LOOKING AROUND :Growing up Israeli

By Barbara Sofer
Mar. 27, 2003

Toward the end of the first Gulf War our daughter Hanni turned seven. We had to limit the guests at her birthday party to the number that could fit in our sealed room. Each little girl in hair bows and party dress came bearing two boxes: one her brightly-decorated gift, the other her elementary school-sized gas mask.

The first-graders played games and sang, passed around a surprise ball, and ate chocolate birthday cake with pink flowers. Those small Israelis, who had only recently mastered reading, were learning the most fundamental Israeli lessons of growing up: You have to go on with the living and the celebrations, despite the threats and terror and wars.

I thought of that birthday party on that Thursday in February when rumors, which turned out to be false, were particularly rife that the new Gulf war would begin on that Shabbat. Hanni, now 19, and I met in the evening on Tel Aviv's Rehov Dizengoff.

Of particular interest to us was the new Castro megastore, a three-story clothing emporium which had opened despite the recession. This is one of those young peoples' venues with loud music and bright lights. The Castro version added the enticing scents of shampoo, peach soap and brewing coffee in a cafe called Fidel.

The customers were nearly all teens and young adults, trying on clothes and having haircuts. The equally young salespeople were wearing the clothing store's signature black and red colors. Lines formed outside the changing rooms.

Amid the music and bustle, I suddenly felt a rush of pride.

THESE YOUNG people have been the main targets of the terrorism of the past two-and-a-half years. Two evenings before, the IDF chief of staff had predicted a war within two weeks.

Yet there we were, in Tel Aviv, the most likely target if Israel was hit. Experts were also predicting increased action in the north. Blink, and nearly everyone in the funky store would be wearing green or khaki, not faux military fashions, but IDF originals - if there was a call-up. Was there a kid in the store who did not personally know someone injured in the military or a terror attack? Yet despite the dangers, here they were, out on the street, examining the newest versions of prewashed denim, trying more than buying, and singing along with the music.
Not a kova tembel - the old-fashioned Israeli farmer's cap - in sight, yet the young Israelis remain the same spunky crew that has come through crises before.

So, too, we ask them to take the latest state of preparedness in their prodigious stride. We shrug off the "unlikely" threat of nerve gas and smallpox.

One remarkable TV commercial shows two Saddam-like figures with a missile on a donkey traveling in the desert. A commercial! Imagine any other country reacting to nonconventional warfare threats with such equanimity.

True, the minister of defense says the chance of attack is small. No big deal. Yet the threat is not quite so trivial that we can put away our gas masks. Despite the opposition leaders' recent complaint that the Israeli army has wasted our tax money, our General Staff must have thought the threat serious enough to send us scrambling into the top closet for those black plastic accessories of Israeli life.

They can't relish sending out all those notices and refurbishing all those filters.

Hanni, now doing national service, spent an evening screwing together filters and fitting gas masks for the homeless kids she works with in a children's home in Tel Aviv. She phoned late at night, partly out of nostalgia, partly for practical advice.

How exactly did she and her siblings keep busy when we went into the sealed room? At 19, she's part of the adult staff, sleeping over at the home to help the children in the shelter if Tel Aviv is hit.

Every little girl at her party, like most of the kids who were in first grade during the first Gulf War, is now volunteering for the national good, either in the military or taking care of the country's most needy children, sick and elderly. That, too, is part of what growing up Israeli means.

For all our hopes, we have failed to provide a safe haven in the Jewish state, a place where external threats are no longer relevant. Yet neither the threat from outside nor the considerable troubles at home seem to have made cynics of them.

Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, who recently visited Jerusalem's recovering terror survivors, sometimes tells a story from her own household. Once, while lighting candles, she asked her three-year-old son to pray for a sick woman, the mother of a friend of his. The little boy's eyes welled up with tears at the sad story. A houseguest asked whether a small child should be burdened with such weighty contemplation.

"All children cry," said Jungreis. "Some cry for candy and say 'Give me more,' while others learn to cry because they feel the pain of those in need."

Israeli kids have not become numb to the pain of others. Just the opposite. Theirs is a unique living experience. No matter where they travel and how easily they fit into a global village, their Israeliness will always be an essential part of them.

Do not mistake their resilience for apathy, their devotion to electronics for frivolity, their interest in chic superstores for giddiness. Growing up Israeli remains a bittersweet challenge.
Yet nothing bolsters my confidence in the future more than an evening spent in the company of our youth.

May the events of today provide them with a safer tomorrow