Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 58, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 31, 2011 Page: 7 of 40
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Page A7
Jewish Herald-Voice
March 31, 2011
New violence suggests end of lull
between Israel and militant Palestinians
JHV: MICHAEL C. DUKE
Young adults on the Houston Federation’s Israel mission learned about the Jewish
state’s geography, topography and security situation while traversing the Israel-
Syria border in all-terrain vehicles on March 3.
Connections From Page A6
pulpit rabbis float between buses to
spend time with all their congregants
during the mission.
“At that moment, I reflected on
my life as I was in Jerusalem before.
Back then, I wasn’t married, I wasn’t
a rabbi yet, I was a student, I was
learning. Now, I stood there as a wife,
as a mother, as a congregational rabbi,
having lost a parent. I was seeing the
city as this kind of bookend. It was
a very emotional moment about the
passage of time of my life through those
years - and I really wasn’t expecting
that,” she said.
Of all the things she did in
Jerusalem during the mission, Rabbi
Silk said she found the most meaning
in her Shabbat experiences.
“Worshiping on Shabbat morning at
the college was phenomenal,” she said.
Rabbis on the mission representing
Judaism’s three major movements -
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform
- each led groups to corresponding
Shabbat services on the morning of
March 5.
On Friday afternoon, March 4,
Rabbi Silk and Rabbi Ranon Teller, of
Congregation Brith Shalom, led the
mission participants in a Shabbat-
welcome song at the Promenade
overlooking the Old City. Rabbi Silk
said that experience was a highlight,
along with leading a kabbalat Shabbat
service on the women’s side of the Kotel
early that evening. UOS’s Rabbi Barry
Gelman led a service on the men’s side,
close to the mechitza (partition).
“I was kind of ambivalent
about trying to pray at the Wall as
a community, because obviously we
couldn’t truly do that in an egalitarian
way,” Rabbi Silk said. “But, with Rabbi
Gelman leading on the other side of
the mechitza, it ended up being a
wonderful experience, too.”
A trip to Israel isn’t a trip to Israel
without a visit to Jerusalem, according
to Rabbi Silk.
“There’s an intangible essence about
Jerusalem because of the religious
aspects of the city that make it so
much different than other places in the
country,” she said.
“It’s all Israel and it’s all important,
but there is a difference. For instance,
there are places up in the north where
there’s a feeling about the land itself,
the borders and defending those
borders. But in Jerusalem, there’s a
really palpable religious aspect, the
Jewish aspect, that is much stronger,
for me.
“Jerusalem, for so many people, is
the spiritual center of the world and the
religious center of the world,” she said.
Israel’s capital city provides a
unique connection to Israel, the rabbi
explained in metaphorical terms.
“Think of Israel, the land, as an
artist’s pallet. Jerusalem, just like every
other place in Israel, has its own unique
hue on that pallet. Without Jerusalem,
whatever color you want to assign it,
Tour through disputed
land offers insight
By MICHAEL C. DUKE
Like Masada and the Dead
Sea, some participants on the
Jewish Federation of Greater
Houston’s 2011 Israel mission
took a specialty tract to the West
Bank/Judea-Samaria to learn
about the settlements and the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Mason Gup was a young
adult mission-goer who chose
the settlement tract and came
away from the experience with
a better understanding of Israel
through the issue of land and
land dispute. Like three-quarters
of the mission participants, this
was Gup’s first trip to the Jewish
homeland.
“I thought that it was
enlightening to actually see the
land and talk to some of the
people whose fate seems to be
discussed in the news every day,”
he said.
The group toured the Israeli
settlement of Ofra during the
visit. Gup said he was surprised
to find that life appeared
relatively normal in an area that
often is portrayed in the media as
a site of heated and often violent
conflict.
“The streets and houses
looked just like any American
suburb and the kids all ran
around playing and singing. Aside
from a few extra fences, you’d
hardly guess that some people
might think of the area as a war
zone. The people there have really
created a wonderful home for
themselves out of nothing, with
all of the odds against them,” Gup
observed.
The settlement visit offered
insight to the complexity of
Israel’s land situation and to the
difficulties in reaching a peace
agreement with the Palestinians,
Gup said.
“It puts names and faces to the
settlers whose wants and needs
are so often ignored. It makes
you think twice when people say
casually that we’ll just move them
all out of there and give the land
to Jordan or some Palestinian
state or whatever the latest plan
is,” he said. □
without it on the pallet, Israel would be
incomplete - and a visit to Israel would
be incomplete without it,” Rabbi Silk
said.
“There’s a central essence to
Jerusalem that without it, it’s as if you
haven’t gone to Israel,” she said.
Next week: Culture □
JERUSALEM (JTA) - Violence
between Israel and militant
Palestinians rose sharply on March 23
with a bombing in central Jerusalem
and a dramatic increase in rocket
attacks on southern Israel.
In a terrorist attack, a bomb
planted near a telephone pole
exploded near Jerusalem’s
International Convention Center,
Binyanei Ha’uma, killing a 59-year-old
woman and injuring more than two
dozen people.
Earlier, rocket attacks from Gaza
struck the Israeli cities of Beersheba
and Ashdod, injuring one man.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces struck
targets in the Gaza Strip, including
what the Israeli Air Force described
as the rocket launcher from which
a Grad rocket was fired at Ashdod.
In one of the Israeli air raids, four
members of Islamic Jihad traveling
in a car were killed. In another, four
Palestinian civilians were killed in
an area from which mortar shells had
just been fired.
The killing of civilians prompted a
statement of regret from Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who
also said that “It is regrettable that
Hamas continues to intentionally rain
down dozens of rockets on Israeli
civilians, even as it uses civilians as
human shields.”
The sudden escalation in attacks,
coming with Israel still reeling from
the March 11 attack in the Jewish West
Bank settlement of Itamar in which
five family members were stabbed to
death, raises fresh questions about
the sustainability of the calm that has
prevailed between Israel and militant
Palestinians since the end of the Gaza
war in January 2009.
Since the cease-fire that ended
that war, known in Israel as Operation
Cast Lead, rocket fire on southern
Israel has been sporadic and mostly
carried out by groups other than
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
But the mortar and rocket attacks in
recent weeks, which have included
the use of more sophisticated, longer-
range missiles known as Grads, have
been the work of Hamas - a sign
that the shaky cease-fire between the
Palestinian terrorist group and Israel
may be falling apart.
“I see the escalation is already
here in a number of fronts - in the
south and also in Jerusalem,” Interior
Minister Eli Yishai said at the scene of
Wednesday’s explosion in Jerusalem,
according to The Jerusalem Post.
In the south, Deputy Prime
Minister Silvan Shalom threatened a
new operation in the Gaza Strip.
“The period of restraint is over;
we must do everything we can to
strike out against those who wish
to hurt the innocent,” Shalom said
on a visit to the site in Beersheba,
struck Wednesday by two long-range
Grad rockets. “I hope it won’t come
to another Operation Cast Lead, but
if there is no other choice we will
launch another operation.” □
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Samuels, Jeanne F. Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 58, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 31, 2011, newspaper, March 31, 2011; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth544283/m1/7/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .