'An emotional roller coaster': How an Israeli mother navigates her husband's reserve duty

ByMATHILDA HELLERJULY 25, 2026 17:48“Miluim [IDF reserve duty] is like being on an emotional roller coaster,” was how Esther described the last few years of her husband being at war. “A rollercoaster that you forget that you’re on, but you wake up right before the drop and try to breathe through it and not vomit.”Esther, 36, was born in New York but moved to Israel in 2005, aged 15, as part of an immersive high school program called Naale. Following this, she did two years of national service in the Gaza border area, and then began a degree in glass and ceramic design at Bezalel QAcademy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. While working at Artza, the company of Itai, the brother of Jerusalem Post photojournalist Chen Schimmel, she met her husband Yonah, who is Itai’s friend.Esther and Yonah began their life in Tel Aviv and were 26 weeks pregnant with their first daughter, Hallel, when war broke out on October 7.“There was a siren, and we jumped out of bed and went into the hallway. But we had no reason to think that it was a big deal, and my husband said he was going to get ready to go to the synagogue,” she said.As he was getting ready, his phone rang. The two knew immediately that it was the army, as no one else would call on Shabbat.STILL IN UNIFORM, Yonah holds his daughter Hallel close in the hallway of their Ra’anana home – a fleeting embrace suspended between deployments. ‘This has been going on for such a long time already,’ Esther says of the rhythm of departures shaping Hallel’s short life so far. (credit: Chen G. Schimmel/The Jerusalem Post)“He said, ‘I’m getting called in.’ And I told him, ‘Absolutely not. Do not answer your phone. If it’s that important, they’ll reach you after Shabbat.’”Yonah left for synagogue. While he was on his way back, there was a second siren, and Esther headed to the shelter alone.“I remember thinking that that was the moment I became a mom. Even though I hadn’t given birth.”October 7 felt differentEsther told the Post that she had lived through previous wars in Israel, but October 7 felt different. “I was shaking. I didn’t know what happened in the South, but I was terrified for my baby. I was reacting in a way that I’d never experienced.”When Yonah returned from synagogue, he answered a second call from his reserve unit. It was only then that Esther learned Hamas had infiltrated southern Israel.“Yonah told me that Hamas had broken into Israel, that they infiltrated the South. At that point, we had just heard that about 70 people had been killed. We heard about Nova [Supernova music festival massacre]. We didn’t know yet that they [terrorists] were in the kibbutzim. I just broke down crying. I was sobbing hysterically, I couldn’t breathe, I was so terrified for him.”Once she collected herself, Esther asked her husband a question that shocked him: “Do you have a will?”“I told him, if something happens, I don’t care about our stuff. I need to know what happens to me. If something happens to you and they can’t find your body, how long do I have to wait before I’m considered not married anymore? I do not want to be an agunah.”“He replied: ‘I cannot wrap my head around that. We’re not discussing this. I’m alive, I’m fine.’”Feelings of anxiety and guiltOn Saturday evening, Yonah was called up to serve with his unit: 551 [the elite paratrooper reservist unit]. Esther left to stay with her in-laws in order not to be alone.“I was just having anxiety attack after anxiety attack; it was constant. At some point, Yonah called me and said, ‘I need to have a real conversation with you. I understand that it’s really scary for you and that you have no control over your hormones, and it’s a wild situation that you’re pregnant and I’m here. But I need you to be my rock. I need to be able to talk to you about what I’m going through and where I’m going. So you need to figure out what you need to do in order to become my support system because that’s what I need right now in order to survive.’”Esther said she felt guilty.“My initial reaction was that I felt selfish because he was going through something so much more scary and existential. He was going to be physically going into one of the most dangerous war zones in the world.”Fears started to run through her head: What if Yonah never got to meet their baby? What if she had to give birth in a bomb shelter, alone, without him?Around this time, Esther’s aunt in the US called and suggested she come to stay with her and recuperate. While Esther immediately refused to abandon her husband, Yonah felt differently: “He said, ‘Whatever you need to do, you have to do because I need you mentally stable.’”A friend helped Esther secure a seat on an evacuation flight to Poland, from where she flew to her aunt in Florida for several weeks until she felt able to return home.“We had gone through Operation Protective Edge [in 2014], so when Yonah told me he was going to Gaza, I figured he would be home in 10-14 days. I knew I had to be home when he came home for the first time.”On returning to Israel, Esther started volunteering. One day, she got a message on her phone from an unknown number. Yonah had written her a letter inside Gaza, and someone had driven it out into Israel, taken a picture, and a commander had texted it to her.“It was like 21st-century snail mail. I had to physically write a response, send it to them, and then they printed it and took it to Yonah.”A few days later, Yonah came out of Gaza and the two reunited for the first time in a month.“This was the start of nearly three years of him going in and out,” she recalled.In late December 2023, one of the men from Yonah’s unit was killed, and another one was severely injured, and this led to the unit being released from reserves at the start of January.At this point, for the first time since October 7, the two were back in their apartment in Tel Aviv, which Esther said was “surreal.” After three months of seeing each other for a day here, a day there, they were suddenly living together again.An overloaded hospital and a traumatic birthAt 35 weeks pregnant, Esther began having contractions, which ultimately persisted for three weeks. At 4 a.m. one morning, when she was 38 weeks pregnant, she went into labor.When the couple arrived at Ichilov Hospital, they were met with an overloaded maternity unit, as the hospital had absorbed all the patients evacuated from the North and South.“I was told that there were women who were more urgent, and that I was not far enough along to get a bed.’”