There are wars we watch on television, and there are wars that enter our homes.
Since February 28th, Israelis have been living the second kind - again.
Routine becomes centered on small adjustments. People check where the nearest shelter is before they sit down at a café. Parents are deciding whether it’s worth sending their kids to school that day. Elderly people are choosing to stay home because getting to a protected space on time is no longer a given.
At night, it becomes more pronounced. Sirens, movement, waiting, then a return to something that looks like routine but isn’t quite. This is what daily life looks like right now for the majority of the country. It’s easy to describe this as a disruption. It’s more accurate to call it erosion.
Homes have been damaged. Families have been displaced. Entire communities, especially in the north, are living with sustained uncertainty. But beyond the visible damage, something else is happening, something that doesn’t make the headlines: the slow degradation of stability.
And that’s where this war is also being fought.
Israelis are used to stepping up in moments like this. You see it everywhere. Volunteers organizing food deliveries within hours. Neighbors checking in on those who live alone. Parents managing children in crowded shelters with a kind of quiet competence that doesn’t make the news. None of this is dramatic. But it’s what keeps things from falling apart.
As Passover approaches, that tension between holding things together and the risk of falling apart becomes harder to ignore. This year, many Israeli families will arrive at the Seder carrying much more than the usual burden of war. Some have lost their homes. Some have spent nights in shelters, parking garages or temporary accommodation. Many more, even far from the missile impact zones, are facing deep economic pressure. The war did not create Israel’s social fragility, but it has made it far worse and harder to ignore.
Passover is built around a very physical idea of dignity. Not just abstract freedom, but something concrete: a table, a meal, people gathered together. It’s one of the few moments in the year when that expectation is almost universal. But this year, for many Israelis, it’s not obvious. Many Israelis are dealing with a more familiar yet less visible pressure: the cost of maintaining a normal life, being able to celebrate a holiday.
That pressure didn’t start with this war. But it has deepened.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE A SEDER MEAL TO ELDERLY AND FAMILIES IN NEED
Today, around 2.8 million people in Israel are living with food insecurity, including roughly 867,000 households. The increase in food insecurity in 2025, of 27% in one year alone, is not a marginal shift. It’s a structural one.
But what does this number truly represent? Fewer items in the shopping cart. Skipping certain purchases altogether. Stretching what’s there. Deciding what can wait - and what can’t. Parents who give up food so their children can eat, and elderly people forced to choose between medicine, electricity, and groceries.
Over time, those decisions accumulate.
By the time a holiday like Passover arrives, the gap becomes visible. Not as a headline, but as an absence - of food, of preparation, of the ability to host or even participate in a basic way.
In times of war, it is tempting to think that social distress should be dealt with later, once the security emergency has passed. That would be a mistake. A country cannot speak seriously about resilience if millions of its citizens cannot reliably afford food.
A society under sustained pressure doesn’t break only at the edges of physical security. It weakens when large parts of the population lose their footing at the most basic level.
That is also part of resilience, and right now, it’s under strain.
At Latet, Israel’s leading NGO fighting poverty and food insecurity, we have seen this up close. We have met families who were moved to hotels after missile damage made their homes unlivable. We have reached older people trapped in apartments under bombardment, with neither the means nor the strength to relocate.
In Northern Israel, where the situation remains particularly unstable, the needs are both immediate and ongoing. Entire communities remain exposed to the combined threat of Iran and Hezbollah. In each case, the mission is simple: responding quickly, with practical help, before vulnerability turns into collapse.
This is not a parallel story to the war, and the response to it cannot be postponed.
For those looking at Israel from the outside, particularly in Jewish communities that feel closely connected, this moment requires a slightly different lens. Not only attention to the security situation, but to what it produces inside civilian life.
Supporting families who are trying to maintain some level of stability is not separate from supporting Israel. It is one of the ways that stability is obtained.
For 30 years, Latet has worked within this space - where social support and national resilience meet. In normal times, that work is often described in terms of poverty or inequality. In times like this, it becomes something more immediate.
It becomes about continuity.
About whether a family can continue functioning through disruption. Whether an elderly person remains supported. Whether a holiday, even in reduced form, can still take place.
Israel will get through this period, as it has others. That much is not in question.
What is less certain is how evenly that burden will be carried. That is where choices matter, not only at the level of policy or strategy, but at the level of attention and action.
This Passover, as we gather around the Seder table and retell the story of the Exodus, we should remember that freedom is sustained by responsibility. A strong society is one that does not leave its most vulnerable members behind, especially in wartime.
That is not charity. It is national resilience.
This article was written in cooperation with Latet – Israeli Humanitarian Aid