S'derot

K, so a little while ago Dan asked me to think about maybe writing for this blog. I'm not going to lie to you; I'm not a big writer. I will for sure have typos and run on sentences and all kinds of things that would make all my English teachers cringe and wonder where they went wrong. And yet, despite all of that I'm still going to try. I'm not an overly fascinating or insightful person, I'm just a regular girl going through life, but I’ll be sharing my thoughts feelings and ideas that happen to run through my mind however jumbled they are.
A few days ago I came back from an all too short trip to Israel. I was lucky enough to go for a good friends wedding and I got to stay for a little while longer (got to be thankful for a long winter break). In that short time I was able to do many things, really it’s amazing how much a persona can pack into a few days if they really want to. I went shopping (tell my father I was boosting the Israeli economy), I visited family and friends; I went back to seminary for a few days, visited the Kotel and some rabbis and of course discovered the burger wrap at burgers bar. There were another hundred things I would have liked to do but IY”H (g-d willing) I will try to do it next time. There is one thing however that I did not get to do and hopefully will not be something to do next time. I really really wanted to visit S’derot for Shabbat. It was and still is something very important to me. Unfortunately I was not able to go during the time I was there but it doesn’t make it any less important to me.

I have a good friend who is learning in Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh, he is in his second year and IY”H (g-d willing) going to join the army in 9 weeks time. I spoke to him earlier on in the year and he told me that he was a bit stressed in Yeshiva so he was going away for a few days to take a break. I asked him where he was going to which I expected him to reply something along the lines of the Dead Sea or up north, but what he said was simply S’derot, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. So that is what he does when he is stressed out, he goes to a city that literally has bombs falling on it several times a day to unwind. Truthfully he told me, he goes to play with the kids, he adores those kids, the ones who are afraid to play outside, to leave the bomb shelter. He told me that to play with them for one hour is almost as if he would take them to Disney World for the day. He plays soccer (which he calls football) and does art with them, takes them to the park, sits and talks with them he acts as a big brother just as he would act with his own little brother. He also goes and learns in the yeshiva there, sleeps in the dorms and runs for his life in the 7 seconds he has between hearing a “Tzevah Adom” (code red) and a Kassam rocket exploding on the ground. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there are 7 seconds to run, my friend Shoshana told me that there are 4 ways to protect yourself from a rocket “Your first option is to run into a bomb shelter. Second, you can run into the nearest home or apartment (all homes stay unlocked in Sderot in case of a red alert). Third, if you are not near a house, then put your body up against a wall. Lastly, worst comes to worst, hit the ground, put your hands over your head, and pray to Hashem that the Kassam does not fall anywhere near you.” This is where my friend goes when he is stressed out; I figure it puts things in perspective for him.
So you are probably thinking to yourselves, why I have told you this little story. What my friend also does, along with the people in S’derot, he arranges trips, not tours so much as trips, where the volunteers get together and run errands for those too weak to do it themselves, those to afraid to leave their homes. They play with the children and help rebuild houses; they talk to the residents and let them know that even though it looks like they are forgotten they are not. Yes it is a dangerous thing to do (he told me that one night he literally had to run to the bomb shelter 11 times in that one night!!), and yes they have to run for their lives, not as a test run but as an actual fact, but they do it. The hope is that it will work as a “pay- it forward” type of thing (without the terrible ending). He also is working on a project so that every other Shabbat anywhere between 50 to 100 people can spend Shabbat in S’derot. All of this is good, but it is just the start. Most people don't even know the extent of that is happening there. So the first thing we have to do is know, raise awareness, realize there is a problem, and then we can start to fix it. There is no nation, no country in the world that would allow such a thing to happen, to be hit with bombs so often (11 times in one night!!) and yet it IS happening, and if we don't do something about it, who will?