A week and a half ago, my dear friend Daniel Mendelsohn and I took down a group of yeshiva boys and seminary girls to Sderot for the organization we work for, Doresh Tov. It was Daniel’s last trip as a coordinator. Today he went into the tough Golani Brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces. I can say for sure that it was the best trip we have done yet. It is unfortunate that I have put off writing about it until now, because the details seep out of my mind like water in cupped hands.
We rented a minibus that sat thirty-six, and had twenty-six boys and girls come-our biggest group yet. The ride there was uneventful, and as we got close to the city, Daniel gave them the instructions on what to do in the event of a Tzevah Adom, a Red Alert Alarm. Upon entering the city we got a little confused trying to maneuver some one-way streets, and stopped to ask a local for directions. Instead of just telling us how to get there, he hopped in his car and told us to follow him there. Seeing the look on the group’s faces, I told them that this was a typical example of Southern Israel kindness. As I have said before, in Israel there’s a saying, “Where the weather is warm, the hearts are warm,” and it is definitely true about Sderot.
The first stop was the police station, where I took the group to see the Machsan Hakassamim. The Machsan Hakassamim is an area behind the police station where they store all the Kassam rockets that residents haven’t kept. Hundreds and hundreds of rusty rockets on racks. They write the dates on the side of the rockets and I showed the group one that had exploded in the town earlier that morning. So they started taking pictures with it and smiling and laughing. I told them to cut it out, and not to smile in a picture holding a weapon of death and destruction.
Next stop was the mayor’s office. He wasn’t in, so the vice mayor filled in for him. We filed into the city meeting room, sitting in comfortable chairs around a very long boardroom table. In the corner was a memorial to the eleven people killed in Sderot over the years, as well as the first Kassam to ever be shot at Sderot, which happened to explode in the mayor’s yard. I was asked to translate for the vice mayor, as he does not speak English. He didn’t feel comfortable sitting at the head of the table in the mayor’s seat, so he asked me to instead. So there I was, sitting in the chair of the mayor of Sderot, conducting a meeting in the city boardroom. I thought it would be at least another two years before I would do that. The vice mayor received two rocket warnings during the course of the meeting, both of them exploding outside of the city. He had a very broad perspective to give us on the effects of the prolonged terror, how it has effected businesses as opposed to the industrial district etc. The shops have been salvaged by nationwide shopping drives coming to Sderot to do their shopping. The factories have not been so lucky. Many of them are in desperate need of repair, but no technicianswill come, as their insurance refuses to cover a trip to Sderot.
The third part of the trip was a short walking tour. Right before we left for it, the dreaded sound of the microphone turned on, followed by the woman’s voice “Tzevah Adom. Tzevah Adom.” To people there for their first time, it didn’t register immediately what was going on. So Daniel and myself yelled at them “GET INSIDE OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING NOW!!” After quickly checking that no one was left outside, we ran in ourselves. Twenty seconds later, Daniel and I came out to find the place a ghost town. I would not have been surprised to see a tumbleweed roll by. After some calling and coaxing they finally came back out from wherever they found shelter. “Welcome to Sderot everybody! I’m very proud of how you handled that. I did NOT expect it to go that smoothly,” I said to the group.
“Now you guys know what we mean when we say move fast,” Daniel added.
Afterwards, the tour continued as scheduled. We showed the group where rockets had exploded and the extent of the damage from the shrapnel. We stopped to pay our respects at a monument erected in memory of two Ethiopian toddlers murdered outside their home four years ago. On an earlier trip I translated for the father of the two-year-old. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, repeating a father’s tale of finding his baby in a pool of blood.
After the tour, we stopped at the house of the Doresh Tov director, David Spanglet. We ordered in pizza and prayed the afternoon prayer service outside, in their beautiful backyard. Before the service, I announced to everybody that the Chief Sefardic Rabbi of Israel, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, ruled that in the event of a Tzeva Adom during prayer it is required by Jewish Law to run inside for safety. As people were hanging in and around the house, another Tzevah Adom went off. As people ran into the house, I yelled at them to get into the reinforced room of the house. About thirty people packed into a small office. They all stared at me with a shocked look in their face as they saw that I didn’t follow them into the office. “What-Elisha thinks he’s bulletproof?” I smiled, as I hadn’t told them that the hallway was also reinforced.
The last part of the trip is always everyone’s favorite: going around to families. We split it up into a couple of groups and went to different “neighborhoods.” A neighborhood in middle-class Sderot consists of several apartment buildings surrounding a parking lot. We went from door to door, handing out free toys to children, letters of encouragement to parents, and hope to everybody. Every person tried to invite us in, to give us something to eat, and some even tried to keep us. Many of them had pictures in their house of Rav Kook, of sainted memory. I told them that I had studied the night before in Rav Kook’s Yeshiva, Merkaz HaRav. While we were going door to door, another Tzeva Adom went off. I was in the midst of knocking on a door. As soon as the alarm went off I tried the handle-it was locked. I rushed across the hall to another apartment; the door was open. I ran inside and showed my friend where the protected room was. We quickly realized that no one was home. My friend Kyle Delmoor, who was with me at the time, looked at me in astonishment as he realized that I had just ran into a stranger’s unoccupied home. “Things work a little differently in Sderot,” I said to him.
We all met back at David’s house and got ready to leave. On the bus ride back I walked up and down the aisle. “They shoot these rockets called Kassams,” I heard one girl say to her mom on the phone. “And they have an alarm called Tzevah Adom and then you have fifteen seconds to find shelter,” a boy said to someone else on the phone. I smiled as I realized that the butterfly effect had been set in motion.
~ ~ ~
This past Friday night, I prayed the Shabbat evening service on the balcony of my yeshiva. As I sang David’s songs on Shabbat eve, I saw the moon rise over the trees on the very Temple Mount that David sat on. I smiled as I thought: with all the problems that Israel has, with all the political strife and religious tension, even with a sometimes hostile security situation; how could I ever dream of leaving such a beautiful place? I don’t plan on it.
March 31, 2008...10:12 am
Doresh Tov: Dodging Rockets in Sderot (Again)
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