*The Extra | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | June 27, 2025*
This week, on Wednesday morning, during one of the daily emergency writing sessions I held for the public, Livnat read us a piece she had written—and in response, hundreds of people started to cry. She wrote that throughout the war, she had been the anchor of her home, and now, all of a sudden, the order had come to return to routine, and she didn’t really know who she was, what her place was in that routine, or who she was supposed to be now. I watched the screens fill with tears and choked throats. Which of us knew what to be now? The cuts are sharp. The announcement of war came at three in the morning, with terrifying trumpets. And now the call to return to life arrives in a brief, indifferent update during the 8 p.m. news.
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That morning I wrote on Facebook that after nearly two weeks of Home Front Command telling us what to do every moment—day and night, in our bedrooms and in our bathrooms, in sleep and in wakefulness, children and elders—after all those tight instructions flashing on our phones, maybe it’s time to start listening to a different kind of command. The one from the heart. And that might take time. It’s hard to expect we’ll return to normal life with the same momentum that we were torn away from it.
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And for that reason, even after the official order to return to routine, I continued the emergency writing sessions for two more mornings. And still, each morning, when I opened my computer, I found hundreds of people already waiting for me there on Zoom.
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During the first meeting I told everyone—we’re doing something subversive! Even in ordinary times, we write against the odds. And especially women—we write in defiance of what’s expected of us and our time. But in wartime, it’s particularly subversive. Then, after the official announcement of calm, I told them we’re continuing the rebellion. We’re not rushing back into our roles. We’re continuing to carve out space for ourselves. Not leaping to resume our lives, but pausing to listen to the command of the heart—and writing from there.
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And that, really, was the strongest feeling I carried with me throughout this intense war with Iran: the feeling that I was an extra in a war film. Without a real role. Without any lines. The plot forced upon me, just like on others around me, and I was simply following the director’s orders. Of course I was. Otherwise, it’s life-threatening.
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And yet, what I most urgently needed, in the midst of all the fear and heaviness, was to be together. Not together in the shelter, not “together we will win.” A different kind of together. And so I posted an open invitation for anyone to join me in the mornings and write—and discovered that more than a thousand people felt the same. They, too, needed that kind of together.
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The plan was supposedly simple. I’d read a poem or two and we’d talk about it. Then we’d write something inspired by it. Then we’d hear a few pieces people had written. And that’s exactly what we did. Only very quickly we realized this wasn’t just another writing session. In the chaotic reality we had landed in, it turned out that for half an hour, we stopped chasing the headlines and started giving them ourselves. We stopped scrolling the endless feed, and instead—we wrote and read what we were going through. We stopped being extras in reality, extras in the film our lives had become. And for half an hour, we took the stage ourselves.
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It took determination. Because on the second day, the rocket barrages from Iran came precisely at 10:30 a.m., and we started our joint writing an hour late. And on the third day, the barrages began again exactly at 10:30, and the headlines were painful, the casualties many, the fear palpable—yet still we started, thirty minutes late. And on Wednesday, when we were already supposed to be back to “normal,” we were reeling from the loss of seven soldiers, and out of the shock and grief—we wrote again. For half an hour.
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Day by day, it became clear there was no substitute for that half hour, when we took a deep breath together and began, step by step, to reclaim the role of lead actor in our own lives. For thirty minutes a day, I stopped being an extra.
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I thought about that a lot this week. After all, what’s so bad about being an extra? From a spiritual point of view, I’ve practiced enough Buddhist meditation in my life to learn that it’s often better to observe than to intervene. To allow things to unfold. In that sense, being an extra in life—watching, accepting—can be a kind of wisdom. And even without Buddhism, life itself has taught me we don’t have much control over the script or the plot. And yet, in the way I live my life, I don’t feel like I’m just watching from the side. I feel the opposite of an extra. And even if that’s an illusion—it’s an illusion I happen to love.
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Anyway, at some point during this week, I received a message from one of my readers. I think it was on Monday or Tuesday. She informed me that today was the yahrzeit—the memorial day—for someone named Nitsevet bat Ad’el. Nitsevet is the Hebrew word for “Extra”. A name I’d never heard before. Naturally, I thought for a second it was a joke at my expense, a play on all my thoughts about being an extra. But she went on and wrote that if you say her name enough times—seven, or maybe seventeen, I can’t remember exactly—and then make a wish, it will come true.
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And I wished to stop being an extra in this war film. So I looked her up. And it turns out she was none other than the mother of King David. And it makes sense that I’d never heard of her, because like so many women in the Bible, her name is never mentioned. We simply settle for the knowledge that David is the son of Jesse.
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Nitsevet bat Ad’el appears in just one Talmudic tractate, and there’s also a legend that tells a rather dramatic tale about her: her husband, Jesse, had fallen in love with one of their maidservants. And for him to return to her bed, Nitsevet and the maid had to hatch a little scheme. The two women switched places in the dark, and while Jesse believed he was making passionate love to the maidservant, he was actually with his wife. Yes, that same Nitsevet—who conceived that night and gave birth to a boy as ruddy as the fire of a man in love with someone else.
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Beyond that bit of gossip, I didn’t find much else. Her name suggests someone who stands to the side, silent, maybe overlooked—but present. Steady. But for me, this week, Nitsevet, mother of David, arrived right on time. In the very week I felt most like an extra in my life. Most conflicted about it. I felt as if she was winking at me, whispering something. After all, every morning, together with hundreds of people, we held subversive gatherings and took center stage in our own lives. Maybe, like her, we learned that even as extras, we still have the power to give birth to royalty?
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Oh, and about that little mystical promise tied to her name—I just checked. It’s seventeen times you have to repeat it. Let me know if it worked?
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Wishing us all a peaceful Shabbat, quiet days and nights, and may all our hostages return home soon,
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*Maya Tevet Dayan*