I should have been there . . . but thank G-d I wasn't

I’m sure I know this man. He must have been my bus driver at some point over the last four years I’ve lived in Jerusalem, or the last two years I’ve lived in Katamon, home to the number 13 bus line. I speak, of course, of the bus driver of bus 13, the bus that was “tipped over” by a mad man on a bulldozer in today’s attack in Jerusalem.

The shooting of yeshiva students in the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, the last terror attack in Jerusalem—a seemingly distant memory, even though it was only this past March—scared me, but I was able to keep on going. I was forced to—we were attending our friends’ engagement party and what could we do but keep drinking our glasses of wine, toast the happy couple, and try not to think about those who were at the same time being rushed to hospitals, or alternately, put into body bags.

Today, though, I was free to think about what happened. Free to listen to the radio as I made my way into Ramat Gan, where I was going to get a refund on a washing machine, of all the unimportant things in the world. Free to listen, over and over again, to descriptions of what had happened and where it had happened. Free to try and figure out from the clues the reporters gave if my friends could have been there—if, hypothetically, yesterday or everyday before that for the last four years I could have been there.

Thanks to technology, I know my friends are safe. Text messages—so impersonal yet so effective—informed me that my loved ones were fine. And as many times happens, some of the friends receiving my check-up text message were clueless about the attack even happening until I asked if they were ok.

I feel an emptiness inside and a intermittent urges to shed tears when I think about the people who could see it coming--who were trapped inside their cars or could see the bulldozer coming down the street, realizing perhaps only at the last second what was actually happening.

I just got home and, despite my news saturation for the day, decided to see if I could pinpoint where it happened—I had to know which bus had been attacked. It was mine. But more than being my bus line—it was my city, it was my home. Any of the pedestrians, making their way down the sidewalks, any of the people in cars, trying to get through Jerusalem downtown traffic, any of these people who were brutally murdered, in a most unimaginably horrific way—any of these people could have been my friends.

We moved on Sunday to Ramat Hasharon. And due to me studying at Hebrew University, I was in Jerusalem yesterday, literally meters from the attack site. I have this weird feeling—it’s similar to the feeling I get when something major happens to my family in America and I’m not there to go through it with them. It’s like I should have been there—but thank G-d I wasn’t.

Today at 6pm Israel time, thousands of people will be saying Psalm 121 for the safe release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. I guess now there will be others for whom we say this psalm:

A song of Ascent.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
What is the source of my help?

My help comes from the Lord,
Maker of the heavens and the earth.
He will not allow you to stumble, Your Guardian will not slumber.

Indeed, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

The Lord is your Guardian, your shelter at your side.

The sun will not smite your by day nor the moon by night.

The Lord will guard you against all evil;
He will guard you, body and soul.

The Lord will guard your going out
And your coming home, now and forever.