SOUL FOOD:

In the wake of a 15-hour transatlantic flight, few of us would jump at a chance to go bowling. Not so for a group of Israeli boys who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on July 2.

Some had seen bowling on television but had never been bowling themselves.

The first ball down a lane delivered a telling story about the daily lives of these boys, ages 9 to 11, in their hometown of Sderot. While the first boy tossed his ball toward the pins, another had dozed off on a nearby bench.

The boom of the ball set the slumbering boy in motion. One shoe off, one shoe on, more asleep than awake, he ran for shelter.

“It broke my heart,” said Rabbi Sholom Goldstein, the pang of the moment still in his voice when I talked to him more than a week later at the Hebrew Academy in Huntington Beach. The academy is home to the Silver Gan Israel Camp, which is hosting the boys for a month.

Sderot, pronounced “stare-rote,” is a city of roughly 18,000 residents in the western Negev. It lies a scant two miles from the Gaza Strip.

For nearly eight years, since the start of the second Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada, the city has been a constant target of Palestinian Qassam rocket attacks. Since Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, thousands of rockets have been launched into the municipality.

Those who were able to fled Sderot long ago, about 25% of its families, humanitarian aid organizations estimate. Those who remain cannot afford to leave.

Residents with homes cannot sell their houses. In Sderot, homes are now worth as little as a tenth the value they would be in a secure locale. When the siren of the government’s Red Dawn warning system blares, residents have 15 seconds to shield themselves from the impending strike of a rocket, or rockets. On Dec. 12, 2007, more than 20 rockets hit the town.

Elementary-age children like those who have come to the Silver Gan Israel summer camp are too young to remember any other kind of life. A study by Israel’s Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War showed that 70% to 94% of Sderot’s children show symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

“They become excited or angry very easily. They have an aggravated sense of fear and anxiety, and have a hard time trusting people they don’t know,” Rabbi Sender Engel said. “They carry their valuables wherever they go.”

Imagine a child who has been in a bad car accident, Goldstein told me. Then, he said, imagine a child who has had that experience time and again.

“[These boys] express their tension by being aggressive both verbally and physically,” Goldstein said. “As they grow older it’s going to be much harder for them to be nicer people, to be calm people.”

Through self-help or professional help, he said, they will have to work on that. In part, this is why Engel, the director of Silver Gan Israel Camp, and the directors of 10 other Jewish summer camps in North America formed the Children of Sderot Summer Relief Project.

This summer the project flew 110 boys and girls, most between 10 and 14, out of Sderot for what it calls “a summer in heaven.” Cared for by nurturing counselors, they are taking part in a pioneering program including sports, crafts, education, recreation and character formation.

Engel says it’s a chance to show them people love and care about them, a chance to show them what healthy emotions and proper behavior look like. It’s a chance that comes at a cost, in total $400,000 ($41,000 for Silver Gan Israel) for airfare, visas, food, medical insurance and living expenses.

Of that, $18,000 is still needed for Silver Gan Israel. To contribute to the project or learn more about it, go to www.CampSGI.com/Sderot.

Scroll over “Camp Photos” on the top menu and click on “Children of Sderot” to see their smiling faces and some of their activities. Next week, I’ll tell you more about their “summer in heaven.”

HOW TO HELP

Tax-deductible donations can be made to: Silver Gan Israel; Attention: Sderot kids; 14401 Willow Lane; Huntington Beach, CA, 92647.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].