September 30th, '03
If a Place Can Make You Cry

In lieu of my personal observations about living in this country, I'd like to share with you an article by Jerusalemite Daniel Gordis. He wrote it a couple of weeks ago, but the issues he struggles with are, unfortunately, as timely as ever.

Thursday, September 11, 2003

It's strange what you learn in a place like this. Mostly, it's about the questions you realize you don't begin to know how to answer.

What do you say to your teenage daughter who's still awake at 11:15 p.m. when the bomb is so loud, and so close, that the house shakes, and the windows rattle? And when the news gets turned on (because a noise like that in a place like this can only mean one thing) and it turns out that they just blew up the main street that's a five minute walk from here, and on the TV she sees her favorite cafe shredded, decimated and flowing with blood. What do you say?

And how do you wake up your younger kids the next morning? What do you tell them before they head off to school? When it's this close, there's no lying. They're going to find out anyway, and the news that they hear during the day could be so bad that it would be unthinkable not to prepare them. So what do you say? That the war's come even closer, that the people (or whatever one calls those who would do this) who want to kill them are closing in? That we don't yet know the names of the dead and wounded, but it's not unlikely that we'll know someone, or of someone? That Cafe Hillel is gone? That the block where our kids rent their videos, buy their falafel and go shopping for school supplies is now undeniably what we've long known it is -- a place where they might be blown to bits?

I'd figured that we'd talk to the kids when they got dressed and came down for breakfast, so I didn't give much thought to how we'd wake them up. But Elisheva had a different thought. She wasn't taking any chances. I happened to glance into Micha's room to make sure that he was getting up and dressed for the second week of fifth grade, and I saw her sitting on the side of the bed, rubbing his back, talking to him. I didn't hear any of the conversation, but I knew what it was about. And then I heard him asking questions. Didn't hear those either, and I was kind of glad. What in the world would I have said? What do you tell a ten year old when the evil has gotten so close that now there's no denying -- they could get him, too?

At the end of the day, a long, angry, nausea-filled day of work while anxiously reading the web, waiting for the names to appear, I headed home from the office to make dinner and to eat with the kids. But Elisheva was in class, Talia was in the middle of something and Avi had a friend over, so when I called everyone for dinner, only Micha showed up. We sat down, but he didn't want to eat too much. Mostly, he had questions. And things to tell me.

"How was your day at work?"

"Pretty good," I told him. "It's sweet of you to ask."

"Were people at your work sad?"

"Everybody was sad. Were you sad?"

"My teacher was crying today when she was teaching us."

"Do you know why she was crying?"

"Because she was supposed to go to the wedding tonight of that girl who was killed with her father. But she left school go to the funeral instead. She was crying the whole time she was teaching us."

"Did that make you sad?"

"Yeah, but other kids in my class were sadder."

"Why?"

"Yoel was sad because his doctor was killed."

"The doctor who was the father of the girl who was supposed to get married?"

"Yeah. And another boy was sad because his sister's gymnastics teacher was killed. And Chava's mother was in the restaurant, but she was sitting in a back corner, so she didn't get hurt. But Chava was sad, too."

Seemed like a lot for a ten year old to process during the day. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to walk over there, so he could actually see the place, and remove some of the mystery. But again, as usual, Elisheva was one step ahead of me.

"Would you like to walk over there after dinner? At 8:00, there are going to be people saying Tehillim [Psalms] there. Would you like to come?"

"OK. Ema took me there when I got home from school."

"What did you see?"

"It's all boarded up, and there are lots of police surrounding it, because there's really no way that they can lock it up. All the walls are gone. The bomb blew them up. And there were lots of candles lit. It was pretty, but it made me sad."

Not much you can say to that, it seemed to me. If this doesn't make you sad, not much will. So we ate dinner, and chatted, and were eventually joined by the other two kids. The conversation turned to the guard at the Cafe. There were two guards, they knew.

"Did he get by the first guard?" one of the kids asked.

"I don't know," I told them. The papers were full of conflicting accounts (not surprising, given the pandemonium at the scene and the fact that many of the witnesses were either dead or unconscious). And besides, I didn't see the point of the conversation. What difference did it make?

"I think that the first guard tried to block him, but he pushed through, and the second guard stopped him from getting further into the restaurant," one of the kids said.

And then I got it. This was no idle chatter. They were trying to figure something out. If we have all the guards in front of every restaurant, office building, bank and other public establishment, but we're still not safe, what can we possibly do? Where can they go and feel secure, they were trying to figure out. But they knew the answer already, so didn't have to say much. They're not safe. They know it. Now they really get it.

