By Howard Feldman
On Wednesday morning 30 September, during Morning Mayhem, we began seeing reports of a possible hijacking involving a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv. Information was limited, confused and changing rapidly. We shared only what we could verify. And then, along with our listeners, we waited.
For around 40 minutes, we held our breath.
There were more than 170 people on board. More than 170 families who believed that someone they loved was simply flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv. People who had probably complained about the boarding queue, adjusted their air vents, declined an overpriced sandwich and settled in for an entirely ordinary flight.
And then, suddenly, it was no longer ordinary.
By the end of the show, we knew that the plane had landed safely. The immediate danger appeared to have passed. We exhaled, although perhaps not completely.
It took a few hours for my anxiety levels to come down. And they did, briefly. Then came the news that Israeli authorities were treating the incident as a terror attack, and many of us entered the next familiar stage: the “what if?” phase.
What if the plane had not recovered? What if it had reached Israeli airspace? What if the passengers had not intervened? What if this was not an isolated incident?
We have become very good at “what if.”
I have little doubt that many in our community are functioning at unhealthy levels of hypervigilance. We are triggered by the smallest piece of breaking news because nothing feels small anymore. A report of an incident is not simply an incident. It is connected immediately to everything else we have seen, heard and feared.
Everything takes us back to everything.
A protest is not just a protest. A warning is not just a warning. A suspicious vehicle, an unattended bag, a threatening message or a rumour on WhatsApp can send us racing mentally through every possible outcome.
And it is not without reason.
Around the world, Jews are facing threats that would once have seemed unthinkable. Jewish schools, shuls, businesses and individuals have been targeted. People have been attacked for wearing a kippah, displaying a mezuzah or publicly supporting Israel.
South African Jewry has thankfully experienced considerably less than some other communities. But the recent CSO warning and the raising of the security threat level remind us that we cannot take our safety for granted.
We have to remain alert. We have to listen to the CSO. We have to respect security procedures, even when they are inconvenient. We have to report suspicious behaviour rather than assume that someone else will do it.
But there is also a cost to living permanently braced for impact.
Hypervigilance keeps us alert, but it can also exhaust us. It makes every sound louder and every rumour more believable. It convinces us that if we stop watching for danger, even for a moment, that will be the moment something happens.
The problem is that it becomes difficult to tell where responsible awareness ends and fear begins.
I am not particularly good at that distinction.
When something happens, I read too much, refresh too often and imagine outcomes that have not occurred. I tell myself that I am staying informed. Sometimes I am. At other times, I am simply feeding the anxiety while pretending that it is research.
There is a strange comfort in constant checking. It creates the illusion that if we know enough, soon enough, we will somehow be able to control what happens next.
We can’t.
That does not mean we should become careless or naïve. It means we have to find a way to be vigilant without allowing vigilance to become the whole of our Jewish experience.
Our enemies should not get to decide the emotional temperature of every Jewish home. They should not be allowed to turn every celebration into a security briefing, every journey into a threat assessment and every unknown into a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Perhaps that is one of the messages of Sukkot.
We leave the apparent security of our homes and sit in a structure that is, by design, temporary and exposed. The roof is deliberately incomplete. We can see the sky through it. We feel the wind. We hear the sounds outside.
That is a very different thing from pretending there is nothing to fear.
We should remain alert. We should take warnings seriously. We should look after one another. But we must also continue to invite people, sit around crowded tables, argue about how much food was necessary and insist that everyone has dessert.
We must keep building, celebrating and showing up.
On Wednesday morning, for 40 minutes, we feared the worst. But the plane landed. The passengers came home. Families who might have received the most devastating news instead received phone calls telling them that their loved ones were safe.
That matters too.
Our fear is understandable. Our vigilance is necessary. But neither can be allowed to become the full story.
The full story is that we are still here. Still alert, certainly, but also still gathering, still laughing, still celebrating and still making room for one another beneath a roof through which we can see the sky.