Limbs felled by age and infirmity, his right arm maintains its vigor, to convey His blessing.
I’m struck each time I experience it -- the strong, willful blessing of Asher Shemesh -- an old 81 in every other respect.
His arms, his hands lie dull on the chair rests. Long past their dutiful years – serving, saluting, blessing, pushing the papers of the people of B’nei Brak. Now, sadly, seemingly, serving only the needs of the self.
Ma nishma, Asher? (How are you, Asher?)
Asher’s eyes circle around the pleasant but confined study, stacked as it is by books not opened for years and photos from an old camera. The faint glimmer of desire disappears from his face.
Yet, suddenly, Asher’s arm responds, rising in a careful, stepped trajectory toward his face. It is a servant, the carrier of precious jewels. As it approaches its destination, his fingers come together as one, stretching towards his lips.
Asher kisses his fingers with the passion of relationship long-lived but still kindling. He then spreads his fingers north to the heavens, to the Source of blessing. To the source of Asher’s blessings – still appreciated, still magnified, even as his own fruit withers.
The gesture is imbibed with the faith, and the gratitude, of his ancestors, generations back into Iraq. Its expression needs no words.
Blessing falls back on me, like a soothing coat of warm mist. It is the blessing of a man, the kavana of a faith culture – from a land not my own. A blessing to which I am privileged – as a Jew living kibbutz galuyot, the gathering of the exiles, in the land of Israel.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Back Home
Our first return to the United States -- a joyous whirwind. The wonders of family smachot (simchas). The glow of two outstanding, young Jewish teens – my nephew and cousin – demonstrating their readiness to be part of the community. American Jewish light bursting through its cloud cover. Resting in the toasty warm cradle of parents, grandparents, other loved and friends.
And then to leave it, them, behind. Again. A heartbreak. As painful as the first time, last summer.
We come back to Israel. I cry on the couch. Who I miss. Whose hugs I long for. Whose hugs my kids need, even beyond.
Skype is great, but we can’t touch.
I grieve the loss -- present and future.
Until I remember where I am, and re-experience the splendidly familiar moments which make this place – Israel – the place my heart wants to be. Where I need to be.
I do a 360o (a 240, to be truthful) and gaze at the homey neighborhood of mirpasot, porches, gathered close together. Where locals live a good portion of their lives in the mostly temperate weather of Modi’in.
One mirpeset catches my eye. A bouquet of flowers in the corner, in bright display. The romantic dance of a couple surveying its growth. A man with a kipa. A woman, long-haired, in pants. Real Israeli life, in all its typical, private moderation.
I walk back inside. Time for an early dinner on our cockeyed, post-flight biological clocks. The kids are watching TV, getting back to Hop, their Hebrew-language-dubbed cartoon network. With a few originals spliced in. Like right now. Shavuot is approaching, and on the air is a cartoon of Moses, Pharoah, and his magicians, dueling it out over snakes, blood and frogs. I can only smile. We have our soup and bourekas on the coffee table, taking in Moses at Mt. Sinai.
Shavuot as a liberal Jew in America was lonely. It’s barely on the map of liberal Jews in America, beyond the revitalized tikkunim, night-time study sessions, which dot the map of the more observant in our movements. Back in Modiin, there are no such concerns. My first check of email reveals a shul-wide pot-luck for the eve of Shavuot, with learning for all ages following. The phone rings with an invitation to Shavuot lunch. Problems solved.
I feel warmly in another cradle, that of Clal Yisrael, the community of Israel. We’ve returned to a cozy place that reflects our expressions, our schedule, even our needs from the boob tube.
I gaze above the trees of loss, absorbing the clearer vista of missing. It’s chronic. It never goes away, as fellow olim tell me. But there are soothants – the phone, Skype, and the visits, please G-d, that will continue to happen.
We’re back home. And it’s worth the missing.
And then to leave it, them, behind. Again. A heartbreak. As painful as the first time, last summer.
We come back to Israel. I cry on the couch. Who I miss. Whose hugs I long for. Whose hugs my kids need, even beyond.
Skype is great, but we can’t touch.
I grieve the loss -- present and future.
Until I remember where I am, and re-experience the splendidly familiar moments which make this place – Israel – the place my heart wants to be. Where I need to be.
I do a 360o (a 240, to be truthful) and gaze at the homey neighborhood of mirpasot, porches, gathered close together. Where locals live a good portion of their lives in the mostly temperate weather of Modi’in.
