ARTICLES

Our Moments

By Paula R. Stern, World Jewish News Agency Columnist.

The holiday of Sukkot is a yearly event that reminds us of the fragility of life. We make ourselves vulnerable, a reminder of how small we are in the universe. The stars above us through the night and the sun beating down on us during the day remind us that life is about the moment. Yesterday we had a home, today we dwell in a hut. Tomorrow is hours away. Sukkot is about this moment. There’s a before and after to many things in life. Moments that change your life forever, there’s just no going back. Sometimes you recognize them as they are happening, sometimes you know even before, and sometimes you can’t even anticipate the effect something will have until you realize how different things suddenly have become. There are personal moments and national moments that touch our lives and form the people and nation we have become.

The plane ride to Israel when I moved here more than a decade ago lasted many hours, but at some point deep over the Atlantic as my sons dozed nearby, it became clear to me that my life had changed. It was a personal moment that enabled me to finally become the Israeli I had longed to be and at the same time leave behind another part of my identity that never quite fit. All the years that have followed have simply reinforced what I felt the moment my feet touched the ground. This is my Israel, my country. I love this land, this people, this state and will never love another. This is my home and I have no other. A newly-freed Natan Sharansky walking across the bridge to freedom and the Jewish passengers of a hijacked Air France plane arriving back in Israel from Entebbe were national moments that told the world that Israel is a place of refuge for all Jews. In a world that pays lip service to attacks on Jews, their cemeteries, schools and synagogues, Israel offers safety and protection.

Poland was another of those mind-altering personal experiences. There’s the person I was before I walked into a gas chamber for the first time in Maidanek, and the person I became as I emerged, reborn, more aware of what “they” had tried to do to “us,” and forever aware of what we had survived. Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwitz, the cemeteries and synagogues all reinforced what I learned in the moments I stood inside that first small room knowing I stood in the exact spot where so many had died.

When Israel sent jet fighters to bomb the Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981, we experienced another national moment of pride. It would take the world another 10 years to realize and deal with the danger Saddam Hussein had become to his people and to the world, to recognize that Israel had done the world a great favor by preventing Iraq from developing nuclear power and so that moment was ours alone to savor. We taught the world and ourselves that we will protect ourselves and not rely on others.  The first time they announced that we should open the gas masks and try them on preceding the US invasion of Iraq, was another personal moment, one I shared with every parent in Israel. It was a moment we each suffered together, and yet alone. I watched as my older sons brought the younger children down from their beds and tried to coax them to try the masks on. There is something about seeing your child with a gas mask on that forever redefines what you are willing to endure for something in which you believe. They will not drive me from my land, though they may try. They will not make us run.  The first time I went to the Western Wall during the Priestly Blessing and stood among tens of thousands of people listening to hundreds, if not thousands of descendents of the tribe of Levi reciting the ancient blessing for the people, I knew that I was forever part of the Jewish people. We stood as one, heard as one, and were united.  The Disengagement process, the orange campaign, Kfar Maimon, soldiers and settler praying and crying together, and finally the rubble and the desecrated synagogues were also life altering moments for our nation. These moments taught us that despite the unity we thought there was, we are still divided in many fundamental ways. And tonight, as my daughter and I decorated our Sukkah in preparation for the holiday, I turned on the radio only to hear the ominous interview between the broadcaster and a hospital representative. I’ve heard it so many times in the last five years, and yet each time, the dread is new, the anxiety, the pain, the anger. This is a moment for which there is no preparation even though we know what moments are to follow. In the end, three young lives were taken tonight, several others severely injured in the latest attack by Abu Mazen’s Fatah movement.  This terrorist attack yet again reminds us of how fragile our lives really are. Young people standing at a bus station, perhaps on their way home to waiting families. They will not celebrate the holiday; they will not sit in a Sukkah with their families. For them, there will be not more personal moments. Instead, there will be funerals and mourning, the lives of their families forever changed in an instance, no going back.

A sukkah is a temporary dwelling, fragile and open to the elements. It is the ultimate test of our trust and faith. We leave the comfort and safety of our fortified homes to dwell below bamboo and tree branches. Despite its proximity to Yom Kippur, a solemn day of fasting, Sukkot is a holiday of joy, a celebration of the rainy season soon to come and the harvest. It is the beginning, a new chance at life after the long and dry summer. No matter what happens to us as a people, no matter how many terrorist attacks, how many missiles, how many times outside forces attempt to stop us, we remain in our land. We remain united, despite that which divides us. We remain strong, despite that which weakens us.  Israel, in a very real sense, represents a Sukkah for the Jewish people. What protection we have from those who would do us harm, can be found in the strengths and the will of this nation. Israel protects us and brings us joy and we must protect Israel. Tomorrow night as we sit in our sukkah, let us remember that we are the sum total of the moments in our individual lives and the lives of our country. These moments determine our strengths and our weaknesses, our unity and our division, our births, our lives and ultimately, our losses. What enables us to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, the threats from Saddam Hussein, terror attack after terror attack, and the sacrifices we have forced upon our own people, will ultimately unite us for the battles that are to come.