I asked the big kids, too, if they wanted to come with us at 8:00, and they did. We finished dinner, cleaned up, and just before 8:00, headed out to Emek Refa'im. On the way, we passed a couple of people in civilian clothes carrying loaded submachine guns. Talia was a bit taken aback.

"This is quite the place."

Trying to reassure her that Jerusalem isn't turning into Liberia, I pretended not to know what she was referring to. "What?"

"Did you see that guy with the loaded M-16 and those other guns just walking around?"

"Yeah, but I assume he's just Shin Bet or something." Total lie, as I also had no idea what he was doing walking around like a one man arms-depot, but I figured I'd try to calm her down.

"Well, even if he is, doesn't it strike you as interesting that no one on the street is paying him any attention?"

Touche. Two points. Nothing to say to that. So we kept walking. The cafe was, as Micha had reported, all boarded up, surrounded by dozens of police (who, I assumed, must have seen the guy armed to the teeth). We crossed the street, brazenly jay-walking in front of about fifty policemen, who clearly understood that a family illegally crossing the street is the least of this country's problems. They didn't even look at us. We walked up to the table where the candles were flickering, and Tali lit one.

We knew dozens of people there. Quiet hellos, some handshakes. Some hugs. A couple of Tali's friends came over and hugged her. And we waited around for someone to start the Tehillim.

Behind us, there were two secular men in their forties or fifties, having a heated conversation. You couldn't help but listen, as they were just shy of shouting at each other.

"Thirty years, and there won't be an Israel."

"Of course there will be."

"Well, it might be called Israel, but it won't be a Jewish state."

"Yes it will."

"No, it won't. You know what the problem is? We're too good to live in this neighborhood. If we'd take the family of the bomber and kill them, then they'd know that doing this causes pain to their family. Or even just exile them. But something more than blowing up their houses. That doesn't work. But all we do is blow up empty houses. We're not willing to be the animals that you have to be to live in this part of the world. They actually live better after their sons blow themselves up. And they don't care when their kids die. They're proud. So we hang around here and cry, and they're one step closer to victory. Why would all these young kids [and he pointed to the dozens of teenagers who were hanging out with their books of Psalms] stay here? Why in the world should they raise their kids in this? They won't, they're going to leave. They don't know it yet, but they will. We've lost this war, and just don't want to admit it."

"That won't happen so fast. And it would be wrong to do that to the families."

"Why's it wrong? Why's it OK for Bush but not for us? But wrong or not, if we don't do it, we're never going to make it here. You live in France, you act like the French. You live in America, you act like the Americans. You want to live in the Middle East, you have to act like you live in the Middle East. But we're paralyzed by our fear of what the world will think of us. So we're losing this war. This country is finished. Maybe not thirty years. I'll give you forty. But the end is getting closer. We gave it a try, this bit of having a country, but it was just the wrong time in the wrong place. Chaval [a pity], no?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Yes, it's a pity."

And they walked away. Tali looked at me. She didn't say anything, but I knew what she was asking me. "Tell me that they're wrong," her eyes said. But I couldn't. I didn't have anything to say. He's right in some ways. We're just not willing to be the animals that one has to be to make it here. And he could be right about the outcome, too. My daughter, I suspect, desperately wanted me to tell her it would be alright. But I wasn't in the mood to lie anymore. So in a moment of gross parental incompetence, I didn't say anything at all. Another unanswered question. I suspect that she got the point.

The whole thing reminded me of a conversation we'd had just this past weekend at home. It was Shabbat, and we were have a rare dinner by ourselves after having been apart for various trips all summer long, when Elisheva said something about "when there's peace." Avi looked at her as if she'd gone mad. "What in the world are you talking about?", he wanted to know, in that tone that only a kid in the prime of adolescence can muster. "You don't get it, do you? There's never going to be peace here. They hate us. They want us out of here completely and they won't stop this until we're gone altogether. And they don't care how many of them die, and they're proud when their kids blow themselves up. You can't make peace with that, no matter what."

A theme that is beginning to be heard here in many quarters. We live in a part of the world drowning in an ethic that is incomprehensible to me, that has nothing to do with the alleged occupation since 1967. It has to do with our being here at all, in any part of this land. For them, it's all or nothing, and there are many more of them, they will sink to depths to which we will not sink, and they know that time is on their side.

