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| Me and Naomi in Tzfat |
Doubtless, you have all seen the pictures and read the harrowing news reports. The images are hard to shake-bloodied sefarim and siddurs (holy books), dead arms wrapped in tefillin (phylacteries), devastated widows sobbing and clutching their children for support. For me, it's more than the pictures. I'll never forget where I was on Tuesday morning when I found out about the attack. We were rushing downstairs to load the buses to go to a "human chain" event in support of the previous week's terror victims in Gush Etzion. The plan was to gather as many people as possible and hold hands in a chain that would wrap around the area, a show of unity and love in contrast to the violence and hatred of the terrorists. It was 7:30AM, and as I bounded down to the lobby (excited, clad in my usual skirt and sweater combo with a big Israeli flag wrapped around my back like a cape), I saw a group of my friends huddled around their phones, and heard something a synagogue. I don't know how, but I knew right away, from the looks on their faces and the way their shoulders had tensed up, that something horrible had happened. We've had enough horrible that I've gotten used to the look of it. I ran over to the crowd, and we sat around, waiting for news to unfold. Girls with family in the neighborhood of the attack were crying and frantically texting relatives. Everyone else was texting parents and friends to reassure them of their safety. It soon become clear that we wouldn't be going to any rally-in fact, we wouldn't be going anywhere, so we said a schoolwide Tehillim (Psalms), and went to class.
The rest of the day was heavy. The names of the victims were released, among them Rabbi Moshe Twersky (grandson of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik) and many other people with whom I share one degree of seperation (friend of a cousin, cousin of a friend, you know how it goes) That night, we learned from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's teachings in memory of his grandson and went to bed with heavy hearts. The next morning, a Druze (non-Jewish) police officer, Zidan Sif, who was crucial in ending the attack succumbed to injuries sustained the day before and passed away. The community bounced into action. The generally insulated and segregated Hareidi (ultra-Orthodox) community of Har Nof rallied around this police officer, and thousands of Hareidi men decided to attend his funeral. An ex-IDF soldier, who was Jewish but secular, heard about this effort and decided to donate buses to transport the Hareidim to the funeral. An Orthodozx Zionist woman heard about this man's generosity and split the bill with him. It was a moment of such profound unity between so many different sects and groups of people in Israel, in contrast to the usual tension and disagreement we see. And imagine the shock of Zidan Sif's family when thousands of black-hatters arrived at the modest funeral they planned in their small Druze village. On the streets, the security level was upped to the second to highest alert level, meaning that the streets were teeming with hardworking soldiers who stood on street corners and all over town for 18 hour shifts. Communities mobilized to support them-women baked for them, schools (like mine, which bought 200 pieces of pizza to give out between 10 and 11PM) bought pizza pies and drinks and drove around handing them out, families made coffee and tea at 2AM to keep soldiers alert and warm and everyone now says thank you when they see a soldier-the amount that they are doing to protect us is unthinkable. For every attack, hundreds are stopped, and the soldiers are constantly on alert.
By the end of the week, we were exhausted. The whole country, really. We needed a break, and shabbos is that perfect time to step back from the world and all the badness and spend time with the best people doing the things we love most. For shabbat, my program, along with the program in our school for girls with special needs, and many of our teachers and their families, went to Tzfat (Safed). It was such a beautiful, uplifting, interesting and meaningful shabbat spent in a city rich with culture, history and spirituality. Now I'm home, curled up in my bed with a cup of tea, eating a jelly donut in honor of the new month (and the impending holiday of Hanukkah!). Every week, it seems, there's at least one attack, and a part of me is just wondering when this week's attack will occur. I know that sounds so horrible, but after 6 attacks like this, it's hard not to think that way. Human beings are the most adaptable beings on the planet, which is a necessary component to our survival. If it gets too hot, our bodies send blood to our extremities, if we have no food, our bodies conserve energy and calories, if we lose one of our senses, the others are strengthened, and if it gets too dark, our pupils dilate and our eyes adjust to the darkness. One of my teachers used this metaphor of eyes and darkness to illustrate how easy it is to get used to this-and the importance of never letting that happen. I cannot let my eyes adjustment to the darkness. I won't let this become something I anticipate and something that no longer shocks me. This cannot become the new normal. We cannot accept terrorism as a part of life-we need to fight it in all ways, militarily, diplomatically, politically, religiously, communally and emotionally. When I think about the funeral of Zadin Sif, I cannot think of a better way to fight this evil force off. I hope you all will keep Israel in your prayers, so that at this time on Friday, when I summarize the week, I don't need to talk about terrorism or murder, because it doesn't have to be that way. Love you, RTS
If everyone who could do something positive actually did it, the world would be a better place. You're doing a lot by helping the special needs girls!
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