A group of 15 Bay Area-based Russian Jewish college students had a near miss in Tiberias while on a Birthright Israel trip.
The group was in Tiberias on July 15 and was having lunch when Israeli hotel guests started screaming.
“We couldn’t understand what they were saying, so it was very chaotic,” said Dima Mostovoy, a 21-year-old recent U.C. Berkeley graduate who lives in San Francisco. “Our guide didn’t really tell us anything at first, but it became pretty obvious what was happening.”
Several rockets landed in Tiberias that day.
The group was shepherded into the bottom floor of a synagogue, where they were instructed not to get near the windows. They sat for an hour and a half and ate lunch, and emerged only when the guide got word that it was safe.
“There was a rocket that hit about a mile from our hotel, and then later one hit about 300 feet away,” said Veronica Kupfer, an 18-year-old from Hillsborough who will be a freshman at University of San Francisco in the fall. While she was in the shelter, Kupfer said, she felt “complete shock and fear.”
Even though she had been calling her parents daily, her cell phone didn’t work in the shelter.
But although she was scared, she said, “they treated us like adults and told us what was going on. They made us feel safe, even though we were in a foreign country where we knew no one.”
As soon as it was deemed safe, they left for Jerusalem. Their trip was supposed to take them to the north, but those plans were scrapped at the last minute as well.
“We were busy the entire time,” said Mostovoy. “It’s not like there was nothing to do. It would have been cool to get up north, but we still got to see a lot.”
They were part of a larger Birthright Israel group of 40, with other American Jews from throughout California.
Rabbi Shimon Margolin, spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Russian Jewish Community, recruited the group and was to travel with them, but personal circumstances prevented him from going. The trip was also organized by the Mayanot Institute for Jewish Studies.
Meanwhile, even though the war had started two days before they were to leave, not one of the 15 dropped out.
Kupfer recalled that in the period leading up to the trip, she was counting the days. Then the war started, and her parents didn’t want her to go.
“I felt that if I don’t go now, God knows when I’ll be able to?” she said. “My parents were very worried. But I knew this trip would be an opportunity to learn and grow as a person. This was not like ‘no, you can’t go to Cancun on spring break.’ It’s much harder to say no to a person who wants the knowledge to mature, so they respected that.”
Another incident that deeply affected the group was when a soldier who was accompanying them got word that his best friend had been killed in combat.
Despite the sadness, Kupfer said the experience completely changed her.
“I found where my homeland is,” she said. Not only does she intend to go back as soon as she can, but she hopes she can buy a second home there someday.
“I feel it’s my home and I’m a part of it,” she said. “I never had to be there before to feel that I was at home.”