When my first grandchild was born some thirty years ago I was naturally thrilled at the idea of having become a grandmother and excited at meeting the new arrival. Over the years our family has grown, all three of our children have married and produced children, so that by now we have more grandchildren than we can count on the fingers of two hands, and have had to enlarge our dining table several times to accommodate the growing family. In my opinion, one of the sweetest sounds in the world is the babble of voices wafting into the kitchen (where I’m getting the food ready to serve) at Friday night dinner as the cousins communicate and catch up with one another’s activities.

By now most of our grandchildren are adults who have completed their compulsory military service, served in the reserves, gained academic qualifications and gone out into the world of employment, most of them in areas allied to Israel’s flourishing high-tech industry. Some are married or engaged to be married, while others are still out there looking for their life-partner, but all of them seem to have full and satisfying lives, replete with social and sporting activities, friendships galore and even some interest in cultural and musical activities. Several of them own dogs (and more than one in one case), reflecting their capacity to extend their love of animals beyond merely sharing pictures of cute cats on the internet. It goes without saying that each and every one of our grandchildren is talented and beautiful beyond words, and that Yigal and I love them all more than words can express.

But now a new arrival has joined our family, Our married grandson, Nadav, has become a father, thereby turning our daughter, Dana, and son-in-law, Itzik, into grandparents, and Yigal and myself into great-grandparents. Suddenly the weight of the four generations of our family has been sprung upon us, and my delight at our new status is tinged with a hint of sadness when I think of my own grandparents, whom I was not privileged to know. The lives of all my four grandparents (as well as those of Yigal) were cut short by the Holocaust, and so the family in which each of us grew up was limited to two generations only – parents and children. Our parents had known their own grandparents and were undoubtedly able to enjoy the company of numerous uncles, aunts and cousins as they were growing up. Sadly, all those extensive family relationships were cut short by the cataclysm that engulfed Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, murdering millions of Jews, including our grandparents and many of our relatives.

The arrival of new-born Ellie, apart from reminding me that I am far from young, serves to instill in me a new awareness of the significance of continuity in our family. Yigal and I have done our duty, produced offspring and sent them out into the world. Now it falls to our children to continue the chain that binds the generations to one another and ensures the future of our nation.

 “When you look into your great-grand-daughter’s eyes you will realise that God exists,” I was told recently by a devout Christian friend when I told her I did not believe in any deity. When I met Ellie last week she slept the whole time, so I can continue to hold on to my atheism.