Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

300,000 pigs to be killed in Egypt. I don’t know how many in Jordan. I hope they are washing their hands. We, on the other hand, are more civilized : OUR assistant Minister of Health (We don’t have a real one) did one major thing to help the situation. He changed the name of swine flu to Mexican flu.
Well actually the medical system here is doing its best, giving the same instructions as are given everywhere else about sanitation and trying to figure out what kind of strain it is.
Me I’m sneezing and coughing and would not think anything of it if the world weren’t so hysterical right now.

THE FLAG

It
is still
possible
to envision a
true Jewish state but only if it is
large enough to include the
rest of the world
and generous enough
to acknowledge and try to right
the wrongs committed even
unwillingly in its
creation.
This is
our

hope

Another week of this double diary and I’ll decide which way to go. First I have to get rid of this bloody cold, and clear my head. We went to a party yesterday, but it was on a small scale, where i could infect only a few of my closest friends. I hung the flags all over the front of the house, and now will call my old housebound acquaintances that need cheering. Then I will go back to bed. If bedrest helps I will join the family in a barbeque or … better yet … have some radiatori and rejoicing at Pappa’s.

For example, The other day, at a meeting of the Federation of Writers’ Associations, in which representatives of English, Yiddish, Russian, Georgian, Rumanians, Spanish, etc. bemoaned the fact that our budgets have been cut to the point where we can’t even afford to maintain the multilingual culture we are dedicated to promoting, the Georgian representative stopped the mourning with “Do you know why the Dead Sea is called the Dead Sea?” we murmured something about how no life can be supported in the salt, and slowly she shook her head. “It is because it is the lowest body of water in the world, and all the rivers flow down to it, but it gives nothing to anything. This,” she said, “is what created Sodom – the inability to give.” There was silence, and then we resolved to plan a ceremony for Holocaust Day next year to echo the multilingual destruction of our various communities, to give instead of shnorring.

When the siren went off today I was in the middle of getting the gunk washed out of my hair. I didn’t even hear it at first. But hairdresser Vital gave apprentice Ariel a look and we understood. I got up, dripping, and stood for two minutes, thinking that if only we had one less war, there would be thousands of more people around one of whom might have found solutions to some of the political problems we can’t seem to get our heads around.
Now – after a day of memorials and meetings – I seem to have come down with a head cold but am moving towards thoughts of Independence. We have two parties to go to, one that’s about singing old songs, and the other about talking politics. Where would you go?

We always begin the day before. Holidays, ceremonies, memorials. But to me the day in memory of all the soldiers is always preceded by a day of teaching that is interrupted by a service. The service is always followed by more classes but I never know what I’m talking about by then. I look out at the students and see victims – young people mourning. And then the campus is empty, every one rushing home with little to discuss on the day.
By six the shops are closed and the streets are empty. We watch the national ceremony on TV and the pictures of all the soldiers I have known flash before me. Their families gather together in my thoughts. The friends lost in terror attacks visit me once again.
The waste of it – the waste of war – No one ever gives a speech about honor and glory of war, only the loss, and the honor of the dead. It is one of the few times when I am happy to hear the name of our anthem, the Hope.
Few people can be unaffected by this day. Not all that long ago I was hanging out khaki uniforms on the line on a Friday morning, and noticed how many of my neighbors were doing the same thing. Olive green or khaki, the mothers were hanging out the army laundry for the weekend, and were very happy to do it because it meant their child was safe and sound for the sabbath.
What of the Arabs, you say? Well, tomorrow evening, as I begin the celebrations for Independence Day, I will not mourn their day of loss so much as wish them a cause for Independence Day celebrations as well.

Let’s see if this blog works better:

http://www.karenalkalay-gut.com/blog.html

who knows where we’ll go?
The week turns from Holocaust week into Memorial week almost inperceptibly. It’s not only the programs on television, it’s every conversation, every plan, every appointment. Monday afternoon begin the services in memory of soldiers killed in the wars in Israel, but days before that grief is re-awakened for the lost future generation, just as the week before that grief was re-awakened for the lost past. We are in the middle of the previous generation destroyed and tomorrow’s generation in constant danger. It is a terrible sandwich to be in. And it is one frought with responsibility.

