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December 13, 2002/Tevet 8 5763, Vol. 55, No. 16
Reality check makes blessings real
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
It was a rude awakening.
A jarring noise, a blaring computerized message.
I was roused from a deep sleep in the dark pre-dawn hours. Alone in a hotel room, in a high-rise building, in a strange city, I was anything but calm when the fire alarm tripped.
I fumbled for the light, confused and anxious, struggling to make sense of the warning: The fire alarm has tripped. Do not evacuate.
Images of Sept. 11 shot through my mind.
Do not evacuate. They have to be nuts.
I reached for my sweats and running shoes, grabbed my cell phone and joined the steady stream of guests descending the hotel stairwell.
We huddled in the early morning air waiting for the all-clear signal.
Back in bed, unable to sleep, the events of the previous evening replayed in my mind. An affecting trio of speakers, Rabbi Daniel Gordis, who left the relative comfort of life in Southern California for Israel three years ago; Yehuda Pearl, whose journalist son Daniel was killed by Pakistani terrorists last year; and Natan Sharansky, past refusenik and current member of Knesset, conveyed the real-life drama that is currently being played out in Israel.
Their stories, told at a plenary session of the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, a national conference that draws Jewish leaders from across the country, evoked the unsettling reality of life where terror is always a chilling possibility.
Gordis captured the anguish of a parent who has made a decision to live in the land he loves at the risk of imperiling the children he cherishes.
"Do we love this place more than our children?" he asks plaintively.
Sharansky told of how he struggles to maintain normalcy even as danger lurks around every corner. Can he persuade his teenage daughter not to go to the cinema with friends and instead spend the evening in the relative safety of their home with a video?
Later, I sit in the hotel lounge discussing the situation and the sadness that seems to have engulfed what historically has been a buoyant gathering.
We talk about the security at the hotel, the X-ray machines at the doors, the phalanx of guards posted at the stairwells and passageways.
And then that night the fire alarm goes off, and the next morning, we awaken to the news of yet another suicide bombing in Jerusalem.
I can't shake the ridiculous fear that gripped me when the alarm sounded. I feel foolish and spoiled and oh-so-fortunate. Yet newly attuned to danger.
My children were home for the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah holidays. We gathered at the table first for turkey, then for latkes, to revel in our blessings and to recall miracles.
And I looked at them, strong and confident and healthy and whole, and wondered how I could live with the underlying fear that is part of the fabric of Israeli life. We are blessed, and I still want to believe in the miracle of peace in Israel.
But that night in the dark was truly an eye-opener.
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.
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