Strength in Compassion

Israelis are resilient. 

The day after the terror attacks, flags were draped on the two sites of the stabbings in Ra’anana. 

The colorful Na Nachs' truck rolled along the main street, its enthusiastic passengers jumping out to sing and twirl.

My son’s school walked over to the nearby beit café where three people were stabbed. 

The boys formed a circle and danced, clapped and sang. 

Many of the schools across the country prayed simultaneously for the healing of the victims of terror.

This is in sharp contrast to our enemies, who scream death and wiled knives from their religious pulpits, run at Israeli children with sharp blades and teach toddlers that heroism means being murderous.

A chuppa at the sea.  Our future continues.

The Jewish people here in Israel are compassionate and strong, determined to live a fulfilled life in the land they love. They act with joy, kindness, hope and prayer and they worship life, not death. They are resilient.

I went for a bike ride to the beach a few days later. Unfortunately, there are still attacks happening; yet Israelis will not hide indoors. 

As words cannot capture the vitality of Israeli life, these two photos express the zest to live each moment fully.

Resilience in Ra'anana

Terror hit Ra’anana yesterday. At nine in the morning, a man was stabbed while waiting for a bus on Ahuza, the city’s main street. Within minutes, ambulance sirens were wailing, cell phones ringing, our concerned kids calling to check if we were ok. 

Helicopters hovered just above the palms. We did not yet have the full story but as the day unfolded with another stabbing incident at a Ra’anana café less than two hours later, life became surreal. Scary.

We soon found out that the first incident happened right outside our friend Marina’s clothing store. As soon as it occurred, a regular middle-aged guy, ran out from his office with an umbrella and bashed the assailant down against the curb. Really hard. He did not think twice. He simply reacted with intuition, force and he saved lives.

At the café, the next assailant (a worker from the nearby Beit Levenstein Hospital) stabbed four people sipping coffee and ran. A cab driver saw him fleeing and instinctively veered into him to stop him. The guy somehow got up and kept running. A man on a motorcycle then ditched his bike, took off his helmet, jumped a fence and bashed the terrorist with his helmet. The cab driver caught up to him and together they captured him. Two more heroes who acted calmly, quickly and saved the day.

Meanwhile, in my son’s grade 11 chemistry class, a student who is trained with Magen David Adom (emergency first aid response team) received a text message that there was a stabbing in the café about one hundred yards from the school. He calmly got up, left the class, grabbed his first aid kit that he kept in his locker, asked a friend to hoist him over the school fence (the schools were all on lock down yesterday) and was the first to arrive on the scene, saving a life. Another hero, this one a 16-year-old kid.

The roads of Ra’anana were clogged with drivers, parents picking their kids up from school.  There was talk that another terrorist was running around Ra’anana, right near my friend’s bookstore. She had locked her store door. People came pounding on the door wanting to be let in. One was a woman from Petach Tikvah who had been on Ahuza during the first stabbing and was now completely fearful. One was a young high school girl. 

The third was a young boy who said he was riding his electric bike when a guy threw himself at him with a knife. He sped away from the terrorist and now sat calmly. My friend was so amazed at how composed he was, she asked him if he was sure it was a terrorist. Yes, he said, the guy had a knife and shouted ‘allahu akbar.’

No sooner had the attacks occurred, I received an email about a free krav maga (street defense developed by the IDF) class that would take place in a few hours.  I went with my 14-year-old daughter and hundreds of others. The room was filled with young and old, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew speakers. 

It's almost impossible to own a gun here, pepper spray was quickly sold out today and we all wanted to know what to do. Word got around fast. The city did not organize anything so the locals took it into their own hands.

Rachel, a spirited, confident, gorgeous young woman took control of the class. Originally from Toronto, she is the daughter of my friend who owns the store where the first attack happened.  Rachel has a black belt in Karate and was recently a krav maga instructor in the IDF.  She knows her stuff. 

She first said we should not stay home afraid. We should go out with total awareness, knowing how to defend ourselves. Within one hour, she taught us basic self-defence tactics in multiple languages, giving us tips on how to fend off an attacker, giving precious time to run away.

One little girl who looked no older than six put up her hand. “What if he is bigger than me?”

“Pretend you are playing soccer,” Rachel answered, giving a strong kick to an imaginary guy in a place that would make him see stars.

People in this country continue to amaze me. They take control. They adapt. They continue to live.

Amir now walks the dog with a huge bicycle chain around his neck. My kids report back as soon as they arrive safely at school. My son took a knife with him this morning. In most countries, weapons are checked in at the door. Not here. And not now.

This is one resilient place filled with the most remarkable people.

Simply Being

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and may the earth hear the words of my mouth.”  Devarim (Deuteronomy) 32:1

Erev Yom Kippur. It is now late morning as I sit in my garden to reflect. There is a waft of sweet guava. A bird sings. A gate creaks.

The roads are sleepy quiet as this day is a holiday in Israel. No school and no work for most. People take this day to prepare for the fast, cooking the festive meal before the fast begins, calling friends, spending time with family and visiting relatives’ graves.

