Sarah Weller is busy getting her three sons ready for a new school year on Sept. 1 as she begins as a teacher in a private school in Jerusalem. Natan, 11, is going into sixth grade, Zacki, 8, is headed for third grade, and Amichai, 5, is off to kindergarten.
As the war heads towards its second anniversary on Oct. 7, Weller says that school during this time has been a challenge. Their father, Yossi Weller, has done several stints of reserve duty over the past 22 months.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and stress,” she tells JNS. “Will the teachers be there or will they be in miluim (‘reserve duty’)? Last year, the teachers kept switching, which was hard, and this year his teacher (who was supposed to teach his class for a second year) decided she needed a sabbatical because her husband was in miluim for most of last year.”
Natan had no science teacher last year. A week of Amichai’s camp was canceled over the summer because there was not enough staff. She worries that the one who is most affected is Zacki, as he was in first grade when the war started.
“I feel like he missed a lot of first grade and understanding how to be in school,” she says. “He has some special needs, and for kids who already have difficulty, the war disrupted things for them. In first grade, you’re supposed to learn how to behave in school, and that is something he still struggles with.”
The war has undoubtedly affected everyone in Israel. Sarah says that whenever they go somewhere new, even on a recent trip to visit family in the United States, Amichai asks where the “basement” is—his way of asking about the location of a safe room in the event of a missile attack.
Even at Ben-Gurion International Airport on their way to the United States, Sarah says, the noise of the baggage carousel startled the kids. Since they returned in late July, several missile alerts have sounded at night in Jerusalem—for projectiles fired by the Houthis in Yemen—and she says they scare her children, who often end up sleeping in her bed.
Psychologists say that after almost 23 months, the war has become almost routine for many children. While there is an underlying tension for all Israelis, most have learned to deal with it.
“Very few kids feel poignant insecurity or a sense of threat that we felt a year ago,” Justin Resnick, a psychologist in private practice, tells JNS. “Every kid in Israel knows what to do when the siren goes off.”
At the same time, he says, there are groups of children who are more directly affected by the ongoing war, especially if someone in their family has been wounded or killed during the war. Many more, he says, are affected by reserve duty. Many soldiers, including fathers of young children, have spent hundreds of days in reserve duty since the war began, putting an additional burden on mothers who need to parent alone for months at a time.
“If you have a parent in miluim, the sense of insecurity is real and the impact is felt in your house,” Resnick says. “For some kids, going back to school and routine might be a refuge after the summer. It might be a relief to see your friends and be busy all day. But many miluim families are feeling exhaustion and tension.”
He says that during the first year of the war, both teachers and students had trouble concentrating on school, but that gradually improved.
“At some point, things settled down, and then they hit another peak around the war with Iran, when suddenly we all found new peaks of uncertainty and tension,” he says.
‘Are they OK?’
Schools have also learned to cope, with many teachers getting training in how to deal with children’s anxiety and schools updating protocols for what to do in the event of a missile attack.
High-school teachers say the war has presented new challenges that they had never before encountered. Dina Weiner, who teaches 12th grade at the pluralistic Reut school in Jerusalem, is concerned about what this upcoming school year—the third year during a war—will bring.
When the war began in October 2023, the first month of school was canceled. Some of the students went to farms to volunteer, as all of the local Thai agricultural workers fled. Others had to stand in for their parents who were either called up or filled jobs in hospitals. Still others wanted to join the army immediately.
Many of the teachers were also serving in reserves, putting additional stress on the staff that remained, Weiner says.
“The biggest challenge the first year was to convince the kids that the fighters in Gaza needed them to stay in school and to do well,” she says. “The soldiers in Gaza can’t be worrying about you. If the home front is not healthy, then what they are doing in Gaza is meaningless.”
Weinser says the teachers have succeeded for the most part, and attendance for most of the year was at or above 90%, more than in a regular year. There was a strong sense of social solidarity, and despite the extra workload, the school functioned well.
Last year, the second year of the war, there were different challenges, she says. In some ways, she observes, things got better as some of the reservist teachers came back to work. The school has learned how to operate during wartime, she says.
But as the war dragged on, she notes, both teachers and students felt exhausted and, in some cases, depressed.
“Some of the kids disappeared and we had to call them every day,” she says. “Are they OK? Are they not at school because they are working? Are they depressed?’”
Now, she says, they are starting a third year of school during war amid ongoing uncertainty. The social solidarity of the first year has dissipated, and the rifts in the country are becoming stronger. She said that she is not sure what she will find when the students return next week.
But the most important thing, she says, is focusing on the issue of unity in both the school and in Israeli society, which has always been one of the core values of the school. School must be a safe space for every child, she stresses.
Living with a ‘split screen’
Reznick says many Israelis, including children, are living with a “split screen.”
Most of the time, life is normal, and people go about their usual routine, but every once in a while, he says, you get hit by a “jolt of electricity” as the reality of the war hits home again.
At the same time, he points out, Israeli children are resilient, and when the war eventually ends, most will recover completely.
