When we sat down on the balcony of “Nechama and a half” at 5 it was a pleasant Tel Aviv afternoon, a peaceful Friday afternoon with half the population fast asleep in preparation for another wild evening. But by 7 I was so frozen I had to warm myself under our quilt until the news.
The news by the way was so strangely barren of so many of the issues we’d been discussing all week I began to believe in censorship – but there was enough shmutz anyway. I didn’t get anything about the injured demonstrator in Bilin, or any west bank demonstrations, or Ehud Olmert, or Holyland or any of the big headlines, but there was a lot of discussions about ‘i told you so,’ and ‘we’ve been hinting about Danny Dankner and the other big families running Israel for years.’
So out of boredom I decided to surf Kurt Gerron, something I periodically do. But for some reason I decided to check in at Yad Vashem to see if anyone ever listed him. And it turns out that his nephew wrote in about 13 years ago, naming his father as Max, mother as Mally, wife as Olly (nickname for Olga). Now it’s my turn to find the nephew.
Then we can go out and party.
I don’t write about friends or students unless they clearly relinquish their privacy, even though sometimes I want to very much. I don’t want to make individuals into symbols – certainly not examples of my life. But today, just after one of my Jewish students told me he is going off to active reserve today tomorrow, and is very afraid he will never return, an Arab student told me he was having serious problems coming to class because he’s needed in his village.
How can I not mention the land-corruption scandal? To me this has the same character as the sex scandals we were enduring in these last years – the same character in that the opportunity and the reason for the massive corruption in this arena is connected to the shift from one type of society to another, in the latter case from socialism to capitalism. As the government releases (previously socialist controlled) lands to the public, selling them to the highest bidder, there is so much money involved it would seem stupid not to bribe anyone possible in order to obtain that land. So in that space corruptible people thrive.
Have YOU been called for questioning yet? We’re in the middle of a deepening inquiry concerning land graft, proving that Israelis don’t just screw Palestinians.
As much as I am proud of the State of Israel, I do not forget the grief of my Arab neighbors. Their leaders opened a war when Israel was partitioned and many left (having been told they would returned victorious in a few days) and many more were chased out. The Nakba was not something determined by Israel, but I still think we should be as sympathetic to the fate of the people who were displaced as we can possibly be, and do whatever we can to rectify the situation without doing harm to ourselves.
Enough of my diatribed. We spent the day with friends – first quietly in a beautiful garden with nothing to disturb us, then in a dingy but well-considered cafe in Ramat Aviv. Everything was quiet and relaxing. Then we picked up the kids and went to the park. That was the real Israel. There was not a square inch of the southern shore of the Yarkon river that didn’t have a family with a barbie. Even though I was sure I’d picked the most secluded part of the park, every one else was there. The ostriches and the goats and the deer and the ducks and the peacocks were all nervous even though no one was paying much attention to them. Must have been something about the smell of cooking meat.
Animals feel atmospheres – I don’t know how but they reflect whatever is going on with our politics, our economics, our senses. When I was walking with Shusha today, one of the crows who always watches us carefully buzzed her. It was a clear warning, but she didn’t notice a thing.
I really didn’t want to pay too much attention to Memorial Day. Not that it is not an important and basic day to this country, but that I had a particularly grueling fine needle aspiration at Ichilov yesterday morning, and with twelve holes in my thyroid, was in need of an anodyne, not sharper pains in my neck, especially after a night of national mourning on television. I woke up early, just made it to my GP for an appointment, and then decided to get some chores done before I went home. As the baker was explaining to me in her Russian-Hebrew that the cheesecake could also be frozen, the sirens sounded, and everyone at that crowded little shop stopped in mid-sentence, standing at attention. Each person I knew who died in a terrorist attack, each one of the 22,684 mourned today, came back into my mind. Sappi, who would dance next to me at the studio, tapping her cane over her shoulder and smiling at me, was the first. She didn’t look like a grandmother, but she was as serious about her role as she was afraid of being blown up in Tel Aviv. Didn’t go to cafes for that reason, and got blown up waiting for a bus on her way to see her grandchild. So many individuals just like her, on their ways to ordinary things in their lives, and stopped abruptly, violently.
The soldiers are even more deeply buried in our collective memory. “I’ve got a dead son in my heart,” a friend told me once – in a general sense this is true for all of us here, bearing a dead child in our hearts.
The last part of that long minute was filled with thoughts of those not numbered amount the more then 20,000 – all those missing arms and legs, brain damage, burns all over their bodies, trauma victims those who weren’t killed but whose lives were irrevocably ruined in one moment – people I meet daily – even in the bakery.
From this afternoon until tomorrow evening is a very difficult time for us. There are few in this land who have not lost as a result of war or terrorism. We do not let the greatness of the schievement of statehood mask tbe loss of over 20,000 losses. And we shouldn’t. That loss is always with us. But it should not let us be blind to the losses of the other. It does not diminish the significance of those who died for us, or their importance, but it does begin to allow us to transcend this loss, and to help increase our own worthiness of this wonderful possibility of a homeland.
At two in the morning we found ourselves coming home from Neve Tzedek, after a particularly stimulating evening with friends. I had thought to go home and raise some of the moral and political issues we had been arguing about with you, but everything went out of my mind as we passed through the incredibly crowded streets of Tel Aviv. Lilienblum Street, Herzl Street, and finally Rothchild Boulevard, were packed with young people – some clubbing, some walking, some just sitting around in groups and sharing a glass of wine. The site of such a living city warmed my heart.
I must continue my rant from yesterday. Some of my neighbors are worried about property values, others that the neighborhood will lose its free pastoral nature, and still others are irritated by the way in which the children have been the focus of the attention, that a group of Chabad men meet the children wherever they gather with wine and cookies and tfillim. Me, I’m upset with a larger issue – that the Rabbi will rise from the dead only when we have all become observant. In this context the existence of Israel is a serious impediment, and so these people are admittedly and vociferously anti-zionist, that most of them have no honorable employment other then praying for us and we are supporting them. These are the same people who are totally destroying Sheikh Jerrach.
Well I’ve done it again, joined another organization. This time it is very close to home. In Ramat Aviv there has been a great deal of messianic activity lately – an intrusion that even I have been experiencing. Like when I went to sign up my granddaughter to the least expensive nursery school and by mistake was allowed inside and discovered the babies being diapered to the radio chants of prayers, like last year when we discovered the feathers of sacrificed roosters before Yom Kippur in a nearby public parking lot (this year it was halted in time)… So the organization is Ramat Aviv Residents and it is trying to stop messianic activities in school playgrounds, shopping centers, etc. in our neighborhood. I never thought I’d be involved in something like this, but messianic Judaism has never been close to my heart. I always liked the idea of Judaism which makes conversion difficult, and learning difficult to obtain. And although I admire many of the humanistic beliefs of the religious extremists, I don’t believe in ‘enthusiasm.’ The other day a very religious woman whom I love said to me, “You have the spark!” And I automatically responded, “Yes, but when it comes I stomp it out with my feet.”
The basis for this is the belief is that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is not dead but hiding and will only return when all the jews are observant and that state of Israel disappears. So they endeavor to convince us all to become observant Jews, and the warmth of their giving, the apparent transcendence of their demeanor, and their good deeds, are indeed great temptations in these troubled times. And the secular society has lost its social infrastructure of family and friends, so something else is definitely needed.
