Sara Bronstein’s recent trip to Israel started out as a stay at an ulpan near Netanya. It ended up a mission of mercy to help evacuees from the North.
Bronstein is one of several Bay Area Jews recently back from Israel. All were eyewitnesses to history and, because of their passion to help Israelis in need, a small part of history as well.
Rabbi Allen Bennett of Alameda’s Temple Israel originally planned his trip around WorldPride, a weeklong gay and lesbian convocation in Jerusalem. But with Hezbollah rockets falling, he shifted his agenda, hopping a charter bus to the city of Nahariya to rescue families huddling in shelters.
Darren Kessler of Richmond was on vacation in Israel, but as the war heated up, he and his family found themselves one step ahead of the bombs.
Each has stories different from the others’, but they all came back feeling more connected to the country than ever before.
Bennett was in Israel during the height of the war. Before he left he received an email from his travel agency, ARZA World, touting a program called “Moments of Tranquility,” which, he says, “offered a four-day all-expenses paid vacation for residents of northern towns who were not able to get out of Dodge during the conflict. It provided bus transportation to Jerusalem, housing in a hotel, two meals a day and guided tours.”
He called ARZA and asked if he could help. The day after he landed, he said, “I was on a bus at 5 a.m. going up to Nahariya to pick up a busload of folks. My job was simply to listen to folks talk about what life had been like and do makeshift rabbinical counseling on the fly.”
On the drive up Bennett saw signs of war all around: bombed-out buildings and one structure so damaged by rocket fire the roof tiles had melted.
Once the families climbed aboard, the bus headed for Jerusalem. Recalls Bennett, “As we moved south, with every kilometer you could see their spirits lifting.”
Some on the bus thought it would be fun to go to the theme park Mini-Israel, but the guide dismissed the notion as too expensive. Rabbi Bennett offered to pay for everyone, but once the owner of the park heard of the rabbi’s generous offer, he insisted on letting everyone in for free.
“Even in the worst times,” adds Bennett, “especially in the worst of times, good people show up. People are asked to stand with Israel, and that’s fine. I wanted to stand in Israel, and have those people know there was an American Reform rabbi not afraid to go where they were, not afraid to give whatever I could, so they would know they weren’t alone.”
The Kessler family trip to Israel began shortly after the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Shalit near Gaza. Darren Kessler remembers the mood among the Israeli people shifting dramatically after that, and even more so once Hezbollah’s attacks began. The day after the family left Tiberias, a rocket exploded next to the restaurant where they had dined the night before.
“We didn’t think it was going to be as big as it turned out,” he recalls of the war. “But I was taking cues from the people around me. Israel has been through this before. Maybe I was naïve, but I felt the chances of us being hurt were small.”
In Netanya, though the family pressed on with their vacation, Keller remembers military helicopters going up and down the Mediterranean coast every few minutes.
But war drew even closer when he and his family joined relatives near Ashkelon, fewer than 10 miles from the Gaza border.
“We were outside having a barbeque,” he remembers. “My son was on the lawn, and suddenly he says, ‘What’s that?’ We look up and see six Kassam rockets fly overhead. It was like the Fourth of July. We heard the Israeli artillery thumping.”
Unsure whether to run to the bomb shelter, the family collectively decided instead to keep enjoying their barbeque. Only in Israel.
Sara Bronstein’s trip was planned a year ago after her first experience at Ulpan Akiva near Netanya. The Redwood City resident has a sister living in Israel, and she has contemplated aliyah herself.
The day after her arrival, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was seized by Hamas terrorists. On a day trip to Kibbutz Beeri near Gaza, Bronstein saw the Israeli military on the move. “We could hear tanks all day,” she recalls. “It’s very weird to be going in the pool knowing there’s a war right across from you.”
Tensions ramped up exponentially on July 12 when Hezbollah attacks began. Bronstein was in Acco at the time. “I knew something bad was happening,” she says. “We found out soldiers had been kidnapped, some killed, and rockets were falling. We immediately heard the thundering, saw helicopters flying and we could see smoke from the fires. When I talked to Israelis, everyone was saying, ‘This is different.'”
Back at the ulpan Bronstein decided she needed to do something to help those in the north. “We had a meeting with the big machers at the ulpan,” she recalls. “I knew some had financial means, so I figured we’d start with them, then go to the rest of the ulpan.”
In short order, she and her fellow students raised more than $10,000 for “HaTzafon Libenu” (The North in our Hearts). The group brought 50 families to the ulpan, providing hotel rooms, three meals a day and activities for the children. “These were people without relatives or friends,” adds Bronstein, “and quite a few had their homes destroyed.”
All the while, she kept up her Hebrew studies. But the purpose of her trip had shifted. “For me it was natural,” she says. “That’s the way I am. I could have worried all day, but what choice did I have? It was a way of not getting all crazy about the war.”
For Bennett, the most impressive aspect of the experience was the way Israelis banded together. “I heard so many stories about the whole country south of the conflict zone turning itself inside out to help,” he says. “Municipalities said ‘Bring them in and we’ll house and feed them.’ Everywhere you went people were opening their homes.”
Though he never felt afraid for his own safety, Kessler says the experience changed his perceptions about Israel’s standing in the world.
“It showed me how vulnerable Israel is now,” he says. “I don’t mean necessarily to the Arabs, but to the world turning against it so quickly and easily. While I was there, I saw Israel portrayed as the evil one at every juncture. There was never a focus on the suffering of Israel, only an amplification of the suffering of Arabs. It’s almost like there was a design to demonize Israel at every turn. It was frightening.”
All three have found being back home in the Bay Area not as comforting as they might have thought. “I have never left Israel so regretfully in my life,” says Bennett. “I felt much better being in Israel when it was in distress than not being there. The first thing I did when I got home was turn on the news to see what was going on in my beloved Israel.”
And as for Bronstein, who may become Israeli herself one day, leaving was excruciating.
“It felt like I was being torn apart,” she says, unable to hold back her tears. “You want to be there on the front lines with the people. We come back here to our comfort and our lives. Things here are so easy. But it’s hard for me. Here all I can do is raise money. There I could be with the people.”