Israel

I was in Israel in 1992 (or maybe it was 1993…I was just out of college and thoroughly wrapped up in my unlikely venture into adulthood). I traveled to Israel with my parents (who were still together) and my two older brothers for a three week tour of the country (or maybe it was two? Again, I was less than present throughout all of this). We experienced “Israel light” in that we always had our guide with us, none of us spoke Hebrew and most of our waking hours were scheduled, as we moved from Significant Site to Significant Site. I remember, though, on the flight home wanting, already, to return. I remember knowing that Israel was a place that I could–should–live. Maybe not permanently, but definitely for longer than three weeks. (Or two.)

Fast forward a thousand lifetimes and my husband, Aaron, is thick in the middle of planning his second “teen tour” for the students who attend the Jewish high school where he is Head of School. Having taken our now-eighteen year old last February for a life altering trip (said child is now planning a gap year in Israel to begin in August 2024), he is working on the parent presentation of the trip that is scheduled for February 2025 (a trip that will include our middle child). Just a few weeks ago, Aaron returned to Israel for eight days on the first of several Mishlachot Areyvut (delegations of responsibility) sponsored by The Jewish Education Project. Our small Jewish home, reform in our identity but more conservative in our observances and practices, has lots of tendrils that reach deep into the land of Israel.

“I think that you need to address the elephant in the room and talk about safety,” I told him after I read over his updated information sheet that he will be sharing with families this coming week. He explained that he would be talking about it and we had a brief discussion.

“I think you really need to reiterate that it is safe and that there isn’t anything like a travel ban in place.”

“There is. The U.S. state department has it at a level 3.”

“Out of?”

“4.”

oh.

I gave some suggestions about language that would comfort parents and helped him to find other programs online that had already added to their website to reassure parents in a post October 7th world that it was still safe to send their children to Israel. He added and rearranged his presentation and we sat side-by-side as he looked for ways to reassure parents… parents like me. I was already trying to quell the rising fear. Fear that I knew I would have to hide from my own kids because the world is a dangerous place, it always has been.

I was born in the ’70s and grew up in a world where children disappeared and we poured milk out of cartons with their faces staring at us. Stranger Danger was a real person and he (it was always a he) could be in a car full of kittens or asking for directions at the mall. We were taught strategies and how to identify the safe people and we discovered that helmets were probably a good thing, as were seatbelts and always (always) we held onto our own drinks in a bar.

When I did my own study abroad semester in London, it was just after the start of the first Gulf War (1991). I experienced bomb scares in the tube and closed streets due to threats that were being investigated. Once, we were evacuated from the tube amidst a bit of smoke only to find out later that a bomb had detonated. I was advised by the college program not to visit any synagogues, which was complicated and painful when I received news about the death of a cousin, understanding that I could not, in fact, mourn even just a little Jewishly. I was not blind to violence, but this was the first time in my life that I was told I needed to change my behavior because of it.

I went to college in Washington, DC and knew that random violence was a fact of life. In one class I researched the 1984 mass murder at a San Ysidro McDonald’s, just outside of San Diego, and contemplated the fragility of life with my classmates. We would be up late into the night and someone would inevitably say, “Well, you can also die getting a Big Mac, so…” I thought about that research paper when subsequent random mass shootings occurred, until the mass shootings and random acts of violence no longer needed a reference point. You could be killed in a McDonald’s or you could be killed in a school cafeteria. Walking alone on a deserted street late at night or sitting with friends in a movie theater. I came into my young adulthood knowing that no place was safe from gun violence. It was a fact that I accepted when I lived in New York City and it was one that followed me home when I moved back to Syracuse. I vividly remember watching from our living room, hundreds of miles away, when the Towers crashed down on my former colleagues in the finance district.

In 2024, my life in the United States is surrounded by violence. Our school district has recently spent upwards of half a million dollars on a police force (at the expense of instructional staff) and daily we are reminded that schools and movie theaters, restaurants and McDonald’s are not immune to random acts of violence. But we go to school each day as teachers, and we send our children out to their own schools … and to the mall and movie theaters and, yes, sometimes even to McDonald’s. The terror is real, but we continue living just the same because terrorists do not win.

I know deep in my bones that one day this horrific war will end and Israel and Gaza will rebuild. I don’t know what that will look like or how it will happen, nor do I pretend to know, but I do believe that I will return to Israel and we will stay for longer than two (or three) weeks. The world is violent and uncertain but I cannot send my kids out into it wrapped in titanium bubble wrap. They will go — to the mall, to concerts, to movie theaters and they will go to Israel. They will go out into this world, with all its treacherous imperfections, and they will discover, uncover, and build a world full of beauty, peace, justice and joy. My fears pale in comparison to the potential that awaits.