By Larry Gordon
Kassam-rocket menora on Yeshiva roof
Yeshivat S’derot
Rabbi Dov Fendel is one of the unsung heroes of the Jewish people. Unless you are deeply or even casually involved in the myriad of niches carved out across the length and breadth of the State of Israel, it could be that you have not yet heard the name.
Rabbi Fendel is American by birth—a Long Islander who attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County as a youngster. He moved to Israel as a young man and through his singular efforts has transformed its Torah-oriented landscape.
S’derot is unfortunately best known for the battering it took at the terrorist hands of Hamas in Gaza who, after the Gush Katif withdrawal in 2005, unleashed their terrorist venom in the form of rocket attacks on the city located barely a kilometer from the Gaza border.
But under the direction of Rabbi Fendel and his wife, Mechi, the story in essence is that the more rockets Hamas shot seeking to kill, injure, and destroy, the more S’derot was strengthened and grew.
A great deal of the support that has made much of this rapid growth and development possible in that tiny corner of little Israel comes from our readership area, where the cause of the yeshiva and community of S’derot is championed.
To that end, the annual dinner of the Yeshiva of S’derot is set to take place at Terrace on the Park next Wednesday evening, April 13. In addition to the illustrious honorees, the keynote speaker will be famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is a cousin of the Fendels and has visited and toured the city.
Rabbi Fendel is in New York this week preparing for the event, and we had a rare opportunity to speak about the origins of his involvement and his taking up residence in S’derot over two decades ago. At the time, he was studying at Yeshivat Sha’alvim in Jerusalem and at some point later on opened a small satellite yeshiva with eight other young men in S’derot. After a while, when Sha’alvim decided that they no longer wanted to be involved in the new small yeshiva in S’derot, Rabbi Fendel decided to start one on his own.
Today this is the Yeshiva of S’derot, whose doors thousands of students have passed through, with many becoming Torah scholars and anchors of today’s S’derot community. At present, several hundred students are learning in the yeshiva, which also features a hesder program, for those who combine military service with Torah study.
Under the Fendels’ guidance, the yeshiva has developed into a premier institution and one of the most sought-after yeshivas in the country. While there are many excellent yeshivos dotting the Israel landscape, there is something unique about this one. And that is the nature of its location, what was experienced as a result, and the spirit and backbone that is emblematic of what it means to step up and sacrifice for Eretz Yisrael.
So S’derot became known to many of us as the city inside pre-1967 Israel that was the target of relentless and merciless Hamas terrorists for many years. Rabbi Fendel said that the first rockets were fired from Gaza in 2003, back when the Palestinians of Fatah and Hamas were not yet mortal enemies of one another. The point of the shabby though sometimes damaging homemade rockets was to coax Israel to move the settlers out of Gush Katif. If Israel wanted quiet on the border, it would have to move the Jews out. That was the message delivered by Kassam rocket.
Ariel Sharon—the prime minister—got the message in early 2004. That year, he decided that the only way to advance the peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors and the Palestinian Authority was to pull all Jews out of Gaza. That would eventually be close to 9,000 people physically extricated from their homes—some of whom had lived there since after the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel drove the Egyptians out of the Strip.
From the time of the Gush Katif withdrawal, the barrage of rockets began to increase, culminating with Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. To that point, over 12,000 rockets of all types and sizes had been fired at the city of S’derot.
Obviously, Sharon miscalculated in an extremely costly fashion. But when you walk the streets of S’derot, as we have done several times and which you may have done as well, it is much like any other town in the world. Stores are open, cars are traveling down streets, and people are shopping.
Back in 2010, during a period when the bombardment was rather intense and somewhat consistent, we were taken on a walk down a residential street. We stopped at a home in which a rocket had crashed through the roof, setting the home on fire and injuring several family members. Our guide pointed to a home across the street where, he said, one of the parents was killed as a result of a rocket hitting the home.
The next time we were in S’derot was for the lighting of the menorah located on the roof of Rabbi Fendel’s yeshiva. It was an unusually warm but windy night as dignitaries lit the menorah that was constructed from spent parts of rockets fired at the city. Standing on the roof, there off in the distance it was easy to see the lights of Gaza filled with a population and leadership that lives to see Israel’s destruction.
Following the lighting, we went down to the street, an area that looked like the town square where singing and dancing lasted through the night, celebrating the great chag that commemorates the weak Jewish minority triumphing against all odds—a bit like what is happening today in S’derot.
In another sense, today S’derot is one of the safest places in Israel for an interesting combination of reasons. Firstly, as Rabbi Fendel points out, all of the campus buildings are bomb- or rocket-proof. They are built with steel and concrete so thick so as to make it virtually impossible for rockets from Gaza to penetrate or do serious damage. Secondly, the terrorist bomb-makers in Gaza have improved the technology and the distance that the new rockets can travel before making impact, thereby making S’derot not their only target in Israel. It seems that the terrorists that run Gaza were interested in hitting S’derot only so long as they did not have rockets smuggled to them from Iran that can reach larger Israeli cities like Ashkelon or Ashdod. Fortunately, for now S’derot is mostly quiet. The bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli Air Force in 2014 may have induced a relative quiet for now, but that can change at any time.
From out here, things are perceived differently. In Israel, however, to attend the yeshiva in S’derot, to marry in the city, and to rent or buy an apartment is not just a matter of starting out a new life in a new direction. It is about Israel’s response to adversity, the resiliency in the face of all odds against them. Today there is a competition to be admitted as a student into the yeshiva. Before he arrived in New York, Dov Fendel told me, he was busy interviewing or “farhering” bachurim for the Elul z’man in the yeshiva.
With next week’s dinner at Terrace on the Park, there is an opportunity to become a part of the magic and miracle that S’derot is and will be in the future. So if you haven’t been to S’derot, this is your chance to grab part of that z’chus of defiance and growth as they face up to Israel’s enemies.
The people of S’derot are heroes, and this is our unique chance to walk with them.
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.