Opinion

A MIX OF IDEAS

Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us.

Dry Bones

Editorial

Therapy Of Performing

I

magine 10 Israeli high school
actresses fulfilling their dream to
perform in Jerusalem before the
Knesset, Israel's parliament. The choice of
script for these girls from Sderot's AMIT
religious high school: Children of Qassam
Avenue.
Kassams are rockets launched by
llamas into the Israeli city of Sderot.
Hamas is the Palestinian terrorist orga-
nization that rules the Gaza Strip. Its
military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Kassam
Brigades, developed the simple steel
rockets, which have claimed more than 20
civilian lives in Israel. More than 100 rock-
ets have been fired from Gaza at Israel by
various terrorist groups since Operation
Cast Lead ended in January 2009, accord-
ing to the Israel Defense Forces.
The theatrical production tells the
story of teenage girls growing up under
rocket fire — and the lethal and terrify-
ing impact. The play is based on the real
experiences of the student performers,
who are part of the Sderot Media Center's
Community Treatment Theater. They
spent a year undergoing drama therapy to
overcome post-traumatic stress disorder
resulting from rocket terror.
The girls had come to overcome the
hurt through the pain relief of theater.

Shocking as it may seem, living under
Israel's Red Color early warning system
is a way of life for residents of Sderot,
Ashkelon and other at-risk areas of Israel.
The system's advanced radar detects
rockets; loudspeakers then warn civilians
to take cover between 15 and 45 seconds
before impact.
So the play is definitely more than a
play. The playbill is intended to inspire
a change in how the outside world per-
ceives Gaza's nearly 10-year-long reign of
Kassam terror on Sderot.
The past decade of rocket attacks, and
the heavy psychological toll on a popula-
tion of young children and teenagers, is
too often completely ignored or over-
looked by the news media.
It makes sense to try to begin this
change of perception in the Knesset.
Sderot Media Center director Noam
Bedein has the right take: "We hope that
our political leaders recognize the power-
ful advocacy tool we have established in
this community theater concept:'
It remains the only platform presenting
Israel's side of the Sderot-Gaza conflict
through the voices of Israeli youth who
have suffered from llamas rocket fire.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who
invited the Sderot girls to perform, gave the

performance
high marks.
Every Jew
should think
long and hard
about his chill-
ing reaction:
"This produc-
tion is some-
thing that was
able to draw us
all into a reality
that is foreign to
most of us. The
war that took
place in Sderot
and the Western
Negev felt like
a war taking
place in another
cowl
The resilience
of the children on Qasaam Avenue in
Sderot, a city of working-class Israelis, is
a microcosm of the entire state's defiance
and resilience to Hamas hatred. If Hamas'
strategy was to rain rockets on Sderot and
the Western Negev until the Israelis living
there wilted under the rocket assault and
fled, it has failed.
Tenth-grader Rotem Timsit was ener-

GRAY OUTLOOK

THERE'S THE
F144ANCIAL
COLLAPSE OF
GREECE AND
ITS EFFECT ON
THE E.U.

ACTUALLY I
WAS TALKING
ABOUT THE
DARK CLOUD
OF VOLCANIC
ASH

DryBonesBlog.com

gized by her troupe's Knesset perfor-
mance. Her energy is representative of the
fortitude inbred in Israelis, the caretakers
of our ancestral homeland.
As this inspired 16-year-old put it: "We
came to share our story and show the
rest of Israel and especially our politi-
cal leaders how a decade of rocket terror,
condensed in this one-hour show, will not
drive us out of Sderot:'

❑

Reality Check

Cheder And Me

N

o one would ever have mistaken
me for a yeshivah bucher. For
one thing, my sideburns were

too short.
But I did attend United Hebrew Schools
in Detroit (at Central High on Linwood
and the Esther Berman branch at Schaefer
and Seven Mile) in the years preceding my
bar mitzvah: Monday to Thursday after
regular school and then junior congrega-
tion on Saturday morning.
I would contrive dozens of excuses
why I couldn't go to class. A sinus attack.
A lost assignment. A sudden onset of
claustrophobia as soon as I got on the bus.
Rapture of the deep.
That rarely worked. Instead, my father
would begin to sing a forlorn little song
that started out: "Ich will nicht gehe zu
Cheder. Uh-huh. ("I won't go to Hebrew
school:' with the whining complaint at the
end understood in any language.)
Mrs. Pike would take me aside after one
of my frequent absences and say: "What's
going to happen, Yehuda, when you meet

a nice Jewish girl and she finds
out you know so little about
your religion?"
To tell the truth, I hadn't
thought about that much at the
age of 11. In fact, it never did
happen, but I always was con-
cerned about missing out on
a grand affair because I knew
only eight of the 10 plagues vis-
ited upon the Egyptians.
But many years later, my
brushing acquaintance with
United Hebrew Schools did
serve me well. A non-Jewish
photographer who had accom-
panied me to Israel on assignment watched
the lines for our exit interview at the air-
port growing longer and was afraid we'd
miss our plane.
"The line moves:' I said. "Just be pleas-
ant, straightforward and wipe that look of
abject fear off your face
When it was my turn, the guard asked
me brusquely where I had been in Israel

and if I had visited anyone
while in Israel.
"Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ein
Hashofet:' I answered.
"Why do you visit there she
said.
"It's a kibbutz where my
cousins live:'
"Oh. Do you speak Hebrew?"
"Very little I said.
Earlier on the trip, I had
perplexed my photographer by
being able to hold a conversa-
tion with an artist in Safed."I
thought you said that you speak
only a little Hebrew:' he said.
"We were speaking in Yiddish:' I said.
He looked at me suspiciously, but let it
pass. He never did get it figured out.
"Where did you learn Hebrew:' asked
the border guard.
"At cheder in Detroit:' I answered. "In
fact, it was started by my Uncle Joseph
Haggai, the one who moved to Ein
Hashofet."

That was it. School was out. My cheder
payoff had served me well and it took only
47 years.
I was waved right through the line
while my photographer was grilled for
another half an hour. That's what comes
of shlepping all that camera equipment
around.
A few more instances of minus six
degrees of separation in Israel.
The headmistress of the only
Conservative day school in the country
was thrilled to meet me. It turned out it
was at one of my uncle's United Hebrew
Schools that she got her first teaching
job. I met a political science prof at Haifa
U. who lived at the end of our block on
Littlefield Avenue in the early 60s.
And Zev Chafets upon our first meeting
said my baseball stories were mandatory
reading at his boyhood home in Pontiac.
So there! ❑

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aoLcom.

My 27 2010

31

