Thoughts about Israel and stuff

Last week on Thursday afternoon, I (Shira) took the kids to a "Tefilat yeladim", a children's prayer group, in our community.
A little background on Yad Binyamin:
Until a few yrs ago, YB was a small community of about 30 familes who mostly worked for a Yeshiva that was here. There were also services here, like a school, pool, library, covered basketball courts, etc. that serviced the surrounding communities. Then, 2.5 yrs ago ( i think) when the people were expelled from Gush Katif, many of them came to live in YB, where the gov't set up caravillas for them. (The caravillas will hopefully be gone in a few years when the people living there either find permanent housing(many have bought discounted land in YB) or will be moving to other places. At some point around that time the Regional Council (located in yad binyamin) decided - hey why not build a whole community here. We found our building project online not so long after that and now live there- pretty cool. There is much more to this development but thats the short summary.

Anyway, back to the story. So I took the kids to this tefillah group organized by the gush katif part of the community. This was Thursday and Friday was Rosh Chodesh Adar, the beginning of the Jewish month of Adar ( the month of Purim) which is a special time for rejoicing and happiness. I wondered what would actually go on there, but since Matani is pretty religious minded and there would surely be special treats there, I figured why not go. The program was some chanting of tehillim (psalms), sometimes with everyone together in a sing songy way and sometimes repeating after the leader, followed by some music and dancing, and of course, the special treats. The room in the community center was full of mothers, kids, a few fathers here and there, mostly from the gush katif community with everyone chanting the words of the tehillim.

As I was sitting there, the following thoughts were going through my mind:
These people have been through really terrible things. They were kicked out of their homes and communities that the Jews have nurtured and cultivated for the last 30 years, protecting inner Israel and creating a thriving agricultural industry. Now, it would be one thing to go through that trauma for some productive purpose, but its totally another thing when the land you built up is now being used as a shooting range for Arabs to shoot rockets into Jewish communities. If I were them I would be really really really mad! Firstly with the Israeli leadership and goverment, all the people who let this happen, and probably with G-d as well. But here was their response- teaching their kids to say tehillim and daven for better time, better things, and the salvation that they know must come for surely there must be some big picture that we can't understand. This tefillah group apparantly happens at teh community center for every rosh chodesh, but I found out it also happens every afternoon at somebody's house! Saying tehillim is a way of life for these people b/c beseeching G-d is (one of) the only coping mechanism and positive responses they can have and teach their children.

I felt very proud to be living in a community with these people, whose level of faith surely exceeds mine and most other people's despite all that they have been through and continue to go through.

When we heard later that night about the attack at Merkaz Harav, and later as I was reading things and trying to digest what had happened, I found myself thinking about this perspective some more- that the only tool we really ahve for understanding these things is that there is a bigger picture out there that we can't possibly understand and that prayer is really all we got.