One mirpeset catches my eye. A bouquet of flowers in the corner, in bright display. The romantic dance of a couple surveying its growth. A man with a kipa. A woman, long-haired, in pants. Real Israeli life, in all its typical, private moderation.
I walk back inside. Time for an early dinner on our cockeyed, post-flight biological clocks. The kids are watching TV, getting back to Hop, their Hebrew-language-dubbed cartoon network. With a few originals spliced in. Like right now. Shavuot is approaching, and on the air is a cartoon of Moses, Pharoah, and his magicians, dueling it out over snakes, blood and frogs. I can only smile. We have our soup and bourekas on the coffee table, taking in Moses at Mt. Sinai.
Shavuot as a liberal Jew in America was lonely. It’s barely on the map of liberal Jews in America, beyond the revitalized tikkunim, night-time study sessions, which dot the map of the more observant in our movements. Back in Modiin, there are no such concerns. My first check of email reveals a shul-wide pot-luck for the eve of Shavuot, with learning for all ages following. The phone rings with an invitation to Shavuot lunch. Problems solved.
I feel warmly in another cradle, that of Clal Yisrael, the community of Israel. We’ve returned to a cozy place that reflects our expressions, our schedule, even our needs from the boob tube.
I gaze above the trees of loss, absorbing the clearer vista of missing. It’s chronic. It never goes away, as fellow olim tell me. But there are soothants – the phone, Skype, and the visits, please G-d, that will continue to happen.
We’re back home. And it’s worth the missing.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Big
Don’t get me wrong. I miss America. In a big way. My family, my friends, the familiar culture and folkways, watching my teams on TV in their time. All those things were on display for me as we visited the States for 10 days earlier this month, our first time “back” since aliyah last summer. I’ll get to these things, some time after I finish watching my Boston Celtics play the Orlando Magic this morning – at 3:30 am Israel time…..
For the moment, however, another big thing. Very big, and very illustrative of the country I left and the country to which I came.
America -- and China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc. -- make and America takes. More, bigger, by far, than anyone. I never realized it so.
From touch down on the tarmac in the USA so much was too big. Often excessively, wastefully and grossly big.
Obesity. People driven there by big cars. Stuffed to the gills by big food.
IHOP has added to its caloric record-setting menu with a stack of pancakes sandwiching cheesecake. Simultaneously leading the herd up mountains of home fries, sausage and bacon.
In Israel, people stuff themselves on fresh vegetables….
Big cars. I dunno, but my compact Honda Jazz has more interior room for 4 than the compact we rented in the States, an engine 2/3 the size, ½ the gas usage, and plenty of get-up to get us up the 2000 feet between here and Jerusalem.
Excess begets excess, as a cause and response. And in ways often much deeper than the frightening but shallow surface of food, cars, and American consumer culture.
Consider synagogue sanctuaries, of which we visited two during our stay. Broadly-speaking, American synagogue sanctuaries are majestic and colorful, focused on an overdone aron kodesh (ark) and a bevy of ornately dressed sifrei torah (torah scrolls) within. I believe in hiddur, the beautification of our religious items. Still, such sanctuaries are excessive.
Why are they made so?
It hit me during our trip, as Jewish life competed with life for Jewish attention. The Shabbat bride sung about in L’cha Dodi did not come walking down the street outside a Boston hotel -- as she does in Modi’in, whether you are observant or not. She was hidden, as a matter of fact, behind the rush of weekend traffic in and out of the city. The inspiring landscape of the prophets, which we view from our balcony, was likewise absent.
I understand it, I know it, I experienced it most of my life. In their synagogues, American Jews have to create kedusha , a separated sanctity, all themselves. At the flick of the switch when they walk in the sanctuary, to disappear into the recesses of their pockets the minute they leave the building. Therein the big, fancy synagogues – temples in the desert. Excess as a response to famine, to spiritual starvation, to the domination of chol -- the decidedly un-sacred – on the outside.
Kedusha permeates the environment in Israel. An aura of the divine blankets this land and envelops its time, no matter the desecration of the Holy One that too often characterizes Israel’s social and political life. Our Shabbat minyan meets in a hastily-transformed but pleasant two room senior center, with a paper-mache portable ark that rests otherwise in a storage pod and contains, at its max, two scrolls. But it doesn’t matter. Shul lives together with its environs, not separated from it.
Big is quintessentially American, at the surface level and below. But it not always better – far from it -- reflecting as much absence as presence.
