Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

I Want To Go Home

It's two o'clock in the morning. I can't sleep. I am on vacation in the United States. I keep going to the computer in my friend's house and going online to read the news. Rockets are hitting Tsfat, Haifa, Carmiel. I stare at the little map where just last week I was plotting our August vacation in the North. All these places that I was so excited to take my family are now under attack. The hotels are closed, and the guests are in bomb shelters. My country is at war.

I look at the above line and try to understand what it means. Israel has never really been at peace. Since my arrival, I have had to learn to shoot an M-16 for shmirah. Soldiers are commonplace, and I know that there are certain places where I need to be careful because of terror. It has been quite common to read the weekly announcements of the elected Palestinian leadership vowing the destruction of my country. No, we have never really been at peace.

Yet this is different. This is not just terror, this is war. During my life, the United States fought two large wars with Iraq, nabbed a drug dealer in Panama, and invaded a nice Caribbean Island. These were wars and in each one, brave American soldiers lost their lives. Yet these conflicts all took place far from the shores of my country. These were not wars that were started because the U.S. was under attack. I never felt as if I was personally in danger. Now, my nation, my home, is engaged in a two front war, neither front more than a few hours drive from my house. I am still trying to figure out how I feel about this, how I am supposed to feel. I am confused, but I know one thing, I want to go home.

Am I crazy? I just spent two weeks in California where the weather is warm, the people are polite, and oh yeah, no one is shooting Katyusha Rockets at you. Why on Earth would I want to leave this vacation and hurry back to a nation at war? It is simply not a rational feeling. Yet I know that I should be back and am counting down the days until our return.

I am not kidding myself that there is some way I can contribute to Israel's defense. But if you go away on a business trip and find out that a mob has attacked your house, you hurry home even if the police are already on the scene. You just need to be there.

By the time this is published, I hope I will be home. Even more, I hope that the war will be over and that we will have taught both our enemies and ourselves an important lesson. I pray that the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces will have rescued those who were taken captive, and that the only terrorists released will be dead ones.

I pray that those wonderful places in the North will once again be known as places of vacations. Of swimming, and hiking, and sipping red wine. I pray that the children of Kiryat Shmona and the children of Sderot (and everywhere else) will be spending their time eating watermelon in the park, not in underground bomb shelters.

Of course I am optimistic. How can you not be? The hundreds of new Olim pouring out of the Nefesh b'Nefesh planes this Summer will have a much more powerful and permanent effect on my country than these rockets.

I am keeping my map on hand and continuing to plan for the day when we will take that trip to the North. "When" — not — "if."

Shabbat Shalom from our blessed nation

© 2006 Yarden Frankl