It was 5:45 a.m. this morning when Amir, Talya and I stepped into the car. The sky was still dark and the air fresh as we drove to the beach. It was a gentle morning, the waves soft and quiet.

We ran the length of the beach, hugging the shore where the sand is packed. No earphones today; my feet stepped to the waves slipping rhythmically to the shore.

We then took out our machzorim to do tashlich, a prayer to ask for forgiveness. We looked out to the horizon, where sea meets sky and Talya said a personal prayer to G-d aloud:

I love you. I love your world. I love your creations. I love it all, the good and the bad, the laughter and the tears. The sea and the sky, the birds and the trees. When I sit in the cool, clear, fresh water I remember a promise you made thousands of years ago. You put the sky and the sea as witnesses to that promise. The sun never fails to rise every single day to light up the world once more even after we're sure it abandoned us for good. The waters that crash on the shore are always pulled back into the place from which they came. They may not resurface in the same shape or size, but they will always be part of the sea. 

We brought some bread to throw into the sea and I felt a little sheepish doing this on such a public beach, imagining some environmentalist lecturing me on the havoc wreaked in the marine system because of these breadcrumbs. Instead, a woman came up to us and asked what we were doing, standing in the waves with our prayer books.

“Tashlich,” we replied.

“I want to do this too. Can I join you?”

We gave her some bread and this woman soon realized her Hebrew was superior. She took over the reading for us.

We threw our breadcrumbs to sea, as if we were discarding our sins, casting them into the water, watching them swirl, sink.

“Besorot tovot,” she wished us. Only good things.

As we cast our bread, I looked out and saw a large delegation of swimmers coming towards us. They soon emerged at our feet. Turns out it was the local Ra’anana triathlon club. This morning they ran to the beach, swam and were about to run back.

They gathered on the shore and I saw a man with a kippa, one of the triathletes, reading from a prayer book. They all listened intently, threw a piece of bread into the sea, embraced, then started to run the 10 kilometers home.

Here were two occasions of what one could label secular Jews reaching out to Hashem and touching their souls.

According to Dov Lipman, who recently wrote in the Times of Israel, “The era of “secular” Israeli Jews is over and recognizing this will help us take the crucial first step towards the fulfilment of what should be our ultimate goal: an Israel in which levels of religious observance and piety are between each person and God, and in which we don’t have a compulsion to identify what type of Jew we are but can simply be “Jews.”

Living in Israel, I see examples of this every day. We are a soulful people and we want to connect and be connected, just like the sea and the sky, the heavens and the earth. We strive to make the two meet.

After tashlich, we swam out and floated on our backs. Our arms were limp, our legs buoyant. The sun was just peeking over the cliffs, bathing our faces in light.

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and may the earth hear the words of my mouth.” Moshe’s song that we will read in synagogue this Shabbat addresses the eternal heaven and earth.

We may be small floating specks, but in moments when we let go, allowing the waves to take the lead, giving in, breathing deeply, melting into nature’s rhythm, we become connected and an intrinsic part of the harmony of creation.

Wishes for a G'mar chatima tova and a meaningful fast.

Dispirited Dust

Jerusalem, Sep 8, 2015

Soupy, moldy, thick, brooding, dark, moist, dank. This is our weather and the forecast calls for more of the same. I walk outside and feel as if I am entering a wet sauna. I try to breathe deeply, but there is little oxygen to enter my lungs.

Is that the sun or the moon? Is it morning or evening?

The world is silent, still. I look up and can barely make out an orb in the sky. Is this the sun? Or the moon? Is it evening or morning? Time has stopped. The wind has abandoned us, the air all but seeped away.

This thick, damp mush takes me back to a distant memory: an old, creaky attic filled with dusty, moldy furniture, cobwebs, darkness. Or is it a basement with old, wet carpets, dust balls, moist cardboard. Where am I?

Poetic fallacy was a term coined by John Ruskin in the 19^th century. In this literary convention, nature mirrors human events. We have read of dancing flowers, moping owls, angry winds and happy larks in poetry.

How about today's morose moon, dispirited dust and lugubrious layers? The Middle East is being smothered by a sandstorm so large, it can be clearly seen on satellites from space.

NASA photo of the sandstorm.

With origins in Syria and Iraq, the massive dust cloud sits 600 metres high, coating Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt’s Sinai, Cyprus and Israel with sand particles, forcing the thermometer to soar to 100 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity levels reaching 85 percent.

The Middle East is shrouded in a foreboding smog and the countries affected all simmer in this thick, unbearable soup together. As we try to catch a breath, the world powers sit from afar and judge us. Their vision is as clouded as the air, our future endangered like the dust particles we are forced to breathe.

If this sandstorm plays in the practice of poetic fallacy, just wait for the next blood moon. That will be on September 28, the last of the four tetrad lunar eclipses. The skies looked similar in 1492, 1948 and in 1967, years that changed the Jewish world forever.

We are now entering a new year and the signs outside are rather brooding.  At least we have front row seats over here in Israel.

A sweet and good year are necessary ingredients in our stagnating soup, so let’s pour them in.

The Tower of David, Jerusalem.