*Send Me Some Quiet | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | January 16, 2026*
All week long I was rocking between headlines, reports, threats, reassurances, commentators and commentators, and the ticking hours. In Tel Aviv Facebook groups, one post after another appeared, all showing just one thing: numbers. Numbers like 1:00 or 3:30 or 4:25. These were bets on which hour would the campaign against Iran would begin. People wrote – I’m not sleeping, can someone talk to me? And a friend texted me, “tell me, have they already invented an emoji that means waiting for missiles?”
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Alongside all this were those who said nothing would happen. Nothing would happen tonight, nothing would happen at all. I am surrounded by quite a few people of this kind – sleeping well, eating well, firmly convinced that everything will be fine. People try to explain to me that this is all psychological warfare. And I explain back that I am always the first to buy psychological warfare. Rational explanations have nothing to do with this.
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This week I noticed that in the mornings I am optimistic and cheerful, but as evening creeps in, I believe every report and every commentary, even when they contradict one another! And when I realized this, I packed a few bags, we got into the car, and we left, toward evening, for Iris’s house in Tivon. I needed to leave the city and the posts that rise in it throughout the hours of the night. And Iris said, come to me. And then she said, what would your mother have said? Because when Iris tries to persuade me to do something, she immediately brings up my mother from the world of the dead. And my mother said, go to Iris.
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And Iris was waiting there. At the dark end of Highway 6, at the end of the rain, at the end of dozens of kilometers without lighting, after one of my daughters pointed out the window and told her sister "I know you cant see it because its very dark/black but its very, very green here", there Iris was waiting for us. If you've read my poem “I Want to Be Women,” I want to tell you that Iris is quiet a few of the figures from that poem. And accordingly she said, come in, no need to take off your shoes at the entrance, no need to be careful about the rug, yes, the dog too, yes, also the dog’s muddy legs, yes, it’s fine to eat chicken at eleven at night, come, I’ll warm it up for you.
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And all at once we had quiet. Quiet in our minds from all the scare tactics, and quiet from the city, which was replaced by an endless valley and a mountain, and for the first time in several nights we got into bed and slept until morning.
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In the morning Iris told us that sleep is the solution to almost everything. Her mother taught her this and she passes it on. When you don’t feel well – go to sleep. When you’re in a bad mood – go to sleep. When you’re worried – go to sleep. Okay, you get it. Since we’ve been friends, Iris has sent me to sleep more than a few times, and I have to admit that it always helped.
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In general, it’s good to have a friend who knows how to take care of you. It’s especially good when you don’t have a mother or grandmothers, and when very few people in the world cover you with a blanket when you lie down, or ask you if you’ve eaten today. When I met Iris, I had a feeling that my mother had sent her to me. It was maybe a year and a half after she died, and Iris repeated sentences my mother used to say and laughed at similar jokes, so it all seemed very logical at the time.
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It’s good to have a friend who knows how to take care of you, and it’s good that she knows how to be decisive – a friend who, when you call her with some question, answers with: well, there’s no question here, Mayushka, you need to do this and that and that’s it. A friend who, when you’re wavering about any matter at all, says to you, I hear you, but there really isn’t a dilemma here. And in general, it’s good to have a friend who says things. In my book The Wandering Jewess, I included two poems whose titles begin with the words “Iris Says,” although in retrospect I could publish an entire book of poems that would all be “Iris Says,” because almost everything she says makes me stop and think.
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The poems “Iris Says” are a one-to-one documentation of our conversations, and maybe it’s best that I simply place one of them here and let it speak for itself:
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*Iris Says It Can’t Get Worse Than This*
The hatred from outside, from inside,
the fear of death, and even her cleaning lady
who became psychopathic, a madhouse, she
says, We have not been lower than this.
And what about the Holocaust? I ask.
Yes, she agrees, that really was very low,
but here we are, she sighs, once again we are
at the bottom of the abyss.
Maybe this is what redemption looks like? I suggest.
I heard some medium on Facebook saying that.
I don’t think so, sweety,
Iris says with sorrow,
according to this theory redemption
was already supposed to be happen after the Holocaust
and after the Crusades, the Expulsion from Spain, the destruction
of the Temple. And in general, she adds,
how is it that once again we are stuck
With redemption? I mean, really,
how much redemption can one small people bear?
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This week I read this poem at an event celebrating The Wandering Jewess that was held at Beit Michal in Rehovot, and people in the audience immediately asked, wait, which Iris is this, Iris Elia Cohen the writer and poet? And I told them yes! That prize-winning writer and poet. Only that while for you she is a literary voice, for me she is first and foremost – quiet.
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And so, as I lay in bed at Iris’s house, my friend who says things and takes care of me and is decisive and endlessly devoted, I thought about quiet. About how it is a skill, knowing how to find pockets of quiet for yourself within reality, especially a reality like ours. People like me, who were not born with this trait, sometimes really have to work for it. To be meticulous about it. Quiet knows how to slip away from you so quickly, sometimes on a daily level you need to perform quiet-expanding actions. To roll out the yoga mat. To get into the pool. To pet the dog without being on the phone at the same time. Maybe not to be on the phone in general, as much as possible. To practice the breathing technique you learned. To leave the city. To return to it. To check every action you take with seven pairs of eyes.
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To place quiet at the top of the list of priorities, in a reality that sanctifies noise from the outside and from the inside.
This week I felt how a friend is a place, and how quiet is sacred.
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You can find quiet in many ways, and you don’t have to travel far. But to close this week and this column, I want to invite you to make quiet with me, and to travel with me for a week of study and writing in one of the most heart-expanding places I know, on the island of Lefkada in Greece. I do this only twice a year, taking with me a small group of women who learn and write, and for one week we quiet the noise from outside and return to listening to ourselves, learning from other great voices, filling ourselves with inspiration, writing, and then returning to our lives, similar, but completely different.
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And I wish all of us lot of quiet. Especially here. Especially now.
And may we all have Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*