life is precious July 04, 2008 |
In a house not five minutes walk from ours, there is a family that instead of enjoying a shabbat meal together this evening, is instead in mourning. They are sitting shivah, the traditional Jewish seven day mourning period. The are mourning the loss of Bat Sheva Unterman, a 33 year old woman whose young life was brutally cut short when a maniac drove a bulldozer through her car three days ago.
In the seconds before her death, she committed the ultimate act of a desperate woman who knew she was going to die. She grabbed her five month old baby and threw her out the car window in order to save her life.
Little Efrat Unterman will never know her mother. Instead she must grow up with the knowledge that her life was saved and her mother's was not. How does a child deal with that knowledge, that burden?
On Wednesday afternoon, at the exact time of the terrorist attack, I was in the city centre, only a kilometre or so away from the site of this tragedy. I was having a coffee with a friend in a cafe. Moments earlier, I had met my husband in the busy pedestrian mall of Ben Yehuda St while he was on his lunch break. We hugged each other good bye and went our separate ways.
Not five minutes into our coffee, my friend's son rang her to say that there had been a "pigua" in the centre of town. "Pigua" means terrorist attack in Hebrew.
"Where?" she said.
"Somewhere near the shuk" he replied.
"Apparently some bulldozer driver suddenly started driving into people. Three people are dead and there are more than thirty others injured."
How could there have been a terrorist attack? Here we were sipping coffee in the centre of town and everything and everybody seemed totally normal. There must have been some mistake. Perhaps the driver lost control of the vehicle?
Then my phone rang. It was Doron, my husband. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Yes, I am absolutely fine. I am having coffee in Hillel St. I am okay."
He confirmed the same story that my friend's son had recounted. Within ten minutes my friend and I were both receiving phone calls and text messages from concerned family members and friends. I even got a text message from a friend in the United States. Bad news certainly travels fast.
As I walked home, I got a call from my mother. I knew it was only a matter of time until she rang me. I was going home as quickly as I could so that I could call her and reassure her that we were okay.
It suddenly dawned on me that this was the first time other people were calling me to see if I was okay. What a flipped out, crazy inversion!
It wasn't until that evening when we were both home that I was able to understand the full extent of the afternoon's tragic events. The news in Israel does not shy away from hard hitting and often distressing images. It's part and parcel of life here. As we watched the evening news, we saw the whole horrific episode unfold. We observed the absolute blind panic in the street as this lunatic rammed into a city bus literally toppling it onto its side. We saw the car that Bat Sheva had been driving, now crushed like a tin can. And then we saw the man himself. The cameras caught the terrorist driving along Jaffa St, ready to kill more innocent people. Suddenly three men jumped onto the bulldozer and seconds later we saw one of them fire a round of bullets killing the terrorist instantly. The next shot the camera captured was the dead man, slumped over the seat, blood pouring out of the cabin.
I don't think I have ever seen real life footage of a person being killed before. And being the news, it was replayed again and again and again. Eventually we just turned off the TV. Enough was enough.
The next morning after breakfast I went to check my email. A friend of mine had posted something on Facebook and I went to read what she had written. The note was titled "Baruch Dayan HaEmet" which means "Blessed is the true judge (God)". It is the custom of Orthodox Jews to say these words upon hearing of a death. The death my friend was referring to was the wife of her cousin. It was Bat Sheva.
I have often heard Israelis say that death and tragedy has struck almost every home in this country at some point. If you have been fortunate enough not to have someone in your immediate family who died -- in the army, or in a terrorist attack, you always know someone who did. That wasn't true for me. Until now. Does this make me a "real" Israeli now? Now that I have a direct connection to a grieving family?
This shabbat I found it virtually impossible to feel joy at my dinner table. I lit my shabbat candles and mechanically uttered the accompanying prayer. I sang with an empty voice and ate my dinner in virtual silence.
