PALO ALTO, CALIF. — The yarmulke on his head and the smile on his face Sunday afternoon symbolized how far Xhafer Voca had come in the past four months. At a reception for about 65 local Kosovar refugees and their families at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, Voca got to eat a bagel with cream cheese, see the Torah removed from the ark and hear Rabbi Sheldon Lewis blow the shofar -- all new sensations for the 48-year-old Muslim. But the two hours of spirited dancing, singing and cross-cultural exchange between the ethnic Albanians and 30 Kol Emeth congregants couldn't make Voca forget the horrors of the war he had lived through. "I'm afraid to think about the things that have happened, the things that I've seen," he said through a translator. "I don't know why I made it out alive. Maybe only God knows why I'm alive." Voca, who arrived in Campbell six weeks ago with his wife and three children, lived in the region where much of the Serbian conflict started, which meant he saw a lot of dead bodies and many people killed. Choking up, he struggled to tell the tale of how Serb military men came to his house in Mitrovice one day and shoved him into the trunk of their car. "For 3-1/2 hours I was in there [the trunk]. I didn't know where they were taking me and I thought I might die," Voca said. "They stopped and talked for a while ...      Read more