The news over the past two weeks has been difficult, with the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, followed by the brutal murders in Itamar of 5 members of the Fogel family, rockets that are being fired into the south and west of Israel from Gaza, and now this terror attack today in Yerushalayim that has killed one person and wounded more than 30 others.
I was working quietly at home shortly before 3pm on Wednesday, when I suddenly heard the sound of multiple sirens at once. Instantly I wondered if there had been a pigu’a (attack), but dismissed the thought because things have been quiet in Yerushalayim for years. But about half an hour later I got a text from Yaffa that there had been a bomb on the bus line that she takes to school, and where she had been standing only two hours earlier.
I tried to text her back, but the text wouldn’t go through, nor was I able to call her - all because the phone lines were full from the sheer volume of calls going on in the country immediately after the bombing. And then the calls began to trickle in from a few friends and relatives wanting to find out if we were okay. A few minutes later and Yaffa’s call to me managed to get through, and we spoke about what had just occurred. We were both shaken by the news, which hit home especially hard since she very easily could have been on that bus. We found out later that it was a different bus line, and that the bomb wasn’t actually on the bus but near it, but that still didn’t diminish our shock and of course our concern for everyone who was injured.
And the question that she asked me was – What do we do now? What does she do now? We don't have a car this year, and so she takes 4 buses a day to get to and from school. How is she supposed to get on the bus to come back home? What if…?
And I had no answer.
The question brought me back to my second year of study in Israel, which was the year that the first intifada began. As seminaries created lists of danger zones where students could not travel, and as many people curtailed travel into Yehuda and Shomron, I resolutely decided that my personal response had to be that I demonstrate that these attacks, designed to scare us away, wouldn’t scare me away. Since I was a second-year student at a time that not many people stayed for two years, I wasn’t bound by the seminary’s rules created for the students from chutz la’aretz, and instead was free to travel as I wished. I arranged Shabbatot for myself in places people were nervous to go - Kiryat Arba, Chevron, the Muslim Quarter; I traveled on bus lines that were routinely attacked by Arabs throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. I needed to show that we Jews were here, and can’t be scared away. But that was during the first intifada, when the Palestinians weren’t armed like they are today; when the attacks, although dangerous, were not on the same scale as they were in the second intifada and like today, when there are shootings, and buses blown up, and tens of people killed and injured at once.
And most different, that was my personal decision for myself, which I imposed on no one else. But today – how can I tell my children to take a bus if they are scared to? And if they aren’t scared to, as their parent, should I tell them to avoid buses?
Yaffa reminded me of the summer we visited Israel in 2001, at the height of the second intifada when numerous buses were blown up in Yerushalayim and many people killed and wounded. We were staying in a hotel down the block from Sbarro’s, and the morning of the horrific bomb attack there we were at a museum. We came back an hour after the attack, and walking through the street to the hotel we saw a scene of havoc, and people walking about with blood on their clothing. And she asked me yesterday, why did we take buses that summer? And my answer was that although I was nervous about taking buses, seeing how the Israelis carried on with their daily lives despite the bus bombings we decided that we too would try to carry on as normal and so we took buses. Somewhat nervously and on the alert, but we did take buses.
But even that was different than today, because I was there together with my children, taking the same risks as them. As opposed to now, when they have to take multiple buses each day, and I only take a bus occasionally, when I need to leave the neighborhood in which we live.
I told Yaffa in our phone call that life has to continue as normal. But that I don’t know the answer. I don’t know whether she should take buses – but what other option is there?
I got off the phone with Yaffa, and my son called to tell me he had just heard of the attack. He had been planning to take a bus to the mall after school with two friends, but one of the mothers called her son and told him she didn’t want him going on a bus. And my son wanted to know, will I let him go on a bus with the other boy to the mall, or would I rather not?
I told him I didn’t have an answer. But as we talked further I told him that if he feels comfortable taking a bus, then yes, I think he can take a bus. I think it is important to take a bus. Life has to continue as normal.
I don’t know if I am right. A part of me feels guilty – I dragged my children here for the year. It wasn’t their decision to come, it was mine. I took them away from their friends, out of their comfortable lives in America to spend a year in Israel. And now a bomb exploded in a place where either of my two older kids could have been at any time.
I welcome your thoughts and comments on this issue. Hopefully this was only a one-time incident, but should life continue as normal immediately afterwards, or should one go out of one’s way to avoid buses? Public places? How would you feel?
But at the same time as I have these questions, I feel something else, too. When I am in America and hear of attacks in Israel I always feel guilty that I’m living a comfortable life, while our brethren in Israel have to endure hardships. But this time, I’m here too, and I can share in their burden.
I think that even in times like this I prefer to be part of Am Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael. That’s where I was meant to be.
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