|
 February 4, 2010
Shalom,
It was my first time visiting Sderot, an Israeli town that for years has been the target of Palestinian terrorist rockets fired from the nearby Gaza Strip. I must admit that even though I was traveling with my father, Rabbi Eckstein, who had been there before, I was a little nervous. Although attacks have greatly diminished since Operation Cast Lead, Israel's early 2009 military offensive to stop the rocket fire, terror is still a part of daily life. In fact, just one day before my visit a rocket landed in Sderot, reminding residents that terrorists are still working tirelessly toward their goal of wiping Israel off the map.
The fact that I have narrowly missed several terror attacks in Israel has given me unwavering faith that God is with me in all my comings and goings. But something about visiting Sderot—where more than 8,000 rockets have struck in the past seven years—made me pray extra hard as my father and I made the one-hour drive from Jerusalem.
When we got to Sderot, I was surprised to see it functioning like any other city. Mothers were walking their children to school, grocery store owners were tending their shops, busses were making their rounds, and fathers were kissing their families as they drove off to work. I was awed and inspired that these people seemed to have returned to normalcy after being subject to barrages of rockets for nearly a decade. "If I lived here," I thought to myself, "I would be terrified to ever let my children leave the bomb shelter." A 15-second warning of an impending rocket strike by a "code red" siren rarely provides enough time to find shelter, especially if you are walking on the street.
But I was soon to find out just exactly what this town had been through over the past decade. Our first stop in Sderot was the local police station, where the mayor gave us a tour of the storeroom that houses hundreds of spent shells from the lethal terrorist rockets that have fallen. "There were days when these rockets would fall non-stop," the mayor told us. "If it weren't for the Fellowship-sponsored bomb shelters I don't know what we would do. All of my citizens would be exposed and we would be seeing many more casualties." The mayor tells each visitor to Sderot how The Fellowship has helped the city by renovating bomb shelters, funding trauma centers, providing medical supplies to hospitals, and much more. In the mayor's words, "The Fellowship has brought smiles, happiness, and hope not only to Sderot, but all the people of Israel, and I am grateful."
As the mayor drove my father and me in a bulletproof police car to a lookout point right outside of the city where we could see the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip less than a mile away, I began to recognize one of the things that distinguishes Sderot from other cities. In Sderot, there are bus stops that are also bomb shelters, children's parks with bomb shelter slides and tunnels, windowless school buildings made out of pure concrete, and huge speakers at each street corner to sound the "code red" siren when rockets are approaching. And there was something else—despite all they had been through, and the fact that rocket attacks could resume at any time, each resident of Sderot that I met seemed to have entrusted God with their homes, their children, their lives, and their futures. What an inspiration to see this level of faith from people who had been through so much!
Before we departed Sderot, we went to visit a Fellowship-funded "safe home" for teenage girls. I saw that a choir made up of Ethiopians, Bnei Menashe from India, Russians, and native Israelis stood outside the facility, bathed in the light of a magnificent sunset and singing into microphones attached to large speakers. The words to the song could not have been more appropriate: "The nation of Israel lives and our faith will never die. This is the song of my grandfather, sung also by my father and today by me; the nation of Israel lives." Their beautiful, strong, and confident voices transformed the song into the prayer of us all.
We turned up the volume of the speakers as high as it would go, hoping that our terrorist neighbors who seek to shatter innocent Israeli lives would hear the message. Together we sang Psalm 121: "I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip—He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." A chill came down my spine as my father and I held hands in prayer. For the first time during my three-hour visit to Sderot I felt no fear, because I had the power of prayer—the greatest weapon there is!
With blessings from Jerusalem,
Yael
|
|
