I’ve never been interested in camping. Call me a Jewish prince, but I’ve always preferred a proper bed and a closed bedroom door. While my friends packed tents and trekked down to Glastonbury each year to sleep in muddy fields, I stayed nice and clean in the comfort of Jewish North West London. So when I was told that for the first few days of my aliyah I’d be staying in a nice hotel in Tel Aviv, I felt relieved. At least, I thought, I’d be somewhat eased into this daunting solo life change.
And eased in I was, that is, until my fourth morning in Israel.
It was Saturday, 28th February. I was brushing my teeth when my phone began to scream with an alert. I’d been to Israel many times before and knew what the alert meant and what I needed to do. The night before, after reading that the U.S. government had advised its citizens to leave Israel due to predicted escalation with Iran, I had familiarized myself with the hotel shelters, so I grabbed my phone and IDs and went down the stairway to the basement.
At the hotel, we were told that Israel had struck IRGC targets in Iran and that retaliation was expected in the next few hours.
Back in my room, I showered as quickly as possible, something I’ve since learned to do every day. I kept my phone as close to the shower as it could be, my head poking out of the door just in case. Soon after, we were told that the hotel would be closing and that all guests would be moved to a larger hotel with a bigger shelter. I threw everything back into the two suitcases I’d brought from the UK and waited in the lobby for further instructions.
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What followed were hours of running to the bomb shelter, hearing explosions above my head, checking Instagram, eating Bamba, going back up to the hotel lobby, and repeat. Eventually, I managed to get a taxi to the new hotel. The streets were deserted, so the journey took no time at all, but my heart was racing the entire way as I prayed there wouldn’t be a siren en route.
The new hotel was stunning. I was put on the eighth floor with a gorgeous view of the beach. The bed was huge, with a thick duvet and enough pillows for a large family. I’ll skip ahead here and tell you that the bed remained untouched. The sirens were so relentless that first day that I couldn’t leave the hotel for more than five minutes at a time. When night came, a group of us set up camp in the lobby, hoping to create some sense of comfort. But after being forced down to the shelter again and again, we gave up.
That was how I spent my first night of “camping”: sleeping on the floor of a parking lot, fully clothed, shoes on, on top of a duvet, using a hotel robe as a blanket. When I say sleeping, I probably got two hours at most. The bright lights, the constant noise, hundreds of other people, and the sirens made proper sleep impossible.
As stressful as all of this sounds, what surprised me most was how strangely manageable it felt. One of the many reasons I’d moved to Israel was to be around strong, resilient Israelis who just get on with it and continue with life under pressure so watching an Israeli mother calmly care for her toddler at 3 a.m, after the 20th siren of the day, or being handed homemade treats that an elderly woman has somehow prepared in between sirens was exactly what I’d ordered. Spending that night on the bomb shelter floor and not complaining felt like the most Israeli thing I could do and I was happy to rise to that challenge.
After my first week, I was supposed to start ulpan (intensive Hebrew language school) in Ra’anana for five months, living on campus before moving back to Tel Aviv permanently at the end of the summer. But after another tense taxi ride from the hotel to Ra’anana, followed by one night alone in a bomb shelter there, an experience I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, I decided to abandon that plan. Instead, I escaped back to central Tel Aviv, where I stayed in a flat with a friend and five strangers.
That week, I slipped into zombie mode. Not because of the war exactly, but because my plans had collapsed and I no longer knew what I was doing. I was living out of a tote bag, had only enough clothes for two days, and was still exhausted from nights interrupted by sirens.
I’m someone who needs to know what I’m doing each day. I need a plan of action; otherwise, things start to spiral. Luckily, I had moved to the one country in the world where community is everything, and when you’re about to spiral, there is an entire neighborhood of people there to hold you up.
My first savior was Joseph, a friend of a friend who let me stay in his improvised commune with my friend Emma and a rotating cast of four or five others. We set up camp in his apartment because he lived next to a big shelter, which we got to know very well over the course of the week. His generosity was unlike anything I’d ever seen. He seemed genuinely delighted to let people stay at his home and eat his food, even on days when he wasn’t there himself.
My second savior was Emma, a friend from home. She made me breakfast each morning even when I was struggling to eat. She sat with me through my wobbly moments as I tried to fall asleep each night. She kept encouraging me when I grew impatient with myself for not coping better and not recovering faster.
My third savior was Oli, whom I’d met briefly in London but didn’t know very well. He’s fluent in Hebrew and helped me enormously with the bureaucracy of trying to reschedule my appointments from Ra’anana to Tel Aviv, while most offices were closed and I no longer had a stable address for government records.
Which brings me to my fourth and final savior, Rachel. Her housemate was moving out and looking for an immediate replacement just a couple of streets away from where we had been staying. The apartment was lovely, not wildly expensive, and it meant living with Rachel, who, like the rest of the commune, had become part of my core group instantly.
The timing felt like divine intervention.
After five days in the commune, I moved into my new flat with Rachel. The relief was immediate. I unpacked my suitcases. I slept in a bed alone. I began eating properly. I started going for morning runs on the beach and walking around the sunny city. I found that I was able to interact like a human being again, being present during conversations with people, actually hearing what they said to me as they asked about my aliyah reasons or gave me their restaurant recommendations.
There are still difficult moments, for me the difference between night and day is…well, night and day. Nothing can quite prepare you for that feeling of being jolted awake at 3 a.m. by a loud siren, jumping up to find your hoodie and shoes, and trudging down to the public shelter with the rest of the street. But that’s also what’s so special. Even half asleep, eyes stinging, I feel something when I see everyone else stepping out of their homes and walking silently in the same direction. That shared experience is bonding in an inexplicable way. A silent way at 3 a.m., more social in the daytime, but bonding all the same.
The sirens have seeped into my daily life in a way that I probably will not fully understand until months down the line. I’ve already had a siren while in the shower, so that’s one nightmare come to life. In the end, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined and, somehow, almost funny, the sort of thing people here speak about as a rite of passage. The other morning, I shot upright at 6 a.m., jumped out of bed, and scrambled for my shoes because I was certain I’d heard an alert but had somehow fallen back asleep. After a few seconds, I realized I must’ve dreamt it, so I calmed down and managed to fall back to sleep for a couple more hours.
Things are getting easier, and that’s thanks to the Israeli spirit and the kindness of friends and strangers. I’ve now started looking for a new ulpan here in Tel Aviv and for a part-time job to support myself whilst I learn Hebrew over the next 6 months. After that, I’ll look for full-time work and perhaps a more permanent flat, another way of putting down roots in this city.
I’m looking forward to this war ending, to not sleeping with my shoes next to the bed and my jacket loaded with my IDs and house key. I’m looking forward to a full night of sleep, to planning proper days out or even a grocery shop without calculating where the nearest shelter is.
But life in between the sirens carries on, and that’s where I’m focusing my energy.
It has been a difficult beginning to my life in Israel, certainly more difficult than I ever imagined. But in the middle of all that uncertainty, I have also found a kind of clarity. I came here to build a life, and almost immediately, I was shown what makes that life possible: not certainty or comfort, but the people who step in when things fall apart.
Originally Published Apr 10, 2026 12:25PM EDT
