Mother-daughter calls

Published in the Canadian Jewish News on Aug. 14, 2014

“Are you in danger?”

“No. Everything’s fine. Business as usual.”

Summer 1982. Israel has launched reprisals against terrorist strongholds in Lebanon. I am working as a volunteer at Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem, with plans to transfer from University of Toronto to Hebrew University and extend my stay in Israel indefinitely. Serving meals, helping perform electrocardiogram tests, hanging with the doctors, nurses and other volunteers at coffee breaks.

Excitement one morning – Israeli soldiers injured in Lebanon are airlifted in for treatment. And dread – everyone has a brother, father, son or boyfriend who will have to serve or be called up in this latest conflagration.

“We want you to come home.”

Does my mother understand my desire to stay here as clearly as I sense her trepidation at having her child remain in a country at war? How I wish she could experience this environment as I do – an Orthodox Jewish hospital where the patients, doctors, nurses and staff couldn’t be more diverse – Druze, Bedouin, Arab, Jew and Christian, all working together seamlessly.

Or so I imagine.

One day, I have an argument with Ibrahim, a Palestinian Arab nurse. Provocatively, and probably rudely, I finally blurt “What is it that you want?” Meaning you and your brethren.

“What Arafat wants, is what I want.”

I feel as if the wind has been knocked out of me. Where was the hope to live together that I had been brought up to believe in? What is it that Arafat wants, I wonder, other than to blow up busloads of Israelis, Arabs included? My youthful illusions of peace and harmony are shattered. I do not recognize the singular miracle of what I am witnessing and participating in.

Now it is 32 years later. Tel Aviv has become Sderot. Rockets from Gaza can reach to the northernmost tip of Israel. Air raids force families to run for cover in bomb shelters multiple times a day in cities all over the country. But one thing has remained constant – a country where people live together in a diverse society, where freedom and tolerance paradoxically coexist, even amid rocket fire.

I call my daughter in Herzliyah, who has recently made aliyah, only to hear the blaring wail of a siren in the background.

“Are you safe? Do you know what to do?”

“Of course, Mom. Every five-year-old child knows what to do.”

“Are you scared? Do you want to come home?”

“It’s not an emergency situation. This is how people live here.”

Spending six months in ulpan, meeting people from all over the globe, working over the summer and determined to start a master’s degree in the fall, the air raid sirens seem more of a nuisance to her than anything else.

Now I understand something of what my parents felt so long ago. The fear and uncertainty. The helplessness. But something more: immense pride, a feeling of continuity, unity, meaning and purpose. And the revisiting of a youthful idealism.

If only all children were taught how to find safety, were cherished and protected, instead of placed in the line of fire and used as human shields.

Were taught to love instead of to hate. To work together with others.

To build instead of to destroy. To hope.

To serve and be served. To be part of a family, a community, the world.

To choose life. To choose peace.

That is the dream worth putting ourselves on the line for.

May it come to pass speedily and in our days.