“Why Does Israel Have So Many Enemies?”
July 2014
By Rabbi Charlie Savenor
By Rabbi Charlie Savenor
For
the past week and a half Julie and I have been in Israel leading United
Synagogue’s Family Israel Experience. Since there is too much to see,
taste and digest in just 10 days, this type of first-timers program
inevitably skims the surface of the country.
While our itinerary
may have focused on the tip of the iceberg, ironically we spent much
time beneath the surface. We marched through King Hezkeyahu’s water
tunnels dating back to the Bible, helped excavate the Bar Kochba caves
in Tel Morisha from the time of Maccabees, and were captivated by the
underground “Bullet Factory” from the 1940’s. In addition, today
Israeli hospitals build their emergency rooms underground to safeguard
against aerial attacks.
These subterranean hollows represent not
only archaeological layers of civilization in Israel, but also the
relentless pursuit of Jews to live in the Land. Understandably part of
the story at these sites deals with our enemy at the time – Babylonians,
Greeks, Romans, British and Arabs - and the outcome of that moment’s
conflict.
On top of Masada, my nine year old son, Joseph, asked a
question that had been clearly percolating in his mind during the trip:
“Why does Israel have so many enemies?”
Our historical tours provided us with the what’s, when’s and who’s of Israeli history, yet Joseph’s seemingly naive question probed what lies beneath the surface. Why all these wars? Why do we keep hearing stories of expulsion and death? Why did we interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a memorial service for three Israeli teens?
His question may have also emerged from his awareness that while all of the children were shuttled to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, the adults went to a place that seemed to be off limits to children, namely Yad Vashem. The hushed conversations on the bus from moved parents and grandparents only made my nine year old - and I imagine many others - more curious about what happened during the Holocaust.
Every visit to Israel is
special because there is always something “historic” going on. This
time was no different. When we landed in Israel, the country still
desperately hoped that the three kidnapped teens would return home
safely. The very next day these hopes were extinguished like a candle in
a desert wind. To make matters worse, a Palestinian teen was then
abducted and killed.
Soon after the rhetorical escalation on both
sides, missiles began to fly from Gaza into the State of Israel.
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Ben Gurion Airport and even the nuclear
facility in Dimona are under attack as I type these words.
Our
family’s first exposure to the missile attacks took place in a cab on
the streets of Tel Aviv. As soon as the driver heard the siren, he
pulled the cab over and told us to get out and find cover. We ran
quickly to a shelter and waited. Waiting for normalcy to return, I
looked around at the assortment of strangers huddled together. Some were
religious capped with kippot, others secular covered with tattoos. Some
were old, others young. At that moment what united us was that we were
all Jews, which, according to Hamas, makes us all targets.
When we
got back in the cab, our driver casually explained with a shrug that
these sirens are part of daily life, especially in Ashdod and Beersheba.
In other words, this is normal life in Israel.
The next
morning I sat on the balcony of our Tel Aviv hotel room enjoying the
morning air gazing onto the beautiful blue Mediterranean. Julie was out
running and the boys were inside watching Phineas and Ferb in Hebrew.
Then
a siren suddenly disrupted the calm. Still in our pajamas, I rushed the
boys into the closest stairwell being used as a shelter.
So many
thoughts flooded my mind as my heart raced: Would this experience scar
our boys’ view of Israel? Where would Julie find shelter running on the
beach? How could this regular race to shelter ever be described as
normal?
As I held my sons tight during the siren, I was reminded
of Joseph’s innocent, yet poignant question about the underpinnings of
the hardships the Jewish people have faced throughout the generations. I thought about the conversations we needed to have when he and his baby brother would be ready - not just mature enough but also ready to embrace their place in the chain of Jewish history and the Jewish future.
With missiles flying towards us, my heart plunged to uncharted subterranean levels as I imagined that one day his children may ask him the same traumatizing question: “Why does Israel have so many enemies?”
With missiles flying towards us, my heart plunged to uncharted subterranean levels as I imagined that one day his children may ask him the same traumatizing question: “Why does Israel have so many enemies?”
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