For an American Jew, it’s a big thing to realize that small is good. It might be the first step over here, to a lifestyle not consumed by big, to a society where it is much easier, blessedly, for Jews to bring kodesh and chol together.
For the moment, however, another big thing. Very big, and very illustrative of the country I left and the country to which I came.
America -- and China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc. -- make and America takes. More, bigger, by far, than anyone. I never realized it so.
From touch down on the tarmac in the USA so much was too big. Often excessively, wastefully and grossly big.
Obesity. People driven there by big cars. Stuffed to the gills by big food.
IHOP has added to its caloric record-setting menu with a stack of pancakes sandwiching cheesecake. Simultaneously leading the herd up mountains of home fries, sausage and bacon.
In Israel, people stuff themselves on fresh vegetables….
Big cars. I dunno, but my compact Honda Jazz has more interior room for 4 than the compact we rented in the States, an engine 2/3 the size, ½ the gas usage, and plenty of get-up to get us up the 2000 feet between here and Jerusalem.
Excess begets excess, as a cause and response. And in ways often much deeper than the frightening but shallow surface of food, cars, and American consumer culture.
Consider synagogue sanctuaries, of which we visited two during our stay. Broadly-speaking, American synagogue sanctuaries are majestic and colorful, focused on an overdone aron kodesh (ark) and a bevy of ornately dressed sifrei torah (torah scrolls) within. I believe in hiddur, the beautification of our religious items. Still, such sanctuaries are excessive.
Why are they made so?
It hit me during our trip, as Jewish life competed with life for Jewish attention. The Shabbat bride sung about in L’cha Dodi did not come walking down the street outside a Boston hotel -- as she does in Modi’in, whether you are observant or not. She was hidden, as a matter of fact, behind the rush of weekend traffic in and out of the city. The inspiring landscape of the prophets, which we view from our balcony, was likewise absent.
I understand it, I know it, I experienced it most of my life. In their synagogues, American Jews have to create kedusha , a separated sanctity, all themselves. At the flick of the switch when they walk in the sanctuary, to disappear into the recesses of their pockets the minute they leave the building. Therein the big, fancy synagogues – temples in the desert. Excess as a response to famine, to spiritual starvation, to the domination of chol -- the decidedly un-sacred – on the outside.
Kedusha permeates the environment in Israel. An aura of the divine blankets this land and envelops its time, no matter the desecration of the Holy One that too often characterizes Israel’s social and political life. Our Shabbat minyan meets in a hastily-transformed but pleasant two room senior center, with a paper-mache portable ark that rests otherwise in a storage pod and contains, at its max, two scrolls. But it doesn’t matter. Shul lives together with its environs, not separated from it.
Big is quintessentially American, at the surface level and below. But it not always better – far from it -- reflecting as much absence as presence.
For an American Jew, it’s a big thing to realize that small is good. It might be the first step over here, to a lifestyle not consumed by big, to a society where it is much easier, blessedly, for Jews to bring kodesh and chol together.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
SIMPLY LIVING, IN COMPLEXITY
I’ve learned the Israeli way. Carpe diem. Sparkle in the highlights of life here. Build that life, as I would anywhere. Consider the complexities (and tensions, ambiguities, paradoxes, ironies, and tragedies) in which I live, but don’t dwell on them.
Dwell on them, however – and they are literally everywhere I turn – and they may land me in an existential pit of Josephan proportions.
As an illustration, yesterday, a pedestrian 10-minute drive to neighboring Modi’in Illit.
Leaving Modi’in, I cross route 443, the city’s northern boundary. Simple enough.
I immediately pass Shilat, a discount zone best known as the local address of Israel’s prime cut-rate supermarket, Rami Levi. It’s a subject of unresolved debate in Modi’in whether we do our food shopping in the West Bank, because it’s not quite clear whether Shilat is in the West Bank -- or not.
Going along, I know I’m in the shtachim, “the territories.” Everything betrays the relative lack of investment – and the coming investment. For Israel, it’s frontier.
I feel its freedom. The untamed, hardscrabble Biblical landscape. Dust kicking up off the side of the road.
I feel its fright. Running down the gauntlet of the suffocating, fenced-in two-lane highway. The fences of the security-guarded yishuvim, settlements.
