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a matter of innocence

experience at Israel's Hadassah Hospital
causes teen to redefine "enemies."

by Ruthie Lehmann

ooking into the imploring eyes of a
child, prematurely balding, whose
body is enslaved with cancer and
the effects of chemotherapy, how could
anyone hesitate to give him something,
some sort of peace of mind . . . a teddy
bear, a blanket? Yet that child is just part
of a very complicated picture smeared with
blood and hatred. Sometimes it is not so
easy to look directly into those eyes and see
a child, not an enemy.
For my symbolic coming of age, bat
mitzvah, I decided to do something
meaningful — to give blankets to sick
children in Israel. For my family, that
automatically translated into "blankets
to sick Israeli children."
Going to the hospital and person-
ally delivering the blankets turned out
to be a more dramatic rite of passage
than I had imagined. Our tour guide's
comment that there were Palestinians
as well as Jews in Hadassah Hospital in
Jerusalem was delivered too late to be
fully comprehended.
On the way to the pediatric oncol-
ogy unit, ambivalence filled my mind.
As my family went from room to room
distributing blankets, I was shocked
and horrified — my mother skipped
the bed of a child whose nametag read
"Mohammed." My mother is not an
evil person; she was just angry, as we
all were.
It was late August and my family
and I were riveted to horrors flashing
on the TV screen: "suicide bomber ...
got on at bus stop ... scene of chaos ... .
tragedy ... casualties." These headlines
penetrated my imagination. A picture
of a very religious woman was played
over and over and over again; her re-
ligious wig (shaytl) — a symbol of mod-

esty and devotion — had been blown
off her head. She wandered aimlessly
in shock through a scene from hell. I
wondered where the heavenly peace
was that both Jews and Palestinians
yearned for.
Later, the relentless news media
showed images of strewn bloody limbs,
bodies without faces. The scenes of
gore beamed to my family's TV set,
translated into a barrage of heart-
breaking bullets of information: three
soldiers wounded ... death toll 20 and
climbing ... many in critical condition.
The Palestinian terrorists, I learned,
had supposedly agreed to hand over
the bodies of three dead Jewish sol-
diers in exchange for some hundred
terrorist prisoners. This possible trade
convinced me that the Jews were the
"good guys" and the Palestinians the
"enemies." The "us" and "them" had
no individual features, only the gener-
alized face of an enemy.
When my family and I traveled to
Israel, shouldn't I have been riddled
with fear and suspicion, despite the
fact a wave of peace had washed over
my homeland? Each time I entered a
shop or restaurant, I feared that my
life might be cut short. While at a café,
I spent most of my time wondering
where the next bomb would explode.
So, on our way to Hadassah Hos-
pital, the initial controversy erupted
in our car after we were informed that
Palestinians as well as Israelis were
confined in the walls of the hospital —
together. I was afraid to think that the
heartfelt letter I had written to anony-
mous sick children would end up in
the hands of anti-Semitic Palestinians.
Moreover, I dreaded the looming

Ruthie Lehmann with blankets like those she gave to children in Israel's Hadassah Hospital.

choice ahead — who would receive the
precious blankets?
After leaving the hospital, I burst
into tears, not only from the trauma
of seeing such sick children, some of
them my own age, but also from guilt.
The reality finally dawned on me. In
a hospital, the lines drawn by preju-
dice become blurred, if not invisible.
I had been so used to the words "en-
emy" and "good guy" that the concept
of "innocence" had not entered my
mind. I had been so accustomed to
seeing young Palestinian children in
terrorist training camps with bombs
strapped to their bodies, that I had not

even considered seeing them in hos-
pitals strapped to TVs. I realized that
these children were only human be-
ings worthy of respect.
One can learn a lesson from sick-
ness, which is totally blind to whom
it attacks; a black person's blood is
no redder than that of a white person
and a cancer no kinder to a Palestin-
ian than it is to a Jew. Reflecting back
upon the pained child I had seen, I
now perceived a human being in need
— in need of my cuddly, comforting
gift. t

Ruthie Lehmann, 17, is a senior at Yeshlvat

Akiva in Southfield.

teen2teen January 21 • 2010 TT1