MISERY LOVES NO COMPANY

By Barbara Sofer

On the first anniversary of the terrorism called "the second intifada" for want of a better term, I reported a suspicious person in Kennedy Airport in New York City.
A speaking engagement drew me for a brief visit to the United States, my first flight after the disaster of September 11. Our own Ben Gurion Airport was a buzz of activity; the planes leaving Israel after the Yom Kippur fast were overbooked and El Al was offering handsome bonuses for anyone willing to postpone travel. Kennedy Airport was noticeably more somber. We were the only international travelers at the international terminal; a 747- full of boisterous Israelis ready to travel despite the threats. I got teary, and might have patted the hand of the woman stamping my passport, reassuring her that life could go on despite Islamic terrorism. Misery loves company, goes the saying. Just the opposite was my reaction: how sad that Americans have to build up the onion skin layers of skepticism, defensiveness and resilience that had allowed us to carry on.
At the United Airlines building, a modest line of passengers half-filled the maze before the ticket counter. The man ahead of me was making jerking, nervous body motions. He carried a yellow backpack on his left shoulder and something that looked like a telescope case (!) over his right shoulder. His long dark hair looked like a wig. The person in front of him, in a friendly American way, asked him where he was heading to. The odd passenger couldn't answer; his English was non-existent. In Israel he would have "profiled" and asked to step aside for a chat. In New York, we kept moving closer to the head of the line. Just as his turn was about to come, the man bolted from the line, knocking over the metal posts, racing down the stairs. The person supervising the passenger flow in the line hadn't noticed. I wound up having to make the security report. By the time the police arrived, the suspicious passenger was long gone. Fortunately, he wasn't aboard my flight, an early morning non-stop to San Francisco, with few passengers and lots of jet fuel. Why weren't the other passengers suspicious? Becoming hyper-alert may be a process that can't be learned overnight; you have to develop the unhappy instincts of nosiness and mistrust. Long gone are the days when we Jerusalemites daydreamed along zigzagging alleyways of Jerusalem. Now we're always alert. In a city where so many people wear costume-like clothing, we're busy checking to make sure faces match clothing, language, gestures. Way before the recent murderous attack in Afula last week, I found myself searching faces for imposters among soldiers laden with heavy backpacks. What an awful way to live.
My hosts in California were from the Central Pacific Region of Hadassah, young women who had been well-represented at the Hadassah Convention this August in Jerusalem. Because of State Department policy, each of them had bravely signed an insurance waiver to visit the dangerous country of Israel. They were all downtown when a terrorist with a guitar case entered Sbarro pizza parlor. Landing in San Francisco where the Golden Gate had been closed to pedestrians, where every tall city building bore an American flag, it was only fair that I return some of the optimism they'd expressed by coming to Jerusalem.
Most people you talk to in America believe that the Israelis with their valiant passengers and superhero sky marshals, (a new term!) would have overpowered the flying terrorists is a widely-held belief. I realized that we've been successful in realizing that old Zionist desire to produce a brave, prickly, feisty new Jew admired for heroism. But those sabra fruit spines were supposed to be external only; they weren't supposed to penetrate to our souls.
The nuts and bolts of how we live with the chronic, wearing fear and the tension was the subject most people wanted to know. I explained how I'm checked three times before entering the supermarket: once going into the parking lot, once going into the building and again on actually getting inside-opening my purse on automatic pilot. One listener was surprised that Arabs and Jews both shop and still work in my supermarket. Either we've done an insufficient job in publicizing how free and integrated our society is despite the chronic threat, or no one was interested before in the details. An American cousin who had expressed little curiosity about gas masks during the Gulf War was suddenly very much interested in their efficacy.
I keep thinking of an old Jerusalem story, told in the name of the late Rabbi Shalom Shvardon, and recently confirmed by a relative who was there. A little boy fell and was badly cut on the fence while playing near the Shaare Hesed home of the esteemed Jerusalem Rabbi. Rabbanit Shvardon covered the boy with a wet towel and asked her husband to carry him to a neighborhood physician. An elderly woman saw Rabbi Shvardon carrying the child and offered moral support: "Don't worry, Rabbi. God will help. Little did the matron know that the child was her own grandson. When she discovered who had been injured, she began wailing, "My Meir, My Meir." When another person's child is injured, we can offer hopeful consolation. But when our own child is involved, we scream to heaven. The world is filled with fear and confusion. That there is now a chorus of screams from a multitude of nations is no consolation.