We have a lot to decompress about. The last two days have been the most intense any of us can remember, yet for each of us they have also been among the most rewarding.

When our congregational family trip to Israel returned two weeks ago today, I could not stop wondering if there was something concrete we as a congregation could do to support Israel at this difficult time. I waited a day and called Neimah Tractenberg, the missions chair of UJC Metrowest and my personal (and our congregational) guru in all things related to travel in Israel.

"Neimah," I asked, "if a small group of us got ourselves to Israel for a few days, is there something we could do to help?" I had no interest in travel for the sake of saying "here we are." Rather, was there something we could do that would be genuinely useful?

In an incredibly short time she spoke to Amir Shacham, an old friend of mine and the head of UJC MetroWest's office in Israel. In about 30 seconds, Amir evidently replied "absolutely" and we began to make plans. The trip was constituted as an official UJC mission, UJC president Gary Aidekman signed on to join us, and this past Sunday night we – Temple B'nai Abraham members Ken Bernstein, Jim Daniels, Merle Kalishman, David Mittman, Linda Pack, Linda Reisberg, and me – took off on Continental flight 84 from Newark, headed for Tel Aviv.

We hit the ground running and never stopped. Amir was our amazing guide on this journey. We spent the entire time in the south-central area, which for the last several years has been under siege from the Kassam rockets fired from Gaza. We arrived early Monday evening and met with community leaders in the emergency center (every community has one) in Ofakim, a lower middle class town with which UJC Metrowest has a special relationship.

(A treat of the evening was seeing Tal, a young man who had been a shaliach in our community last year – which included spending a lot of time at Temple B'nai Abraham – and who looked nice and distressingly grown up in his new army uniform.)

We learned about the hundreds of kids who regularly hang out in the shelters while school – due to the current situation – is not in session. Many people have left the area, staying with friends or relatives in other parts of the country. With rockets raining down, who can blame them?

It sounds crazy, but there is a system in place that works. Radar carried aloft by large balloons ringing Gaza takes note whenever a missile is fired. In seconds, the trajectory and velocity of the missile are taken into account and the area where it will hit is warned. Depending upon the area, warning times range from roughly 20 seconds to a minute or more. Depending upon where you are, either a woman's voice belts out "Red Alert" (in Hebrew of course) or a siren goes off and everyone stops what they are doing and heads to the nearest shelter.

Everyone has made lots of trip to shelters, though the good news is that, once you are there, it is never necessary to remain more than a few minutes. Everyone takes it seriously, but everyone also seems to take it in stride.

We stayed with host families in Ofakim, where we slept comfortably, ate ridiculously well, and became downright embarrassed by how happy people were to see us and how much they appreciated our being there.

Tuesday morning, we spent more time learning about the situation and then headed on to several hours of work. While houses in many communities in the area have safe rooms, much of the housing stock in Ofakim is simply too flimsy for that to work. So every block or two in the town, there are 30-foot segments of very thick, eight-foot-high concrete pipe, with something like a wind break at each end. Does the job, but ugly as hell.

So we joined volunteers from a cool organization called Lev Echad – volunteers from throughout the country who have come to help during the crisis – and joined in painting these aesthetic monstrosities. I don't know if our collective artistic impact made much of a difference, but I can tell you that, on a street in that town in Southern Israel, there is a tubular shelter with the words "Temple B'nai Abraham" on it…colorful and in very large letters.

From there, we moved on to spending a chunk of the afternoon with children hanging out in the shelters, where I took special pride in teaching three 11 year olds gin....well enough so that each of them eventually beat me, which is when I knew it was time to quit.

Wednesday morning – this morning! – we visited a few locales in the area, including the town Sderot, famous for being right in the middle of the action. Everywhere we went, we visited the local command center, where we heard variations on a theme – local populations are doing what they need to keep safe, which is why there have been so few casualties, but it requires constant vigilance and, as we heard over and over, people are getting tired of this…very tired.

In Sderot, we went to a place called the Resilience Center (an exact translation from the Hebrew in which the phrasing sounds better), where local residents are treated by psychiatrists and psychologists for the enormous stress all are under and which some adults and children have found unbearable...becoming too scared to leave the house, crying upon hearing even innocent things go bump in the night, and so on. Many of those in the area simply don't have much money…which limits opportunities they have simply to get away. These free services – many of which UJC supports – are invaluable.

