A few months ago, on Dec. 31, 2025, I was in a taxi. On the backburner of Israeli consciousness was a vague possibility of war with Iran. A month later, the wait for an impending war with Iran was real.
But at the end of December — which now feels like a lifetime ago — it must still have been on people’s minds, for somehow on that day in December the conversation with the taxi driver, Avi, turned to the subject of war. Except, he speaking about the Six Day War almost 70 years ago (1967).
“We’ll get through whatever it is that’s going to transpire, we always do,” he said. “I grew up in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem. Auerbach Street, to be exact. The house near ours, Auerbach #5, was bombed. We lived at Auerbach #7. Nothing was left of #5. It was completely rebuilt after the Six Day War. Our house practically touched theirs. You know how it is in that neighborhood with the narrow streets and squished buildings.
“I was the little one there. I was laying under a bed, trembling. The radio was on, saying how Egypt had conquered Jerusalem. Everyone began screaming in terror. ‘They’re here! Oh my G-d, they are here!’
“Then, the son in the woman’s apartment we were staying in noticed: The radio signal was from Egypt. He jimmied the transistor radio, and reached the Israeli channel, Kol Yisrael. The IDF military spokesman said: ‘They are nearing the Old City of Jerusalem.’
“The adults began to weep. Me? I was the only one laughing. I had just nearly been there the previous week. The week before the Six Day War, my buddies and I had broken through the security barrier, which Jordan erected to prevent Israelis and Jews from coming to the Kotel for 19 years, and entered what was then Jordan. Yuda, who was part of our group, was shot in the neck by Jordanian soldiers (and survived). We had already reached the Damascus Gate when it happened — we were on our way to the Kotel, the Wailing Wall.
“We dragged Yuda as the shots continued whizzing above us, aiming to shoot at us too. We were a group of five. We escaped unharmed, other than Yuda.
“He was in a wheelchair until the day he died, 12 years ago.
“We were young, serious mischief makers, banditim. We weren’t scared of anyone. We were nuts, and stayed nuts. All of us, our crowd, went on to become taxi drivers.
“We’ve all been together since our youth, and remained close with Yuda too.
“So as I’m in this apartment in the Six Day War, the house next door gets bombed, causing our place to shake violently, as we start smelling the scorched house next door going up in flames.
“When there’s a knock on the door.
“We froze in fear.
“One of the grownups mustered the guts, got up and looked through the peephole in the door.
“Through the narrow aperture, she sees the neighbor from the house next door, a Torah scroll pressed to his chest.
“With relief and shock, she opened the door.
“The neighbor explained. The entire house collapsed around him, except for the armchair he was sitting in, holding onto the Torah scroll.
“The neighbor remained with us for the next three days. Since Jerusalem was on the border with Jordan, the neighbor had sent his family away to Tel Aviv right before the war.
“A parachuter of ours, from our neighborhood, was shot down by the Jordanians! Shot down! This contradicts even the Geneva Convention!
“Across the shul I grew up praying in, Beit Aharon, on the wall there, the parachutist who was killed, is memorialized.
“He fell 50 meters from his home. And you know who he was? My father’s sister’s fiancée. My aunt’s fiancee.
“So listen, we’ve gotten through Pharaoh, we’ve gotten through the Six Day War. We’ll get through this, too.
“Listen! Mashiach is here. He’ll be here any minute. He’ll fill you in on the whole story . . . Don’t worry.
“Mashiach is here, neshama.”
• • •
The other day, mid-March, two-and-a-half months since that cab ride, now living through the actual war that on Dec. 31 was only vaguely anticipated, I am running to the bomb shelters under blaring sirens, I’m on my way to pay a condolence shiva call, again in a taxi ride.
This time, the taxi driver is speaking about Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
“How are you holding up with the sirens,” he asks me, but then proceeds to talk. “Look, I come from a bereaved family. It’s not simple. Not simple, he sighs. My mother’s two brothers fell in battle. My uncles. Before I was born. I never knew them.
“One day I picked up a particularly elderly gentleman who came into the taxi. He was maybe 90 years old. We started talking and I understood he was one of the rare Old-School variety, who spoke Ladino. We began chatting in Ladino. ‘Where are you from? Where do you live?’
“ ‘Jerusalem,’ came his fast reply. ‘I was raised in Yemin Moshe.’
“Surprised, I said, ‘perhaps you knew my mother? Rachel Shalom, then Zvili?’
“ ‘Ah, Rachelika, she was called. Aronika, was her brother. She had two more brothers, who heroically fell in the War of Independence, yes?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I answered.
“I saw his facial expression turn emotional. ‘Is everything OK,’ I asked him. ‘Why are you trembling?’
“ ‘I was Yehoshua’s commander in the battle of the Kastel,’ he said in almost a hoarse whisper.
“ ‘And I want to tell you, you had the most brave uncle. You can’t comprehend how brave Yehoshua was.Today, he would receive major military recognition for his heroic sacrifice.’
(The Battle of Kastel to secure Jerusalem took place a couple of months before the modern State of Israel was born.)
“ ‘He just head on fought the the Jordanian soldiers, eliminating a real threat that was a link in the chain in the Battle to secure the Kastel.
“ ‘Ultimately, he absorbed three bullets. Remarkably, he continued to fight, even after he was hit, until he couldn’t anymore.
“ ‘He was so incredibly brave.’ ”
My mother was 14 when this happened.
“I was raised on these stories, on both of my uncles’ — Nissim and Yehoshua’s — bravery.
“They were four brothers who went to battle.
“Only two returned.
“My grandfather, from the agony of the loss — Yehoshua and Nissim fell in the same battle — my grandparents receiving news of their double bereavement — he died of literal heartache during the shiva for his two sons, my uncles.
“There was no State of Israel yet. In my uncles’ merit, and all the others who fought and died for it, the state was born shortly after my uncles’ double shiva. I never forget them.”
This taxi driver went on to share his own grandfather’s miracle story of escaping a Jordanian bullet that was instead absorbed by his metal bound siddur that he held.
The taxi driver reminisced about his boyhood playing ball in Mamilla at the Jordanian border, and the awareness it entailed through the eyes of a little boy.
He spoke of his grandfather who arrived from Georgia in 1875.
And about his own IDF service in the Sinai desert. He spoke somewhat at length of the First Lebanon War he served in.
He then said, “I was very scared to serve, because of the story with my uncles. But, how should I explain it?
“Because I’m from a bereaved family, because my mother’s two brothers were killed in battle, my father needed to sign to grant permission for me to be drafted.
“My father didn’t want to sign the document.
“But my mother . . . ultimately, she was the one who signed it.
“Yes. My mother was the one who signed.”
• • •
As I sit in the bomb shelter, this time our generation doing our part for the eternal Jewish people, unfortunately living through yet another war, I think of those who came before us and fought and sacrificed before us.
We are the lucky ones.
We have the luxury of receiving a warning.
We are blessed to have bomb shelters and Iron Dome and Patriot.
For different people, under different circumstances, coping with the stress of this war is profoundly challenging. But I wonder, what will a taxi driver in 20 years or so be telling their passengers about the war we are living through right now?
Then again, as Avi the taxi driver said, “Mashiach will be here any minute. He’ll fill us in on the whole story . . . ”
© IJN 2026
