What can you do in 15 seconds? You can listen to the intro of a song, or take a sip of your soda. You can scan the morning headlines, kiss your loved ones good bye.
Or, you could live in Sderot, and in 15 seconds you can watch your whole world fall apart. Sderot is a town in the South of Israel, right near Bear Sheva. A small, virtually unknown moshav, Sderot has gained notoriety in past years for being the hotbed of rocket attacks on Israel- literally. As reported in the New York Times, “… Sderot’s importance began growing with the huge increase in rocket fire since the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and after the 2006 war with Hezbollah, which sent thousands of rockets into northern Israel.”
It is now 2012, and while the rockets are, thank God, nowhere near as heavy as they were, they are by no means gone. I spent some time in Sderot this past week, and I can’t seem to get it off my mind. Sderot is a place where there are bomb shelters in childrens playgrounds, where remnants of Kasami rockets litter the ground. Sderot is a place where schools need to look like prisons to keep those within it safe, where one cannot walk more than a couple of feet without seeing a memorial for those who have been lost. Sderot is not a place I understand.
But it is one I deeply respect.
I live in a world where buses run on schedule, where I do not plan my day around the nearest Michal. I live in a world that is safe. I take that for granted, but mere hours in a place where nothing is taken for granted provides that often missing perspective.
Some people in Sderot live in fear, others in defiance. Some live with pride, others with a sense of inevitability. They all live differently, but they live there nonetheless. The fact that these people refuse to let cowards who hide behind their bombs and several hundred meters force them out of their homes astounds and humbles me.
I am not the kind of girl who sees God in every sunset or rainbow or four-leaf clover. But in Sderot, all you see is God. There is no reason for any of these homes to still be standing, for any of these children to be able to laugh and sing and play. No reason, no logic and no way. But there is, and if that isn’t proof enough of His presence I don’t know what is.
I am not that brave. Before that first rocket even landed there would be a ‘For Sale’ sign in front of my house.
Or maybe I would surprise myself. Maybe my ideals would matter more than I realize.
But it doesn’t matter, because the world of ‘maybes’ isn’t a world at all. It’s a world that I visit when I so choose- it is not the world I live in.
But that is the world of the residents in Sderot. And they don’t get to leave whenever they feel like it. They have to live in it, every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
Arielle Wasserman is currently studying at Midreshet Lindenbaum, one of Masa Israel’s 200 programs.
