Rabbi Billet's daughter writes from Gush Etzion

By Dassi Billet Jacobson

Dateline: Neve Daniel, Gush Etzion

Updated Sunday 5 pm 

It is hard to believe what we've lived through this past week since the kidnapping of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel, and Eyal Yifrach a few minutes from our home in pastoral Gush Etzion last Thursday night. The boys were waiting to catch a ride from a bus stop next to Alon Shvut junction in the direction of Bet Shemesh. This is a place we drive past frequently, and it is also around the corner from two of our kids' (Teeli and Noam) schools, literally a five minute walk from there. While our hearts go out to the boys and their families, and to the boys schoolmates, many of whom are our friends sons, there is also a heavy feeling that comes from that this happened in our neighborhood. 

Yes, we know we live over the green line, but Gush Etzion is safe. We don't generally feel like we live in a war zone. We have all the freedom of movement that we were used to in America; in many ways things are safer here for kids, and our kids have more independence here than they would in New York. We work, we shop, we have moderate political opinions. Dan and our big boys (Roni and Yehuda) run in these hills, 5K, 10K. Teeli has walked to friends' Shabbat afternoon birthday parties in Elazar and Efrat, neighboring yishuvim, with a group of teens. Our large grocery store, Rami Levy, has an even mix of Jewish and Arab employees, and an even mix of shoppers from both populations. We greet each other, stand in line together. This is normal life in Gush Etzion.

And yes, our big kids, and we the adults, sometimes tremp to get around. There are safety rules of course. Try to tremp from inside a yishuv, try to get into a car with someone you know, travel with a friend especially at night, sit in the back, don't say where you are going, wait for the driver to say his destination, try to take a bus. In a place where the cost of cars and fuel is prohibitive (both about twice the average America price), most people own one car, and have two working parents in the house. Public transportation is infrequent and doesn't always arrive reliably. So we tremp, giving and receiving rides, in the spirit of neighborliness. It's like an informal carpool. It is something that happens all over Israel, not just in the settlements. Don't be mislead — teens from Haifa, Netanya and Modiin find it to be a fairly efficient and certainly cheap form of transport which can get them to the natural spring they'd like to picnic at which is not on a bus route- all over the country. It sounds crazy to an American, and when we first moved here 9 years ago I certainly felt that way. To this day it makes me nervous. But it's usually very safe. Certainly for our teens it allows them freedom of movement, a freedom which has been intensely curtailed over the last week. 

But the tremping thing is the least of it, and honestly I'm not wringing my hands over it. The point is that the boys were doing something that is considered safe with the permission of their parents. An act of war was perpetuated against our kids (because they are all our kids, and that is something we all very much feel) in our own backyard.  Everyone is affected.  Kids with increased anxiety, Mothers and Fathers with worried faces, adults crying at random times.  This story is on everyone's mind, and it is the only topic of conversation. We have friends in both Talmon and in Nof Ayalon, the homes of Gilad and Naftali. In my WhatsApp group of old college friends, there is one woman from each place. Between them and the four women from Gush Etzion (out of 11 women), and 2 women with sons who are students at Makor Chaim, Gilad and Naftali's school, the front lines are over-represented and Israel feels very small indeed.