5 minutes hence I turn into Modi’in Illit, an enormous Charedi (ultra-orthodox) enclave, and its twilight zone of Middle Eastern life. We’re one-week away from Yom Ha’atzmaut, and every municipality in the country is decorated with the blue and white. There are plenty of flags flying in MI, touting the city and its mores, but no blue and white ones. I feel sick about the message conveyed, the message not conveyed, to all who live there.
It’s a yishuv teeming with children and rising buildings to house them. Hundreds of Arab construction workers sit on the street corners by the construction sites, waiting for rides home after work. Or waiting for work, as far as I know.
Isn’t there a construction freeze in the settlements? I’m only asking for clarification, not making a political statement. Is my government saying what it is doing? Doing what is saying?
I’m confused and distressed, riding along the rim of Joseph’s pit.
But then the kids and I arrive at our destination, in the West Bank, in a dungeoned storage room, in an apartment building on the outskirts of town, across from a fence separating the yishuv from everything else. It’s a meeting with our 5-year old’s feeding therapist. She’s helping us build a normal life in Israel.
I heave a sigh of relief. Today, I am lucky.
The turbulence subsides. The discontent is in its place. I stand up, sit up, drive straight.
I’m happy in my portion. Troubled by ours. Obsessing about neither.
The Israeli way.
Dwell on them, however – and they are literally everywhere I turn – and they may land me in an existential pit of Josephan proportions.
As an illustration, yesterday, a pedestrian 10-minute drive to neighboring Modi’in Illit.
Leaving Modi’in, I cross route 443, the city’s northern boundary. Simple enough.
I immediately pass Shilat, a discount zone best known as the local address of Israel’s prime cut-rate supermarket, Rami Levi. It’s a subject of unresolved debate in Modi’in whether we do our food shopping in the West Bank, because it’s not quite clear whether Shilat is in the West Bank -- or not.
Going along, I know I’m in the shtachim, “the territories.” Everything betrays the relative lack of investment – and the coming investment. For Israel, it’s frontier.
I feel its freedom. The untamed, hardscrabble Biblical landscape. Dust kicking up off the side of the road.
I feel its fright. Running down the gauntlet of the suffocating, fenced-in two-lane highway. The fences of the security-guarded yishuvim, settlements.
5 minutes hence I turn into Modi’in Illit, an enormous Charedi (ultra-orthodox) enclave, and its twilight zone of Middle Eastern life. We’re one-week away from Yom Ha’atzmaut, and every municipality in the country is decorated with the blue and white. There are plenty of flags flying in MI, touting the city and its mores, but no blue and white ones. I feel sick about the message conveyed, the message not conveyed, to all who live there.
It’s a yishuv teeming with children and rising buildings to house them. Hundreds of Arab construction workers sit on the street corners by the construction sites, waiting for rides home after work. Or waiting for work, as far as I know.
Isn’t there a construction freeze in the settlements? I’m only asking for clarification, not making a political statement. Is my government saying what it is doing? Doing what is saying?
I’m confused and distressed, riding along the rim of Joseph’s pit.
But then the kids and I arrive at our destination, in the West Bank, in a dungeoned storage room, in an apartment building on the outskirts of town, across from a fence separating the yishuv from everything else. It’s a meeting with our 5-year old’s feeding therapist. She’s helping us build a normal life in Israel.
I heave a sigh of relief. Today, I am lucky.
The turbulence subsides. The discontent is in its place. I stand up, sit up, drive straight.
I’m happy in my portion. Troubled by ours. Obsessing about neither.
The Israeli way.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Coby Speaks Hebrew
For years, its possibility made my mouth water. Now, it’s the most succulent taste of aliyah.
Coby is speaking Hebrew. Spitting it out rapid-fire. While playing with his friends. And while talking to us.
The self-confident demands of the wise child. Tayn lee et zeh (“Give it to me”).
The rejections of the wicked child. Lo rotzeh (“I don’t want to”). (Or even the more chic Israeli, Lo ba lee.)
The loving affection of the simple child. Aba, anee ohev otcha (Dad, I love you).
The absent-minded non-sequential ramblings of the child who does not know how to ask, which I’d repeat if I could understand them….
It’s an absolute miracle how it happens, though not an overnight one. (The truth about most miracles, huh?) You place a 5-year old who doesn’t know Hebrew in a gan chova (kindergarten), with maybe 3 or 4 other kids who speak English, and then you hope and pray for the next ¾ of a school year.
Every time you walk into his gan, you feel (at least what you imagine is) the pain of your child’s lack of understanding of, his muteness in the language. You wonder whether you could make it one day in that environment, let alone 6 days every week.