It was at the Sderot command center that we experienced our first red alert...but as we were already in a designated shelter, there was little to do. A minute later, we were shown on a map where the rocket landed…a mile or so away. Thank goodness, it was in the middle of an open field.

We spent much of today at Kibbutz Erez, another UJC partner community, which holds special memories for me as I was there on 9/11 when I heard the news. Erez is literally on the border with Gaza, school has not been in session for weeks (though there are scheduled indoor activities all day) and many members have been out of the kibbutz for an extended period.

I was a little horrified but also somewhat amused by an elderly couple whom Merle and I had dinner with and who "tsk tsk'ed" about the "inconvenience" of it all. No shelters for them! After 60 years of marriage and kibbutz life and nearly 10 wars, they were not about to alter their routine just because of some wayward, obsolete missile!

We worked on the kibbutz, as well, all of us doing different tasks. Linda Reisberg and I worked diligently under a 12-year-old taskmaster named Einav, sweeping and mopping out the public shelters on the kibbutz. I am proud to say that they gleamed by the time we finished, and I must also admit that it felt genuinely good to do even something as simple and mindless as that, if it would make life just a tiny bit better for those living under such conditions.

There were a few more red alerts while we were on kibbutz, but none of them were for our area so we did not pay much attention, though we could hear the missiles when they landed in neighboring areas. At the end of the afternoon we headed up the highest hill on the kibbutz from which we could see Gaza – you don't want to know how close we were to the border – and watch Israeli helicopters launching missiles and listen to the fighting from the distance.

I realize it all sounds dangerous, but it really wasn't, as we would have received plenty of advance notice about any incoming Kassams. What the sight did for me, however, on top of all we had seen and experienced in the previous 48 hours, was to bring home for me once and for all what our Israeli brothers and sisters in this area have been living under, not for two weeks, but for eight years!

We met youngsters in first or second grade who have never known anything else but whose families refused to leave, because this is their home, and to leave is unthinkable. I suppose it is easy to think them crazy – why live someplace where people are firing missiles at you? – but I admire them enormously...especially as I sit in this comfortable airport lounge preparing to return to my safe and comfortable home in New Jersey.

Our last little while on the kibbutz was spent in one of the large underground shelter/activity rooms where David Broza – not quite the Israeli Mick Jagger but pretty close – gave a surprise concert (presumably going around to all the communities in the area) and all the kibbutzniks sang along to every song. I only knew a few of the songs, but just being in the room with everyone couldn't help but make me happy.

And now we're heading home, and I look for some profound message in this brief, intense journey. There are two that come to mind.

First, there are terrible things happening in this part of the world right now, and the images on television disturb me as much as they disturb anyone. Nevertheless, as much as others would like to imagine it so, this is not something Israel “did.” Indeed, after years and years of putting up with attack after attack after attack...literally thousands of rockets launched from Gaza after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from there…it is mind boggling to imagine how much has already been tolerated. It is utterly tragic Israel's recent actions were necessary…but necessary they were.

Second, I do not know if it is true, but I cannot count the number of times we heard that we were the “only” such group to spend time in the area under siege. The gratitude conveyed to us was both heartwarming and embarrassing. David told the rest of us about a conversation he had with a kibbutznik who said that his own relatives from Tel Aviv were scared to come visit!

Ask any one of us who were there…we truly felt safe.

And so, if there is just one thing I would like to get across, it is that through visits like ours, through our contributions, through our advocacy – do not minimize the impact of a simple, well-written letter to your congressman! – and quite simply, through our love, we must continually reassure these brave, unbelievably admirable brothers and sisters of ours that, in every way that matters, we are with them. They have not felt it enough, and that is a tragic omission on our part we must do everything to correct.

And now…the flight is being called. Time to unplug the laptop, throw everything into my backpack, and head down to gate C-7. I suspect it will be a long flight. I've traveled a great deal as an adult but I don't remember a trip like this. There will be a lot to think about.

Sha-alu l'shalom Yerushalayim, as we say, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I look forward to seeing you soon.

B'shalom,

Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin

Rabbi Clifford M. Kulwin is rabbi at Temple B'nai Abraham in Livingston. >>BACK TO TOP>>