By Dr. Batya L. Ludman

What a week.
We are once again burying our dead - our beloved sons and daughters, babies and grandmothers. When does it end? Weeks such as the one we just had, when we go from one attack into the next do not give us any time to begin the recovery process that comes after the news of such an attack.

Combined with the horrific violence, and the knowledge of innocent young lives and those of families being taken while performing such mundane tasks as riding a bus or sitting in a house, we are once again hit very hard. After a year and a half, we have seemingly become hardened. We hear about an attack, watch television for a few minutes, determine that our loved ones are safe and as we ascertain that no one we knew was there, we once again go on about our business as if nothing ever happened.
We have become almost desensitized to the daily struggles and in order to cope with what we have endured for so long, we seem to barely notice yet another pigua (terror attack).

After all, we are long past the point where we could hope to remember all the names, places or incidents, and we simply add the next set of statistics to our already far too long list. We are naturally embarrassed when we can't seem to remember events that happened only a few days earlier-but they seemed like an eternity ago.

Take a moment to seriously consider how most of us have come to live.
We in Israel at times have learned to live our lives in between attacks. If we are blessed with a few days, we almost start to forget that we are in the middle of a war. The key word is almost. Like a death sentence of terminal cancer, for many we know it is just a matter of time. The minute there is a big attack or we have day after day of attacks coming one on the heel of the next, we are quickly thrown back there to that time of uncertainty. Our cool exterior crumbles and we are devastated by our loss. Our children, once innocent, ask us if there was yet another incident.
We linger over conversations with our friends who yet again call to check in-this time to weep together over what has happened.
We ask each other, and ourselves, how long can this go on, and we each offer our own wishful solutions.
We are once again back to watching television and feel that we don't want to be too far away from the news.
We hear of areas of high alert and we ourselves note our vigilance. We are in great pain.
We are struggling to cope.

Strangely enough, after a year and a half, we all appear to have been coping quite well in spite of these horrendous circumstances. Some days the price is very high and we all reluctantly acknowledge, when we are honest with ourselves, that in some way we too have been lightly injured. We seem to be hated by everyone and those who purport to like us make very difficult demands on us. We too are the lightly wounded casualties even if we were never within arm's length of an incident. We have greater levels of stress, are depressed, overeat, have difficulties sleeping, are anxious, hypervigilent and the list goes on and on. We have tried reading, relaxation, turning the television off and leaving the country.
Sometimes, these even feel good.

Now we need to move on to those things that might make us feel great.
We are just about ready for something big-right about now. Something that could help to alleviate our pain and enable us to feel stronger.
My solution is a simple one and I have watched it work wonders in the United States. It is to develop a sense of collective patriotism.
We need to feel proud and not defeated; we need to feel strong and not alone.

We can work together for the good of our country. We can come together in our similarities and ignore for once, our differences. We can give blood, collect food or cards for the chayalim, visit those in hospitals, sing Hatikvah and join together with fellow community members. We can stand up and recite a silent prayer in synagogue for those who are injured when they call upon us to pray for those who are unwell.

These are just a few things that we can do to get outside of ourselves and interact with the community. They call on us to come together, united with our fellow Jews and be strong.
To say once and for all-this is ours, we are entitled to be here and we will work together - forgetting for a moment ourselves, and our differences, to help each othe r- to demonstrate our idealism and our patriotism.

We can and will stand united togethe r- we can do something- we can cope-we can be proud. Each and every one of us can, with our own strength, make a difference.
It is easy to feel like a victim of terror. It is difficult to fight for what has brought us here and kept us fighting. It is difficult at times to fight for what we believe in-but through this strength, we can show the world, that we are not afraid.
Our people are true leaders throughout the world.

It is time once again to be that light unto the nations.
It is up to each and every one of us to fight terrorism and through this struggle, to restore peace to our wonderful country.