Op-Ed: Healing When Bet Shemesh Hurts

Following recent events in Bet Shemesh, Israel, lubavitch.com asked staff writer Rivka Chaya Berman, a resident of Bet Shemesh, to share her experience of life in the community. When she is not busy writing for lubavitch.com, Mrs. Berman, a registered nurse, helps people heal.

After my first visit to Bet Shemesh, when my husband and I were in the contemplation stage of aliyah, I perceived the religious-secular divide to be so pronounced that I was very glad to be back on American soil, where seeing another Jew was a delight, a cause for signaling acknowledgement, however subtly, of our shared member-of-the-tribe status.

I found myself consenting to smears of Dead Sea skin cream from our mall’s young Israeli Ahava pitch girl, in hopes that my willingness to be moisturized until I oozed would prove that I—a wig-wearing, elbow-covering, long-skirt swishing Jew—loved and accepted her as is: multiple-pierced, tight jeans self, no questions asked.

Moving here taught me that what I had noticed pre-aliyah was an outsider’s view of Bet Shemesh—an irreconcilable chasm between different kinds of Jews. But the reality was much more blurred and accepting.

After the international media covered protests and the harassment of Jewish school girls by fellow Jews, my friends and family from the States have been asking me questions about what’s really going on here. Is the pressure so high, are resources so scarce, and tolerance so low, that it would be better to divide the city into separate charedi, national-religious, and secular districts?

My answer is, if you want to see how different types of Jews get along in real Bet Shemesh, come to Terem next time you need help. Terem is an urgent care center with branches across Israel. In Bet Shemesh, Terem functions as the place you go to x-ray that ankle, stitch your leg, to care for a kid screaming from ear pain at 2 am, or to check if labor contractions mean its time to get to the nearest birthing center, a half-hour away in Jerusalem.

At busy times, the waiting room is filled with tattooed Jews, shtreimel Jews, mini skirt, maxi skirt Jews. Peace camp kibbutzniks, over-the-green-line-niks, and Nicks fans file in, and the pressure is high. There are babies at home awaiting nursing. Shabbat is coming and the cooking is not done. Resources are scarce: there are one to four doctors, and not everyone can be seen at once. Everyone has to wait their turn, or watch as a more urgently ill person jumps the line entirely.

In a setting like this, in Bet Shemesh, one would expect nasty words to be exchanged. Squabbling. Cursing. At least a little spitting. I’ve been on staff for over a year now, and I have never seen this happen. Not once. Not even a half-hour before Shabbat or minutes before Yom Kippur, when everyone wants to get home already.

Why is there peace?

At first I thought shared pain was the answer. I grew up in Southern California, and I experienced the aftershocks of niceness that followed earthquakes. A little Richter-scale action pushed office denizens out of their cubicles and onto the sidewalks, and once all were accounted for, chatting was easy: everyone had their own “where were you when the earth moved” anecdote to share. As an adult in New York, I lived through the post-September 11th epidemic of kindness. The great tragedy that told us our world was no longer secure smacked pettiness right out of us, at least for a time.

But I don’t think that’s it. I believe the cooperation and goodwill I see in the waiting room goes deeper than foxhole friendships. I think part of the answer lies in the reality that the neat definitions of Jewish types in Israel are less tidy than the media and their pundits would have us believe.

Secular and religious Jews, charedi and national-religious Jews, not only live together in Bet Shemesh, they often have the same address and last name. Mom is wearing a modest head covering, and daughter has a belly ring. Or the opposite, bare headed dad tucks son’s curly peyot behind his ear to make way for the otoscope.

I know from my own family that runs the spectrum from rock’n’roll to chassidic, that you don’t always agree with the choices family members have made, but you understand that they are good people who have fine qualities beyond their religious observance. Besides, they’re family – so you love them anyway.

I’d push further that our own self-picked peg hole—orthodox, modern, secular is not water tight either. A few months ago, a fellow came in. A truck driver with burly arms, dirty fingernails, and no kippa, with a red, hot, sore leg needed IV antibiotics. As the medicine dripped its way into his veins, he picked up one of prayer books lying around and caught up on the afternoon prayers. Over the summer, a mom wearing a tank top attempted to distract her daughter from the impending pain of a blood test by urging her to recite the chapter of Psalms she said in preschool.

I think what Israel needs now is less separation between types, not more. I think the solution lies in being thrown together. Because we have a ways to go.

No, I don’t see in the waiting room is Jews of all joining in a circle as one, singing rounds of hava nagilla, or dancing the hora. But come on. This is Israel. And it’s hard to dance on a twisted ankle.