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Archives for July 2006

From the home front

July 19, 2006 by

Another day has passed and with it more rockets landing from Lebanon. For those who are worried about us, I need to recount a phone conversation I had tonight. Our daughter’s in-laws live in Haifa and I spoke with her mother-in-law tonight, again offering to house them for as long as they would like to spend here. She answered that they are fine. They feel safe. They have been in their house reading, listening to music, watching television, taking advantage of the time at home to get things done. They are fine. They are not worried.

Of course, we in the center of the country feel safe and confident, but it is particularly reassuring to me that those in the line of fire are just as confident.

And a personal note: Our youngest granddaughter who will reach the ripe old age of a week on Friday and still has not been named, is very adorable. We enjoyed visiting her and her siblings on Tuesday. And it felt very nice to pick up our younger daughter and her husband who returned in the middle of the night from a trip overseas. It’s good to have them back home.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings

What a people!

July 17, 2006 by

What a people we are! Today our enemies attacked firing kassams in the south (in Ashqelon and Sderot), in the center (a terrorist was caught in downtown Jerusalem carrying a bomb in preparation for an attack) and firing katyushas in the north (Haifa, Safed, Meiron, Kiryat Shmona, Acre, Tiberias, Talal, Julis, Abu Snan, Kafr Yassif and other towns across the north) and yet we hold strong. One after another the government ministers, the mayors, the police all report the same thing: our people are saying “stay the course” “we can do this” “we are with you.” In Haifa where one building took a direct hit, the owner of the apartment said, “This is what we are involved in and this is part of it.”

I still don’t understand anyone’s criticism. Is there any possibility that these attacks on any other civilized country would be met with as much restraint as our forces are using? If the US were attacked on two of its borders and were a terrorist caught on the same day in Washington, do you really think it would absorb the blow? If they are targeting homes in our cities, what would be a proportional response? Targeting homes in their cities? When the Israel air force went after a civilian area that houses Hezbollah’s supplies and infrastructure, they dropped leaflets hours before warning civilians to leave the area so they wouldn’t be harmed. And the world says we use disproportional responses!

They can never defeat us. This is a people like none other. We are one large family. Yes, we squabble when things are going well, but comes a crisis and we truly are one.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings

Living through the war

July 16, 2006 by

This past shabbat, my husband and I went to the home of friends. When we arrived, our hostess warned us that she had made a lot of food since it was her way of coping with the war. On Saturday afternoon, one of her friends came over and mentioned that she was stuffed because she had made lots of food as her way of coping with the war.

Never having had the urge, I couldn’t relate to making food as a coping mechanism. I would have imagined that my main coping mechanism was watching or listening to the news, but today I found myself moving furniture, scrubbing the floor, and washing- scrubbing the handles on my kitchen cabinets. I began to realize that it was another way that I had of dealing with this war.

And this war isn’t a very easy thing to conceptualize. On the one hand, the simple truth is that we have enemies that desire my death and the death of all of my children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbors. They would enjoy seeing my blood running in the street. They target apartment houses, soccer fields, schools, pizza restaurants, and shopping centers so much desiring blood that they praise those who blow themselves up to accomplish their goals. They have never lied about how much of our country they want (all of it). So that should be simple.

But it isn’t, because we as Jews and Israelis don’t have the same values. I don’t know one person in this country who wouldn’t want a solution that allows us to live and let live. Were the Arabs to say to us (and mean it) “we just want to live our lives, raise our children, plant our gardens, go to theater and concerts and movies with you Jews (or separately from you Jews)” there is no one I know on the left or right who would have a problem with it. Land could be shared. Municipalities could have more or less autonomy. All of it could be solved, but we need them to care about their own lives more than they care about ruining ours.

We want simply to live. We have so much to give. When we left Gaza, the Arabs who had been working with us in agriculture begged us to stay. They had good jobs and were providing for their families. They knew that what we left would be destroyed by the other Arabs—and it was.

