SOUL FOOD:

When the nine grade-school boys call home to talk to their parents, the first thing they ask is, “Have there been any Qassams today?” They ask the way we might ask, “So, how’s the weather?”

But unless you’re talking about tornadoes or earthquakes, Qassams are not at all like weather. Qassams are missile rockets, which Palestinians in the Gaza Strip lob into the boys’ once-idyllic hometown of Sderot, Israel.

As I explained last week, these children are here for a respite as guests of the Silver Gan Israel summer camp, run by the Hebrew Academy in Huntington Beach. These boys are all too young to remember Sderot’s tranquil days before the second Palestinian uprising began eight years ago.

When through an interpreter I asked a boy named Dan how often the wail of the municipality’s Red Dawn warning system sent Sderot residents dashing for the protection of a bomb shelter or a safe room, he answered, “Every day.”

Asked how close a Qassam had ever come to his home, Mikhael said a rocket had once blown the porch off the house. If the missiles fall in a more distant part of the city, the small boy said, the terror sooner fades. But when a rocket strikes close to home, it takes a much longer time for him to feel at ease again. If at ease is something these boys ever really feel.

While they are here, they are sleeping in a house lent to them by benefactor Allen Alevy. The home lies in the path of the Long Beach Airport flight pattern.

On the evening the boys arrived, they sat gathered around the kitchen table with their counselor, Rabbi Sholom Goldstein, when a jet roared overhead. Goldstein watched in dismay as the boys dove under the table. He explained about the airport and assured them there was no danger. The episode, though, was revealing.

The grassroots efforts of 11 rabbis enabled these boys and 150 other children to enjoy a missile-threat-free, monthlong “summer in heaven” at camps throughout North America. It is giving them, says Rabbi Sender Engel, the director of Silver Gan Israel, “the gift of childhood,” something they have never had.

Along with educational programs and counseling, the boys have participated in crafts, sports and recreational activities that have included weekend outings to Bakersfield and Oxnard, excursions on the boat of another benefactor, Alice Alkosser, as well as trips to amusement parks like Sea World.

They spent one evening at Boomers in Fountain Valley, where the go-karts made the biggest hit with them. This weekend they will see Disneyland, thanks to a local manufacturer and real estate developer, Yosi Cohen.

“Those children have a lot of tough times in life, and I want to give them a piece of America. How could you come to America and not go to Disneyland?” asked this man who said children mean everything to him.

“It’s never been my money. It’s God’s money,” Cohen said, describing himself as “only a messenger.”

When asked what he’d say if he were given the chance to talk to the Palestinians who are ripping his town apart with rockets, Shai — a big boy with a bigger smile — first shot me a wise-guy grin, and then claimed he’d just beat them up. Shai is not shy.

The grin and a quick giggle told me he was joshing. Then suddenly sober, with a straight face, he said he’d tell them this: “You can have Sderot, if that’s what you want, if you’ll just stop there and stop bombing other cities.”

I asked if he was serious. “Are you serious?”

Nodding his head up and down, Shai said something in Hebrew to Goldstein. “He’s serious,” Goldstein said to me.

Asher is 11 years old but smaller than most of the boys. He has big, brown eyes and a shock of black curly hair.

When I asked him what the biggest difference is between Sderot and Huntington Beach, he drummed his fingers lightly on the table in front of him before answering. Then in Hebrew he told Goldstein, “It’s more quiet here.”

These boys will be scarred for a long time by their life in Sderot, Goldstein said. It has made them tense and predisposed to aggressive behavior, something Goldstein has been working with them to control.

One day, a boy named Sagi came to him and announced he’d had his best day yet at the camp. When Goldstein asked him why that was Sagi replied, “Because I have not fought with anyone.”

Goldstein described the moment as “an unbelievable thing.” When a kid says that, he told me, “It means [I] got to him. I entered his mind. I made progress.”

If Goldstein has entered the boys’ minds, they have entered many hearts. In Bakersfield at the Chabad synagogue they visited, Rabbi Shmuli Schlanger had a tough time when he had to say goodbye.

He hugged each child and later asked Engel for the boys’ names and Sderot addresses. When he visits Israel later this year, he plans to visit them.

American students at the Silver Gan Israel camp are filling gold-colored, credit-card sized address books with their names and addresses. The cover of each book reads “My Friends @ Camp SGI.”

These nine boys will soon be back in Sderot, but they will not soon be forgotten. If Engel has his way, they will visit again next year if Sderot is still under siege.

If his prayers are answered, the city will again be at peace.

Tax-deductible donations can be made to: Silver Gan Israel; Attention: Sderot kids; 14401 Willow Lane; Huntington Beach, CA, 92647. To learn more, visit www.CampSGI.com/Sderot.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.