It's almost 11:00 pm and for once, I am not wondering where my children are.
I am wondering where I am instead, as a returning American immigrant and as a Jew.
The post-Disengagement horror stories continue their steady march into our bruised landscape and those who care are simply numb. Those who did not care before, care even less by now, unmoved by the daily tales of tragedy after tragedy.
Three suicides committed by young soldiers at last count, with scores more admitted to psychiatric wards around the country, unable to cope with the trauma, the grief and the rage of having to perpetrate one of the worst military operations in Israel's history.
Homeless families of seven who used to live in five-bedroom houses are now scattered all over Israel, crammed into two-room apartments the size of their former kitchens. Residents of the much-touted "caravillas" are struggling with burst pipes, inadequate electrical wiring and a faulty infrastructure barely constructed for the thousands expelled from homes the government urged them to build decades ago.
And it's not even winter yet.
We once innocently referred to this place as The Holy Land. We know now that although this will forever be true, it doesn't mean the inhabitants have lived up to the same standards. We have indeed become "a nation like all other nations", to our eternal disgrace.
Filthy Israeli politics has sold us out – again. I wonder how many years it will take until the ethical among us learn that the only way to change the system is to shake off the disillusionment and depression and GET INVOLVED. It means teaching our children, as our predecessors did in the Sixties, that political activism – not only on the streets, but at political events and in actual political parties – is the most effective way to create a new reality.
Our generation has been too reluctant to get our hands dirty with politics, and we are now reaping that bitter harvest. It is not too late, however, to teach our children to be passionate about a commitment to politics as a venue for changing a corrupt and broken system. This country desperately needs it. We desperately need it.
The Russians, for once, are way ahead of us and wisely started their own political party years ago to protect their own interests and those they perceived to be Israel's.
It's time to form a North American immigrant party to bring this country back to the ethical Jewish standards we thought we were "moving up to" when we made aliyah.
And since some of our concerns are identical to those in Natan Sharansky's party (immigrant rights, for example) perhaps we could form a coalition together – who says miracles don't happen?
In the Middle East, even the Russians and Americans can team up for the same cause.
Ein Gedi Botanic Garden
Seek the serenity of a Judean Desert sky in Autumn at the Ein Gedi Botanic Garden
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Social Workers and The Disengagement
My colleague at a therapeutic girls' dormitory, a social worker, has spent the last six months in and out of Gush Katif every week, bringing hope and support and supplies to those who built their homes in support of the religious zionist dream. She is deeply worried about what is happening to the families there as they face the final scenes of this mammoth nightmare, but even more concerned about "the day after". Her husband, who was at Yamit "back then", has told her that he cannot go with her to be with the families for the Shabbat prior to Tisha B'Av -- he "just can't face it again". Her children volunteer in the yishuvim wherever they are needed. She has been active in the movement to educate the Israeli public and raise awareness of the depth of what is happening and it has unnerved her.
"I gave out orange strips of cloth on the streets in Tel Aviv," she said, "and people were yelling at me from their cars. 'Go home to your yishuv!' they shouted. 'Go away! Leave us alone already! You people are destroying the country and making a lot of noise out of this issue. Get over it," they yelled. And then they were those who waved, and smiled, and turned their hands thumbs up while driving, who said 'Yasher koach!' and 'Keep the faith!' -- and it is just exhausting to live through it all." And that was only one day's activity, between the days she puts in helping frum teenage girls repair their broken lives after living with neglect and abuse in their homes.
Yes, we have that too here in the Holy Land, to my infinite sorrow.
Meanwhile, the directory of our dormitory, an outstanding senior clinical social worker, has a
mother and two brothers and their families who live in "the Gush". His mother is almost packed and he is planning to help her move; she is too old to deal with the stress of the coming days. His brothers are having bigger problems. They pack their things, knowing they can only fight so far. Their wives unpack every box, every day, as soon as the men have closed them. They refuse to leave their homes, to dismantle their lives for the political pleasure of others.
"Marriages are in trouble," he tells me. "Husbands and wives are arguing and crying and fighting with each other all through the yishuvim. These are some of the unspoken things that escape the notice of the media and the friends, for husbands and wives rarely air their dirty laundry in public, let alone convey their most intimate wounds resulting from this trauma. When I left work, my boss was planning to go to the Gush to help his family and was "unclear about how or when" he would return.
"My brother is selling all his furniture," he said. "There is nowhere to store it, not for the length of time it will take to rebuild his home elsewhere. He has to move into a caravan the government says it will provide -- and there are not enough of them -- and they are barely a quarter of the size of his home. His beautiful garden, which he spent so many hours and days and years tending, is a huge sacrifice for his children on the altar of this government's stupidity. And their promises are lies: the caravans are not yet ready, the new locations for the communities are not even chosen yet. The land is not prepared, the plots are not set, the community infrastructure is years away, as are the basic amenities providing services to their homes, such as piping for water, electricity, gas and phones. And once those things are done, it will still take months -- and possibly years -- until the homes themselves are built. By that time, storage fees will have cost more than the new home will be worth."
Some 10,000 people will be homeless by Elul, evicted by the government of Israel, their mothers and children traumatized along with husbands and fathers, brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, friends and soldiers who are forced to do the bidding of their commanders, who are equally distressed about their roles in this tragedy.
