Sunday, July 23, 2006; B05

Menachem Kellner, a native of Albany, N.Y., teaches medieval Jewish philosophy at the University of Haifa. He lives there with his wife, Jolene, and their 31-year-old daughter, Rivka, in an apartment not far from the sea. Their son, Avinoam, is a social worker in Jerusalem.

HAIFA, Israel

Since rockets started landing here, we have been instructed by the Israel Defense Forces "home front command" on radio and TV to take shelter away from outside walls and windows. This morning we were minding our own business (Jolene was reading an attack on postmodernist relativism, I was reading the draft of a student's PhD thesis and Rivka was working on an article on the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides and Harry Potter) when the damned siren went off again. Our building has (allegedly) bombproof rooms on each floor, but most of the time we simply head for the hallway.

It has become a familiar routine now, making small talk while we listen for the booms. Rivka usually chats with an elderly neighbor to help keep her calm (not that she looks nervous -- she survived World War II, so this is small potatoes for her). When it was clear that nothing was happening (when the Katyushas fall, you hear the explosion for miles), we went back to what we had been doing. But from the next room I could hear that Jolene and Rivka had given up their serious projects and were consoling themselves by watching "Oprah" on TV.

We found out recently that one of the rockets that fell Sunday landed near one of the first strip malls in Israel. Now that I take personally -- one of our favorite restaurants is in that mall. Why do we like that restaurant so much? Because, while strictly kosher, it is staffed almost entirely by Arab Israelis, who really know how to be hospitable. In short, the restaurant is Israel the way it could be, Jews and Arabs socializing together, if our neighbors would only allow it. Oh, and the food is pretty good.

One unanticipated advantage of this whole crisis is that Avi, who usually remembers about once a month that he has parents in Haifa, is calling every day now.

This morning my wife and I drove to a supermarket to stock up on essentials (diet popsicles, ketchup, all the basics). It was full of employees busily replenishing shelves, and a smallish number of customers. On the way home, we checked to see what else was open: a pharmacy and a bank. But all the restaurants and food stands (falafel, shwarma, etc.) were closed.

Traffic was light. But a quite remarkable thing happened: A cab driver yielded the right of way at a traffic circle. Now that's scary -- I wonder what he knows? The university and the Technion [Israel Institute of Technology] remain closed. Two institutions where Jews and Arabs work and study together (not to mention swim together in the Technion pool -- so much for the "apartheid" state of Israel!) closed by Hezbollah.

Sitting down to lunch, we heard two distinct booms. Not being idiots, we went into our normal drill (put on shoes, grab radio and cellphone and zip out to the hallway) and only then heard the sirens. A good friend texted me a few minutes later: "They must be trying to save electricity."

There were alarms several times today (the drama is usually over in two or three minutes). The afternoon started off with Hezbollah shooting 70 rockets across northern Israel in a 20-minute period, scaring a lot of field mice but doing relatively little damage. Before we could congratulate ourselves, bad news started rolling in: two little kids killed in Nazareth (the residents are almost all either Christian or Sunni, two groups hardly better than Jews in Hezbollah's eyes) and many wounded; two Israeli soldiers killed on the Lebanese border and several wounded. Stir-craziness set in this afternoon and we drove south, to Or Akiva and then to Hadera for dinner. Normally neither is a place we would make a special effort to visit. On the way we discussed where to go for tomorrow's outing and I voted for Afula, where there are great falafel stands. The moment I said that, the radio announced Katyushas in Afula for the first time. If I could only keep my mouth shut!

We drove home through downtown Haifa, passing the beachfront building (empty) and the new court building (hit but only slightly damaged). Sadder was the train station, battened down and locked shut.

The day ended on an upbeat note: The university announced that it will reopen on Sunday, at least for faculty and staff. Allowing thousands of students back on campus would make it too tempting a target, I suppose. Arabs make up about 20 percent of our student body, and it's a safe bet that there are more Arabs studying in an atmosphere of intellectual openness and freedom at the University of Haifa than at any other university in the Middle East.

The sirens wailed at 5:27 a.m. . . . that damned siren is one effective alarm clock! Groggily making our way to the shelter, we waited for the sirens to stop. There is no all-clear signal as there was in the Gulf War back in 1991, when we donned claustrophobic gas masks at each alarm; the siren just stops and we go about our business, which in this case meant trying to fall back asleep. Fat chance.

The rest of the day was quiet, with only one other rocket alert. We really have not been talking a lot with other people over the past several days. No one is going to work, and we are all seeking safety in our homes. In effect, there is no shared experience here, only a very great many individual, disconnected experiences.

While I write this in the comfort of my apartment, I know full well that at this moment (I can hear the warplanes overhead) people are being blown to bits in Beirut in my name, and soldiers who could be my children are fighting and dying to keep me safe from people who have been trying to kill me all week. I know that Hezbollah targets civilians (people just like me), and I know that our army does not -- but I also know that there is no such thing as a "surgically precise" airstrike.

My heart cries out to stop the death and pain in Lebanon, but I do not speak. Hezbollah started a war and could end it. Imagine what would happen if they said: "We are releasing the two kidnapped soldiers and stopping the Katyushas." Israel in a matter of minutes would suspend operations in Lebanon. Every Lebanese child killed by a Jewish bomb dies because Nasrallah refuses to make that announcement.

What would Israel do if Hezbollah disarmed? Stop the bombing and turn its back on Lebanon. What would Hezbollah do if we disarmed? I leave that to your imagination.

The Israeli view of the world has room for Lebanon, for Jordan, for Egypt, and even, for the majority of Israelis, for a free and independent Palestine. The Hezbollah, the Hamas, the Iranian view of the world has no room for Israel.

We awoke naturally, no sirens, to discouraging news: Nasrallah alive, several IDF casualties overnight, more dead and wounded in Lebanon, two helicopters collide and crash. Israel is a small country; even if we do not know any of our casualties personally, we certainly know people who know them.

Rivka tells me that she read in one of the papers that the army reservist who activates the national alarm net is named Oren. Thankfully, there have been no messages from Oren since midday yesterday, and we certainly hope it stays that way!

Well, that was a vain hope. We were eating when the alarms sounded, and off we went. . . . Loud booms, including one after the alarm stopped.

Caught something so typically Israeli on TV later: in front of the central post office, two people arguing loudly -- a man saying we have to stay the course and a woman condemning our bombings in Lebanon.

From what we can see on TV, at least one of the rockets landed smack in the middle of Haifa's Jewish-Arab business district, Hadar. The other rocket hit a building less than a kilometer from our home. Closest hit yet.