Reposted from my Facebook profile:
Beyond a bomb shelter
At 15, in 1980, I got to spend the whole summer with my cousins in Beit Herut, the village in Central Israel. Today, I live in a US state that’s considered part of the Bible Belt’s buckle, and they live in a part of Israel that’s referred to as Israel’s waist because geographically, it’s the narrowest region.
In the ‘70s, villagers made the bomb shelter appear less threatening by painting giant flowers on it. The flowers seemed at odds with its purpose, but I appreciate them like I appreciate music that’s cheerful with a beat.
This visit, I saw that brambles all but cover the shelter. Some of the flowers are still visible at the entrance, though. Nitza reminded me, most new homes include safe rooms, but Gila, her 97-year-old mother, one of my hosts in 1980, lives in an older house -- the house where I spent my 15th summer -- and would not be able to run to the shelter if she needed to.
Nitza offered to tour the bomb shelter with me. She began walking down its dark stairwell before I had a chance to demur. I followed her, praying no one was there already, and that the door wouldn’t slam on us and lock us in. Every time I saw the bomb shelter, I never thought to imagine a cement staircase or any features inside.
A relatively new half-case of individual water bottles lay in the doorway at the foot of the stairs, but also on the walls, a Salvador Dali print, then in the corner, an electric keyboard, and on an opposite wall, a small chalkboard with an inspirational message translating to, “May we feel quiet, calm, healthy, and have a sane state/land.”
Nitza suggested the shelter sometimes double as a club. Who attends? Who entertains? Who feels entertained in such a setting? What kind of music do they play? Do they sing along?
Citrus Groves, the Beach, and Giant, Gnarly Ficus Trees
This trip, I wanted to walk around Beit Herut on a nostalgia tour. On prior visits as an adult, I’ve rented a car and driven to the moshav with Pat.
This time, I hoped to walk to the beach with Nitza like we used to do at 15, and to the neighboring village, Kfar Vitkin, which has the regional elementary school and synagogue, where we went when I was ages 11, and 20 when I came for Rosh Hashanah during my junior year abroad.
I didn’t realize they still had citrus groves in Beit Herut, so I didn’t imagine getting to pick any like I had done during my first trip to see my grandmother (z”l) and aunt (z”l) at eight. Before school one morning, last week, Nitza’s youngest, Roie, who’s 16.5 and who just received his Army draft letter -- the testing and role-appointment process starts ahead of age 18 -- took me on a walk in a nearby clementine grove.
“They’ve already harvested them, so we can pick a couple if you want,” Roie said. I told Roie about Jones Farm in nearby Millington, Tennessee, where the peaches are pickable, too.
Later the same day, Nitza, her older son, Yonatan, and I walked down a neighborhood street lined with giant ficus trees, which reminded Nitza of an article she saw, including a photo of the younger-then ficus-tree-lined street in Beit Herut in the ‘50s. “And your grandfather’s [z”l] in one of the photos,” she said, “I’ll send you the link. Why he’s walking down the street with Bracha Elfenbaum and not his wife, I don’t know, but you’ll see” (at the link, click the blue-font button above the ads to see the whole article, which includes a section on Beit Herut, with “90” in the headline, since the village was 90 years old at the time of the article).
Ivrit 24/7 etzel Nitza / Hebrew 24/7 at Nitza’s house
When Nitza and her sons visited us in Memphis a couple of months ago, we spoke English the whole time and I promised them that when I came to their home in February, I’d speak only Hebrew. Poor them! One of the Hebrew terms for listening, “lasim lev,” translates literally to, “to put one’s heart,” or to be heartfelt, and they certainly did and were for my entire visit.
They also spoke unnaturally slowly for my benefit. The root of the Hebrew word for patience is suffering, and I know they also suffered. I stayed for 2+ days, so imagine watching a 55-hour-long video at quarter-speed. For me, living aloud in Hebrew felt like a triumph, including talking and walking around a clementine grove with my cousin’s child – nearly the same age as his mother and I when I lived in Beit Herut for the summer.
While in the grove, I thought of two short stories, one of which takes place in a kibbutz orange grove, and which I compared for my undergraduate Comparative Literature thesis, “Nomad and Viper” by Amos Oz and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.” I told Roie how I’d concluded that both female protagonists probably ended up dead because they allowed themselves to be attracted to unsuitable people. And that through the thesis, I gave myself a moral: Pick the right kind of person. Ultimately, I did.
I wasn’t sure if what I had described had made sense in my limping Hebrew until he said, “It reminds me of the expression, ‘Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.’”
Disco, Big Band, and prayers for a future soldier’s safety
Driving home from a Sisterhood program at our Memphis shul yesterday, I heard the buoyant “Tangerine,” which was a ‘70s oldie from the Salsoul Orchestra, which had remade the original ‘40s version. I felt linked to my grandparents (z”l), parents’ (z”l)/Gila’s, and Roie’s generation all while bopping along to the radio en route to our Memphis home and reliving the clementine picking.