And then it happens. The synapses of the fertile brain, the strivings of young enthusiasm. Helped by a little swab of God’s paint brush.
Coby speaks Hebrew. A delightful, independent-minded, mischievous, articulate, Hebrew-speaking little Israeli, well in the making.
Next stop, my guess after the summer, Adina. Following her little brother. Good for him, and her. Her parents? Well, there, a story for a different time.
Coby is speaking Hebrew. Spitting it out rapid-fire. While playing with his friends. And while talking to us.
The self-confident demands of the wise child. Tayn lee et zeh (“Give it to me”).
The rejections of the wicked child. Lo rotzeh (“I don’t want to”). (Or even the more chic Israeli, Lo ba lee.)
The loving affection of the simple child. Aba, anee ohev otcha (Dad, I love you).
The absent-minded non-sequential ramblings of the child who does not know how to ask, which I’d repeat if I could understand them….
It’s an absolute miracle how it happens, though not an overnight one. (The truth about most miracles, huh?) You place a 5-year old who doesn’t know Hebrew in a gan chova (kindergarten), with maybe 3 or 4 other kids who speak English, and then you hope and pray for the next ¾ of a school year.
Every time you walk into his gan, you feel (at least what you imagine is) the pain of your child’s lack of understanding of, his muteness in the language. You wonder whether you could make it one day in that environment, let alone 6 days every week.
And then it happens. The synapses of the fertile brain, the strivings of young enthusiasm. Helped by a little swab of God’s paint brush.
Coby speaks Hebrew. A delightful, independent-minded, mischievous, articulate, Hebrew-speaking little Israeli, well in the making.
Next stop, my guess after the summer, Adina. Following her little brother. Good for him, and her. Her parents? Well, there, a story for a different time.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Adloyada???
עדלידע. Adloyada. To the non-Israeli who gives me the correct definition of this word go all our remaining chametz....
I’ll give you a few moments, and a few lines.
Keep on trying.
You can get it.
OK. The definition of adloyada is “Purim carnival.” What?????
Here, the beauty of life in a Jewish country, with a Jewish language, at work. Incorporating the purpose, the gestalt, of a word, within the word itself. It’s simply unbelievable.
Let’s go back to the Talmud, tractate Megilla.
“A person is obligated to drink on Purim until he does not know the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordechai’.” Ad de-lo ya-da bayn arur Haman v’baruch Mordechai.
Albeit with considerable disagreement over manner and extent, the rabbis want us to drink, party and rest our minds on Purim. “Until he does not know.” To release the cognitive discipline of our lives, at least for a day. To go with the heart, with what is different – hafuch – on this day.
Men dress up as women. Women dress up as men. Chilonim (the secular) don the garb of dati’im (the religious), and vice versa. And, here in Israel, we go to parades where everything is turned on its head.
People really like it. In fact, amazingly, Purim in Israel is longer than Pesach. The stores start selling costumes months before. Schools upend the normal order of things – with fun activities, dress-ups, spoofs – the minute the month of Purim (Adar) begins (2 weeks before Purim). In fact, I don’t think our daughter had any academic studies at all for 2 weeks!
People clearly need to party here, to carpe diem. And G-d knows they’re entitled. They’re entitled to turn things on their head and pretend, in a sense, that they are elsewhere. In mind, spirit and body.
Adloyada is at the heart of what Purim means to Israel. Perhaps a “Purim carnival” is good enough for the Diaspora. But not for here, where the Jewish past and present live. In love, in tension. Trying to make a life together.
My chametz inventory is getting low. So whoever guessed correctly, get here soon….
A sneak preview: Pesach preparation is much less insane in Israel than it is in the United States….
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tiyul
Tiyul.
Tiyul -- its simple meaning, its pshat. “A walk, trip, hike, excursion, tour, outing, drive.”
Tiyul – its deeper meaning, its gestalt, its drash. Consider a linguistic root – natal. “To take, to lift.” The sense of ownership implied.
Let me take you on a tiyul, and we are just learning.
A chamseen, desert heat weave, has come. Back, for a moment, from its brief winter vacation. Our shorts are likewise back from their brief winter vacation on the top shelf.
Tu B’shvat, the blossoming of the trees – they’ve rung our doorbell for weeks. We’ve listened with half an ear. But the chamseen knocks wildly, and we can’t ignore its plea to come outside.
