by Dana Asher

Eliran Shalom was in the process of laying tefillin in the school synagogue at ORT Spanian when he heard a deafening explosion. Assuming the thunderous boom was caused by a low-flying plane, he continued to wrap his phylacteries until his friend came running into the shul shouting about a terrorist attack on the number 32 bus outside the Jerusalem school’s gates.

Zohar, a mutual friend, was on that bus. The two raced out to site.

"Pieces of bodies were strewn all over on the ground and people were busy moving bodies away and arranging them on the side. I continued searching," Shalom recalls.

Eventually, Zohar, who was not hurt, answered his cell phone and the boys began to assist those wounded in the attack. “A few minutes later, there was already a long line of corpses covered with black bags identified according to serial numbers,” Shalom says. “I hope never again to witness an event as frightening as this."

Like all Israeli students who face the uncertainties of living with terrorism at school, on the street and in their backyard, avoiding the bus doesn’t ensure a sense of safety. When Meir Levi, and his friend, Ronen Landau, students at the Gadish ORT Ramot School Jerusalem, missed their bus after catching a movie, Landau called his father, Samuel. The concerned father instructed the boys to wait for him to pick them up rather than take the next bus.

The decision to err on the side of safety cost his son’s life. On the trip home, a group of terrorists fired on the car. One of the bullets cost Ronen his life. “Then as his father drove to the nearest Red Magen David [first aid unit],” Levi recalls with sadness. “I heard Ronen's last groan.”

Ronen Landau is one of 36 ORT students and graduates who at press time had lost their lives in terror incidents and military action since the beginning of Al-Aqsa Intifada in the fall of 2000. Somehow the number seems surreal, as reports of the unthinkable pepper the papers day after day. How does a school deal as devastation tears apart its student body?

How do school administrators—stretched to the limit by budget cuts and the escalating needs of traumatized students—help them cope with ongoing violence and terror, much less continue to teach? How can one educate a child who came to school on a newly retrofitted armored, bulletproof bus or who is told to depart school in small groups to avoid risk at the hands of terrorists?

"Each school in the ORT Israel network handles security differently and approaches counseling differently," explains Uzi Tsuk, president of ORT Israel, which educates 85,000 junior high school, high school and college students and 15,000 adult-ed students each year. "Schools are located in different areas and therefore their needs are distinct. Our head office is there for support, and the schools come to us for that."

Certainly, because of the current security risk, a wide range of social activities no longer takes place. But often, it is the parents who don’t allow their children to participate in trips that were subsequently cancelled. At ORT Yad Lvovitch, a ninth-grade guided tours of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa neighborhoods and eighth-grade nighttime activities in Latrun were called off and the traditional bar mitzva orientation was moved to a nearby Netanya location instead Zipori of the Galilee as in previous years.

"Parents are dealing with decision making. How far do you push fate? Do you let your kids go to the movies? Do you let them go to a restaurant?" says Jerusalem resident Roberta Bernstein, a certified social worker who counsels terror victims. "It’s causing a lot of stress for parents."

Since the beginning of the current wave of terror, more than 70 violent attacks attempted to eat away at the spirit of Israelis. The savagery has included suicide bombing attacks on commuter buses, attacks on discos, weddings and pizzerias, gunfire in broad daylight on city streets and massacres of families attacked in their homes. The victims have been men and women; they have included the young and the elderly.

While the attacks on Israel and Israelis have created a need for new programs and services at ORT Israel schools, it has coincided the fact that Israel has had to divert funds once allocated for education to security and defense. Due to heightened security needs, ORT Israel has had to hire security guards while letting go teachers. An increased demand for counseling has resulted in workshops on handling stress and one-on-one sessions, but ORT Israel simultaneously lost funding for distance learning and special services for students with learning disabilities.

"We need security guards at every school, people trained specifically to guard entrances," explains Tsuk. "Funds to cover such costs don’t come from the Ministry of Education and we certainly weren’t budgeted for this kind of expense. Counseling also is not covered by the main budget." ORT Israel’s main budget was decreased as well—by 5 percent this year and 7 percent the year before.

"We are," Tsuk continues, "in the process of letting go 200 of our 5,000 teachers. The result? Fewer class choices and fewer hours."

How do the students fare in all of this? "I feel that my college is secure," says Yoav Nimron, a student at ORT Braude in Karmiel who is entering his final year in electronics engineering. "Over the past months as threats have increased, the security has doubled. Student IDs are checked. And if you drive through the front gate—upperclassmen can park inside the school compound—cars are checked and trunks are open. Sure there can be a wait to get inside. When they are stricter with security, you know something is going on, such as a specific threat."

In May, six weeks before Nimron made a trip to the United States to speak to members of Women’s American ORT, Braude suffered its first terror victim. A student on his way to Bethlehem for reserve duty was killed in a bombing in Haifa.

When asked how this affects him, Nimron shrugs. "This is our home, the only Israel we’ve got. My sister lives up north and my 4-year-old nephew hears the missiles the Hizbollah launch from Lebanon. He asks when the thunder will stop. How do you live with this? We just do. We live our normal lives. Nobody wants to leave."

A more tangible concern for Nimron and his friends is the practical worry of missing a month of school due to his miluim, or reserve duty. During a time of crisis, as students are called for army duty, they miss classes and sacrifice precious study time.

"Can you imagine missing 25 days of school and not being behind? We worry about lost study time and about dropping grades," Nimron says. "It’s hard, especially for engineering students."

Tsuk has heard this before. In the last year, most students have been dedicating a month to reserve duty, whereas this wasn’t the case previously. "During peacetime,” Tsuk says, “you usually can coordinate your reserve duty with school break. Of course, during a crisis, this is usually not possible."

This has created a need for additional tutoring for students who may be missing weeks of classes at a time. Whether it’s helping students bridge the gap between time away from school or counseling to deal with overwhelming fears, ORT Israel’s schools are finding one thing in common: dramatically changing needs of its students.

After Ronen Landau’s death: Gadish ORT Ramot School opened its doors in the middle of summer and brought in counselors to deal with the grief of the students and staff. Landau’s mother, who teaches in the school and sees Ronen’s classmates on a daily basis, attended the graduation dedicated to Ronen's memory. Gadish ORT Ramot students created the United Hand Against Terror project, where each student printed his or her hand stamp on a piece of fabric in an identifiable color. The pieces were placed together to form a hundred-meter-long chain—symbolizing one hand against terror.

For now, that symbol at ORT Ramot seems the symbol of ORT Israel as a whole: one hand against terror. One front. One student family. Certainly, it hasn’t been an easy two years for ORT Israel, functioning in the wake of war.

“The Israeli economy has been affected not only by war but also by worldwide recession. Here, we feel it more deeply because of security costs and defense issues,” Tsuk says. “The situation in Israel is more intense then ever in my memory. In such times, we seek help from outside from the Jewish community and we count of the help of ORT supporters.”