For some strange reason you readers prefer the wordpress site to my old-fashioned one. But I like the old one because it tells me how many visitors i’ve had.
Ah Tel Aviv! While Lisa was deep in the city taking pictures of the old bus station and the Saturday action, I was lounging in a restaurant near the market, watching the amazing natives stroll by as if they were walking down the hall of their apartment, in slippers, all relaxed for the Sabbath. i’m still cameraless, otherwise i would have shown you all the nature of the way tel-avivians treat their city like the kitchen they kind of stumble into after a night of carousing. But what really gave me a feeling of the city as a home was the conversation around the table – my friends were reconstructing the neighborhood of their infancy – a website (whose address i hope to give you tomorrow) is helping them.
Some of you have asked about the photo of my aunt. This is the first picture I’ve ever seen. I know that sometimes my mother used to look at me and cry because I looked like her sister, and sometimes she would blurt out that I’m as dedicated as she was, but I had no visual. I’ve been looking for her for months – especially after I saw the Bielsky film “Defiance.” There were some things that sounded familiar in that film, but others that were strange. The role of women in the Bielski otriad, for example, was pretty domestic, and I remember that my aunt was a fighter. After weeks of searching on the internet I went back to my mother’s testimony in Yad Vashem. The printed version didn’t say much, but in the form, there it was in my mother’s handwriting – Lenin Brigade with all the details… So I went back to the Internet. And finally found this picture.

Let’s compromise – I’ll try both sites for a little while and see how it goes. But I can’t afford the statistics so i’ll be totally blind about who reads this.
The other day, Holocaust Day, I ran out of some drugs and had to hit the pharmacy in the mall. It took me just a minute so I thought that since I’ve already paid 6 shekel for parking, I’d step in next door to Zara and see what’s up. It was crowded. Crowded. But within seconds an amazing t-shirt with zippers and an unmistakable friendliness to my body called me to attention, and I found myself standing in the long line for the registers. “Isn’t it unusually packed?” I asked the girl at the counter. “Yeh, sure, it’s Holocaust day,” the salesperson next to her answered, “Wait ‘till you see Memorial Day!” It took me a long time to digest this information, being one of the sinners I wanted to condemn, but this morning, as I put the t-shirt on, I realized how much I needed the trivial renewal of clothing for this week-long period, when so much is mourned, and so much is ignored as well.

Malcah Kaganovich was my mother’s youngest sister. She was born in Lida in 1912. She was educated there, became a Hebrew teacher, married Meir Kravitz and moved to Dyatlovo or as the Jews called it, Zhedtl. She joined the Otranski Otriad, the Lenin Brigade, after the second Jewish massacre in Zhedtl in 1942 and was active as a fighter. These partisans were determined, armed, and concerned primarily with blowing up German trains. According to my mother Malkah was burned alive when the barn they were hiding in was ignited by the Nazis in June of 1944. According to Chaike Grossman and Abba Kovner, however, she was caught by the Germans during a mission and hung. Her husband survived. She was thirty one when she died.

This is the only photograph of her that I know anything about. At first I thought she was the one in the first row, second from the right, that looks something like my grandmother of whom i have a little faded picture, but then I saw that she might be the one peeking in the last row near the right – and she looks very much like me.

She has long been part of my life, and anyone who knows my poetry knows how much she weaves in and out of the words. Here’s one blatant example:

MALCAH

Sometimes, on a quiet summer night
I smell her flesh burning.

The shack ignited by Aryan soldiers
flares up again: the informant farmer
watches from the barn.

The women scream
as my uncle
pulls them out
one by one
leaving her –
perversely,
heroically,
for last.

And there she
remains
for me –
my Partisan aunt –
Queen of burning flesh.

This afternoon in Ramat Toshavim cemetery as we mourned the anniversary of the death of Amos, I could not help but contrast the ages on the stones to the ages of those killed in the Holocaust. We had been talking about the Holocaust all day, about my aunt who died at the age of 32, about numerous relatives, about millions of children, about innumerable individuals. We also talked about the unborn. Had not 6 million been killed then, it was announced today, there would be 32 million Jews. Here in Ramat Toshavim, most of the people died of natural causes, except those killed in the wars, or terrorists. There are old graves that seem so isolated from the experience of such a massive catastrophe But Holocaust Day has just begun and I’m already sick of it. “Move forward,” I want to say, and “Make sure the memory is not used for manipulation, rationalization, explanation, and move on.”