Unease and hope collide on UJC Sderot mission
N.J. philanthropists boost local economy in sister city regions
, NJJN Israel Correspondent | 04.10.08

The hundreds of rusted metal pipes and shards on the shelves at the Sderot police station look like harmless scrap metal as they lie in their neat and organized piles.

	New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner interviews mission member David Lentz for a story about Sderot.

But these used rockets have torn through factories, homes, and hearts, destroying not only buildings and property but also the fabric of life in Sderot and the surrounding communities.

A mission of lay leaders and staff of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ visited Sderot last Tuesday to show solidarity with its residents and to learn what it is like to live in a city where thousands of rockets and mortars have fallen, including some 1,500 in 2008 alone.

The delegation visited a kindergarten that was nearly hit by a Kassam rocket last month, toured a medical center for shock victims, and shopped in the stores of a town whose business district has dried up.

But seeing the hundreds of rockets at the police station made perhaps the deepest impression on the visitors from New Jersey.

“That’s really scary,” said Barbara Drench of Mountain Lakes. “Oh my, that’s terrible. We read about it in the papers, but until you see it, you just can’t understand the extent.”

Barbara’s husband, Dan, suggested bringing the rockets to MetroWest to demonstrate the severity of the problem.

The commander of Sderot’s “Color Red” warning system told the delegation that the rockets in the display were just a fraction of the ones that had been retrieved. “Yair,” who asked that his last name not be used, showed the group that each rocket was marked with information about where it had landed, which terrorist group fired it, its size and range, and the bomb squad unit that dealt with it.

Yair said everyone in the city knew victims of the rocket attacks, including his nephew, who was severely injured, and his mother-in-law, who was unhurt when a rocket hit her house directly. He spoke of the warning system that gives Sderot residents 15 seconds to find shelter before a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, some two miles away, hits the town.

“In those 15 seconds, you have to think about where every member of your family is and make sure that they are all safe,” Yair said. “I have three kids under six but I only have two hands. My children were born into this reality. The Color Red alert is part of our lives. I hope you never have to experience this.”

A rare respite

At the time of the mission, no rocket had hit Sderot in more than three days. Yair said that many concerned residents had been calling him to check whether the alert system was broken.

Across the street from the police station, the MetroWest group visited low-income housing where an IDF reserve artillery unit of 60 soldiers volunteered to paint, spackle, and repair apartments damaged by rockets. They made a point of buying their paint, tools, food, and other supplies in Sderot.

“We left our families to work to brighten the lives of the people of Sderot before Passover,” said Lt. Col. Dudu Goren, the unit’s commander.

UJC MetroWest Israel operations director Amir Shacham said it was important for the group from New Jersey to see Israelis coming together to help their fellow citizens in Sderot. MetroWest physician Joshua Schor, who had a cousin in the unit, brought the soldiers and mission-goers together.

David Lentz of Livingston, who initiated the visit to Sderot, helped raise nearly $4,000 for the soldiers’ volunteer group in one week from the men’s club of Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn and elsewhere.

“We saw Israelis were coming here, and we decided we had to come, too,” said Lentz. “We wanted to lead the way for other federations and Jewish groups to visit Sderot when they come to Israel. The Israelis we met appreciated that Americans came here. They were not used to seeing Americans here shopping. The story of the Sderot Jews is very compelling for every caring Jewish community in the world.”

Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, who heads UJC MetroWest’s Israel and Overseas Committee, said that all Jews have to treat any attack on Israel as an attack on themselves and feel the pain of the people involved.

“Sderot is a beautiful Israeli town on a beautiful sunny day, and yet you know there are days when the children we see here can’t go outside and it’s very upsetting,” Rosenthal said. “When I hear about things happening here in Sderot or in Kibbutz Nir Am, it’s as if it happened at home. I have to go home and say I was there and bear witness. It’s my obligation to the people who haven’t come here.”

Rosenthal said rockets fired from the Gaza Strip can reach parts of the Merchavim region, which is a MetroWest partner community in the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program. A resident of Merchavim was killed by a rocket that hit Sapir College near Sderot in February.

In Merchavim, the mission visited the Waldor Day Care Center, which was built by UJC MetroWest, which is now in the process of building “safe rooms” to protect the kindergartners. UJC MetroWest is expected to get more involved in preparing the people of Merchavim should they face challenges like those in Sderot and the communities of the surrounding Sha’ar Hanegev Region.

Shacham said it was important that the visitors from New Jersey, who came to Israel to monitor the progress of Partnership 2000 and religious pluralism projects, did not hesitate to come to Sderot and other areas within the range of the rockets.

“We call them Partnership 2000 and religious pluralism missions, but they merge together when we come to show support to the people suffering from rocket attacks in Sderot and Sha’ar Hanegev,” Shacham said. “Everything comes together, and our partnerships allow us to answer such needs in real time.”

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News