O pinion
I Spent the Night in a Bomb Shelter With My Kids
BY SHARON WEISS-GREENBERG
LAST NIGHT WAS the second
time that I hugged my children
in a bomb shelter.

The first time was on Nov.

12, 2019. That day, I heard a
siren indicating that rockets
were headed to my new home in
the city of Modiin, having just
moved to Israel in 2018. I picked
up my kids early from school
and brought them to a play date
at a friend’s house. I wasn’t sure
what the protocol or etiquette
was for a situation like this.

We set up our children in
the “mamad,” the safe room, to
play games and watch Netflix.

Mamads are a fixture in modern
Israeli apartments. These
well-fortified spaces have extra-
thick walls and floors, airtight
steel doors and extra metal
closures on the windows.

Back then, my children had
no idea what was going on
around them — they were too
busy having fun. They did not
hear the explosion of Iron Dome
intercepting and destroying the
incoming rockets. They were
simply thrilled to have a day off
from school.

As for myself, I wasn’t sure
how to feel or act, so I just played
it cool. After a couple of hours, I
decided it was time to go home.

I remember feeling terrified,
but I didn’t want my children
to know. On the walk home, I
noticed how life seemed pretty
normal. Last night was different. This
time, my kids are older (second
and fourth grades) and were
prepared. Just last week there
was a practice siren, a drill,
for the entire city of Modiin,
including at my kids’ school. It
was hard not to be with them.

The same way that I remember
practicing fire drills with my
former students when I was
a teacher, my children were
preparing for the imminent
threat of rockets being launched.

I was hopeful that the prepa-
rations would not be necessary,
the same way you prepare for
any type of unsafe situation and
hope for the best. In retrospect,
I am grateful to have been more
prepared and for my kids to have
been prepared, too.

As someone who grew up in
the U.S., it feels different to be
in Israel as terrible news breaks
rather than watching it on TV or
reading about it. It is different to
actually hear the sirens warning
us to seek shelter. The sound
is terrible and multilayered,
as we also hear the sirens of
neighboring cities. It is different,
and scary, to actually feel your
home shaking throughout the
night and morning, as Iron
Dome did its best to intercept
the hundreds of rockets.

My family moved to Israel
for many reasons, but certainly
this was not one of them. I do
not want such violence to be the
reality in Israel; I want peace. I
want people to compromise and
value each other. Simply put, I
would love normalcy.

I appreciate how my children
can practice Judaism here
without being different from
mainstream society. What’s
more, we deliberately chose a
neighborhood that embraced
diversity in Jewish practice.

While there are random incon-
veniences as an American
immigrant to living in Israel,
ultimately these are no big
deal because they are just that:
inconveniences. I was hopeful about the
results of Israel’s most recent
election — we almost landed a
rather diverse government coali-
tion. Things may be difficult
now, but I am hopeful that we
can move to calmer days soon,
when everyone in the region can
sleep through the night, put food
on the table, and have the will,
want and ability to live in peace.

Last night, my children stayed
up past bedtime. Normally I’d
find this frustrating, but I was
grateful because they were still
awake when the sirens began.

I opened the door to the kids’
room, and fortunately they were
already climbing out of their beds.

Though the thoughts in my head
were racing, I tried to appear calm.

Our city and our school had
sent out advice on how to interact
with your children when under
attack: remain calm, focus on
them, allow them to express
themselves and use physical
affection to comfort them.

At first, my kids were nervous
that we were not quick enough
getting to the mamad. Once the
door to our mamad was fully
shut, my younger son turned to
me and said, “Mommy. My heart
is beating so fast.” I followed
the instructions that had been
sent earlier: I made eye contact.

I said, “Come let me hug you.

Let me feel your heartbeat.” It
worked — he quickly calmed
down. The interaction lasted less
than a minute, but it was intense.

Together we fooled around
on my iPhone — I figured that
was the easiest way for us to
stay calm. Unfortunately the
internet didn’t really work.

Instead we talked, and I hoped
our chatter would drown out the
sound of rockets exploding. In
my mind, I was counting down
the minutes, as we are advised
to stay sheltered for at least 10
minutes once the sirens sound.

