I still have the Red Alert app on my phone.

That isn’t something shocking. Anyone who has traveled to Israel since October 7th probably has it installed and running quietly in the background, ready to scream if rockets are incoming and people need to run for shelter. It has become part of everyday life there. But I never removed it when I came back to the States. The only difference is that now the alerts that wake me up aren’t based on my GPS location; they are centered on the places where my family lives. I wake up to alarms in Beit Shemesh, Efrat, and Ashkelon. I know when rockets are falling near Ra’anana and Karnei Shomron. I know when my daughter is running to a shelter with her husband and baby in Herzliya.

My husband thinks I’m crazy.

I don’t keep the alerts on because of some twisted sense of voyeurism or some deep-seated masochism. And it’s not because I think it gives me any real control over a situation that I can only watch from thousands of miles away. The siren goes off, and I imagine it: my family and friends rushing to their bomb shelters, waiting for the all-clear, hearing the explosive booms overhead, and praying that the walls hold and the building stays standing. And me, here, with only the sound of the alert and my Tehillim, whispering prayers into the dark.

I know I’m not actually doing anything.

Still, when the alerts wake us at 3:00 AM to tell me that Iran is attacking civilians, I get out of bed and text my daughter, my son, my parents, just to let them know that I know they’re sitting tight. It does nothing in real time, but I do it anyway. Then I start searching. News sites. WhatsApp chats. Accounts on X. I piece together fragments of information: the missile was intercepted, there was an impact in Tel Aviv, shrapnel hit a child’s bedroom. And most importantly, the words I’m waiting for: all clear.

Then I go back to bed until the next one.

In Israel, it’s become commonplace. I’ve watched bomb shelter weddings and parties. There’s an app telling them if they have enough time to shower before bombs start falling. It’s like these killing machines are merely a nuisance. Most people couldn’t imagine living under constant rocket fire and responding by casually shrugging and saying, “Yeah, it’s annoying. I have to wake the baby to get to the shelter.” And yet even I, waking up thousands of miles away, think in the back of my mind, “They’ll probably be fine. The rockets will get shot down.” I mean, we literally have space lasers. Why worry?

That’s when I start thinking maybe we’re all crazy. Because while I don’t live in Israel, if there were a flight tomorrow, I would get on it just to run to the shelters with my kids. It may sound crazy to most people, especially since I wouldn’t be helping any more than I would checking my phone near my bed, but in the grand scheme of things, I would rather live in a country that protects its citizens than in one that watches civilians get bombed and debates who deserves sympathy.

“But Israel started it,” they say. 

“But we don’t want this war,” they cry.

They don’t recognize the enemy standing right in front of them.

So the Red Alert app stays on my phone. Not because it protects me. Not because it changes anything. Not even because it keeps me connected to my family and my people. It stays on because it keeps the war where it belongs: not as a headline I scroll past, but as something sitting on my nightstand, screaming in the middle of the night.

I’m not running to a shelter. I’m not dodging sirens or sprinting toward a reinforced room like a parkour enthusiast. I’m not there for that. But I refuse to live as if everything is normal while the people I love are on the front lines.

So I leave the alerts on and pray. And I wait for the all-clear.

And I hope for the day when the difference between good and evil becomes as unmistakable as that shrieking alarm.