Please, God, let Roie stay safe when he chooses a combat soldier role for his army service in a year and a half. Roie’s mom, Nitza, is begging him to do National Service for a year prior, to buy time, like Yonatan, his older brother did. It didn’t help Yonatan, though. He ended up fighting in the war with Gaza in 2014 anyhow. Thank God, he survived.
In 2021, Nitza, who is an archeologist, not a journalist, felt moved as a mother to write a still-timely and also prophetic “Haaretz” newspaper op-ed; here’s an English translation link.
A cliff-side coffee picnic and a super senior moment
And yet, during my visit, Yonatan, Nitza, and I took a mostly carefree walk, with Roie, transporting a propane burner and coffee on his bike until we reached a beach overlook across the Coastal Highway from their home, where we enjoyed a cliff-side coffee picnic. If only I could ignore the yellow hostage flags flying on the foot-bridge we used, along with a Hebrew-language banner, “No more sacrifice [of human life]!”
We perched cliff-side, watching a seagull wind-surfing near us and kite-surfers among the distant waves far below. Of course, as life-long nearby residents, Nitza knew of a snake-path down the cliff, which included a few-rung ladder at the bottom, and which I prayed I would navigate with no mishaps. Look at us, almost 60 and 60, and we reached the beach relatively easily!
That night, we visited Gila. Her long-term, more than short-term, memory was to my advantage. “Sarah, Sarah, Mamaleh,” she said over and over, smiling. No one has called me Mamaleh (Yiddish for little mama) for nearly 40 years, since my grandmothers (z”l) died. Nitza and she sang Israeli folk songs and I tried to tell Gila my memory of the birthday cake she made for my 15th birthday when I spent the summer with them, but she didn’t hear, or didn’t remember, or both.
I had forgotten to bring the Dinstuhl’s Memphis-made chocolate that I’d brought for her, so we returned the next afternoon, shortly after her nap. Gila was still prone and asked again, “When will you visit me next?”
“I hope to be back within a year or two,” I said wishfully.
“I’ll be in heaven by then,” Gila said. I leaned down and hugged Gila and kissed her cheek. Her grip surprised me and she returned my kissing gesture over and over. Gila was younger than I am now when she hosted me during the the same summer Nitza introduced me to Brazilian music.
Learning the essentials
When I left a day later, the cab ride out of Beit Herut and to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv pre-dawn included radio music. Cat Stevens’ “Sad Lisa” played as we wound through the village toward the Coastal Highway. I don’t think I’ve heard that song since the ‘70s, and I flashed back to accompanying Nitza for the day at her public and regional elementary school in Kfar Vitkin.
The school hosted a field day, so kids got to wear gym clothes all day. “The Six Million Dollar Man” era was in full swing and Lee Majors always seemed to wear a track suit. One of the boys even sported a T-shirt with an ironed-on image of the TV show, if I remember correctly.
In the morning, they had Chumash/Torah Study, which no public school in America did at the time (but who can say anymore what’s happening in US public schools?), and which struck me because I attended a modern Orthodox Jewish day school back home, where of course we studied Chumash. It amazed me how Torah study was built into their otherwise secular schooling. If there were any non-Jewish kids, I wonder what they studied meanwhile.
Earlier in the week, with a Jewish Agency-sponsored Shoham-Memphis delegation of which I was a member, I visited an Orthodox girls school and another that reminded me of a Montessori school. For nursery school, I had attended Montessori, but not until spending eight years at a modern Orthodox Jewish day school did I get the foundation that ultimately inspired the best version of me.
Watching four eighth grade girls with their principal present their artwork inspired by October 7th, I became teary. Not only the work moved me, but also their apparent, budding leadership skills, which I remember learning myself in my Jewish day school environment. When our principal handed each of us a red, cloth-bound copy of Pirkei Avot / Ethics of the Fathers at 8th grade graduation, he told us, “I know that each of you will be a leader in your community,” and I believed him.
And the Jewish literary heft, probably like the learning I enjoyed, would prepare them beautifully, too. Through tears, I asked them, “How have Jewish texts helped you cope with what happened on October 7th?” The Orthodox delegation member thanked me for the question later.
As we left the school, I stayed behind for a few moments to speak with the principal. Her younger vice principal stood with us, adorned by one of those fashionably tall headdresses Orthodox women wear these days.
I said, “I love what you’re doing for these girls. I went to a Jewish day school growing up, which provided an essential foundation for me. I figured out I was a lesbian by age 11, though, which made being there more difficult. After college, I almost didn’t make it back to any sort of Jewish observance once I let myself be myself…but it was because of the great education I got at that school that I did make it back, to the point of being able to lead our shul’s minyan once a month and….” I trailed off as the principal kept saying, “Thank you,” and putting her hands on her heart. She understood.
