SHUVOO NEWSLETTER

Issue No. 28 – Rosh Chodesh Adar - February 17, 2007

Legendary Mt. Meron, once verdant and green, now bears the grey-black scab

of the Hezbollah Katyusha hit that scorched its forests during the 2006 war

with Lebanon.  (Rena Cohen photo)

 

THE IMPACT OF WAR

By Ashirah Yosefah

 

I am sitting in Tsfat in front of a large picture window overlooking the lovely redwood deck that is the pride and joy of my friend Rena.  From this vantage point, and certainly from the deck, one can gaze down the mountain into the valley surrounding the Kinneret.  The mystical Mt. Meron rises up just over the valley and to the right. 

 

It has been raining for a couple of days now.  It began to thunder during the wee hours of Thursday morning.  The first rumblings resounded off in the distance around 3:00 am.  Rena was paying a nocturnal visit to her computer.  Her pulse quickened.  Could these sounds in the distance be a rocket attack?  Only when the storm reached Tsfat about 15 minutes later did her apprehensions subside.  I had to smile with empathy.  Winter’s first thunderstorm in Jerusalem was a real winner.  With the first crack of thunder, I bolted out of bed “wondering,” and I did not have to live through the storms of Katyushas that rained upon northern Israel this past summer.  I suspect there were a lot of quickened pulses in Tsfat in the darkness before dawn this past Thursday.

 

Now it’s Friday morning, the rain has eased a bit and the sun has broken through.  Clouds and blankets of fog are tickling the slopes of Meron, stretching a whispy veil over the valley below.  It's Erev Shabbat, so I take a walk to get flowers, wine and other treats to honor the Sabbath. 

 

Tsfat is the burial place of some of Judaism's most memorable Sages and Kabbalists.  It lies at tip of the spiritual "spine" of Eretz Yisrael:  A distinct line of Kedushah that runs from its base in Hevron, up to Yerushalayim, on to Tiverias and then sweeping up to its nape in Tsfat.  Walking through the Old City area, my mind goes back to the recent war with Lebanon.  More than 400 Katyushas rained down upon this holy city.  Externally, the city looks all but untouched now, but the surrounding forests, so naturally lush and verdant, are pockmarked with large expanses of scorched vegetation and earth, ashen and gray.  On a rainy and foggy day such as today, it is as if "grey calls unto grey", bringing to mind the verse from Tehillim 42, "deep calls to deep:"

 

“O my God, my soul is downcast; therefore I think of You in this land of Jordan and Hermon, in Mount Mizar, where deep calls to deep in the roar of Your cataracts; all Your breakers and billows have swept over me.” (Tehillim 42:7-8)

 

On the exterior Tsfat looks calm, but beneath this pseudo-composure, people have not recovered from the trauma of war.  Rena tells me that parents hate to let their children out of their sight.  They are afraid to let them go off to school and need to be in near constant communication with them.  One woman is torn between the fear of leaving her home and fear to be alone in her home.  The lingering effects of the war have cast many family relationships into varying degrees of duress.  Family finances are in ruin for many of those forced to exhaust their meager savings paying for hotels, for room and board, during the many weeks they sought refuge in the south of the country.  Back in their homes, they are having difficulty putting food on the table.  This has increased to 140 the number of families fed and clothed by "Lev u'Neshama," an organization Rena works with in Tsfat. 

 

A car backfires here and everyone jumps. Before traveling, people get information on the bomb shelters along their route.  Stressful?  To be sure.  The residents of Tsfat are a bit jumpy these days.

 

The truth is that the entirety of northern Israel was the target of Hezbollah warfare this past summer.  A close friend of mine in Jerusalem is a trauma specialist.  She traveled to Haifa after the war to give regional trauma workshops to medical personnel and social workers.  She came home in dismay.  "How do you train caregivers to treat trauma," she asked me, "when the caregivers themselves need treatment for trauma?"

 

Throughout northern Israel, many families with children fled south to safety during the recent war with Lebanon.   Recently, the Director of the "Home Command" office (Israel's equivalent to America's "Homeland Security") advised the people of Tsfat that heading south to safety will not be an option during the next war.  Why?  They foresee the entire country coming under attack from all directions:  From Lebanon to the north, Gaza to the south, and even from the Shomron.  Terrorists aligned with Hezbollah are positioned in the very heartland of Israel waiting for the signal to attack her from within.  Time frame?  Whispers of next summer are common in the upper echelons.