Back to Emek Refa'im street. The Psalms were nice, and Ma'ariv was poignant if quick. By the time it was over, it was close to 9:00, and Micha was getting tired, and he had school the next morning. So we started the walk home, Avi, Micha and I. Tali stayed behind with friends, who were now singing those slow, mournful songs in minor keys that Israelis have raised to an art form.

This time it was Avi's turn to pipe up.

"You know, Abba, I wanted to go to Emek Refa'im last night, but Ema wouldn't let me."

It wasn't really a question, but it was more than a mere statement of fact. It was a musing on the Russian Roulette that life here has become. He knew, full well, that if Ema had let him go out with friends that night, things could have turned out very differently for us. And he knows that the guards don't always work. And that the savages have now discovered our neighborhood. And he's read the papers that report that Hamas says that they're now going to blow up multistory apartment buildings instead. He gets it. He didn't even need to ask a question. He just knows.

We got home three minutes later, and it was time for Micha to go to bed. He got undressed, brushed his teeth and hopped into bed. It was too late for a story, so I just sang to him. After the Shma and the other things we say with him each night, at which point he usually just grabs his pillow with both arms and goes to sleep, he suddenly turned onto his side, and looked at me.

"Abba, why do the suicide bombers blow themselves up?"

Why, I wanted to know, is your mother not here for this conversation? But it turns out she'd already had it. Because he continued.

"Ema says that it's because they believe that after they do that, they're going to be treated extra nicely." I suppose that's the euphemism for the whole seventy virgin bit. Thank God he didn't ask about that. "Do you believe that?", he wanted to know.

"No," I told him. "I think that they're wrong. They're not going to get anything special. They're just killing themselves and lots of other innocent people. What they do is evil, and they're being taught terrible things by their teachers."

"That's what Ema said, too." So far so good.

He turned onto his stomach, grabbed his pillow and closed his eyes. But I couldn't leave him, not with that. So I sat back down next to him, rubbed his back, and told him I was sorry. "I'm sorry that you have to think about that kind of stuff," I told him. "Kids your age shouldn't even know about this."

"It's OK," he said. He paused for a minute, and then he said, "I still like it here. I'm still glad we live here."

I gave him a kiss on the head, told him I loved him, and walked out of the room. I figured that the last thing he needed at the end of a day like that was to see me crying. What would I have told him? That the world is falling apart and no one knows how to stop it? That two years after 9/11, the day on which everything supposedly changed, Osama bin Laden is still making videos, Saddam is still alive, and we're still being blown to bits? And that no one has any idea what to do?

Michah had asked me if people at work were sad. Of course people were sad. Who wouldn't be? Towards the end of the day at the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, we had a lecture from someone on our faculty, a well known Israeli man of letters, who is far to the left, often far too left for my particular taste. But he's smart, very smart, and you can't easily ignore anything that he says. Yesterday, though, it was clear he was in no less pain, and feeling no less fury, than anyone else. He'd scrapped what he'd planned, he told us, and did something different.

It was a brilliant presentation. He ended with a passage from Yosef Hayyim Brenner (1981-1921), perhaps the greatest writer of the Second Aliyah, who was murdered by Arab rioters in May, 1921. In 1911, Brenner wrote a novella called "Mikan U-mi-kan" ("From Here and From Here") in which he penned the following lines:

Efshar, efshar me'od, she-kan i efshar lichyot
Aval kan tzarich le-hisha'er
Kan tzarich lamut, lishon
Ein makom acher

It's possible, it's very possible, that here, it's not possible to live
But here one must stay
Here must one die, and sleep
There is no other place.

That pretty much sums it up. I still pray for peace, but I know I won't live to see it. I suspect that my children won't either. Sure, there will be hudnas, and other celebrated cease fires will come and go, but there won't be peace. Not in my generation, and not in the next. And yet, I can't imagine the Jewish people without a state, and I can't imagine how I'd look in the mirror if we left. So we stay, try to raise decent Jewish kids who are both passionate Zionists and moral human beings, and try to learn to live with what I believe will not change.

So what do I hope for? I hope that Micha will also put his kids to sleep here, and not somewhere else. And I hope that somehow, we'll survive here, and that despite everything, we'll build the kind of society here that will lead his kids to tell him, a few decades from now, on some dark, oppressively sad, tear stained night, "I'm still glad I live here."

Daniel Gordis www.danielgordis.org is Director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, and the author, most recently, of If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State (Crown).

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