Rabbi Shraga Gross, principal at Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison, presents Esther Bar-Eli and her 12-year-old daughter, Avital, who are visiting from Sderot, Israel, with a Passover Haggada signed by students at the school. Photo by Debra Rubin
Sidebars
April 03, 2008
For Esther Bar-Eli and her family, running to a safe room and crouching under school desks have become so much a part of everyday life in Sderot that they don’t give them much thought.
However, when Bar-Eli and her 12-year-old daughter, Avital, came to Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison March 27 to describe that life to students, she was overcome with emotion.
“You know, it is my life, but now that I am standing here, to talk about it seems so strange that it has to be like this,” she said, as students and teachers rushed to bring her tissues to dab her tears.
Bar-Eli had to halt several times to compose herself as she described life under “color red,” the daily warnings that signal incoming Kassam missiles launched by Palestinians from Gaza.
“There are periods where nothing falls, but even in silent periods there is always tension,” she said. “You don’t know when it will happen so you are always in tension. When this red code goes off, every child and baby knows they have 15 seconds to get to a safe room.”
Bar-Eli, who has seven children, said her own two-and-a-half-year-old daughter already knows how to get herself to a safe room. Her one-year-old son, although too young to talk, raises his arms to be carried to safety when he hears the warning.
Bar-Eli, who spoke that same evening to students and staff at Rutgers Hillel in New Brunswick, said while newer homes are built with shelters, people living in older homes have to make do.
“They go to the most internal room they have,” she explained. “It could be a bathroom. I know families where the abba and ima and three children are in the bathroom in the middle of the night.”
Singing ‘Color Red’
Just a few weeks ago, said Bar-Eli, she heard a loud explosion in the middle of the night and went out on her porch to see what was happening.
“I hear more boom, boom, boom,” she said. “I see a very large fire. I am a social worker so my heart tells me to go help, so I dressed and I go. A half-hour later, the firemen go, and I saw three cars totally burned and black and smoking. Baruch Hashem [Thank God], it was a great miracle no one was hurt.”
For schoolchildren, the situation is no better.
“When kids hear the red beeper go ‘beep, beep, beep’ they run to the classroom shelter,” said Bar-Eli. “All lessons stop. Some, they get afraid and cry and after a few seconds they come back to learn. It is very confusing. Seven or nine times a day this can happen. It’s very hard to learn in this situation. Some do not come to school,” and children find it difficult to go outside to play.
However, members of the western Negev community, she said, survive by supporting each other in times of crisis.
“Even children know they must be responsible for each other. They know who is more sensitive, who needs support. They do this naturally. No one asks them to do. If Avital sees friends crying, no one has to ask her to help.”
Rabbi Shraga Gross, RPRY’s principal, spoke of the near-misses Sderot residents consider miraculous, but also told students of two young Ethiopian children killed while playing in their yard.
He also said young students sing a song called “Color Red” as they run to take cover.
“When I heard this song, I could not believe this was a song people should have to sing,” said Gross. “It tells them what to do, what to feel when the siren goes off. Can you imagine, boys and girls? I ask you to think back a few years to what you were singing in kindergarten.”
Gross also gave the Bar-Elis items to take with them from the student body, including a Passover Haggada signed by every female student in the fifth through eighth grades.
“Just as God released our people in Egypt so too may he redeem our people in Sderot,” he said.
A dream vacation
ESTHER AND AVITAL Bar-Eli’s visit to Middlesex was made possible by Joshua and Leslie Ostrin of Highland Park, one of three couples honored March 23 at the 119th anniversary dinner of Congregation Ahavas Achim.
“We sort of felt we weren’t so deserving of an honor so we wanted to do something to honor someone who was more deserving,” said Leslie Ostrin. “Sderot was in the corner of our minds because we had just been to Israel because Josh’s brother lives there, and he and his family spoke about it quite a bit. So we said, Why not bring a family over here to give them a break?”
With the help of Rabbi Steven Miodownik, religious leader of the Highland Park synagogue, they found the Bar-Elis, who had moved to Sderot six years earlier.
Miodownik said because the congregation wanted the Israelis to attend the dinner, he contacted the Israeli consulate to expedite the six-month visa wait.
The Ostrins not only paid for the Bar-Elis’ trip, but hosted them in their home until April 1.
During that week, the couple made sure their Israeli guests were treated to a dream vacation. They took them on a Circle Line cruise around Manhattan and purchased tickets to The Lion King on Broadway. Another congregant, who works for Disney, arranged for a backstage tour conducted by a cast member.
Other Ahavas Achim members donated money for a shopping spree while a congregant employed by Macy’s arranged to have a personal shopper take the mother and daughter around the Herald Square store.
Esther Bar-Eli “was very uncomfortable; she didn’t want to take the money,”
recalled Leslie Ostrin. “But she was so excited. Here she was someone who had never even been on a plane being taken around New York City like this. Avital will have her bat mitzva after Pesach, so they got some things for her bat mitzva.”
Mitzvah project
TWO EAST BRUNSWICK girls from the Young Israel of East Brunswick raised more than $7,000 as their bat mitzva project, which was hand-delivered to Sderot.
At Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva are, from left, Adina Grayman and Melanie Chustckie, who raised more than $7,000 for terror victims in Sderot as their bat mitzva project, and Sderot residents Esther Bar-Eli and her daughter, Avital, who spoke March 27 at the Edison school. Photo by Debra Rubin
“We asked our friends and family and raised money through our shul,” said Melanie Chustckie, who will become a bat mitzva in May. “We did it because it’s really scary for them to live with rockets every single day.”
Adina Grayman, who became a bat mitzva in November, said the girls sent letters to congregation members asking for support for people who have had their lives disrupted by the Kassam missiles from Gaza for years.
“It really made me feel good to help these people,” said Adina.
She and her parents, Scott and Ariela, and Melanie and her parents, Deborah and Jeffrey, and their families traveled to Israel more than two months ago to present the check.
The girls had heard about the plight of people living around Sderot through their school, Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison, where students have said daily tehillim (psalms) for the safety of the area’s residents for years, according to principal Shraga Gross.
- Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com