*Around the Table of Mothers and Fathers | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | 30.1.2026*
This week a photograph was published: senior officials from the American military landed in Israel and met with senior officials from our own military. A long table stood between them. On one side sat the American commanders, on the other the Israeli commanders, and at its head the flags of both countries. On the wall was Ben-Gurion’s quote: “Every Hebrew mother shall know that she has entrusted the fate of her son to commanders worthy of that trust.”
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After shifting uncomfortably, I wrote a post about the absence of Hebrew mothers from that table, and of American mothers as well, the absence of women altogether from all decision-making tables: the security cabinet, the senior military command, the Ministry of Defense, and of course the government. Regardless of the men sitting there and how feminist they may be, I asked how it could still be that around this most important table there is not even a single woman.
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It is a rhetorical question, of course. Because the answer is known. We are still living in a reality in which the starting line for men and women is different, and therefore women can barely reach the finish line. This has to do with the messages women receive from a young age. With the fact that there are hardly any role models. And with the fact that the years of career takeoff overlap exactly with peak fertility years and pregnancies, and if you choose to build a family, no one saves a seat at the table for you until you are done with the job of mothering. On the contrary, the chairs are squeezed closer together, and good luck trying to squeeze in.
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That post sparked many responses, like every feminist post does, and after replying to many of them, I found myself thinking sadly about how hard it is to be a mother during a war. Certainly a mother of soldiers, but also just an ordinary mother to children, who, for two years and three months, has been working around the clock at something no one ever prepared her for: constantly stabilizing the family, the household economy, the partnership, and the mental state. A mother who asks what might come. A mother who, in the most frightening hours, summons strength from who knows where just to get through another day, another siren or threat of war, only to discover that once again, everyone who threatens and responds and gives speeches and fights and makes decisions about her and about her children are, one hundred percent of them, not women and of course not mothers.
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That thought made me sigh loudly enough for my younger daughter to ask, Mom, are you okay? And I told her yes, yes, I am just thinking about something. And she asked, so do you want to see my dance? I barely lifted my eyes from the screen, but when I did, I found my daughter dancing a truly wild dancein front of me. Where did she even learn it, and when? It turns out that all this time, while I was sunk into writing, she had invented this dazzling performance on her own and practiced it until it was perfect.
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That evening my older daughters made dinner, salmon and rice and stir-fried vegetables, and then asked me if I was eating enough, as if they were the mothers and I was the child. And when we sat around the table I looked at us, a group of senior commanders without flags, without slogans on the wall, and the long sigh from earlier was replaced by a smile spreading across my face: how much I receive from these girls, gifts and lessons and meals and dances and questions that push me to think more and more. How much is happening here, around this life-command table.
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And how much the real command tables lose by not having any women’s and mothers’ wisdom, or the wisdom of girls and boys, seated around them. By the fact that the worldview of more than half the population is not present there. How can you manage anything like that and succeed?
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Sometimes people tell me, wait “until after the war” to deal with topics like these. But I think that if women’s wisdom, mothers’ wisdom, and children’s wisdom had been present around the table, maybe the war would have been different. Who knows if it would have happened at all. No one truly knows, because we have simply never tried.
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And so I decided that opposite that table, I would set a huge metaphorical table of mothers’, fathers’, and children’s wisdom. I asked you on Facebook what you have learned from your children over the past two years, the years of war, and from the hundreds of answers I received, a magnificent table of deep life wisdom was set, one that all of us can sit around.
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Here is a small part of what you answered:
Danielle: “I learned to stand your ground, even when you are tiny, to know how to say ‘no’ without blinking, to love fiercely and with all your strength.”
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Roni: “Not to give up on home. We were evacuated for two years from Eshkol. They never stopped asking and demanding to return home from the very first moment. They have friends and friends’ parents who were kidnapped or murdered, even before October 7. They have experienced wars from the moment they were born. In addition, we were welcomed beautifully into the community we moved to, but they only wanted to go home. While we were still hesitating, they were clear and goal-oriented, and they taught us what home is, what community is, what family is, friends and landscapes that are part of who we are.”
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Inbar: “Honestly, I underestimated them. I thought they were spoiled, irresponsible, impossible to rely on, their room always messy, just playing Fortnite all day. And then October 7 came, and I discovered they are lions. I admire them today.”
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Michal: “I learned from them that life and the joy of life are stronger than anything. That there is joy and love in the world. That within their calm they hold grief and loss and pain, and in fact all of us do. The entire State of Israel.”
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Orly: “I learned from them that life is stronger than anything. That the vitality and optimism of the young, and the atmosphere around them, are contagious. This is expressed in the fact that one day they are at funerals and memorials for friends, and the next day they are at a party, celebrating life.”
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Kobi: “I learned adaptability from them. When we were evacuated and I did not even know where we were, they had already found friends, explained to me what was happening in the dining hall and which dish and which day were the best, and rode their bikes around the community. It continued two years later and back home as well. As if you returned a fish to water.”
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Shirley: “The day before yesterday, when they brought back Rani Gu’ili, of blessed memory, I suggested to Sani, age eight, that we remove the magnet with the hostages’ symbol from the car. He said he thought we should leave it so that no one ever forgets what happened here and what happened to the hostages. So even though we want to move on, he taught me not to forget too quickly either.”
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Yisrael: “I learned that they are brave and determined, and more Zionist than I thought. They identify this country as theirs, and they proved ownership of it by going out into the fire.”
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Eldad: “The older twins were in the army throughout the war. When I became almost nonfunctional with all the shelling in the north, and saw the wounds their friends returned with from service, they simply, naturally, reassure that everything will be okay. They carry on naturally with their friends. There is something special about this generation. From them I learned how to remain optimistic even on hard days.”
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Naama: “I learned to ask for a hug when I need one.”
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Ariela: “I learned from them that ‘the right lighting makes all the difference.’ This is of course in the context of taking photos on a phone. But it can also be projected as a metaphor for life itself, and for choosing the angle from which we see our lives.”
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Sela’it: “I learned from them to love again the things that had become taken for granted. From a snail on the sidewalk to the fact that I have a family.”
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Wow. I leave us with this beautifully set table. With this command that is no less than the other command. And with the hope that we will be filled by it, and that we will begin to manage the world this way. And if you would like to read more, I linked that posy here below.
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Wishing all of us Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*