So we experience sadness and desperation and the pain of losing our beautiful young soldiers and sailors and the men and women and children killed in this war. But we also experience something amazing: the magnificence of the Israelis. We see kindness that is unparalleled… people taking in people they have never met so that they will be safe; singers performing for people who are in shelters; television programs that exude love and caring for our people; people collecting toys and games for the children who are in shelters; others collecting toiletries and snack foods for our soldiers. I have never seen such kindness. This nation pulls together as one. It reminds me of the rhetorical question in the liturgy “who is like your people Israel?” At times like these, they are magnificent.

But the kindness doesn’t stop there. I have received emails from many many of the people we know in the States telling us that they are thinking of us, praying for us, supporting us, standing with us. There is such kindness in the world. May it help us defeat the hate.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings, Spirituality

I’ve had it!

July 14, 2006 by

OK, the world has offically gotten on my last nerve.

I won’t go into ancient history that would affirm that this land has been the land of the Jews since Abraham. I won’t expound modern history that would show that there was no such thing as the “Palestinian people” until after 1967 when suddenly the Arabs decided that the Arab people so outnumbering the Jews could never be looked upon as victims, so they had to form a sub-group that was a “minority” and now have created a myth of a people that never had its own land or culture.

I will just speak about the past few years. On May 24, 2000, Israel completed the withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. The UN affirmed that Israel had left all Lebanese territory. That didn’t stop Hezbollah from shelling our positions and kidnapping our soldiers. And there were kidnappings that were foiled that hardly made the news.

Last August, Israel expelled 7000 Jews from their homes in Gaza– people who lived on lands that had NEVER been occupied by Arabs. In fact, when they came to settle there, the local Arabs greeted them with bread and salt and wondered how these people planned to live on the sand. But that expulsion didn’t stop the rocket attacks on our cities or the murder and kidnapping of our soldiers.

Then we elected a new prime minister who (I think, foolishly) vowed to withdraw (expell Jews) from Judea and Samaria to try and establish a border with a fledgling Palestinian state (made up of a majority who applaud the murder of Jews.)

But that didn’t sate our enemies.

And now, the world has the nerve to tell us to act with restraint! Don’t they realize that the Arabs want us dead and gone and want to erase Israel from the map! Listen to Hezbollah’s broadcasts. Last night they referred to Haifa as being occupied land. So is, in their mind, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Lod, Rechovot…. Wait. I don’t have time to list all of the cities in Israel because if you look at their map of Palestine, it includes ALL of Israel.

Folks! We are fighting for our lives. We are fighting today in the north and in the south because all of this country is within range of their rockets. We live about 3 kilometers from an Arab village. Former cordial relations have been disrupted by the radicalization of their populations. Ever since the west has begun singing its song of moral equivalence with the refrain of “both sides” and “cycle of violence” and has advised Israel to “exercise restraint”, the Arabs have felt emboldened. They see themselves as having been taken seriously and realize that there is sympathy for their cause. It helps them maintain the hope that they will eventually wipe us out.

We must win this time. We can’t afford to lose. We’re betting our lives on it.

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings

Unraveling a yarn

July 10, 2006 by

Yesterday I responded to a notice on our community mailing list. A woman had posted that she had a garbage bag full of yarn and knitting needles and she was giving it away. Since I use yarn frequently these days to make blankets for my new grandchildren when they are born, I could not pass up the offer. So I called her and arranged to pick up the yarn.

When I got home I started going through the bag. There were multiple balls of the same colors and types of yarn—a nubby gray-green, a very thick off-white, a very thin red, and some nubby off-whites. However, there were also works in progress: about half of the back of a black sweater with red rectangles, but with no further yarn to finish it; the front of a salmon-colored mohair vest for a thin person, most likely a child, and a small aqua mohair skirt still on the round knitting needle.

I began to feel like an intruder on the knitter’s world. I wondered about her. I understood that the woman who had given away the garbage bag full was not the knitter. No one would give away their half-finished work. A perfectionist would finish it. A defeatist would throw it away. It had to have belonged to someone else.

