The television images showed a chilling drama: reporters in Tel Aviv pulling gas masks over their faces and speaking with barely suppressed anxiety about Scud missiles rocking Israel`s largest city.
Casualties and property damage caused in two separate missile attacks late last week were relatively light. There have been many more deadly attacks than these in Israel`s history.
Nevertheless, for many Chicago-area Jews, the assaults and the specter of chemical warfare were a special nightmare, one that recalled memories of the Holocaust and brought forth feelings of helplessness, fear and anger.
And the attacks also dramatized the emotional ties that still so strongly bind American Jews with Israel.
”It was like a brick hit you. I thought, `Here we go again. Another dictator using gas on the largest Jewish population in the world,` ” said Theodore Weiss of Wilmette, a survivor of three concentration camps and president of the Holocaust Education Foundation.
”It exposed a new level of vulnerability that for most of my life I haven`t felt as a Jew in this country,” said Jerry Kaye of Wilmette, director of youth activities for the Union of Hebrew Congregations.
For those with relatives in Israel, the feeling of helplessness was especially intense.
On Saturday morning in Chicago, as another missile alert in Israel proved to be a false alarm, Jody Hamisha was riveted to the TV set in her northwest suburban home, waiting for information about her parents and brothers living in Israel.
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”Every day is tense,” she said. ”You wake up not knowing what has happened during the night, and you just pray that the missiles haven`t fallen. ”Physically, I`m here, but emotionally, I`m over there. My family is there, and my friends are there. I spent half my life in Israel. I`d be a lot calmer now if I was there with them.
”After the second attack, I was almost sure there would have been retaliation, but there wasn`t, and that`s probably good. But I don`t know how long they will hold off. What other country will let itself be bombed and not eventually strike back? And if they do strike back, what will happen then?”
After the missiles fell on Israel, Chicagoans jammed the phone lines trying to get in touch with loved ones. Eventually, after long waits, most did.
Reuven Bogoff, a West Rogers Park resident who lived in Israel for six years, was on his way to synagogue for Saturday morning services when a friend informed him of the second missile attack. Bogoff did not learn of the extent of the attack until evening because he does not watch television or listen to the radio on the Sabbath.
”I was afraid they might have used gas warheads,” Bogoff said. ”I was very concerned Israel was going to counterattack. It`s a double-edged sword for me. The U.S. is asking a lot of Israel to stand there and take a punch. But I think they have to do it. They have to support President Bush.”
Bogoff said he continues to worry about friends and relatives living in Israel.
”When they tell you a missile hits near the Wolfson Hospital and you know where that is, it gives you the chills,” he said after the first attack. ”You can put names to the places, and that`s what makes it bad. You start crying inside. When you see the children in gas masks, it takes your breath away. It`s pretty intense.”
The attacks also fed the anxieties of Jewish children in the Chicago area, such as the seven sons of Rabbi Yossi Birnbaum, ages 16 months to 8 years.
”They have been to Israel,” Birnbaum said. ”They know their grandparents. They know their cousins. They write letters to each other. They send pictures back and forth. They understand that a war`s going on right now. ”They have a fearful mind right now. I see it on their faces. They are exposed to the horrors of war getting close to home.”
Birnbaum, who was born in Israel and lived there until emigrating to Chicago 10 years ago, said he tried unsuccessfully the previous week to find a way to take his family back there indefinitely.
Israel, he said, ”is not an easy place to live in, and it`s not pleasant to live under fear,” but he wanted to return as a show of solidarity with the Jewish nation, he said.
Jews here are dealing with the growing danger in the Middle East in different ways. Some say they are stepping up security at their synagogues, schools and community centers to deter possible terrorist attacks.
Even before the outbreak of war, Jewish leaders said, they were on guard for anti-Semitic violence. But the war has dramatically increased their fears of violent acts.
”When you hear the threats from (Saddam) Hussein on television and you see how the airports and others are being cautious, you don`t need a direct threat before you do something about security,” said Rabbi Frederick Schwartz of Temple Sholom on Chicago`s North Side.
At the Joliet Jewish Congregation, the congregants have formed a committee to stand guard at the temple every night, according to Rabbi Morris Hershman.
Of course, Jews are also praying.
Alan Leavitt, a salesman, attended Saturday morning services at Temple Sholom, where special prayers for Israel were added. For Leavitt, the missile attacks dramatized a long history of Jewish persecution.
”It`s been 2,000 years of this,” Leavitt said. ”We`ve lived through the Inquisition, we`ve lived through the Crusades and the Holocaust. So it`s not so new to us.”
In Long Grove on Friday night, about 500 people, three times the normal attendance, gathered for Sabbath worship at Temple Chai, the largest reform congregation in the northwest suburbs.
”Many of us are here tonight for many different reasons,” Rabbi Harold Caminker said in opening the service. ”One of those reasons is the welfare of many of our brothers and sisters in the State of Israel.”
The recent events in the Gulf war, Caminker said, ”touch us in an intense and personal way. We need this time together.”
Part of the service was dedicated to praying for and honoring Capt. Steven Feldman, a U.S. Air Force pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia. Feldman`s mother lives in Schaumburg.
At the end of the service, congregants sang ”The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by ”Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, to demonstrate both their support for the war against Iraq and their concern for Israel.
Louise Stein of Flossmoor, who was attending services at Temple B`nai Yehuda in Homewood on Friday, expressed concern for Soviet Jews now arriving in Israel.
”The Soviets are coming from a terrible situation hoping for a better life, and they walk into this,” she said.
”We came because we were very distraught and found it hard to stay at home,” said Phyllis Tinsley of Chicago`s Near North Side, a worshiper at Temple Anshe Emet on Friday night. ”It`s a double responsibility being an American and a Jew.”
At the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Rabbi Arnold Rachlis opened the pulpit to his congregation after delivering a personal and reflective sermon about Jewish remembrances of war.
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”There`s something twisted about hearing of gas,” Rachlis said of worries that Hussein`s missiles may contain poisonous gas. ”The gas chambers of Germany and the gas of today. There is something vile and obscene, and twisted and sick,” he said of parallels to Nazi Germany.
For Malka Mittelman-Seifert, a Holocaust survivor whose 17-year-old brother died in a Nazi concentration camp, the pictures of families in gas masks forced her ”to return to what I went through as a small child.”
Fundraising efforts for Israel are being stepped up because of the crisis.
”There is a great crunch in Israel`s economy right now,” said Meir Rosen, a spokesman for the Chicago-area Israel Bond Board of Governors.
”People are in shelters. They have a semi-mobilization. Various things have stopped.”
”There is a great deal of anguish and concern,” said Maynard Wishner, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Chicago. ”Our government is taking a world leadership role of which the Jewish community is very supportive.
”There is a sense of identification with the men and women out there. Things are being done. But the world should take a look back and see who chooses to become an enemy of the Jews. Sooner or later, they become the enemy of everyone else. Maybe we`re destined to be the radar system for the rest of the world.”