Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

Standing in a Golden Cage

Last week, I decided to go to a rally for the Jews of Gush Katif. As soon as I got to the rally, a women speaking in rapid Hebrew handed me a sign and thrust me into a metal cage covered in gold tinsel. As I was trying to figure out what the sign said (and why I was standing in a cage), a bunch of reporters ran up and started asking me questions (also in Hebrew, of course). Once I understood what the signs and cage represented, I tried to explain to the reporters why I was there. While they were not really interested in what I had to say, here is what I tried to tell them.

I made Aliyah to Israel because I am a Zionist, someone who loves both the land and the State of Israel. I felt spiritually inspired when I set foot in Eretz Yisrael, but it was the Teudat Zehut, the document proving that I am a citizen of Israel, that made me most proud when I arrived.

Yet how do I temper my great love for this Jewish nation, when I read that the government, my new government, refuses to pay compensation to citizens who were forcibly evicted from their homes? How am I to understand that the leaders of this nation which I have longed to join are ignoring their own law requiring my fellow citizens to be paid for their destroyed homes?

I have come to accept that everything in Israel is a political debate. The old expression two Jews, three opinions is probably more true here than anywhere else in the world (2 Jews, 100 opinions?). But helping people who have lost their homes is not a political question, it is a moral imperative. In the United States, the director of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina was fired within three days for not helping displaced people quickly enough.

Yet here in the nation I love, people have been waiting for months for help. Hotels are great to visit for a week, but they are not appropriate places to live with one's family. They become "golden cages" when there is no where else to go. Donated clothing is a beautiful gesture and sorely needed, but these people do not want to live as refugees. They want to rebuild their lives.

I spoke with one women who moved to Gush Katif 30 years ago and spent her life building a home and a community. She had moved to Gush Katif because that is where the government said they needed people to live. She is surprisingly not bitter, and is even interested in moving to the Negev where the government now says they need people. But as her home and community sit in piles of rubble, she still awaits the funds the government promised her when they told her she needed to leave.

I do not know if a rally will encourage the leaders of our nation to do what they must know is right, but maybe it will have some impact. Even if our own government is the cause of the suffering, we must not stand by and ignore the plight of our brothers. And even if I am just an Ole Chadash in Ulpan Aleph, maybe the least I can do is spend some time standing in a golden cage.

Shabbat Shalom from our blessed nation.

© 2005, 2006 Yarden Frankl