Back in Sderot: A Day With Lev Echad

Last Wednesday, I returned to Sderot to volunteer with Lev Echad. It was an experience that I highly recommend to anyone and everyone who can make the trip down. Unlike my trip the week before, I didn't think of this trip as a fact-finding, dangerous excursion to the city where Kassams fall almost daily. I went to help the people of Sderot.

I arrived at Lev Echad's compound at around one in the afternoon. A short while later, I was briefed about what to do if a condition red was sounded. When outside, find a wall that faces east and crouch against it. If you're near any family dwelling, don't knock, just enter and find a shelter or fortified doorway. The idea of entering a home uninvited can be strange or uncomfortable for an outsider to contemplate. For the locals and volunteers who have been in Sderot for a week or more, the practice is second nature.

My first assignment of the day was to respond to a request by a 20 year-old woman to help her mother, who suffered from extreme anxiety, to seek help. We arrived at the address around two in the afternoon. My partner, a yeshivah student, was reluctant to knock on the door as it was siesta time. Knowing when the call came in, I insisted. The mother opened the door and made it clear that we were most welcome to enter. She set up some refreshments for us despite our protestations; we were there for her. Sderot's people are so happy and grateful to have others visit them. They are grateful to see others stand beside them to face the fallout of the government's lack of moral clarity, to face the inability of so-called leaders to deal decisively with outright, deadly attacks.

Her daughter joined us shortly and after about twenty minutes her husband arrived from his job in the municipality. Sitting in the salon, talking about family and the situation in the country, the mother seemed at ease. However, when the topic of going outside came up, she seemed to clench in from the center of her chest. We spoke about her anxiety. For weeks, she had not left the house, had not shopped for food or worked.

We discussed our views on the source of Israel's apparent national paralysis in dealing with its problems, the disconnection between the people and those ineffectively chosen to ineffectively govern. While discussing this topic, a condition red was sounded and we huddled under a reinforced doorway. We left about a half-hour later.

My next assignment found me on the other side of Sderot about two hours later. That evening, an information session was organized to showcase government officials and policy makers. A mother of five children needed a babysitter so that she might attend. The hour we were supposed to spend there turned into two. The children were absolutely delightful. A two year old played for a while and then went to sleep. The other children were happy to watch a DVD. We talked for a little while about what it was like to go to the park.

When the mother came back home, she spoke about how the government officials said nothing of importance. The main message was that the rockets would continue. Get used to it. It was simultaneously a disgrace and an outrage.

The mother drove us back to the Lev Echad compound, where volunteers were preparing for the nightly march throughout Sderot. Once underway, the volunteers waved flags and bear torches, singing and dancing from one neighborhood to the next. They sang Hebrew songs, psalms, and "Sderot, we love you." People would come to the windows. Some would come down from their apartments to sing and dance along. There were embraces as volunteers and citizens became reacquainted from earlier assignments. In parking lots, we passed cars with shattered windshields and holes peppered throughout their steel bodies, damaged by Kassams. We walked along roadbeds gouged and scarred from shrapnel.

The parade lasted over two hours. By the time the volunteers arrived at the school where they slept it was almost eleven in the evening. We were then informed that Elya had arranged for a bus to take us to the beach at Ashkelon for a midnight swim. So, at half past midnight, I was swimming in the Mediterranean with a bunch of pre-army and post-army kids, some younger than Tamar. We could see the lights of Gaza. Swimming about fifty yards from the shore, I felt I was swimming in a photographic negative of a world.

When I came out of the water, Elya had just gotten the chance to swim. As we passed, he asked me, "What do you think of them?" "Very impressive," I replied. These young people, and all who came down to support Sderot, these people understood what is important, what is crucial. When I lamented that more people weren't volunteering and visiting Sderot that Wednesday, Elya informed me that it was a light turnout relative to the norm. On weekends, numerous busloads of people, some privately arranged, some through yeshivahs and communities, came to spend Shabbat with the people of Sderot. Lev Echad arranges to house them and feed them.

We arrived back at the school at two-thirty, pre-dawn. After waking several hours later, I had one assignment: to help a mother convince her eight year old daughter to go to school. It turned out that the daughter was not overly-anxious, she was exhausted. She had slept only two hours the night before, which was normal for her. She had health problems and the rockets aggravated her sleeping patterns. We sat with mother and daughter for a while and returned to the compound.

I hope to return to Sderot in the coming weeks, spending two or three days at a time helping out. It's good work, good people, both volunteers and Sderot citizens. It's not only about the responsibilities to one's country and countrymen. It's about the the feeling of reconciling who we are as Jews and free people facing down barbarism.

Lev Echad is doing great work. If there is a drawback, it is that Lev Echad does what it does so well that the government might not feel the need and responsibility to do all that it should in relieving Sderot and eliminating the threat from Gaza. So, while Sderot is justifiably grateful to Lev Echad, I hope their indignation towards their government of mediocrity remains strong and vociferous. Until we have a system that rewards achievement and punishes failure, this outrage of a neglected public must not abate.

You can contact Lev Echad at 054-7587462/3.