Ah, but it’s a school day. Not a problem...when your kids get out at 1:30 pm! Plenty of time for a tiyul.
T-shirts, water bottles, pita sandwiches, a mix of pretzels and raisins, sunglasses and sunscreen in hand, and we’re off. Destination – the Castel, gorgeous mountain and outlook, site of a decisive battle of the War of Independence.
We drive east. The meadows, the rolling hills – they are as verdant as they will ever be. We relish the bounty of the winter’s rains. Patches of wildflowers grace the landscape. The thin cows of Joseph’s dream graze in packs, fearing no sacrifice these days. The road is awesome, but short – like Israel itself.
We get on route 1, the lifeline of modern Israel, connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. 50 kilometers, 3500 feet, and a million miles away from each other.
The passage is proud. The trees of the JNF forest stand resplendently on all sides – embodying the souls of Israelis past and present, and the renewed self-confidence of the Jewish people.
We arrive at the Castel. The kids are already complaining. “I am bored!” Those decisively non-magical words, the bane of parents’ existence.
The Castel doesn’t cooperate, at least at first. “It’s just a hill. I’m tired. I don’t want to walk up.” But, yes, as if on cue, like so many other sites in Israel, the Castel speaks for itself. There’s a partially destroyed house at the top, an exclamation point from a different – or is it? – era. Its stone is weathered and beaten, grass sprouting out. But one with the land, it cannot be denied.
Coby races up. Adina picks up her slaggard pace. The house of the mukhtar (head of the village) is surrounded by an intricate series of trenches, a maze of delight for the children. We tell them of the battle that raged here 62 years ago. Battle -- the subtext of most sites in the land of Israel. The message of power, of kill or be killed – so dominant in the known time of the land.
Rattled, we are also stilled, rejoicing in our portion -- as we see the kids grasp, take and lift the land we have travelled so far in distance and in time to live in.
Tiyul.
Tiyul -- its simple meaning, its pshat. “A walk, trip, hike, excursion, tour, outing, drive.”
Tiyul – its deeper meaning, its gestalt, its drash. Consider a linguistic root – natal. “To take, to lift.” The sense of ownership implied.
Let me take you on a tiyul, and we are just learning.
A chamseen, desert heat weave, has come. Back, for a moment, from its brief winter vacation. Our shorts are likewise back from their brief winter vacation on the top shelf.
Tu B’shvat, the blossoming of the trees – they’ve rung our doorbell for weeks. We’ve listened with half an ear. But the chamseen knocks wildly, and we can’t ignore its plea to come outside.
Ah, but it’s a school day. Not a problem...when your kids get out at 1:30 pm! Plenty of time for a tiyul.
T-shirts, water bottles, pita sandwiches, a mix of pretzels and raisins, sunglasses and sunscreen in hand, and we’re off. Destination – the Castel, gorgeous mountain and outlook, site of a decisive battle of the War of Independence.
We drive east. The meadows, the rolling hills – they are as verdant as they will ever be. We relish the bounty of the winter’s rains. Patches of wildflowers grace the landscape. The thin cows of Joseph’s dream graze in packs, fearing no sacrifice these days. The road is awesome, but short – like Israel itself.
We get on route 1, the lifeline of modern Israel, connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. 50 kilometers, 3500 feet, and a million miles away from each other.
The passage is proud. The trees of the JNF forest stand resplendently on all sides – embodying the souls of Israelis past and present, and the renewed self-confidence of the Jewish people.
We arrive at the Castel. The kids are already complaining. “I am bored!” Those decisively non-magical words, the bane of parents’ existence.
The Castel doesn’t cooperate, at least at first. “It’s just a hill. I’m tired. I don’t want to walk up.” But, yes, as if on cue, like so many other sites in Israel, the Castel speaks for itself. There’s a partially destroyed house at the top, an exclamation point from a different – or is it? – era. Its stone is weathered and beaten, grass sprouting out. But one with the land, it cannot be denied.
Coby races up. Adina picks up her slaggard pace. The house of the mukhtar (head of the village) is surrounded by an intricate series of trenches, a maze of delight for the children. We tell them of the battle that raged here 62 years ago. Battle -- the subtext of most sites in the land of Israel. The message of power, of kill or be killed – so dominant in the known time of the land.
Rattled, we are also stilled, rejoicing in our portion -- as we see the kids grasp, take and lift the land we have travelled so far in distance and in time to live in.
Tiyul.
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