9-11 and Raise Your Spirits

9-11.
That's the catchy term the world uses. 9-11 and everyone knows what each person is referring to.
The Arab terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in the United States, plus two other attempted sites.

The towers came down in death and destruction, and smoke and steel, and horror and loved-ones-lost.
In Israel where I live, we had been living our own mini-9-11s every day. A shooting here, a suicide bomber there (the most infamous being the Sbarro bombing).
It was a beyond-frightening time for all - so scary that many folks would have just stayed locked up in their homes, rather than face the outside world.
But we women of Raise Your Spirits were determined to go on with life. And, live life ourselves and with our friends and families despite the hells around us.

So on 9-11, we went on! The show went on! Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
We had debates and even borderline- fights with those who disagreed, but we knew we had to go on. If we stopped living life at every terror attack, we'd still be home under the covers.
In addition to that, the WORLD had now just joined the people of Israel in what had been our private trauma.
We needed to be together with others, and we needed to believe that life would go on, that the earth would keep turning.

So after complex discussions, we sent cast members to synagogues around Gush Etzion, collected prayer books and handed them out to our audience.
We turned our performance into a giant prayer rally - 450 women praying together in complete faith. Our performers prayed behind the curtain and the audience in their theatre seats.
And then the show went on - one our best shows ever. The audience weeped and they laughed, and they were able to put the evil world out of their hearts and minds for one hour, as they traveled with us through the stage version of "a silly-sad-serious-shiny" life of Joseph and his brothers. 

And there we stood on 9-11, Raise Your Spirits and our sisters, united, believing, supportive, loving - getting through the worst day the world has known TOGETHER as a family of Jewish women.
[http://raiseyourspiritstheatre.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/doing-our-job-again-our-rys-emergency.html]

May Hashem bless the world and finally soon destroy evil from our midst.

Sbarro's 13 Years Later

It was August 9, 2001. We had rehearsal that night. We had rehearsal most nights of the summer of 2001. There was too much terror and fear around us. The alternative to coming to rehearsal was to sit home under the blankets and cry. So, if someone wanted to cry, she could do it on her friend’s shoulder, then say some tehillim and get up on stage.

I had founded Raise Your Spirits two months before in order to raise spirits, to win our private war against the terror around us, after my next-door-neighbor Esther Elvan was murdered along with my friend Sarah Blaustein, HY”D. But the list of murdered Jews that summer was horrifically long.

So, on August 9, everyone showed up, hugged, and told one another where they were when the Sbarro’s bomb went off. One of our narrators, Miriam, a local Bnei Akiva head was very worried and beyond upset. One of her Bnei Akiva counselors, Malki Roth, was missing. Miriam had called a meeting of her counselors and Malki didn’t show up.

At the popular eaterie, Sbarro’s on the corner of King George and Rechov Yaffo, a suicide-homicide bomber had murdered 15 people - fathers, mothers, children. It was a horrible vicious attack, and we were all still reeling from the catastrophe.

Then, as today, in this horrible incident, the Hamas terror organization was responsible for the blood-shed.

Miriam found out that Malki Roth, HY"D, was among the murder victims in Sbarro’s. We were all devastated beyond words, beyond tears, beyond heartbreak. We said tehillim. Our knees shook. We continued on. A Jew has no choice but to continue on.

That was 13 years ago. Raise Your Spirits went on stage in JOSEPH and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to bring the women of Efrat/Gush Etzion together in a positive uplifting project, to give women of Israel a reason to cry in the darkness and then sing about the eternity of Israel.

Throughout the past 13 years, we’ve performed in seven different productions for 50,000 women. The situation in the country has fluctuated, sometimes from bad to worse. Today, we are faced with Hamas again (although all sorts of terror groups have raised their heads continually).
Today as war rages in the south, as sirens blare in different parts of the country every day, we are rehearsing again, aiming to raise our spirits with a positive uplifting activity – the production of COUNT THE STARS – The Journey of Abraham and Sara.

May Hashem bless the women of Raise Your Spirits and the entire nation. One day soon, we pray the music we sing will be filled with pure joy.
(Photo from Keren Malki)