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Stuart Schoffman: Close to Home

A Tuesday night in early September. I am on the phone, not speaking, only listening. It�s a conference call from the Old Country, a press briefing by the United Jewish Communities, which is finally releasing the results of its exhaustive National Jewish Population Survey for 2000-01. Sitting in Chicago, the project�s research director recites various sobering statistics, culled via state-of-the art polling techniques.

Forty-seven percent of the Jews who got married between 1996 and 2001 married non-Jews. The median age of U.S. Jews is 42, seven years older than the population at large; Jewish women bear fewer children than the American norm, with under 1.9 births per woman -- below the "replacement level" of 2.1. There are 5.2 million Jews in the States -- 300,000 fewer than in 1990 -- if you count not only those "whose religion is Jewish," but also people who call themselves Jewish and "something else," say, Catholic; and also those who have no religion, or "practice a nonmonotheistic religion," but have at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing. If, however, you subtract people who do not consider themselves Jewish, the total falls to 4.3 million. If, on the other hand, you tally everyone who lives in a household that includes at least one Jewish adult, the number soars to 6.7 million -- 100,000 more than a decade earlier. Hooray.

A mere four million-plus self-identified American Jews, I jot sleepily on my yellow pad, is about the same as the fast-growing number of Palestinian Muslims who restively reside in the Land of Israel, from the river to the sea. On a more uplifting note, the NJPS finds that 35 percent of American Jewish adults have visited Israel -- a surprisingly high figure -- and that 79 percent of the children aged 6 to 17 (in the 4.3 million group) have received some Jewish education, including 29 percent who go, or went, to day school. Following a Q&A;, the press briefing ends at 11 p.m. My daughter is asleep and I kiss my son goodnight and attend to some paperwork. And about 15 minutes later, a loud boom.

My brother calls. He lives in the Talpiot neighborhood, a few kilometers away, wants to know if we�re OK. The blast was a few minutes� walk from my house, at Caf� Hillel on Emek Refaim, the main drag I visit every day of my life, a block down from my wife�s office. Roberta often gets takeout salads from Hillel. Ever since the day in March 2002 that she ate lunch at Caffit up the street, and left 20 minutes before a bomber walked in but miraculously failed to detonate -- it was two days before Caf� Moment blew up, you remember, the one by the Prime Minister�s house -- ever since then, Roberta doesn�t sit in Emek Refaim caf�s. I do. Mine of choice is Aroma, where this very afternoon I had my usual egg sandwich and double cappuccino, despite police warnings that in the aftermath of the 500-pound IDF bomb that failed Saturday night to kill Hamas figurehead Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, something bad was going to happen in Jerusalem. Hey, I figured, Aroma has a security guard. So did Hillel. Two.

Population survey: 14 more Jews lost. Six at Caf� Hillel, including a bride-to-be and her physician father, American Israelis like us. Eight others earlier in the day, in the bus stop bombing outside the Tzrifin army base near Tel Aviv. An Arab waiter was also killed at Hillel. I am welded to the TV. Channel 10 talks to Liran, age 22, lightly wounded, who has worked at Hillel for three months and says that today, more than ever, she was afraid, but others told her that after Tzrifin there was less need to worry. Jerusalem�s ultra-Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupoliansky, is on air by phone, sounds calm, matter-of-fact, even strangely upbeat -- I infer that he is resigned to God�s will -- and sprinkles his comments with Biblical idioms, and says it�s a disgrace that the protective fence around Jerusalem hasn�t been completed. He�s a nice man, and I�m no expert, but I beg to differ. Arbitrarily segregating the "good," "safe" Jerusalem Palestinians from their brethren just outside the city limits -- I�ve seen the fence at Abu Dis, and it does just that -- virtually guarantees that one of these days, the bomber will come from within. Or am I wrong?

I silently enter my kids� rooms and sit down on their beds and listen to them breathe, the way I did when they were infants. I return to the TV and learn that police had stopped and inspected the ambulances that raced to the scene -- fearing a terrorist attack on a hospital. Reporters pick apart Israel�s public-safety strategies and the terrorists� tactics as if covering a soccer match. Channel 2 interviews police commissioner Shlomo Aharonishky, who assures us the police are on the job and also advises people to carry guns. What have our Zionist dreams come to? Was it only a few weeks ago that we celebrated Rafi�s bat mitzvah, that we saw ourselves through the eyes of our guests from abroad, who marveled at our way of life, so rich with meaning and spirit and friendship? Tonight, once again, the roar of this mad conflict drowns out the music of community.

The morning after. We wake the kids and break the news. Roberta drives them to school and I walk to Emek Refaim and watch workmen install new glass at Caf� Hillel. I go to the post office and then to Aroma -- life must go on -- but Aroma is closed, with a sign expressing grief and sympathy. I run into friends on the street. No one is making predictions, only that we will be keeping our kids closer to home. Peace is not at hand. Wise leadership -- here on the ground, back at the ranch -- is in woefully short supply. If only the warrior-politicians were to adopt as their mantra the dictum of Caf� Hillel�s ancient namesake, which 98.6 percent of Jewish day-school graduates in Chicago know by heart: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." But this, like so much else, is way too much to ask.