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THE ISRAEL TO WHICH they return will be familiar, and not. Still fractious and almost ferociously opinionated, the Israeli in the street, like all survivors, is forever changed, but ultimately the same. Coming back from death’s door is for the individual Israeli a transcendent experience, but once it is shared this most personal of emotions becomes nationally affirmative.

The extent of the damage is unfathomable. Israel’s medical facilities, overburdened with caring for the sick and wounded, become an assembly line as thousands of Jewish women and girls, some as young as eleven, line up for abortions. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, which otherwise condemns the practice, turns a blind eye.

No other people experiences so many funerals per capita in so short a period. Israel’s supply of rabbis qualified to lead prayers at gravesites proves to be insufficient. When it becomes clear how many dead are piled up like rotting logs in the former prisoner of war camps, rabbis from around the world are invited by the IDF Chief Rabbinate to fly in to help. They do so in droves, many for the first time putting aside their skepticism about a Jewish state that in their eyes is insufficiently religious.

Yet, as always, Jewish humor prevails, and as usual it is black. Television comedians quickly see the possibilities: the Muslim invaders have finally given Israel’s cities an opportunity for broad-scale urban renewal; the Knesset, with no members, has never been more efficient; the ultra-Orthodox, who before the war dedicated their lives to study, eschewing labor, have at last joined the workforce.

Jewish money pours in from abroad to finance the rebuilding, so much so that, as the comedians put it, the country’s second major import—after cash—is brass plaques to commemorate the donors.

With labor in short supply and no Palestinians to take up the slack, Christian fundamentalist and Jewish college students flock in to hammer nails, pour concrete, and repave roads.

The Knesset building is reconstructed in six months. Rebuilding the western wall of the Holy Temple takes longer: some of its stone building blocks weigh five hundred tons. Bulldozer after bulldozer breaks down in the effort; how the ancient Israelites brought them to the site and lifted them into place remains a mystery to this day.