*So How Is Money Doing? | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | April 17, 2026*
This week I came across a humorous video on Instagram by Yarden Endevelt, where she tells her mother things like; Mom, we’re doing Hezbollah at my partner’s parents’ place this year. I feel bad, his mom already cooked. And also - we already did Iran at your place. And also - the ceasefire we’ll just keep it small at ours, but I’m not hosting. The caption of the video: “When you’re planning the coming year.”
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And it was so accurate. I mean, I really hope the coming year won’t look like that, or any year. But it was accurate for many homes around me, where I saw how even the war on the home front turned into a multi-generational Israeli family gathering - meals, shared sleeping arrangements, long hours with siblings and cousins and grandchildren that probably wouldn’t have happened in any other situation.
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And indeed, with the ceasefire, more and more posts appeared online - on one hand, those leaving their parents’ home back to their own after a month and a half, happy about the approaching independence. And on the other hand, the hosting parents, already missing their children and grandchildren the moment they left, and at the same time so grateful for the quiet.
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Israeli family life alongside the costs: “We went to the supermarket twice a day,” someone wrote, “and our electricity bill went up fivefold, but it’s all for the family.” And someone else wrote, “RIP our annual vacation in the Seychelles that got canceled in favor of a month in Mitzpe Ramon that cost me the exact same….”
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And following those posts, I was reminded again that alongside everything else, the war is also costing us a lot of money. Straight from our pockets. And I asked on Facebook: how much did the war cost you, in money, I mean, and what was a particularly unusual expense for you?
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And among the many hundreds of responses, people replied, saying: about 20,000 shekels in one month for alternative housing solutions with a safe room, or 15,000 shekels spent on canceled flights and emergency tickets back from abroad at high prices, 3,000 shekels for increased frequency of psychological therapy, 4,500 shekels for art supplies and games for the children, 8,000 shekels for supermarket shopping for the extended family that stayed over, and of course months of lost income for freelancers, some of which may continue for months ahead, because every business needs time to recover. And finally, though not only an economic expense, Leaura wrote about her beloved rabbit that died because amid the family chaos and intense stress, they didn’t notice in time that its condition was deteriorating.
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At the end of that thread, someone wrote: “How healing it is to read all these responses, I thought it was just us.”
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I assume she wrote that because we don’t talk about it. Money is always considered taboo in moments like these. It’s seen as the immoral thing to deal with during a war, when there are those who lose their lives, or become disabled. What is 8,000 shekels at the supermarket compared to that? We also don’t like to think about the fact that in wars there are those who make enormous profits, and that wars have economic motives at least as much as they have ideological and other motives.
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When you’re a woman, you know this taboo around money very well - you’re not supposed to talk about money, because women around you almost don’t talk about it with you. You’re not supposed to say how much you earn, how much you have in the bank, how much you’ve invested, if you’ve invested at all. You’re not supposed to negotiate. And to this day, women are still expected to work, motivated by a sense of calling and love. Certainly mothers, certainly those who care for their parents, certainly those in caregiving, teaching, nursing, and cleaning professions - but also salaried employees in offices who are asked to organize the holiday toast. And if you’re like me and you do talk about money, you discover that your friends, even the most successful ones, aren’t eager to talk about it. It’s not “women’s talk.” So during a war? Even less so.
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And so this week I spoke about money with my community of writers in my Inspiration Season. This amazing community, of hundreds of people, that meets once a week in peace and in war. When I see them insist on showing up on Zoom, my heart leaps with joy, because here - the world goes on no matter what. And at the beginning of the meeting I asked them: what emotion arises in you when you hear the word money? Because money is, before anything else, emotion. That’s what I believe. And the taboo around money is a taboo around emotion. And if we are all experience a kind of unease during this ceasefire, we cannot deny that a large part of it is also connected to what we spent, what we didn’t earn, the worried questions about what will become of us - that is, of our money.
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And indeed, the list of emotions accumulated in the chat repeated itself: unease, fear, frustration, helplessness, desire, and again unease, fear, and on the margins also hope and longing.
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Money is a powerful and deep emotion. It is many powerful and deep emotions. And what do you do with all these emotions now, when our world is so shaken?
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So this week, we wrote about money. I was afraid no one would want to read the draft they had written. That they would be ashamed. Or worried. Or afraid. Or any other emotion that talking about money awakens in you. But more and more writers raised their hands, and we heard some of the most beautiful texts. About a mother who bargained in the market and caused embarrassment. About a father who was frightening to ask. About a partner. About bankruptcy. Texts that are not about now - not about the war, the expenses - but that teach us why we feel what we feel.
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Money is emotion. And this meeting was perhaps the most emotional one we’ve had so far. At the end of it, I leaned back and thought how good it is to make time for yourself and to look at ourselves with open eyes. How important it is to ask how much things cost us. Even when we’re talking about wars, about large processes, to ask: what am I paying? And what emotion does it awaken in me, to pay for things? Where did I even learn to feel this way? And when?
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I really feel like ending with a poem about money. And for me, money is always tied to my grandmother Leika, who grew up in a shack, who was frugal, who was wise and tormented in everything related to money. Here is one of the poems I wrote about her:
*I Want an Electric Juicer / by Maya Tevet Dayan*
Translated by Jane Medved
Why electric? What’s wrong with the real kind?
my dead grandmother asks. All of our lives
we squeezed oranges by hand.
Why should she work so hard if there’s an easier way?
That’s my mother, from her life in the beyond.
You two are always looking to spend money,
my grandmother grumbles. An entire life and death,
and she’s still lecturing us.
Buy yourself one and I’ll pay for it, my mother ends the discussion,
as if she still has a bank account,
as if I am not paying from my pocket
for all the gifts she has bought me, since her death.
I’ll buy it for you, Bubbaleh,
my grandmother concedes, lifting
the burden, as usual, from my mother.
After all, she has left us a goodly amount
from all the taxis she never rode,
the leftover food she refused to throw away,
the tea bag she dipped into the same cup until it fainted,
the socks she darned. What will I leave behind,
except for tormented conversations with the dead?
What will I manage to put aside from all the coins
accumulated on my behalf, through endless hours of labor,
human lives, hard working generations. I don’t even like
oranges. But you need vitamin C for your health, my dead
grandmother interjects. See, we are starting up again.
May we all have Shabbat Shalom, peaceful days and a lot of money!
*Maya Tevet Dayan*