But what happened to her? Did she pass away, in the middle of her work? Did she become disabled so that finishing it was not an option?

I picture her sitting and working. The black and red sweater, I imagine, was for a grandson. I recall my own mother knitting, most likely a sweater for herself, and one of my sons asking for a sweater too. Did this woman’s grandson ask for a sweater? Did she sit and knit it with the anticipation of his delight when she presented him with it?

Was the salmon vest for a granddaughter? Did she think of the child’s dark shiny braids contrasting with the brilliant hue of the sweater? And the skirt? Was this a skirt for another granddaughter? Was this the beginning of a project that included a skirt and a top that the child was going to wear to a special occasion?

And now all that is left are the pieces—pieces of potential—of a life that reached out to others and left things unfinished.

But I wonder…. Did this woman who devoted her time and energy to others express her love in other ways? Did she smile and tell stories as she knit amidst her family? Did she leave them with happy memories of a warmth and acceptance that will stay with them always?

And I wonder… I used to think that leaving a project in the middle was a negative thing, but I suppose that if I had my choice, I would be engaged in creating until the very end and the unfinished pieces would only be more evidence of the love that I felt for my family. I would hope that they would be able to see those unfinished pieces and smile, picturing my happiness at attempting to bring more beauty and love into their lives.

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

I’m back

July 6, 2006 by

No, I have not been captured by aliens. I have not been ill. I have not been upset, depressed, or preoccupied. I have been traveling. For the last 9 days, we visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.

As long as I can recall, I have had a mental map of Russia as a dark and frightening place. After all, throughout my childhood they were trying to “bury” us and we looked upon them as an evil empire. And, indeed, there was repression and a lack of any semblance of freedom. Russia and its satellites, the USSR, were closed to the west. They feared democracy and capitalism. They suppressed religion. People we wanted to participate in Jewish prayer or even study Hebrew were harassed and often arrested. But now, a decade and a half after the breakup of the Soviet Union, it is a travel destination.

To say that it was beautiful would be an understatement. We visited palaces filled with such opulence that it took one’s breath away. We saw the onion-shaped spires on the cathedrals, painted and formed with the appearance of marzipan candy. We saw the canals St. Petersburg. We saw the hundreds of fountains of Peterhof. We saw art that was indescribable in the Pushkin Gallery, the Kremlin Armory, and, of course, the Hermitage. In the Hermitage, we were able to see the hidden collection—paintings that were stolen from private families by the Nazis. These paintings were brought to St. Petersburg after the Second World War and hidden. They were only shown for the first time in 1995 and to this day, one is not permitted to take any photographs of them because the Russians do not plan to return them to the families who had once owned them. Among these paintings were a large number of paintings by impressionist masters.

So beauty was one large theme of the trip. Beauty was everywhere: in the underground stations, in the beautiful neo-classical buildings, in the large number of parks and gardens. We enjoyed a number of performances of folklore, a capella singing, a circus, and a ballet. The people on the streets too were beautiful. The Russian women, by and large, dress well and are lovely to look at.

Another theme for me was that of the resurgence of Jewish life in Russia. Particularly in Moscow, the community is active and there is life. There is a large community center in Moscow that offers classes and cultural activities, but also affords the Jewish people there exercise equipment, a gym, a library/resource center with about 50 computers, a large performance hall, and a very elegant kosher catering facility that serves delicious food. The building is modern, spotless, and is used each day by hundreds of people.

I felt in Moscow and St Petersburg what I had felt in Budapest—people trying to recover from years of repression and neglect. Everywhere things were being rebuilt and renovated. Workers stood on scaffolding chipping and patching and painting the walls of buildings in warm ochres, and blues and roses. One got the feeling that in a few years, everything will be painted and fixed and the cities will be even more beautiful than they are now.

I have posted a selection of the pictures I took.

Filed Under: Ramblings
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