Israeli Parenting Tinged With Panic

Romema Schlossberg believes that divine intervention spared her son, Yoni, the night a pair of Palestinian bombers blew themselves up on a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem and killed 10 young people.

Fifteen-year-old Yoni was there that Saturday night two weeks ago with a large group of friends, celebrating a birthday on cafe-lined Ben Yehuda Street. But he left early, minutes before the bombers turned the packed street into a charnel house.

The bombings elevated to a national obsession the already acute fears of Israeli parents that their children might be caught up in a suicide bombing. The familiar parental dilemma of how much freedom to allow teenagers has taken on the significance of a life-and-death decision made every time a child walks out the front door--and many parents are doing everything they can to keep their kids at home.

In a nation that prides itself on its ability to absorb the shock of terror and get on with life, suicide bombings in malls, on buses, outside a discotheque and in a pizza parlor have taken a measurable toll. Fanatical bombers who pack nuts, bolts, nails and, in a recent case, rat poison into their deadly charges, then appear to seek out gathering spots for young people, have made even a trip to see “Harry Potter” at the local cinema seem risky.

Yoni’s two best friends died in the Ben Yehuda blasts. A dozen other friends were injured, and several remain in Jerusalem hospitals. The teenager has spent much of his Hanukkah vacation making the rounds of hospitals, visiting the injured and comforting their families.

Romema Schlossberg is convinced that her son was saved by her prayers. “I had told him not to leave that night, to stay and do homework,” she said. “But he got angry with me and, for the first time, disobeyed me and left to join his friends. At about 10:30 that night, I got this terrible feeling and I prayed, I prayed so hard to God: Please protect my son tonight, wherever he is.”

It was at about that time, Schlossberg later learned, that Yoni decided to come home rather than make a last stop at an ice cream shop with his friends.

Now, in a desperate attempt to keep him home, Schlossberg has turned the family’s garage into a clubhouse where he and his friends can gather.

“I tell them, ‘Why do you have to go downtown?’ ” Schlossberg said. “ ‘Stay here.’ ”

Across the nation, thousands of parents are taking similar steps: turning extra rooms into clubhouses, urging their teenagers to rent videos instead of going to the movies, forbidding travel on buses, ordering food delivered at home, banning school trips. There is a noticeable drop in the crowds attending public Hanukkah celebrations this year compared with previous years, particularly in Jerusalem.

“In the last weeks, there is a change in how parents are viewing” how to balance their fears against their children’s desire for independence, said Yehezkel Gabai, principal of Jerusalem’s Rene Cassin High School. One of his students, 15-year-old Assaf Avitan, died in the Ben Yehuda bombings. Fifteen other students were injured in the blasts, Gabai said.

Going Out as Usual Is No Longer Advised

The entire school community--staff, teachers, students and parents--is having trouble dealing with the aftermath, he said.

Before the Dec. 1 bombings, he would urge anxious parents to control their fears and let their children visit the city’s indoor shopping mall or go downtown, Gabai said. Not now.

“I’m not saying to parents anymore that they can feel confident, because really, now it is dangerous,” Gabai said. “I still tell parents that in a month or two, this will pass and we won’t have to be so afraid. I tell parents that we must continue to live. But really, I’m not so sure that I am speaking the truth. The truth is that I think we have to be afraid and we have to be very careful.”

At a memorial ceremony attended by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York Gov. George Pataki and New York Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg in Jerusalem’s Zion Square on Dec. 9, Gabai appealed to Israel’s political leaders to consider the effect that the conflict with the Palestinians is having on the nation’s youth.

He said he was amazed by the strength the students showed as they rallied around their wounded friends and the bereaved families.

“But heroic children also need hope,” he said. “They need to see the light, to believe that this role they are playing is temporary. They feel and say that we, the adults, have let them down. They want answers from us.”

In a later session with students who survived the blasts, Israeli President Moshe Katsav found himself facing terrified teenagers.

“They told our president that they are frightened,” Gabai said. “They said: ‘It is not like six months ago, when our parents were afraid and we were not. Now we prefer to stay at home. We don’t want to go into the city, because we are afraid.’ ”

Gabai said parents who used to tolerate teenagers who came home a couple of hours after their last class now phone the school, frantic, if their children don’t arrive within minutes of the final bell.

“It is important for parents to overcome their fears, but it is difficult to convince them that they must still let their children go out,” said Rina Levy, deputy director of the Jerusalem municipality’s educational psychology department.

Company of Peers May Help Youths Cope

She and her staff, Levy said, have been working overtime to counsel parents, students and staff at local schools who are suffering from post-traumatic stress in the wake of the recent attacks.

“In this age, it is the most important thing for youths to be able to gather with their friends and to feel independent,” she said. “It is important to build coping mechanisms in many aspects of life, and this is one of them. It helps to build one’s own identity and one’s strength to confront one’s fears.”

That natural process is being disrupted, Levy said, by parental intervention and restrictions on children.

“Parents take steps that are irrational,” she said. “They will say: ‘I won’t let him or her go alone. I will go with them.’ It is an irrational belief that if they are there, they will somehow be able to protect the child.”

In downtown Jerusalem, the municipality struggled this week to entice people back to the site of the bombings. A stage was erected on Ben Yehuda Street, and singers filled the air with joyous Hanukkah tunes every night, just paces from the spot where candles flicker and wreaths have been laid in memory of those killed.

The plate-glass windows shattered in the blasts have all been replaced, and the blood has been scrubbed off the storefronts and cobblestones. But only a handful of people has come out in the evenings to hear the live entertainment, shop in the boutiques or eat in the cafes. Those who do must thread their way past police barricades set up at the entrances to the pedestrian mall and present their bags for search by security officers.

“People are not in the mood for celebrating,” said Pnina El Ezra, a clerk at Chic Parisien, a women’s clothing store. “Business is terrible and keeps getting worse.”

El Ezra said she can understand the bleak mood. “I stand here in the store, and I can still envision the blood on the walls outside. I just see it in my mind,” she said. “It’s not just here--the whole country is suffering.”

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Batsheva Sobelman in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.