nights straight, propping it up on my chest until the early hours of the morning. The actual book thief, Liesel, had charmed the Angel of Death in Nazi Germany with her youth, loyalty and compassion. It was no wonder that she stolen the best of my sleep.

But as we sat around my coffee table, this new war cast a dark shadow on the delicate, silvery china pattern. I sensed it, but was powerless to do anything about it. My foreboding was confirmed as soon as the first club member spoke.

"My youngest son was called up for reserve duty," she began, her voice so soft that we had to lean in to hear her.

"He'll be alright," I comforted her, feeling just a touch guilty but a whole lot more relieved about my own sons who were still civilians.

"Don't get me wrong. I am for this war. How long can we live under the threat of red alerts? I just want it to be over quickly," she whispered. "My heart can't bear it."

We had all been there. Waiting for a call from our sons or daughters in wartime or simply during their military service so that we could dare to breathe deeply again without shattering some cosmic balance. So that we could stop running around to keep ourselves so busy. And it was this being there, this familiarity with danger in our midst that triggered the next question.

"But what about all the civilians we're killing?" a grandmother-looking sort blurted out emotionally. "Did you hear about the five sisters who were just killed in their sleep in an air raid?"

I hadn't, but I grabbed at the chance to find a way to Liesel. I shook my head and clicked my tongue to register my "What can we do about it?" sorrow. "Strange," I said then. "Just like Liesel's entire foster family was killed in their sleep by an errant bomb." I reached down for my copy of The Book Thief resting on the table, ready to open it to the right chapter and read the scene aloud. But I was cut off.

"Are we to be feared like our own worst oppressors?" a self-claimed devil's advocate threw out.

There was a chilled silence. And then a trim woman who had driven up from what she called "the south", a child of Holocaust survivors, jumped in agitatedly.

"We are defending our own country. We are not like them. We are not in this for the sake of purifying humanity," she spat out in a voice I didn't know she had.

"But where is our humanity?" a lab worker who worked at a rehabilitation center for soldiers asked. She picked up her copy of The Book Thief. Like me, she was clearly moved by the book and was pushing for a return to it. "Liesel and her foster father Hans kept theirs alive at the risk of their own lives. They hid Max, the Jew whose father had saved Hans in his youth, and even fed unknown, starving Jews on their way to Dachau."

"Our humanity is in living. In keeping ourselves alive, and making sure our children have a place to live where they won't have to grovel. First our northern settlements were under rocket attack. Now our southern settlements are. In fact, like the mayor of Be'er Sheva said, if you fold a map of Israel in half, Be'er Sheva falls exactly on the crease, smack in the middle of this country. What are we supposed to do? Bend our heads and cast our eyes downward, praying that our suffering will end?"

And so the evening continued. Every time I, or anyone else, tried to bring the discussion back to The Book Thief, it was hijacked by this new war of ours.

Somewhere toward the end of the evening, after the big block of apple cake was chiseled down to a small lumpy shape, the woman whose son was in the reserves got a call on her cellphone. She jumped up and took it in my kitchen. We continued talking, distracting ourselves with updates about our families and stories of our latest trips abroad.

But we all looked up as she rejoined the group and grabbed for her purse.

"He's home," she breathed. "He got a few hours off and came home. You'll have to excuse me, but I'm leaving now."

My other guests left soon after. Dishes were piled up high on the kitchen counter and on the coffee table. But when I walked my last guest to the front door, I sat back down on the couch and closed my eyes. And then I reached for the remote and switched on the television.

Three more of our soldiers had been killed.

My stomach tightened, and I gulped down the tears. I switched off the television. I got up from the couch in search of our next book that I had already taken out of the library. And then, with dishes and leftover food all around me, I turned off the lights and changed into my pajamas. I snuggled under the warm winter quilt and turned to the first page.

Liesel had stolen my heart. I was hoping that some other character would find a way in.