Making lemonade out of October 7th?
Back in Kfar Vitkin as a young kid, I also remember Nitza’s school taking us on a tiyul / hike through farm fields of the villages and how my Sabta / grandmother loaned me a metal bottle on a belt that she had filled with fresh lemonade. She sent me off with the lemonade and a sandwich, so I’d be properly outfitted for the hike and fit in with the other kids, who had the same equipment.
When Nitza and I walked toward the school the other day, we passed the Bauhaus-style “Yad Habanim” / fallen soldiers memorial building in Kfar Vitkin. Nitza noted the row of wooden anemones in front of the building, added after October 7th, and representing the fallen in Israel’s southern region.
During another part of our walk, I heard guys who were building a new house yelling directions to one another in Arabic. “Who do you think are the builders?” my first cousin Moshe / Maishe said when I explained it as a viscerally scary moment for me. When I saw him later that night, my childhood friend Ohad responded a little bit more compassionately, “When they bring any of the hostages to hospitals after they come back, they ensure that none of the hospital workers who speak Arabic are in the vicinity.”
Flying home, I read an article in El Al’s in-flight magazine about how now is the perfect time to visit the south in Israel again. When I visited a year ago, a Moshav Nativ Haasara resident gave us an unfortunately ghoulish tour, saying the moshav was a ghost town and would likely remain so, since it sits right next to the wall separating it from Gaza, and since parasailers, including former gardening and handymen employees of the moshav’s residents, had killed 20 residents on October 7th and had burnt a number of houses to the ground.
Now, the magazine reported, a number of residents have returned to rebuild and urged us to go visit -- tragedy tourism that’s trying to morph into average tourism. Is anything about Israel average?
The night before I left, Maishe picked me up at Nitza’s and drove his wife, Bina, and me to Netanya, where we met my other first cousin, Edna, and her husband, Eran. We ate at a Moshe Segev Kosher restaurant. He’s a top Israeli chef.
Ohad joined us, too, and I asked all of them what I asked a series of Israelis during my previous trip in February, 2023, “What do you wish Americans understood about Israel?”
Not surprisingly, Ohad had a hard time, getting a word in edgewise, since the rest of the people were genetically my family, and so he just said quietly, “The article you shared with me was good [https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/what-israelis-wish-american-jews-understood/].” The article specifies what American Jews need to understand about Israelis now. Still, I think the wishes apply generally, too.
Meanwhile, I said to Maishe, “Edna told me some months ago, ‘As long as Jews live in this part of the world, there will never be peace.’” Ohad nodded.
“I have hope,” said Maishe, “I think if we can get a new government, then we will be fine.” He said, the Yom Kippur War, in which he fought in the Tank Corps, in one of the first tanks to enter the Sinai – and during which he earned legit war hero status – taught him, sometimes, we need a crisis in order for things to change. “Who could have imagined we’d ever have peace with Egypt?” he marveled.
During my recent flights, I did not do light reading. I read the recent book that Memphian Jill Notowich collaborated on, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and the book’s conclusion (spoiler alert) struck me especially in its yearning for a hopeful future.
Jill worked to bring the book to light, as Jill’s great uncle, David Shainberg (z”l), also a Memphian, was murdered during the massacre. At the book’s conclusion, Yardena Schwartz wrote that extremists caused the conflict then and today, and that the voices of, “…moderate, peace-seeking Israelis and Palestinians” need to be empowered.
Yardena Schwartz’s vision begs a series of questions for me: What’s the definition of “extremists?” Who is qualified to define the term? How do extremists behave and who judges the behavior?
A number of Israelis I met during my trip spoke bitterly of how they hate that the haredim/Orthodox Jews, who they see as monolithic, took away their pleasure in Judaism through their extremism. And why, they wonder, must their own secular children, fight and potentially die in Israel’s wars while the Orthodox get to study Jewish texts all day and not serve in the army? (Of course, there are Orthodox Jews who opt in to the army, including another childhood friend’s son-in-law.)
At a minimum, they wonder, why must they always accommodate the Orthodox and never the other way around?
“Give me an example of that,” I asked.
They mentioned pareve (non-dairy, Kosher) desserts. They taste awful, they complained.
With such intra-Jewish division, how can we sufficiently unite against a true enemy like Hamas, or the Grand Mufti in David Shainberg’s (z”l) day? And yet, Israelis have told me, pre-October 7th, the disunity felt gargantuan, and now, relatively, they’re united…back to Maishe’s point about a crisis propelling change. In the coming days, I hope Israel can feel less like “Sad Lisa” and more like “Tangerine.”