These are the same sirens
that are amplified throughout
the country to honor Holocaust
survivors and victims on Yom
Hashoah. It is the same siren
we all hear a week after that for
Yom Hazikaron, to remember
the soldiers who have fallen for
the state of Israel.

About 20 minutes later, the
kids cuddled up on the twin bed
inside the mamad and, for the
second time that night, I tucked
them in. My younger son looked
relieved. “I didn’t want to have to
worry about waking up,” he said.

“I’m glad we are sleeping here.”
I was glad, too, because at 3
a.m., the sirens began again. I
went to the mamad and hugged
my boys; they asked if I could
rub their backs. One fell asleep
again almost immediately.

Again we could hear Iron Dome.

It’s now 8 a.m. in Israel as
I type this. I am bleary-eyed
and nervous, and I keep second-
guessing every noise I hear. Is
that rumble of a garbage truck?
Or is it Iron Dome? Is that a
siren in a neighboring city? Or is
it an ambulance or the noise of
my kids watching TV?
There is no in-person school
today. All Israeli schoolkids will
be learning on Zoom. They will
be discussing the situation as a
class, and we will process that
discussion afterward as a family.

In terms of what happens
next, I don’t really know. But I
am hoping for the best. l
Sharon Weiss-Greenberg is director
of education partnerships for My
Jewish Learning. This article first
appeared on Kveller.

Time to Talk About a Better Future for Israelis, Palestinians
BY LEAH SOLOMON
18 MAY 20, 2021
For the sake of Zion I will not be
My heart is with my friends
silent, for the sake of Jerusalem and family across Israel, who
I will not be still. – Isaiah 62:1 are running back and forth
from shelters or have simply
FOR THE PAST THREE given up and started putting
nights, as the rocket sirens their children to sleep in safe
blaring through Jerusalem rooms. And my heart is with
forced my children and me to parents and children in Gaza
rush to shelter — and heralded who have no shelters to run to
what we now know would be and can only sit in their homes
a massive onslaught of rocket in unsubsiding fear.

attacks by Hamas on Israel — I
My heart is sick at the senseless
have been unable to sleep.

deaths of far too many innocent
JEWISH EXPONENT
Israelis and Palestinians,
including many children. And
my heart is broken by the lynch-
ings and mob attacks by both
Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews
and the fracturing of society.

We can never allow ourselves
to accept as inevitable the utter
terror that Israelis are experi-
encing as they flee from hundreds
of rockets, that Palestinians
in Gaza are experiencing as
14-story apartment buildings
are bombed into smithereens,
or that Jewish and Arab citizens
across Israel are experiencing
as nationalist mobs torch cars,
burn down buildings and lynch
innocent passersby. The primary
short-term goal for every Israeli
and Palestinian leader at this
moment must be to achieve an
absolute and immediate cessa-
tion of all violence.

See Solomon, Page 27
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



O PINION
If You’re Asking American Jews if They’re
Religious, You Don’t Understand American Jews
BY RACHEL B. GROSS
IN SHELDON OBERMAN’S
children’s book “Th e Always
Prayer Shawl,” a grandfa-
ther passes on his tallit to his
grandson along with the sage
advice, “Some things change
and some things don’t.”
At public readings, Oberman
wore his grandfather’s tallit,
which had inspired the story.

When a non-Jewish author told
him that she wished she could
tell stories the way he did, he
placed the tallit on her shoul-
ders and told her, “You can! You
can do it.”
This story illustrates
how religion functions in
complex ways in the lives of
North American Jews. Was
Oberman’s tallit a religious
object? Was he using it in
religious ways?
Th e new study of American
Jews by the Pew Research
Center, too, refl ects the compli-
cated and oft en contradictory
ways that Jews employ the
concept of “religion” as well as
the way “some things change
and some things don’t” in both
American Jews’ practices and
sociological studies of them.

Like the 2013 Pew study of
American Jews, “Jewish
Americans in 2020” divides
Jews into “Jews by religion”
and “Jews of no religion.”
Jews by religion say their
current religion is Jewish.

According to Pew, 27% Jewish
adults do not identify their
religion as Jewish but consider
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM themselves Jewish ethni-
cally, culturally or by family
background. Among Jews
18-29, that number rises to 40%,
twice that of Jews ages 50-64.

