"You aren't supposed to be here."
The words hung in the air as a father, still wearing his uniform after rushing home from his base for a precious 48-hour leave before Rosh Hashanah, stared at his three-year-old son. He had imagined this moment differently – perhaps a running embrace, excited squeals, tiny arms wrapped around his neck. Instead, his child looked at him with confusion, as if he were a stranger disrupting the carefully constructed routine that had emerged in his absence.
This is the reality of whiplash – not the medical condition, but something the combat soldiers have named for the jarring, disorienting transition between war and family life. There is no decompression chamber, no adjustment period, no gentle reentry. One moment you're scanning horizons for threats, and the next you're standing in your kitchen, trying to remember which drawer holds the sippy cups.
After 45 days of service – 14 days of basic training followed by 30 days of miluim – these transitions have become a defining feature of this new reality. The math seems simple: 45 days total, with some weekends and brief visits home scattered throughout. But the arithmetic of absence doesn't capture the full equation. Even when physically present, the soldier is never truly home.
The gun remains within reach, a constant companion even at the Shabbat table. The phone buzzes with unit updates, operational changes, logistics coordination. While helping with bedtime stories, the mind drifts to next week's deployment schedule. While pushing a child on the swings, the group chat discusses equipment needs. The body may be home, but the soul straddles two worlds, never fully present in either.
For those who have served 300, 400, even 500 days since October 7th, this whiplash has become chronic. Each transition grows harder, not easier. The repeated crossings between these two realities wear grooves in the psyche, creating a permanent state of being neither fully soldier nor fully civilian, neither completely deployed nor genuinely home.
The families bear their own version of this burden. A wife who has mastered the impossible juggling act of work, children, household, and worry suddenly finds her husband in the kitchen, eager to help but unsure where he fits in the choreography she's perfected in his absence. Does she hand over the reins, knowing he'll leave again in 36 hours? Does she maintain her routine, leaving him feeling like a visitor in his own home?
She might pile all the accumulated tasks on him – the broken shelf, the parent-teacher conference she couldn't attend, the car that needs servicing. Or she might protect the delicate balance she's created, continuing as if he's not there, sparing them both the pain of another disruption when he leaves. Neither choice feels right.
The children develop their own coping mechanisms. The older ones grow quiet, having learned that getting too attached to Abba's presence means more pain when he disappears again. The younger ones, like the three-year-old who couldn't process his father's sudden appearance, simply adapt to a world where fathers are sometimes real and sometimes just pictures on phones.
The soldier walks through his home like a ghost, simultaneously there and not there. He wants to fix everything, to make up for lost time, to squeeze months of fatherhood into a weekend. But the washing machine has developed a new quirk only his wife knows how to manage. The baby has a new bedtime routine. His spot on the couch has been claimed by toys and homework. The family has learned to flow around his absence like water around a stone.
This is the whiplash – the violent psychological jarring between being essential and being redundant, between hypervigilance and domesticity, between protecting the nation and feeling useless in your own home. It's checking your weapon while reading Green Eggs and Ham. It's the muscle memory of combat readiness interrupted by a request to open a juice box. It's the guilt of leaving and the guilt of returning, knowing each transition tears the fabric of family life a little more.
For the veterans of this war – those who have made this journey dozens of times – the whiplash has become a chronic condition. They've stopped trying to fully transition, existing instead in a permanent state of partial presence. They've learned that the question isn't how to avoid the whiplash, but how to survive it, how to maintain some thread of connection across the chasm between their two worlds.
As we support our soldiers, we must remember that the battlefield extends beyond the physical borders they defend. It reaches into living rooms and bedrooms, into the spaces between goodbye and hello, into the moments when a child doesn't recognize their parent or a spouse doesn't know whether to hold on or let go.
The whiplash is real. The wounds are invisible but deep. And for thousands of families across Israel, this jarring transition between worlds has become not an exception, but the rhythm of life itself – a rhythm that continues long after the last siren falls silent.