Coping Through Wars Is Our Enduring Strength

It was 1973. The Yom Kippur War. Sarit was four months old. We were members of a new moshav (managed then like a kibbutz) in the Bika. My husband, along with the majority of the moshav men, had been called up to the reserves. Only three men stayed behind to help protect the moshav and keep it going. And I desperately needed to get to Jerusalem – 70 kilometers away.

Sarit was allergic to milk, and we were running out of the only formula she could tolerate. There was no WhatsApp list to post: "Does anyone have a can of Nutramegin?". No phones to call pharmacies. No online medical services. No money to buy gas for our car. No buses. No crisis hotlines. We were on our own.

Who would have imagined several wars later that we'd have Facebook groups appealing for ceramic vests for their units, or for donations for home-cooked meals or humorous memes to keep our spirits up. We didn't miss what didn't exist. We used what we had. I had the tradition of hitchhiking.

As the culture of those days was to pick up just about anyone holding out their index finger, the Israeli sign for wanting a tremp– to hitch a ride – that day in 1973, I was standing alone on Road 90 next to a pole which signaled a bus stop. Being alone on that road was a good thing – I had no competition for a ride. The Bika had been declared a closed military zone when the Yom Kippur war started, and I was praying a car, any vehicle, would stop for me. After more than an hour, one did.

The driver dropped me off in Jerusalem near Zion Square, and I started walking. In those days, all prescriptions were filled at the kupat cholim clinics, not private pharmacies. Unfortunately, this special formula was only available privately at full cost. I wandered down Yaffo St. and up King George St., stopping at every pharmacy I found.

"Try East Jerusalem," one pharmacist suggested. I found a pharmacy on Salah Ad-din Street.

I handed him my stamped document from the Ministry of Health allowing me to buy two cans each week.

"I really need both cans," I pleaded.

"You know you are allowed to buy only one at a time," he told me. "Come back in a few days."

He read my desperation and exhaustion. There were probably a few tears from a frightened mother as well. I don't remember. I just know I walked out clutching two cans.

Now I had to find a way back to the moshav. I took a bus to the far side of the Old City and stood with soldiers who were waiting for rides to their bases. This was a short wait, thanks to the dozens of new immigrants who had not served in the army. Their way to contribute to the war effort was to ferry soldiers to their bases near Jericho, a thirty-minute drive or to the Jiftlik, thirty kilometers north of Jericho.

"What are you doing here?" asked the American driver who pulled up. I explained my situation and he told me to jump in.

We played "Jewish Geography" as we drove past the churches on the Jericho Road and through the winding streets of the village of al-Eizariya, and finally down the two-lane road in the direction of the Dead Sea. We quickly found a mutual friend: Yosi Goel, who taught at the Hebrew University and wrote for the Jerusalem Post, including a feature about the moshav and me.

"I'll drop off the soldier in Jericho and then take you home," he said. I knew it would add another twenty-five minutes each direction to his drive, but I was grateful and happily accepted the offer.

By December, half of the men hadn't returned yet, including my husband. Many of the foreign volunteers who had come to help us left because the work was so demanding. The government imposed a "carless day" system – each car had its own "day of rest." We had a big sticker on the windshield of our Opel saying "Wednesday." It didn't matter much. We could barely afford to use the car on any day. A tank of gas used up our monthly stipend. No one was driving much as most of the men were away and none of the other women had a driver's license. I was the only one.

One morning the radio room received an urgent message from the fields, seven kilometers down the winding hill.

"Bring the ambulance. Now! The tractor wagon crushed Yuval's leg!"

Aaron, our work manager, was in the compound. He ran to the ambulance, only to find that its wheels were stuck in the mud. In my memory of this day, I was the only one in the compound who had a driver's license. According to my letter home, I think that Aaron just ignored the fact that he didn't have one.

The wheels spun as he struggled unsuccessfully to free the heavy GMC from its captors. He gave up.

"Keep trying," Aaron told me. "They really need it. I'm going down there in the Peugeot."

I climbed into the driver's seat. I'd had a license since the day I turned sixteen – eight years earlier. I hadn't driven a stick shift since driver's education in high school.

Where's first gear? I put the key in the ignition and focused: first should be up to the left. Second should be straight down from that. Where's reverse?That's what I need. I found it and rocked the GMC back and forth. Some of the women pushed while others wedged cardboard and wood under the tires.

The ambulance was high off the ground. I imagined I was sitting in the cockpit of the Boeing 707 in the 1970 movie Airport when the mechanic (George Kennedy) had to move a plane stuck in the snow so an airliner damaged by a bomb could land. Kennedy's character talked to the plane like a drill sergeant. I, however, used fierce and determined facial expressions.

"I got it out after five minutes," I wrote. "I almost cried."

I pulled out of the gate and shifted into second without grinding the gears. The narrow road had no guard rails to prevent a vehicle from plunging down the steep ravines. I had no idea what I was doing and was too afraid to try for third. I crawled down the seven-kilometer road in second gear. Luckily, the third member who had remained on the moshav was an ambulance driver, and he rushed Yuval to Jerusalem.

"I was a heroine." I proudly wrote, "I've always wanted to be one!"

Tragically, a few years later we lost a moshav member when his tractor tumbled down the ravine. Some years after that a new road was built but sections of that old road are still visible. I can't imagine how we went up and down that road on tractors, cars and trucks, let alone in an ambulance with me driving.

It's not hard to understand, however, how we managed the war with no phones, no Internet and no social media to ask for help and for critical items we needed for our soldiers or for an allergic baby.

That's just what we do.