All in a day in September 2003

SHANA MAUER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

On Tuesday, Sept. 9, I left my house at 8:45 a.m. to go swimming. I had considered jogging, but was dissuaded by a gnawing pain in my lower calf, a result of a recent exercise class. A half hour into my workout at the pool, a friend turned to me and asked if I had heard about the morning excitement. My blank look betrayed my ignorance. A Palestinian boy from the neighboring village had been caught in Efrat, armed with a large knife and a suicide note. A vigilante resident had noticed him and alerted security personnel. The boy was apprehended next to a central park, 400 metres from a large elementary school where children had just begun their morning studies. Had I gone jogging, the park most certainly would have been on my route.

I understood from my friend that no one had been hurt. I was relieved, as many of my friends go for power-walks in the morning before heading out to work. Like me, most of them cut across the park as part of their routine. But, since the prospective terrorist was foiled, I did not give the matter much more thought. I resumed my laps. Besides, I felt selfishly secure. At the time of the incident, my husband was already at work in Jerusalem. I had been safe in my house a half-kilometre away and my kids study at a different school in another neighborhood. By Israeli standards, we were well out of harm's potential reach.

Later that same day, my husband and I cancelled our plans to see a movie in Jerusalem. The news was rife with reports of terror alerts. At eight o'clock in the evening, when the radio reported the deadly bombing at the Tzrifin bus stop near Rishon Letzion, we were not surprised. Callously, I noted that we could still make a movie in Jerusalem now that the terrorist attack had been perpetrated. My thought, of course, was fleeting and we did not go out. Instead, we watched the news, observing the carnage of the victims, the devastation of the family and friends.

Later that night as I was falling asleep, I heard an ambulance heading to Jerusalem. I listened for a second siren. The response to terrorist attacks typically includes multiple emergency vehicles. Hearing only one siren, I convinced myself that it was nothing more than a woman in labor or some basketball injury and drifted off into sleep.

The next morning, however, the news confirmed my initial instinct. The ambulance had been en route to an attack. This time the bombing was not in a location that I had only visited once or twice, but our favorite café on the Jerusalem's most happening thoroughfare, Emek Refaim Street. It was a place where we often went for coffee in the morning or before seeing a movie, a spot that we had passed almost every day for the past few years on our way to work, where we often came across friends and coworkers.

The Café Hillel chain is the culmination of Jerusalem at its best, and its newest store on Emek Refaim was its showcase. It boasted a kashrut certificate, but was equally appealing to both Jerusalem's secular and religious residents. It was fashionably stylish, yet comfortable and inviting. The staff offered service not often found in Israel and the food and coffee set the standard for local cafés. On the night of the attack, at least one of the owners was at the café, personally overseeing business, the service and checking in with the two security guards.
In the face of merciless death and immeasurable devastation, which claimed seven Israeli lives, including the lives of one of Jerusalem's most beloved doctors and his daughter, a bride on the eve of her wedding, the loss of a café may seem trivial and meaningless. But similar to the bombing of the nearby Moment Café two years ago, or Mike's Place in Tel-Aviv, this suicide bombing will leave a wake of despair that will take its toll, affecting many who were nowhere near the attack.

Businesses on Emek Refaim will now suffer. Shoppers will opt for stores and markets in less conspicuous areas. Restaurants will have fewer patrons. The entrepreneurial owners of Café Hillel, successful businessmen in a climate of economic turmoil, will have to absorb their sizable loss and construct a strategy to stay afloat. The café's employees will be out of work for the meantime, unlikely to find an alternate workplace in a country with an 11 per cent unemployment rate. And the residents of Jerusalem will have to gird themselves from the emotional anxiety that their city may well be in line for another pervasive wave of terror. Once again, grocery shopping, trips to the post office and pizza outings will become perilous acts of courage that involve a level of risk too awful to contemplate.

My husband and I ended up travelling to Emek Refaim Street. The site of the ruins was heartbreaking. It symbolized all the hopelessness of the fight against terrorists armed with lethal explosives and demonic determination. Later that day, my husband and I were in the centre of Jerusalem and happened to pass by the Jaffa Street store of Café Hillel and, though we were rushed, we performed the only miniscule act of defiance within our grasp. We stepped inside, ordered sandwiches and coffee to go, smiled at the cashier and bid the security guard a good day.

Shana Rosenblatt Mauer, originally from Vancouver, is a writer living in Efrat, Israel. She works as a PR professional and grant writer for the Shalom Hartman Institute.

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