Daniel Gordis recently posted “A Caterpillar and An Anthem” describing daily life in Israel for everyday families which gives an important perspective. The following thought came from a visit to Sederot:
“But what struck me more than anything on the way to lunch was the playground. Even in the pouring rain, it looked just like a regular playground, with jungle-gyms, swing sets and the like. There was even a colorful cement caterpillar - for the kids to climb on, I assumed. “See the caterpillar?” Laura asked me. “It’s hollow,” she said. “And see over there? Those are the openings. It’s really a bomb shelter. When the Color Red siren goes off [indicating an incoming kassam], the kids can run from the other parts of the playground into the caterpillar and wait there until the rocket hits.” (I asked Avi, sitting in the back, to take a quick picture, despite the rain.)”
and later in the article, a question: …”How do you educate kids, my friend Ahrele (the principle of the high school in that region) once asked me, when the siren goes off (sometimes several times a day), and hundreds upon hundreds of kids cram the high school hallways desperate to get to a protected room but can’t move because all the passageways are jammed with students? And then, minutes later, when it’s over, how are they supposed to sit quietly and start thinking about their history class, or focus on geometry? “We didn’t finish the job,” Ahrele once said to me and Elisheva during a dinner at his home a couple of years ago, the sounds of exploding shells in the distance punctuating our conversation. “We didn’t show them that we intend to live here, no matter what. Really, when you think about it, this is just the latest battle in the War of Independence. It’s the battle for our right to have a place to live.” Read the whole thing
Mr. Gordis asks for prayer for this situation. With thanks to Daniel Gordis
