By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Editor, JTNews
One month ago, Rabbi Beth Singer and Rabbi David Fine were basking in the sun of beautiful, springtime Israel and at the same time fearing for the future of the Jewish homeland.
Agonizing was one word Fine, the regional director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said was a good way to describe his feeling of being in Israel at this time in its history.
“I’m delighted I went, though you really feel like the Birkat HaGomel [the prayer one says upon escaping danger] was an appropriate prayer,” Fine added. Although he said he was never in any danger during his two-week visit, he could hear terrorist bomb blasts and four of his rabbinical colleagues narrowly escaped injury when some fast-acting Israelis pushed a suicide bomber out of the café in which the rabbis were sitting.
Rabbis Singer and Fine were participating in the 113th annual meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the rabbinical arm of the Reform movement.
Singer, who traveled to Israel with her two daughters, 10-year-old Rena and 8-year-old Jenny, said they all felt “very comfortable and safe and just glad to be there the whole time from the beginning to the end.”
Her husband, Rabbi Jonathan Singer, with whom she shares the pulpit at Temple Beth Am, was not so calm and happy back at home in Seattle, Rabbi Beth Singer reported.
“As many times as he’s been here … never was it this bad when he was there in the past. He couldn’t envision that we could feel so safe and actually be pretty safe,” she said. When she called home after a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, her husband asked if they would be coming home now, but they did not consider cutting their trip short.
Singer’s original plan — “to do absolutely nothing but stay in the hotel and keep the girls … where they were visiting friends” —went out the window almost as soon as a friend picked them up at the airport in Tel Aviv.
“He took us on a day trip to the Dead Sea. It was great. Every place we were, the violence was happening someplace else. The whole week felt like that beautiful day in Seattle when the World Trade Center disaster happened,” Singer said. Her experience of Sept. 11 included lunch at University Village, where life just seemed to be going on. “In Israel, everywhere I was, life was going on,” she said.
“There was a day, just before my conference started. I took the girls with me to Jerusalem. I went and put our stuff in the hotel. We started walking cautiously toward downtown Jerusalem. We decided we wouldn’t go to Jaffa Street…” she began. Then they decided to walk once down Jaffa Street. They were right where terrorist bombs had gone off in the recent past. The streets were so empty and so calm. Singer said she took a picture of the girls in front of a popular street sign as evidence that they were there. They also walked through the Jewish quarter in the Old City and visited the Kotel, where it was also “very peaceful, very quiet.”
Then, for the following week, while their rabbi mother was at the conference, the girls, who are students at the Seattle Jewish Community School, had the unique experience of attending school in Israel with their friends. “They had a tremendous first experience living with an Israeli family for a week,” she said.
Both Singer and Fine said the conference was also a powerful experience — 250 rabbis from America visiting Israel to show their solidarity — but mostly they were inclined to talk about their personal experiences in the land of Israel during this difficult time.
“To a person, every single Israeli person I encountered … just literally stopped us in the street and thanked us for being courageous and coming at this time,” Singer said, adding that it was all very meaningful.
“I understand every person who feels they cannot go or it’s not wise to go at this time,” she added. “I would go back tomorrow. I would not hesitate to go back to Israel right now. In terms of calculated risk, it still seems that by being somewhat cautious and aware that one can go and have a very safe trip there.”
Fine, who spoke a few days after Singer and a few hours after Prime Minister Sharon had practically declared a state of war, had more mixed feelings about encouraging visits to Israel. Parents and staff of the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle were in the process as this paper went to press of deciding whether to send the 8th grade class to Israel this year. Fine has a son in that class. “People have been questioning whether now is an okay time to send their sons and daughters,” he said, not offering his opinion about whether he felt the class should go.
“We sing ‘Hatikvah’ [‘The Hope’]; we believe that there is hope, and yet it is hard to see it, hard to feel it,” Fine said.
What can American Jews do to support their fellow Jews in Israel during this crisis? Fine said people should reach out to the individual Israelis with whom they are close. Write or call to tell them you are thinking of them and that you still feel connected.
“It’s also important for Jews to speak with their friends, their neighbors and the press and give the full picture, the full story, that militants who would bomb innocents are not militants; they are terrorists,” Fine said. “Killers of civilians are terrorists.”
He said it is important to keep informed about what is happening in Israel and to gain understanding of what different people mean by the words like occupation and territories. Fine said it is important to remind others who is the aggressor and who are the victims and how Yasser Arafat was offered a state and refused. “What do we offer now?” Fine asked.
Fine said his perspective had not been changed by his recent trip, but his awareness had increased. “I’m much more attentive to the news. I appreciate that the European media holds a strong bias against Israel in a way that the American news media does not,” he added.