*The Neighbors | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | June 20, 2025*
Early Friday morning, with the first siren of the current operation, we realized this time the situation wasn’t fit for our tiny upstairs shelter, and we headed down to the building’s bomb shelter. We were the first to arrive. It stood empty, with a single blue mattress propped against the wall. We laid it on the floor, sat down, and waited for the missile barrage.
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By Saturday, before the second round of sirens, we covered the blue mattress with a sheet and a few pillows we’d brought from home. Around our mattress, the neighbors placed their own mattresses, blankets, bags—and the shelter began to look like the lawn at a nature festival—minus the lawn, the nature, and the festival
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On Saturday night, families with small children went to sleep there even before the sirens. They woke together with each alert and the sounds of explosions, huddled together, keeping the quiet, keeping the dark. They exchanged apples and pears and cookies in silence. They moved as if part of some well-organized plan to avoid waking the kids, who were managing to sleep.
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In the darkness of the shelter, I recognized Or and Hannah, two wonderful women from the building committee. Sharon, who’d renovated the apartment above us last year and then had our car cleaned at her expense. Also the neighbor who used to yell at us when our dog was still a puppy. And the woman whose alarm clock rings for hours, and when you complain, says it isn’t hers. None of that mattered anymore. What mattered was the dark, the quiet, the fact that the kids didn’t wake. That we survived together. That we were so deeply kind to one another.
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By Sunday morning we could already tell which neighbors were caring for kids alone, whose spouses were stuck abroad, which dogs and pillows belonged to whom. And that’s no small thing—ours is a big building. Most of the neighbors—even if I’d passed them briefly in the elevator—I hadn’t really known in the four years we’ve lived here. But now someone from the ninth floor organized a play circle for the kids, and for hours, in the middle of the war, I watched my youngest daughter running wild.
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It reminded me of our own childhood, when the shelters were where all the kids from the building played—even in times of peace. Only now, without the peace.
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We knew everyone so well, suddenly, that we immediately recognized that the father who entered with two little girls in his arms during a siren wasn’t from our building. We helped him find a corner. Turns out their building had taken a direct hit the day before. Their mother was out of the country. The girls were scared. We gave them a doll and played with them. We passed the blue mattress to a mother of three who was clearly struggling. Her husband was stuck abroad. By midday, someone brought down a mat. The kids arranged plastic chairs into a game. A neighbor brought down chicken soup for everyone.
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By Sunday night into Monday, the mattresses in the shelter had merged into one large, connected sprawl. Kids and dogs were sleeping across the bedding of neighboring families. I already had the phone numbers of at least seven families in the building saved in my phone. My youngest daughter didn’t even come home that entire day. She ran around with the other kids throughout the building. I found them on two different floors dancing in front of the lobby mirror. In the evening, they sat together in a circle in the shelter.
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That night, in the moments between the warning and the blasts, sitting there together in the dark, I suddenly regretted that we don’t do this just because. That we don’t go on some kind of shared camping trip beneath the building once every two weeks, even in times of peace. I knew right away that it was a silly thought—no one’s about to give up their comfortable apartment for the shelter, with its fans, sealed metal windows, and low ceiling. Still, it was comforting to imagine.
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On Monday morning, a friend told me we had the chance to “hitch a ride” on a yacht to Larnaca, if I wanted to get my girls out. Longtime readers here might remember that we suffered a direct rocket hit last October, and since then, every siren triggers intense anxiety for us. We packed immediately and headed to the marina.
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Before we sailed, I got messages from the neighbors in the shelter. They asked if the girls would like to video chat with their kids once we arrived. They wished us a safe journey . They felt our absence.
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Then, when we arrived in Larnaca and were welcomed into Maya’s home, the very first thing she said to us was: “You have no idea how much the neighbors here are waiting for you! The whole neighborhood’s been getting ready since morning!” And very quickly I understood what she meant: neighbors brought us fruit and vegetables. Others invited us to evening gatherings. When we missed the taxi, three different neighbors came out to help with rides. But what brought tears to my eyes, in a moment that felt like it came from another dimension, was the neighbor who knocked on the door and walked in carrying a mattress for us. A blue mattress.
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We laid the blue mattress down on the floor in Larnaca. Covered it with a sheet, a pillow, a blanket. And as we went to sleep, we were far away—but close in heart to all the neighbors this war had brought into our lives. The neighbors in Tel Aviv, and the neighbors in Larnaca. It wasn’t like anything we’d known.
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It reminded me a little of my grandmother and her neighbors, who also spent weeks in bomb shelters. And suddenly I understood something about the deep bond between them. Our neighbors are still right there—just beyond the wall, close to us in the shelters of the soul, mattress pressed to mattress—revealing to me, again and again, that good neighbors have a depth and a reach far beyond anything I ever imagined.
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May we have a quiet Shabbat. And may we always reach out to those around us.
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*Maya Tevet Dayan*