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The ESP of the Jewish Way of Life 
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| Lost and
Found in Jerusalem by Amy Hirshberg Lederman As America and other countries learn to cope with the threats of terror,many have said that Israel has much to teach us. This story, written by an American mother living a sabbatical year in Israel with her husband and 10- and 12-year-old sons from 1997 to 1998, offers some real-life insights. |
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I awoke with a start when the radio went off at 6:30 AM.
Hebrew words I only partially recognized filled the
room.
I reached over to turn off the radio, causing my head to
spin
and my stomach to lurch. "I’m sick, honey. Really sick." I mumbled weakly. "Can you get the kids to school?" My husband sleepily opened his eyes and conceded the day. "Sure, no problem." Like the blanket covering my chilled body, my irritation at being stuck in bed for the day spread over me. Since moving to Israel for our sabbatical year, we had established a lovely morning ritual that included getting up together, sending the kids to school, and then leisurely drinking thick, dark coffee on the back porch while listening to English-speaking news on the BBC. I hated losing even a single, precious day together — being sick was just not in the plans. In our tiny bedroom, made dark as night from the mandatory Israeli Defense Force blackout shades that covered every window of the apartment, I spent the day in a time warp. I turned over images in my mind like pages in a photo album, snapshots of the year we had been living in Jerusalem. In traditional Jewish law, every seven years you are required to give the land a rest from its labors. So too, we had given our household and professional labors a rest and moved to Israel for a year of rest and restoration — a sabbatical in the land we now embrace as our spiritual home. The decision to leave Tucson and plunge into this adventure was initially the result of my being offered a fellowship at the Hebrew University. But within less than a week, my husband came home with a new pair of hiking boots and a draft of his letter of resignation from the hospital where he worked. Leaving Tucson was tough, but establishing ourselves in Jerusalem was harder. No tour book could have indicated how awful it would be for my reserved, 12-year-old son to walk into his Hebrew-speaking-only class on the first day of school, only to become the brunt of jokes in a language he did not understand. And no one could have predicted how incompetent and frustrated my highly intelligent husband would feel in his attempts to accomplish the simplest of tasks, like grocery shopping or getting his hair cut. Add to that the disappointment I felt during those first few weeks when I would arrive home, energized and excited from teaching, only to find my obviously depressed family staring dumbly at the television set, hoping to find something to watch besides the evening news on the Jordanian channel or the Hebrew version of Jeopardy. It was during this initial period of culture shock that two horrific bombings occurred: the first at Jerusalem’s oldest outdoor market and the second at Jerusalem’s most famous pedestrian mall. After those terrorist attacks, we gathered together like the lost tribes and decided upon a plan of action. My husband had the clearest answer: we had to severely confine our family’s freedom until things quieted down. Restricted bus use, early curfews, and constant phone calls gave us a superficial sense of security as we tried to restore some normalcy to our daily routine in a city where random acts of terrorism threatened our very being. The kids, being kids, resented our rules as overbearing and ridiculous. After all, their Israeli friends had no such restrictions and our security requirements only served as yet another barrier to their hopes of fitting in. "You shouldn’t have made us come here if you aren’t going to let us DO anything! Nobody else has to take a taxi! All the kids take the bus to the mall after school and you won’t even let us go!" We couldn’t give them the answers they wanted. We were the "cautious Americans," struggling to make a safe place for ourselves in a society that is braver and more optimistic than any other I know. We didn’t want to overreact, but we couldn’t deny the fear we felt every time they hung out in downtown Jerusalem or at the park. I was startled out of my mental wanderings when my bedroom door flew open and I heard my son call out: "Hey Mom, I’m home. Are you feeling any better?" I couldn’t believe it was already 3 PM and that more than six hours had passed since he had left. Throwing himself on the bed, he began to unload the events of the day. I loved the simple fact that during our year, for the first time in my life, my husband and I were home when the kids returned from school. Within seconds I learned of the newest tragedy: the tearful story of how Josh had left his backpack, with everything from eyeglasses to city maps, on the bus he had taken home from school. Not, of course, the private bus we paid for to decrease the possibility of him being the subject of a terrorist’s plot, but the public one he took with his friends instead. I swallowed my initial reaction of fear. Didn’t he know that the Number 18 bus was the one most frequently targeted by terrorists? Doesn’t he know how we worry every time he leaves the apartment until the moment he returns home safely? "You have to be more careful, Josh… blah, blah, blah… if we can’t trust you at this age… blah, blah… you need to assume more responsibility for your things. "Was it my lightheadedness or did I really sound as bad as I felt? Somewhere between listening to myself and watching his eyes glaze over, I stumbled upon the hard truths. First, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything, from the largest elephant to the most insignificant backpack on a bus in a city like Jerusalem, where thousands of buses run daily. And second, I had no time. Groggy and still a bit dazed, I attempted to rally myself and began the frantic, detective-like search through the Hebrew Yellow Pages. Somewhere between the Es (for Emergency) and the Ls (for Lost and Found) it hit me — the real significance of what had happened that day struck home. Josh’s lost backpack was not just a case of a forgetful kid who left something on the Number 18 bus. It was truly a matter of national security! Living in Israel had taught me many things, one of which is that it is a country constantly on high alert — alert to life, to the daily struggles of living in a land where cultures collide at every corner, and alert to the fact that at any given moment, your world could be turned upside down with the explosion of a bomb. There is not a man, woman, or child living in Israel who isn’t versed in matters of personal security. Any unattended object, be it a purse, a shopping bag, or a briefcase, is never taken lightly. On a park bench or a lunch counter, a box or bag without an owner results in an emergency call for security. Police response is immediate and precise. Time was critical in my own search and rescue mission. I had visions of Josh’s backpack being lifted from a bus filled with people, most of whom would undoubtedly be angry or frustrated at yet another interference with the progress of their daily lives. Each phone call brought me closer to my goal until finally I found the bus driver who had noticed that when Josh got off the bus, he had left the pack behind. He surmised that an American teen would undoubtedly have an overbearing American mother following close behind. In this case, he was right. We found the backpack, glasses and all. But I found much more than the backpack that afternoon. The search had led me to a place of deeper understanding, an awareness of the real reason that living in Israel is so very meaningful to me. It is because the everyday ordinary events of life, the ones which on the surface have no more meaning than a lost backpack, carry with them so much more significance. There is a deeper, more essential awareness of the substance of life’s daily struggles when it is connected to the commitment I make to living as a Jewish woman in a Jewish state. Whatever the difficulties of living in Israel — and they are numerous and constant — they are directly related to the stake I claim in securing, for all time, that Jews everywhere will have the right to live safely in a country whose soil has been nurtured throughout time by Jewish history, values, culture, and tradition. And in some small way, I know that my family has contributed to its continuity by adding our own particular type of Jewish sustenance to its soil. Amy Hirshberg Lederman is an attorney, Jewish educator, public speaker and freelance writer. She served as the Director of the Department of Jewish Education and Identity for the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and as the Assistant North American Director of the Florence Melton Adult Mini- School.Amy’s most recent short story was published in Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul. You can email Amy at amyleder@aol.com. |
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Belonging
to the Jewish PEOPLE.