 

As I sit here typing, a stone's throw below me sits the neighborhood bomb shelter – capacity 15-20 people. A fanciful mural has been painted across its exterior.  So close a shelter, "cute" as bomb shelters go, but so inadequate.  Rena's apartment complex is one of several in the immediate area served by this shelter.  In her building alone live 50 families, mostly with children, lots of children.  In the 10-15 seconds between missile alert and impact, residents have to go up two, or down three, flights of stairs, down a long hall, down three flights of broken concrete exterior stairs, around the building itself, and across an open field to reach the shelter. Should the alarm sound at night, can one reasonably expect the parents to be able to awaken their children, gather them up and get them up the stairs, around the building, down the stairs and across the field in the time available?

 

The neighborhood bomb shelter.

 

Sitting behind me, Rena reflects: "If the alarm does sound… sometimes it doesn't and the only alarm we have is the thud of impact."  It seems malfunctioning alarms were all too common this past summer.

 

Let's be positive and assume these families do make it the shelter in time, what will they find?  Conditions in the northern bomb shelters were horrendous during the war.  Another Jerusalem friend of mine made weekly trips north bringing food and toys to each of the shelters.  She is still unnerved by what she experienced:  Poor ventilation, insufficient facilities and space, no air conditioning, and, in many cases, no electricity.  Thousands of people were living in scorching, squalid conditions for weeks while the sounds and vibrations of war closed in on them from beyond the walls of their confinement.  Residents were told that televisions and air conditioners were sent by the hundreds to these northern shelters in order to improve air circulation and enable the people to have a connection with the outside world, but most of the equipment never arrived at its destination, having been "absconded" along the way.  Mind you, what good is an air conditioner without electricity?

 

This has definitely been an informative week.  The country is small and the network of friends and acquaintances you acquire can be quite enlightening. Yet another friend contacted me this past week.  We had not spoken in eight months, when he suddenly called me "out of the blue."  He has a son serving in the IDF along the Israel-Lebanon border.  Some things cannot be shared.  Suffice it to say, that things are not good. 

 

Another war is coming.  We know it.  All of Israel needs to prepare, but the war-traumatized residents of Israel's north merit special attention.  Despite widespread damage and indisputable need, most of the "war response" funds contributed to certain aid agencies in North America have not materialized or even become accessible to the people in such desperate need of their benefit. 

 

Israel is, without question, unique in all the world, and life here can often seem stranger than fiction.  It has recently been made public that the Jewish Agency, in partnership with The Abraham Fund (proponents of Arab-Israeli co-existence), have allocated in excess of One Million USD to teach Arabic to Jewish schoolchildren in Israel's northern communities.  The rationale?  There are now so many Arabs living in northern Israel that it is incumbent upon Jews in this region to learn to speak Arabic. 

 

The Government of Israel has also recently announced that it has allocated an additional One Billion Shekels for Arab communities throughout Israel.  Charity is wonderful, but should not charity begin at home?!?

 

If, God-forbid, the world does not wake up and the Islamic global vision succeeds, perhaps Arabic will become the next international language of commerce, and the school children of northern Israel will be ahead of all the rest of us in sailing off into the fortunes of the future.  Then again, maybe not, “infidels” don’t play a prominent role in the Moslem scheme of things. 

 

My dear friend Rena works with two local agencies assisting the needy of Tsfat.  She knows only too well the gaping holes in the bureaucratic and foreign aid systems.  She strongly recommends that donors deal directly with Jewish organizations "on the ground" in Israel to ensure that their donations are actually used as intended.  With all but unavoidable war in the offing, the existing need is only going to grow. 

 

As I gaze down at the sheet of fog rolling back into the valley below, I cannot help but think that a blanket has been pulled over too many eyes, in Israel and beyond.

 

From Tsfat, a city of holiness and Katyusha scars …

 

Ashirah Yosefah

 

Postscript:  It is now Motsi Shabbat and I’m seated on Bus 982, en route to Jerusalem from Tsfat.  Across the aisle sits a young boy, roughly Bar Mitzvah age.  A large volume of Talmud Bavli is braced between his hand and chest.  From the light overhead, I watch his lips move silently as he studies.  Behind me sit a father and son.  The boy is barely seven.  He happily sings zimrot (sacred songs) and chats with his Abba, then asks to call a friend.  His conversation is peppered with “b’ezrat Hashem”, “Baruch Hashem.”  The loudspeaker crackles.  His knitted white kippah nodding gently as he drives, our bus driver davens Tefillah haDerech (the Traveler’s Prayer) from memory.  “Amein” echoes in unison throughout the bus as we turn onto the highway at Meron with the war-scorched holy mountain standing watch behind us in the inky black of the Rosh Chodesh sky.  Welcome to the true Israel.  Rosh Chodesh Sameach.