Some may wring their hands
over what they see as dwindling
participation in Judaism as
a religion, as commentators
did aft er the last survey. But
what I see in this survey is
evidence of the innovative and
ever-changing ways Jewish
religion is practiced, not
grounds for panic.

Although the authors inform
us “religion is not central to
the lives of most U.S. Jews,”
the concept of religion, as most
Americans use it today, is a
modern, Protestant creation,
and Jewish practices fi t uncom-
fortably in the category. Despite
the best eff orts of Jewish
thinkers to separate religious
and cultural aspects of Jewish
practice, the boundaries have
never been clear.

Traditional understand-
ings of “religion” have rested
uneasily with Jewish realities,
which have a greater focus on
communities and practices.

Only 20% of survey respon-
dents said that their “religious
faith” provides a great deal
of meaning and fulfi llment,
perhaps because American Jews
rarely use the language of faith.

But the study does reveal
the many ways that American
Jews of all kinds create Jewish
meaning in their lives. Th ese
include practices traditionally
understood as religious, such
as attending a seder (62%), and
those understood as cultural,
such as cooking or eating
traditional Jewish foods (72%).

In my book, “Beyond the
Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as
Religious Practice,” I argue that
making sense of Jews’ practices
requires us to employ a broader
defi nition of religion. Following
religious studies scholar Robert
Orsi, religion is best understood
as meaningful relationships
and the practices, narratives
and emotions that create and
support these relationships.

Understanding religion as
relationships makes our inter-
actions with families, our
attachments to our ancestors,
our connections to communi-
ties and the narratives we use to
explain our place in the world
central to religious activity.

It lets us see Jewish religion
fl ourishing in a wide variety
of practices and in unexpected
sites — in ways that its practi-
tioners might not themselves
identify as “religious” because
of the way religion is so oft en
narrowly construed.

I applaud the authors of
this study for asking far more
questions about Jews’ everyday
practices than the 2013 study
did, as well as for noting that
cultural activities comple-
ment so-called religious ones.

Th is study fi nds that, in large
numbers, Jews eat foods they
recognize as Jewish, visit Jewish
historic sites when traveling,
read books and articles about
Jewish topics, listen to Jewish
music, and watch TV and fi lm
with Jewish themes.

What all of these activities
have in common is that they
allow Jews to place themselves
within narratives that provide
existential meaning. I wish that
the study had asked about visits
to Jewish museums, which are
increasingly important spaces
of Jewish community, or
genealogical research, a wildly
popular pastime that helps
Jews place themselves within
family and communal histories
that cross time and space.

I suggest we pay more atten-
tion to what Jews do than to
what they name as “essential”
to their identity, as the study
continues to ask, echoing
the 2013 study. Only 20% of
American Jews consider eating
traditional Jewish foods to
JEWISH EXPONENT
be essential to what being
Jewish means to them. But the
wording of the question does
not refl ect Jews’ realities.

Eating foods recognized as
“Jewish” may be a meaningful
part of a Jew’s life, but it may
be too quotidian, too easily
overlooked, to be recognized
as essential or important
according to traditional metrics
of religion. Commonplace activ-
ities such as eating foods that
remind us of our families, our
communities, and our histories
are oft en quietly fundamental
to religious identities rather
than explicitly identifi ed as
essential to them.

Likewise, the study fi nds
that large numbers of Jews own
Jewish ritual objects. Th e fact
that 24% of “Jews of no religion”
own a Hebrew-language
prayer book should give us
pause. As religious studies
scholar Vanessa L. Ochs fi nds,
American Jews unobtrusively
enact important parts of their
identities through the material
objects they have in their
homes, including items they
rarely if ever use. Oberman’s
unconventional use of his tallit
reminds us that Jews can fi nd
new and sometimes surprising
meanings in ritual objects, even
outside of traditional contexts.

Some things change, and
some things don’t. American
Jews continue to fi nd meaning
in emotional connections to
their families, communities,
and histories, though the ways
they do so continue to change.

Expanding our defi nition of
“religion” can help us better
recognize the ways in which
they are doing so. ●
Rachel B. Gross is assistant
professor and John and Marcia
Goldman Chair in American Jewish
Studies in the Department of
Jewish Studies at San Francisco
State University.

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