In Kenneth Brannaugh’s film, Belfast, there is much  discussion of the family moving from Belfast to England – primary because of economic necessity.  As a child of refugees and perhaps a refugee myself, the one sentence in which the grandfather tells the boy that he will be looked after by his parents, his extended family, his neighbors and his society, struck me with both fists.  That’s the way every child should grow up, but in contemporary society few get that opportunity.   

One of the reasons that drew me to Israel in 1972 was the idea of community  – the fact that many people who had lost their families or were displaced for other reasons remembered the need for society and worked together to recreate that.  My next door neighbor was Iraqi, married to an Uzbecki, and she and our other Polish neighbor family created a group with me that was my first experience of families.  

My own parents when I drew up had either lost their families or found themselves far apart geographically after the holocaust, and spent their energies trying to survive and to help the survivors.  

The society of the first decades of my life was one brought together by tragedy and necessity, and one abandoned by the next generation who needed to blend in with a greater world.  Perhaps this is true of the next generation of Israelis as well.  Scattered all over the universe they find their personal space and others who share their intellectual needs elsewhere.  Also of course, their financial needs. 

Few people get rich here.  As is was always said, the way to making a small fortune in Israel is to come here with a big one.  

But the sense of community has become far more complex in the past decades.  Politicians worked on dividing the peoples far more than bringing them together.  And I pledge, more and more, to continue to find ways to bring as many of the communties here possible together as much as possible.

I got back yesterday, and am very severely in need of sleep, groceries, laundry, and a haircut,  but this is more on my mind than ever – finding ways to create communities, to widen the concept of community  We’ll see how far I get.