“I am the grandma, how can I not go? Am I comfortable going? No, I am not,” said Barbara Gilbert of Las Vegas.
Her grandson, Yosef Aryeh, will be having his bar mitzvah in February in Efrat, Israel. Though she says the trip makes her “very nervous,” Gilbert is nonetheless planning to travel to the Holy Land for the celebration.
But not everyone is as resolute as Gilbert. Many grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins have decided not to attend their relatives’ simchas, or celebrations, because of the security situation in Israel — a situation that ebbs and flows and whose hot spots shift from one part of the country to another.
J. correspondent Renee Ghert-Zand and her family made aliyah from Palo Alto to Jerusalem last summer. Her son celebrated his bar mitzvah Dec. 25, with his grandfather the only family member on Ghert-Zand’s side from outside Israel in attendance.
She said the Nov. 18 Palestinian terrorist attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, which killed four rabbis and a Druze policeman, pushed possible attendees over the edge. “Later that day and the next day, I got one cancellation after another.”
Gilbert’s son and daughter-in-law and their three children have been living in Israel for more than a decade, and she has seen them go through the Second Intifada and multiple Gaza wars. Yet last summer’s war left her particularly shaken and scared.
One Saturday evening when Gilbert was visiting Israel during Operation Protective Edge, a siren went off while she was walking with her daughter-in-law and 2-year-old grandson. The family, which was far from a shelter, ran to take cover at a nearby medical center.
“The siren was going and it was such a loud and very scary noise,” recalled Gilbert, noting that the medical center was locked but her daughter-in-law and grandson ran and hid under the overhang. “I was a little older and I didn’t make it.”
During the short run, Gilbert told herself, “I am a nice person. Why do they want to hurt me?” She cried and clenched her teeth so hard she broke a tooth.
“I get tears in my eyes telling it all over again. I was just so shook up,” she said. “But then all Yossi [her grandson] says to us is, ‘Are you coming for my bar mitzvah? Are you coming?’ How can we say no to him?”
While it’s difficult to argue with fear, Ghert-Zand feels she has her finger on the pulse of the risks involved on the ground, and knows when it is safe and when it is not.
“People sort of get the wrong impression by watching the news,” she said. “They literally think [terrorists] are running through the streets with meat cleavers. Yes, there are random runnings-over of people at bus stops and it’s terrible and scary. … But daily life continues here. You never know what the situation will be here in Israel, but you have to go on with your life — plan simchas, celebrate. I would hope that those planning to come celebrate [future simchas] won’t cancel. As long as they are able to get here, they should come.”
That was the way Atara Kennedy of Silver Spring, Maryland viewed the recent bat mitzvah trip she planned for her daughter, Grace.
“You cannot stop living,” she said. “And we would not stop our trip. It would send a message to the Israelis that we have abandoned them, turned our backs.”
Atara and her daughter toured Israel from Nov. 23 to Dec. 7, and their visit overlapped with the high school trip of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, where Grace is a student. Kennedy said there was “a lot of positive energy” around the experience. She believes that her daughter came away with a greater understanding of the Jewish state and an even deeper connection with Israel.
Authentic Israel, one of the largest facilitators of the free 10-day Taglit-Birthright Israel trips for Jews ages 18 to 26, also runs regular bar and bat mitzvah tours. Guy Har-Nir, Authentic Israel’s head of educational operations, said that while there was a decrease in tourism to Israel last summer, “now we see it’s coming back.” Authentic Israel predicts even more tour groups will visit Israel this summer than in the summer of 2013, the year before Operation Protective Edge.
It is common for families to rethink their bar or bat mitzvah tours because of security concerns about Israel, Har-Nir said. But he said that tour providers are closely tuned in to the Israel Defense Forces and other official government security agencies.
“Israel is a very safe place, especially for tourists,” Har-Nir said, noting that tour guides typically can steer clear of problem areas and offer a meaningful but safe experience.
“I think especially with a bar or bat mitzvah, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience that doesn’t come back.”