Terror in Prague?

14 days ago, the Czech secret service said they had received concrete information that leads them to susspicion that Prague should be the next target of an islamist terrorist attack.
It was the weekend of Rosh ha-Shana (Jewish new year) and they said that Jewish buildings are the most probable target. Consequently, we spent the holidays being guarded not only by the usual Jewish community guards, but also by the (armed) Czech police. In addition, Prague was full of policemen and soldiers that guarded mainly the city center and its most important buildings. I took the thread seriously, but I have to admit I was not really alarmed. When I lived in Israel, I was very often informed about security alerts by the Jewish agency through the yeshiva. In the Jewish world, we are used to constant possibility of an attack. In Jerusalem, you are checked by the security even when you go to the pharmacy to buy vitamin C tablets. I teach in a school, in which even the first graders are used to an armed guard that watches over them during the day.

On Friday, prominent Czech newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes revealed that the target of the Rosh ha-Shana attack should have been the Jerusalem synagogue in Prague. In the article they also described the details of the planned attack. The information was also published in some other world´s newspapers and within minutes made the world´s headlines. My Masorti community joins the Jerusalemska synagogue minyan (the community that prays there) every Shabbat for the Saturday morning service. I know the synagogue and its people very well. On Lejl Sukot (the beginning of the holidays of Tabernacles) i.e. in the evening after the news had been released, my community held a joined meal in the Sukah (a shed we eat and sometimes sleep in during the festival) in the yard of the Jerusalem synagogue for our minyan and the Jerusalem synagogue community as we had been planning since the beginning of the week. The news naturally made people weary, however on Friday evening both of the minyanim (communities) came to the synagogue as usual. All the people that signed up for the dinner during the week were there together with several other guests and visitors. The sad truth is terror became a part of our lives. But I firmly believe we have to face it by not giving in to it. One of the main aims of the terrorists is to make us fear them. Once we give up our lives we will start to make them feel they are winning.