What difficult days, what sad days. And how worrying of what is yet to come. I can honestly say that the words of Rabbi Judah Halevi have never felt truer for me: “Libi ve-mizrach ve-anochi be-sof ma’arav, My thoughts in the East but the rest of me far in the West” (Hillel Halkin translation).
More than any other time, these last 36 hours I’ve felt the echoes of history like never before.
“Tarpat,” as the 1929 Hebron riots are known (for their Hebrew date) — one day, Arab neighbors, people you passed on the street and said “Good morning” to daily, or with whom you tipped cigarettes so as to ignite yours from their already lit one, or stood next to at the market, these people, these neighbors, plunged knives into your backs. In these recent hours in Lod and Ramle, Acre and other mixed Arab-Jewish towns, we heartbreakingly witnessed riots of might turn out to be known as “Tashpa,” for this year in the Hebrew calendar.
Thankfully, most of the Israelis attacked by their neighbors are alive this time, but they were trapped in their homes, in fear for their lives, and as of this writing they still are. You almost think of the echoing words “Lodz Ghetto” morphed into “Lod Ghetto,” yet this is Israel 2021. Horrifying.
The images of sifrei Torah, Torah scrolls pulled from burning synagogues. Of Jews removing mezuzzahs from the lintel of their doors so as not to identify their homes as Jewish, to be spared from terror — this is Israel today? This echoes 1930s Germany.
Sheikh Jarrah. A legal land dispute. When I was a little girl, the words Sheikh Jarrah was the neighborhood my mother’s nice Arab seamstress hailed from. She’d come by the apartment, take measurements, leave with fabric in hand and return with a brand new tailor made skirt. Then I got older and learned of the infamous Hadassah medical convoy massacre of 1948. All the doctors and nurses were murdered by an Arab attack in, I believe, the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. That neighborhood is today another echo from the past that was a layer in the complex convergence of terrorism that exploded inside Israel this week.
The bombardment of lethal rockets by Iran’s proxy, Hamas, exploding in Israel, is terrifying. I sadly, at this point, can’t keep up with the horrendous loss of human life and the wounded these vicious attacks are bringing. It’s overwhelming. At first it was two people from Ashkelon, one of them a devoted caretaker from India. Then it was a car hit in Holon. Then another town. Then back to Lod — a fatal rocket hit, besides the rioting. The multiple near lynchings. I can’t!! Plus,this new terrorism from the inside that has reared its ugly head.
Tarpat. 1929. A sensitive process of trust that took 92 years and endless layers to develop — is gone. Ninety-two years, literally, went up in smoke. More than the burning cars, shuls, buildings and streets, as damaging as that is, what was burning away in those streets was trust. That is a true tragedy. I still believe that most Israeli Arabs are like those who helped last week in the Meron tragedy, but their good will is blackened by the violent ones.
To be sure, there were Israeli Arabs — doctors, lawyers, nurses, blue collar worker — in Haifa marching with signs of love and support for the State of Israel, condemning the violence in no uncertain terms.
But the damage has been done. Trust has been eroded. We all know what a precious thing it is to build and have trust. The road ahead, the next 92 years, how and will trust be rebuilt?
The other echoes I felt were from 2000. I was living in Israel and remember well the pretext of Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, as the trigger for the second intifada. And all the tension of that time.
This time, too, the Temple Mount is artificially becoming part of the story, because if anything, with de-escalation in mind, the Temple Mount was actually officially closed to Jews and Jewish prayer on Jerusalem Day this year (last Monday, May 10).
Yet, the strangest thing happened. On Jerusalem Day, as streams of Israeli youth filled the Wailing Wall Plaza, side by side with the Temple Mount that sits rising in the foreground on the right, a fire broke out on the Temple Mount above the Wailing Wall area. A controlled upward orange flame was burning and glowing above the Wailing Wall as thousands filled the space below, singing. It almost felt like the closest thing to a glimpse of the Temple days of yore, with the korban tamid, the continual sacrificial flame. A taste of what it might have been like that. An echo.
I feel tremendous sadness for my beloved Israel, bleeding and wounded, whose soil and people are crying. I wish I were there right now.
I stand in strength, shoulder to shoulder, with Israel as I pray for echoes of calmer times to reverberate, throughout the homeland our generation is so blessed to have.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
