Shadowed by Bad Timing

I've been thinking a lot lately about blogging, about what my blog could be, what I want it to be.

I've been thinking about those posts that are in various stages of completion:

• Part 2 of Toward a Jewish Identity (in which I decide to cover my hair), and Part 3 (in which I stop, still grateful for that profound experience);
• On my experience as a kippah-wearing woman in a mid-sized American city, the questions that result from curious strangers, and the one inquiry that left me speechless;
• Religiosity as a fire: getting burned (out) when it flares and keeping it going when it's barely smoldering - and why do I have to bounce between the two extremes?
• And in the book world, I've decided it would be fun and interesting for readers (and hopefully for me) to start a series on my Yaldah Publishing blog detailing (but not too much) the process of taking a book from manuscript to published book - the inside story on how Like a Maccabee came to be.

But then there was war.

I'm shocked and scared and angry and feeling more than a little helpless. Everything in my life pales in comparison (as it probably should). Yet I also am driven to finish As in Days of Old, to pursue what may otherwise seem mundane, and to keep my concern from carrying over to my children.

I wonder if Oldest Son (5), who loves to wear a kippah all day, and Youngest Son, who likes to emulate Oldest Son, and Husby and I, also kippah-topped, are now in any greater danger locally from anyone anti-Israel or otherwise prone to violence against visible Jews.

I wonder if it is better to be safe and remove the kippot for now (please G-d, shelter Israel in safety and make it possible for peace to flourish soon, in our day), or wear them especially now as a show of solildarity.

At any rate, I think I will wait a bit on the blog posts in progress, and perhaps launch the inside story of the birth of a book in a few days to a week.

Meanwhile, I work and wait and pray.