I did not know Bat Sheva and I know my connection to her is tenuous at best - but that does not make me feel any less sad that she is no longer in this world with us. I think of her baby, who thankfully is just an infant and it will be many years until she understands what happened to her mother.
Life is precious. It seems that life here is even more so.
Shabbat Shalom.
In the seconds before her death, she committed the ultimate act of a desperate woman who knew she was going to die. She grabbed her five month old baby and threw her out the car window in order to save her life.
Little Efrat Unterman will never know her mother. Instead she must grow up with the knowledge that her life was saved and her mother's was not. How does a child deal with that knowledge, that burden?
On Wednesday afternoon, at the exact time of the terrorist attack, I was in the city centre, only a kilometre or so away from the site of this tragedy. I was having a coffee with a friend in a cafe. Moments earlier, I had met my husband in the busy pedestrian mall of Ben Yehuda St while he was on his lunch break. We hugged each other good bye and went our separate ways.
Not five minutes into our coffee, my friend's son rang her to say that there had been a "pigua" in the centre of town. "Pigua" means terrorist attack in Hebrew.
"Where?" she said.
"Somewhere near the shuk" he replied.
"Apparently some bulldozer driver suddenly started driving into people. Three people are dead and there are more than thirty others injured."
How could there have been a terrorist attack? Here we were sipping coffee in the centre of town and everything and everybody seemed totally normal. There must have been some mistake. Perhaps the driver lost control of the vehicle?
Then my phone rang. It was Doron, my husband. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Yes, I am absolutely fine. I am having coffee in Hillel St. I am okay."
He confirmed the same story that my friend's son had recounted. Within ten minutes my friend and I were both receiving phone calls and text messages from concerned family members and friends. I even got a text message from a friend in the United States. Bad news certainly travels fast.
As I walked home, I got a call from my mother. I knew it was only a matter of time until she rang me. I was going home as quickly as I could so that I could call her and reassure her that we were okay.
It suddenly dawned on me that this was the first time other people were calling me to see if I was okay. What a flipped out, crazy inversion!
It wasn't until that evening when we were both home that I was able to understand the full extent of the afternoon's tragic events. The news in Israel does not shy away from hard hitting and often distressing images. It's part and parcel of life here. As we watched the evening news, we saw the whole horrific episode unfold. We observed the absolute blind panic in the street as this lunatic rammed into a city bus literally toppling it onto its side. We saw the car that Bat Sheva had been driving, now crushed like a tin can. And then we saw the man himself. The cameras caught the terrorist driving along Jaffa St, ready to kill more innocent people. Suddenly three men jumped onto the bulldozer and seconds later we saw one of them fire a round of bullets killing the terrorist instantly. The next shot the camera captured was the dead man, slumped over the seat, blood pouring out of the cabin.
I don't think I have ever seen real life footage of a person being killed before. And being the news, it was replayed again and again and again. Eventually we just turned off the TV. Enough was enough.
The next morning after breakfast I went to check my email. A friend of mine had posted something on Facebook and I went to read what she had written. The note was titled "Baruch Dayan HaEmet" which means "Blessed is the true judge (God)". It is the custom of Orthodox Jews to say these words upon hearing of a death. The death my friend was referring to was the wife of her cousin. It was Bat Sheva.
I have often heard Israelis say that death and tragedy has struck almost every home in this country at some point. If you have been fortunate enough not to have someone in your immediate family who died -- in the army, or in a terrorist attack, you always know someone who did. That wasn't true for me. Until now. Does this make me a "real" Israeli now? Now that I have a direct connection to a grieving family?
This shabbat I found it virtually impossible to feel joy at my dinner table. I lit my shabbat candles and mechanically uttered the accompanying prayer. I sang with an empty voice and ate my dinner in virtual silence.
I did not know Bat Sheva and I know my connection to her is tenuous at best - but that does not make me feel any less sad that she is no longer in this world with us. I think of her baby, who thankfully is just an infant and it will be many years until she understands what happened to her mother.
Life is precious. It seems that life here is even more so.
Shabbat Shalom.