only in israel | Imamother

supermom

Sun, Nov 14 2004, 4:29 am

I read this article in the vioces magazine

I was driving from Jerusalem to a family barmitzvah in Kibbutz Lavi on a friday afternoon together with my wife, her mother and another couple, cousins of my wife. The road is fairly narrow with many bends and undulations in it requiring close attention all the time. I slowed down when I saw an army roadblock ahead where a number of vehicles had stopped. A soldier carrying a heavy gun approached our car and peered in through the window.

He didn't ask to see our papers, but told me and the male cousin to get out of the car. Not knowing the security dangers in the area, we complied. "Over there," he said in Hebrew, pointing to a rather makeshift and rickety edifice. We accompanied the soldier to the appointed area where a strange sight met our eyes. Other occupants of parked cars and trucks had been sheperded into the same area; a motley crew of charedim, totally secular and kippa seruga. "Sorry about this" said a somewhat more senior looking soldier, "but it's getting a bit late and we need a minyan to eable one of our soldiers to say Kaddish". Needless to say our trepidation quickly turned to relief, followed by a warm feeling of camaraderie rarely experienced. We were able to produce a couple of spare kippot for the secular men joining the minyan and there were smiles all round as mincha was followed by the recitation of Kaddish by a soldier. The remainder of our journey was uneventful, but our experience made for a great story explaining to the bar mitzvah party why we were not joining the family for mincha service!