We just had another "tseva adom" alerting us that a rocket was launched at Jerusalem and that we needed to seek shelter. After the alarm stopped, we waited 10 minutes, per protocol, before leaving the boys' room, which is the "safest" room in the house. The boys were in the middle of their Hebrew class in the living room, and I was literally italicizing the word "exactly" in the second paragraph below (about the location of our hotel in Tel Aviv) when the "tseva adom" sounded. Overall, the boys (plus Pentheus and I) seemed to do "better" than last time. At the beginning, the CK was crying and wanted me to hug him; then, the CKwanted to stand by himself ("I don't want anyone to touch me.") next to the bed. The boys' Hebrew tutor was with us during the alarm, and I think her presence made it easier for the boys, although because she is 18 now, she only heard her first "tseva adom" last Friday night, too. The difference being: unfortunately, she has had to practice and "prepare" for things like this. She said that Jerusalemites were referring to Friday night's event as an "azahkha emeht" ("real" alarm, as opposed to a drill). It turns out that the rocket this afternoon landed in an open field about 15 kilometers from us. While I know that 15 kilometers is relatively far away, it's pretty damn close, too.
The boys seemed to be able to "bounce back" fairly quickly after this one, as I can hear them in the living room reading Hebrew aloud with their tutor. I know it's only been a few minutes and perhaps none of this has hit us (no pun intended, I assure you) yet, but it's kind of sad and disturbing that we have been able to "adjust" to this so quickly. I mean, we've had 2 sirens alerting us that missiles aimed at us have been launched, but we go right back to whatever we were doing. I don't want to "get used to it"! I guess, though, that's the only thing we can do - get back to whatever we were doing. The other option is to let the sirens paralyze us, which would be worse.
I have deleted my initial sentences from this paragraph because they were all about how there had not been alarms about missiles aimed at Tel Aviv since Sunday and Jerusalem since Friday night. I had written about how we continue to listen to the news and read the English Israeli newspapers online to find out what's going on in the rest of the country. I just heard about some of the details related to the stabbing at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv this morning, and I have to admit it's a little weird knowing that just last month, Dad, the boys, and I stayed at the hotel exactly across the street from the Embassy. I keep reading articles about how close we are to a cease-fire but I don't know how accurate the reports are. One analyst has said that the fact that Hamas launched a rocket at Jerusalem may be a sign that a cease-fire is close, and that the rocket was an effort to "save face" with Hamas supporters before a cease-fire goes into effect.
Everyone is understandably nervous about what's going on. Wherever we are, people are talking about it - at our synagogue, on the bus, in restaurants. The buses that used to play music now only play the news; the typical "mahkolets" (convenience stores) where we go to shop run out of English language newspapers before we get there. We all feel for Israelis living in the South, and now that we have had a small taste of what they've been experiencing for months, our hearts ache, especially for the children. I read in the Jerusalem Post today that 85% of all children under age 10 and 50% of all teens in Southern Israel suffer from PTSD. I can easily believe it. Here's an ad from today's newspaper in which a bank is offering special deals to those in the South whose homes were destroyed by the rockets.
As I think I have mentioned, our Ulpan teacher has been great about teaching us practical words and phrases as part of our class. Well, at Ulpan on Sunday morning, all of our new words and phrases came from watching ynet.co.il, an online news source based on Yediot Achronot, an Israeli newspaper, on a laptop. To be honest, I hadn't expected the words "teel" (missile), "ahzahkha" (alarm), "charahdah" (anxiety), and "beeroot" (interception) to be so practical, and I didn't think I would need to know how to say "From the roof, he could see that the two rockets landed in the open field." By the end of Ulpan, I knew a lot of new words, but I was really sad, too. At Ulpan today, we used many of the words from Sunday and added on more - "p'geeah y'seera" (direct hit), "rahsees bohair" (burning remnant), "cheesool" (assassination/elimination), "mahtach" (barrage), and too many more. Kind of wish we were back learning relevant words from a video detailing sites of the Old City as seen from a Segue like we did in our second Ulpan session!
The boys and I have continued to go out to see the sites. Sunday after school, the CK and I went to the former Central Prison of Jerusalem which is now a Museum for the Underground Prisoners. Sort of like the one we saw last month at Akko, the prison was used to hold prisoners, both political ones like those who fought for the Jewish underground (the Haganah) and criminal prisoners (Jewish and Arab). There was absolutely nobody else there except for the CK and me. We saw a movie in English, and visited each of the 58 rooms in the museum. (Seriously, the CK wanted to see every single room, which we did. The CK was upset when we were getting ready to leave because we hadn't seen rooms 36 and 48, but we did end up seeing them after all - they were on the same hallway as the bathrooms we used before we left the museum!) One of the interesting things we saw was the doors to the prison. The bottom opening of the door is raised 6 inches from the floor and the top opening is only at the 4 feet mark. Doors were made this way to make it difficult for prisoners to escape - a man can't just run out the door; he would have to remember to lift his feet and duck his head:
The labor work the CPJ prisoners did was to make gravestones and coffins for the British soldiers who died in the conflicts.
After the museum, the CK and I walked a bit to downtown Jerusalem and hung out for a while. Then we met Pentheus and the WK at Luigi, an Italian restaurant near the San Simon Park about 10-15 minutes from the dira. Dinner was only ok, except for the foccacio which was yummy, but we had a good time.
Yesterday after school, the WK and I spent the afternoon together. We took the #13 bus downtown and then took the "rekevet kala" (light rail) to Har Herzl, at the southwest terminus of end of the rekevet kala line. Our goal was to go to the Herzl Museum (also called the World Zionist Organization Museum) and to walk around the Har Herzl Memorial Park, where Theodor Herzl, Zev Jabotinsky, Yizchak Rabin and many other Zionist and national leaders are buried. Har Herzl also acts as the military cemetery for war veterans and those killed by acts of terror. When we arrived at the Museum just after 3:30, the Museum was closed; despite the fact that my Frommer's guide stated that the Museum was open until 5 pm, the Museum actually closed at 3:15. But at least we could walk around the Memorial Park.
Despite everything that is happening, we're still very glad we are in Israel, and as we think about leaving at the end of next month. Pentheus and I get more and more sad. To be honest (and this won't surprise many of you), I have cried almost every day this week thinking about having to leave. When I picked the CK up from school, the first thing Meital (his teacher) said was, "Chaval sh'ohzveem" (Shame that you're leaving), to which I responded, through tears, "B'vakasha, ahl t'dahbree ahl zeh" (Please, don't talk about it.) It's not that I don't want to come back to the States; I, we, all of us do. We've missed our friends and family terribly. It's just hard to think about the end of our adventure. I do know one thing, and I couldn't have said it better than the bumper sticker I saw on a car on the way back to the dira after lunch today:
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