Sderot has only been a name. Not even a place on the map. Just somewhere near the Gaza Strip. Let me tell you, it is a beautiful town. There are parks with green grass, two-story apartment buildings of different vintages, and single-family homes with beautiful tiled roofs. Its climate is one you could die for. And if a bomb hits you, you will. With my colleagues, we ascended a bluff and looked down into the lion’s den. Using my camcorder I could look right into the apartment complexes from which the multitude of armament has rained down upon Sderot. It is a small town with its few strip malls, a police station, synagogues, and town center. There are a few restaurants and many small grocery stores. They probably don’t have any large ones. It is a completely civilian location.

Shooting at Sderot has only one reason: to kill civilians or otherwise terrorize the population. And for years, and with thousands of attacks, the town has refused to die, even if nearly half have temporarily relocated, maintaining ownership of their homes so to return some day. I cannot describe the complex intersection of feelings that I had standing there, looking at Gaza in one direction and Sderot in the other. I am no hero. I didn’t want to see anything launched at us. I just didn’t understand how these people could live. I just couldn’t understand why Israel waited so long and took such a torturous route until they defended these people. The distance between the two is less than from Richmond to Ashland. It is as if someone is lobbing mortars into downtown Richmond from the airport! Who would tolerate that for an instant?

Then they took us to what they fondly call “The Katyusha Museum.” It is a space behind the police station where they display a fraction of the katyushas and Grad missles that they have cleaned up. Irony is that the katyushas are made from metal fabricated in Israel with Israeli markings that were sent into the Gaza Strip to be used for building homes and schools and hospitals. Instead Hamas uses them to shoot at Israel. The Grad missles are made in Iran. They have the markings.

Who cares? I have never served in the military and have never been under fire. Standing in front of those shelves was a reality check and shock. These were not words in a dispatch like this. These were real. They were meant to kill me and any others like me. I took pictures but had nothing to say. Afterwards we walked around this area of Sderot but we were told to always know where the nearest bomb shelter is located. It’s like the announcement on airplane that “the nearest escape hatch could be behind you.” I paid attention. Nothing happened. We ate lunch outside the bus and departed from Beersheva and a visit to the conservative/Masorti Congregation Eshel Avraham. It, too, is under the gun. There they spoke about dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, which is just not “post.” Then we returned to Jerusalem much later in the evening.

I write this last installment thousands of miles, 13 days and light years away from Israel, in the comfort of my home in Richmond. It is hard to verbalize the crosscurrents that run through me. I have never known an unembattled Israel. I have never lived without the State existing. I don’t know what that means and never want to. I was born in New York, English is my native tongue and I root for sports teams far away, the Dodgers and Mets.

Yet I live in two realities. I spoke in synagogue last week of the last episode of Voyager in the Star Trek series. Its Captain Janeway is trying to bring it safely home but cannot. At the last minute, Enterprise captained by Jean Louc Picard (pardon my spelling) comes from another time through the worm hole to save the Voyager. How can these two coexist? The Enterprise preceeded the Voyager. Picard is dead and Janeway is alive. And yet, for this instant, they both existed. There was no past separate from a present and it impacted on both their futures.

So I live. I wear two watches. One set on Eastern Standard Time, one set on Jerusalem time. One keeps me on target here. One keeps me rooted in Jerusalem. One tells me what time to be in the office. The other tells me what time it is to call our daughter. I live with two realities constantly present, just one more up front and the other not too far back. I see tiled roofs in Richmond. I see the tiled roofs of Sderot. My street is peaceful. May theirs be, too.

The next time I write a column will be next summer when I will walk the streets of Jerusalem and visit the village of Sderot again. Meanwhile I pray for peace. For everyone. In every language. Wherever they live.