From Tekoa, Sara Rivka Ernstoff:

Dear Grandpa,

Hi. How are you? I'm distraught, for want of a better word. This morning I was in the park when Danny Brochin asked me if I had heard about the terrorist attack earlier in the morning. A bomb hit a bus carrying many children in Gaza. Two people were killed, about ten injured, amongst them children.

I began to cry. When will it all end? Later, in the store, I heard the news on the radio and burst into tears again. Ariella demanded I stop crying. The children hate it when I cry. Moshe picked Kobi up at the zoo tonight. I had asked him to come home early because I have a class at 6:00 and wanted Kobi to be in it - and wanted him to take care of the baby since Martha is sick. They approached the driveway leading up to Tekoa just after six and saw a school bus - which happened to be driven by Tzuria's brother-in-law Golan - stopped. The bus was about to turn into Tekoa when it was hit with gunfire. If Moshe had arrived moments earlier he may have been hit, too.

Once home, Kobi jumped out of the car and joined my class as we took off to jog around Tekoa. Suddenly the sky over Herodean lit up with the biggest, slowest flare I've ever seen. Machine gun fire rang out over the expanse between here and the Herodean area. Then several loud booms. More machine gun fire. Only then did Kobi tell me about the bus shooting, and I realized that the army was probably going after the attackers. I hope they find them.

Just last week I decided I couldn't live in fear anymore. On Thursday I took the baby, left the kids to fend for themselves (I did leave money for pizza, of course) and took the 5:15 bus into Jerusalem.

The driver was a guy named Michael, a scrappy, clean-cut 22-year-old who came here from Russia about ten years ago. I asked him if he was ever scared. "I never was before the other night," he said. He had been driving the route to Kiryat Arba, which is right near Chevron, and the Arabs put burning tires in the road - to slow the bus down - then shot and hit his bus. "I was scared," he admitted. "I just kept going. Look at the window..." Sure enough, the window was cracked and you could see where the bullet penetrated.

My first stop in Jerusalem was my favorite frozen yogurt place on Ben Yehuda. Kentucky Fried Chicken, just across the way, was almost empty. Usually on a Thursday night it's swarming with yeshiva bochorim. I ordered a cappachino frozen yogurt and asked the proprietor how was business. "Lousy," he replied. I ate my yogurt inside and watched the television news with him. The big story of the day was Gilo; the talk was of a government offer to buy bullet-proof windows for the residents facing Beit Jalla. Sort of like offering to put band-aids on someone who's still being beaten up. Getting rid of the bully would make a lot more sense.

I then went over to Shaul's Shwarma for a falafel. You may wonder why I had desert first. Just in case I wanted to have fleishig, that's why. As I was ordering my falafal in the near empty restaurant, in walks an American named Al from West Hempstead. He was there with his grandchildren who live in Talpiot, a very nice neighborhood of Jerusalem. "Davka now you came to visit?" I asked him. "Aren't you scared?" He shook his head no.

"What would you say to a tourist who IS scared to come?"

"Look," said Al, "I lived through the Holocaust and WWII. I drove a car back and forth to work for forty years and flew all over the world. When your number's up, it's up. Ain't nothing you can do about it." I found that somehow reassuring.

I decided to take a leaf out of Al's book and get out a bit more. But now, after the shooting tonight, I want to crawl, turtle-like, into my shell and stay there until it's all over.

Love, Sara-Rivka

Copyright 2000 SR Ernstoff