Reflections on the Resilience of Israel

According to IDF reports, terrorists have fired around 8,000 rockets since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Since November 14, 2012–just about a month ago–around one thousand rockets have hit Israeli cities. On average, that’s about 3 attacks a day.

But to Southern residents, braving the rocket assaults hasn’t been a foreign concept. In the past twelve years, over fourteen thousand rockets have barraged the communities of Southern Israel in escalated onslaughts of terrorist violence.

The “Code Red” Siren, indicative of an imminent missile, gives only seconds after the rocket is launched for these half-a-million residents to find shelter. Depending on the location’s proximity to Gaza, there are generally about 15-60 seconds to run for safety from the time the siren begins its wail. For example, Be’er Sheva residents have 60 seconds to find shelter. Ashdod: forty-five seconds. Ashkelon: thirty. And a Sderot resident? Fifteen. To put this in perspective, if a siren had started to ring in Sderot while you were reading the very first word of this article, by the time you reached this point, here, it might be too late to find shelter. Fifteen seconds.

To me, the situation in the south is unimaginable.

And I wonder: how do these Israelis keep coping, keep living, keep picking up the shattered pieces of their selves to continue their day-to-day lives?

Then, in answer to my question, I see more, hear more, and read more.

An example of Southern Israeli resistance arose in Ivrit (Hebrew) class today. We watched a video of little kindergarteners singing in a small Sderot elementary school. Yet the song of choice was not just any usual tune. Titled “Tzeva Adom” (The Color Red), the song was composed by a creative elementary school teacher trying to help her young students cope with the constant sirens they heard daily. In the video, adorable children are singing and smiling, as they run to duck behind tables and chairs as the siren drones warningly in the background. The kids have choreography, too; they gesture with matching Hokey-Pokey style hand and body motions to the rhyming Hebrew lyrics.

The contrast—singing in the midst of sirens, dancing when there is the potential for death—is a striking form of resilience.

I remember when, during several of my family trips to Israel, we would walk along the streets and notice the bomb shelters. Many of them were colorfully painted, decorated by murals and pictures. Adorned by brushstrokes of flowers, peace signs, hand-prints and happy faces. It was jarring to see life painted over death’s shelter. Or perhaps, it was fitting…

And then, I hear about the sculptor, Yaron Bob, who picks up pieces of Qassam rockets off the ground of Sderot’s blood-red earth, and shapes them into flowers, or sculpts them into Menorahs. Both bring beauty and light into the world. He has sold thousands of pieces already, and contributes a portion of his proceeds to the shelters.

I also recall the time when, during my seminary year in Israel, I stayed in Be’er Sheva for Shabbat. And this time, I was the one getting a firsthand glimpse of the terror—as well as the strength and resilience of Israelis.

I had brought along my two seminary friends with me to the land of palm trees and Avraham’s famous well for Shabbat. We found ourselves awoken by the siren twice on Friday night, at around both 3 and 5 am. We ran to the laundry room-turned-bomb-shelter in our pajamas, the ten of us squished together: three American seminary students, five Israeli daughters, a mother, and a father. Stunned, crouching, my knees up against my chin, I couldn’t utter a word.

I don’t remember all the details, but I had thought it strange when, after we had heard the whoosh of the rocket explode in the distance, the family started talking conversationally. “Shamatem et ha Boom? Shamatem?” (“You heard the boom?”) they asked each other, their speech interjected with laughs and smiles, as they nonchalantly picked themselves off the floor of the shelter. The talk then turned to the following day’s Shabbat meal. Maybe I should have put more eggplant in the stew? Mrs. Cohen mused.

Meanwhile, I just stared. I couldn’t understand why the family had started laughing. If you hadn’t been there a second beforehand, you wouldn’t have known that we had just experienced a bomb scare. How could they take this life and death situation so lightly?

But now, everything comes together – the Color Red song, the painted bomb shelters, the Menorahs sculpted out of pieces of rockets, the conversational laughing after the siren ends – and it all connects.

Sometimes, life can be scary and funny and sad and okay all at the same time. To stay sane and humane in a sometimes evil and inhumane world, where missiles fall at midnight and the people you see in the marketplace can be your enemy, laughing can often be the best, and only, option.

To summon the inner strength to transform those natural, expected intense reactions like anger and fear into laughter and songs like “The Color Red” is something superhuman. To take the shattered pieces of a broken heart, hit by a missile, and sculpt it into roses, and light, is something miraculous.

On Shabbat morning, after the scares of last night had melted away with sleep, Mrs. Cohen greeted us cheerfully and apologized for the slight disturbance, asking us if we were able to sleep through the rest of the night. As we sat down at the table, she spoke to us.

“You know,” she murmured to us as she sipped her tea, “You are very lucky to have had this experience, because now you know that Israel is not just about visiting all the beaches and going on all the tiyulim (hikes) to the ancient cities or pretty tourist sites, or holy tombs; it’s also the running, the slight panic of the siren, and then, it’s the laughing in the bomb shelter that really tests your faith, that reveals your trust and your love of Israel…

Your school took you to Ein Gedi and the beautiful Golan, to Eilat and Tzfat and the Kinneret. But you know,” she continued, “the bomb shelter—this is Israel too!”