It takes a few words to make a difference in a sentence; just a few words can change its entire meaning. I thought about this yesterday after listening to Rina Goldberg speak about her family at Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi with her husband, Mark. She told us the two of them, a couple that made Aliyah 35 years ago, had 5 children and that yesterday would have been their son’s 34th birthday. Would and have. Would and have. I knew something seemed peculiar about the expression on her face. Just as she was explaining herself, I understood what happened. Rina chose her words carefully, and said that one of her sons was no longer alive; he was killed in the Israeli army.
After she told us this, the words seemed to linger in the air and my mouth actually dropped open. I know that everyone in Israel knows several people who have perished in wars and attacks against Israel. But hearing that a younger soldier from a family who immigrated from the Bronx to Israel sat heavily in my stomach. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
In America, it’s not the norm to worry about losing your children when they leave home after high school. But in Israel it is, and not just in the army, because accidents happen frequently and everywhere. A 14 year old from Beit Shean died in a terrorist attack a few days ago near the border to Syria in the Golan Heights. My Israeli “sister”, Maayan knew him from around her neighborhood. But there was no element of shock from her, just a tug at her emotions. If a 14 year old boy was killed in my neighborhood, we would plant a garden in his honor and have a service or something of the sort. American and Israeli families live similar lives oftentimes, but never in the same exact atmosphere. When Rina and Mark made Aliyah, a word in their sentence changed. With time they became an Israeli family, not losing their American roots, but transforming and adapting to the realities in their Israeli lives. Things like this happen every day in Israel, and many other countries where citizens are under constant threat from their neighbors or even their own governments. Learning to accept these risks is what the Israeli family can do better than most.