“It was pouring rain. I actively labored for 15 hours, eight of which I was standing at the front of the hospital.”Esther stopped relaying her birth story at this point because of the extreme trauma of what happened next.What followed was a six-month recovery. She couldn’t be alone with her baby until Hallel was four months old because she physically could not hold her. Esther ended up having reparative surgery two months after Hallel was born.Having moved to Ra’anana after the birth, Esther thankfully had the help of her in-laws, who, to this day, have been above-and-beyond in the way they have shown up, she said. “It was the most responsible decision we’ve ever made. We wanted to stay in Tel Aviv, but our reality just didn’t allow for it.”Because she was so incapacitated during this time, Yonah took over a large amount of what new mothers do, and as a result, Hallel became extremely bonded to her father, something that remains today.Yonah’s next round of reserve duty was when Hallel was five months old.At that point, Esther was more capable but “still not 100%” and had someone coming and helping her every day. Yonah agreed to go for half of the time he was called up for, doing one and a half months instead of three.“We tried to video call Yonah, and Hallel couldn’t understand the concept that she couldn’t reach him through the computer. I have never seen her scream like that; she was terrified, she couldn’t process why she couldn’t touch him.”They did not attempt a video call again.Twenty-one months after Hallel was born, Esther gave birth to their second baby, Mia.While she was pregnant with Mia, the first Iran war broke out. Esther said that was the first time she began to see miluim in a negative light.“I was seven months pregnant running to the mamad [safe room] with a one and a half year old while Yonah was called in. Until this point, I understood miluim, but suddenly it felt pointless. I needed him more at home than the army did on the Jordanian border.”Thankfully, the second birth experience was “incredible” and not in any way comparable to the first. Yonah was home, having just finished another round of two months in the army.Motherhood in a time of war, with a husband fighting, is no walk in the park. Esther said that the two have survived it by “making a game plan” and being practical.“For me, as the mother, it’s been about trying to find things that would help me through those really tough moments. You have to enter into this superhuman space; people don’t see the small, tiny things that happen day to day, which actually take an exceedingly huge amount of internal resources and power.”Additionally, she said that there’s a societal expectation that wives and partners of men in miluim be okay because they must be used to it. “There is an expectation that you have to be this strong home front, and that you shouldn’t complain about it. There used to be more sympathy, but it’s not like what it used to be.“It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that they just want life to be normal again, which I completely understand. This has been going on for such a long time already. It’s uncomfortable to think about war, and that there are families for whom life is just not normal on a regular basis.”Just because people like her don’t ask for help as much anymore doesn’t mean they don’t need it, she said.“If you know someone who’s going through it, just check in and get a cup of coffee with them. To just be there for these people is huge.”The need to not be alone, to have a distraction, is especially true for Esther in the moments right before Yonah leaves. She spoke of the process of being photographed by the Post for “HER,” which happened to be on the day of Yonah going to miluim.“You can see it in the pictures. I can’t stop crying. And then there’s the picture where Yonah is walking out the door, and I’m holding Hallel and my eyes are half closed. That’s me gathering myself. I cry, get it out of my system, and then I’m done.”After he walked out the door, the family had a little dance party.“I guess part of our distraction, part of our survival kit, is putting on music and having a dance.”Esther said that if she had to sum up having a husband in miluim, she would compare it to being on a roller coaster.“When you’re on a roller coaster, there’s the climb, and then there’s the crazy part, and then there’s the plateau. There’s the climb to the miluim, and then there’s the drop of him leaving, and then the crazy twists and turns when we are figuring out how we navigate this: How do we breathe through this? And then it’s over, and we can breathe. And then it happens all over again.”What helps them through the twists and turns?“We find a rhythm. I think it comes down to communication - really good communication. We get really frustrated with each other, but we try to talk about it as much as possible.”However, she said, sometimes these important conversations get cut short.“He leaves while we’re working through an issue, and we have to continue it via whatever limited communication we have this time or wait until he’s home again.”There’s also a palpable tension in the air when he’s gone, she added.“I think it’s the weight of his absence and fear that he’s not coming back. It’s just a big rip in our equilibrium when he’s gone.”During the time Yonah is away, Esther said, she has to function for the girls, but the fear is constantly hanging over her. Often, her imagination has gotten the best of her, and more than once she found herself thinking sounds in the hallway were someone from the army coming to knock on the door and tell her of her husband’s death.Hallel is now old enough to understand that he leaves again and again but not why. In the beginning, it didn’t seem to affect her, but as time has passed, she has become more and more clingy, throws tantrums, and gets upset. Now that Yonah is home, Hallel constantly checks in on where he is.“I’ve caught her walking around saying, ‘Abba is home. He’s just working.’”All this being said, Esther spoke glowingly about her husband. “He’s just a very empathetic, kind person,” she said, adding that he is “100% committed to being her partner and the best father he can be.”“He’s done the work and is very in tune with himself and knows what he is capable of giving to his family, to miluim, to his work. I love that he is connected to himself in that way.”Looking back, Esther said, she is proud of herself.“I am most proud of the fact that I had two kids in this crazy, insane time. I went back for a second. I’m really proud of myself for going through the process – I think it was the bravest thing I’ve ever done.”Follow us on Google