Then there are the social workers. We, as clinical and community professionals, are struggling with the trauma as well -- primary and secondary. We are traumatized by what we witness, what we read, what we hear and what we experience. We are traumatized by the trauma of our clients. We are trapped by our own deep and frightening knowledge of what we know is already happening and what yet awaits everyone. We are traumatized by events totally beyond our control, events that leave us with no option other than to set aside our own feelings and minister to others, to all of our brethren, and to watch the systematic destruction of their lives and the generations to follow, those children and grandchildren to whom the victims trauma will be passed on.
This is not the Holocaust. Jews are not being murdered by strangers, or even by our own. That is true. But in a real way it is having a similar effect on many of the families suffering through the annihilation of everything they have built, some for the second time after a relocation to Gaza from Yamit, the scene of another exile from their homes. The promise of a new life, building the Land and securing our borders to protect our People, has become a nightmare of unparallelled dimension.
We, the social workers of Israel, will be there to support and succor them, during the disaster and in the days after, in the years and decades to follow. That is our mandate: to comfort, to help rebuild, to offer and coordinate support and social services, to teach victims how to move on and reclaim their lives. That is what social workers do. "
But for us, we who must find a way to accomplish this task while setting aside our own grief and rage at the injustice and tragedy of it all, it is a trauma upon trauma, our own and that of all the others which we must bear.
I hereby honor all of my colleagues who have donated their time, their strength and their faith to this task, and who willingly face their own feelings while helping others to face and deal with their own. I honor their husbands and children and families, who bear the brunt of their silent pain, and not-so-silent suffering when it burst far from the eyes of their clients and the cameras.
May G-d grant us all strength in these coming days of insanity and may we someday merit to see the sense of it all, though it is hidden from us now. May our pain be the final birth pang that brings the coming of Moshiach Tzidkenu so this horrendous Diaspora may end once and for all. May G-d have mercy on all of us.
"I gave out orange strips of cloth on the streets in Tel Aviv," she said, "and people were yelling at me from their cars. 'Go home to your yishuv!' they shouted. 'Go away! Leave us alone already! You people are destroying the country and making a lot of noise out of this issue. Get over it," they yelled. And then they were those who waved, and smiled, and turned their hands thumbs up while driving, who said 'Yasher koach!' and 'Keep the faith!' -- and it is just exhausting to live through it all." And that was only one day's activity, between the days she puts in helping frum teenage girls repair their broken lives after living with neglect and abuse in their homes.
Yes, we have that too here in the Holy Land, to my infinite sorrow.
Meanwhile, the directory of our dormitory, an outstanding senior clinical social worker, has a
mother and two brothers and their families who live in "the Gush". His mother is almost packed and he is planning to help her move; she is too old to deal with the stress of the coming days. His brothers are having bigger problems. They pack their things, knowing they can only fight so far. Their wives unpack every box, every day, as soon as the men have closed them. They refuse to leave their homes, to dismantle their lives for the political pleasure of others.
"Marriages are in trouble," he tells me. "Husbands and wives are arguing and crying and fighting with each other all through the yishuvim. These are some of the unspoken things that escape the notice of the media and the friends, for husbands and wives rarely air their dirty laundry in public, let alone convey their most intimate wounds resulting from this trauma. When I left work, my boss was planning to go to the Gush to help his family and was "unclear about how or when" he would return.
"My brother is selling all his furniture," he said. "There is nowhere to store it, not for the length of time it will take to rebuild his home elsewhere. He has to move into a caravan the government says it will provide -- and there are not enough of them -- and they are barely a quarter of the size of his home. His beautiful garden, which he spent so many hours and days and years tending, is a huge sacrifice for his children on the altar of this government's stupidity. And their promises are lies: the caravans are not yet ready, the new locations for the communities are not even chosen yet. The land is not prepared, the plots are not set, the community infrastructure is years away, as are the basic amenities providing services to their homes, such as piping for water, electricity, gas and phones. And once those things are done, it will still take months -- and possibly years -- until the homes themselves are built. By that time, storage fees will have cost more than the new home will be worth."
Some 10,000 people will be homeless by Elul, evicted by the government of Israel, their mothers and children traumatized along with husbands and fathers, brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, friends and soldiers who are forced to do the bidding of their commanders, who are equally distressed about their roles in this tragedy.
Then there are the social workers. We, as clinical and community professionals, are struggling with the trauma as well -- primary and secondary. We are traumatized by what we witness, what we read, what we hear and what we experience. We are traumatized by the trauma of our clients. We are trapped by our own deep and frightening knowledge of what we know is already happening and what yet awaits everyone. We are traumatized by events totally beyond our control, events that leave us with no option other than to set aside our own feelings and minister to others, to all of our brethren, and to watch the systematic destruction of their lives and the generations to follow, those children and grandchildren to whom the victims trauma will be passed on.
This is not the Holocaust. Jews are not being murdered by strangers, or even by our own. That is true. But in a real way it is having a similar effect on many of the families suffering through the annihilation of everything they have built, some for the second time after a relocation to Gaza from Yamit, the scene of another exile from their homes. The promise of a new life, building the Land and securing our borders to protect our People, has become a nightmare of unparallelled dimension.
We, the social workers of Israel, will be there to support and succor them, during the disaster and in the days after, in the years and decades to follow. That is our mandate: to comfort, to help rebuild, to offer and coordinate support and social services, to teach victims how to move on and reclaim their lives. That is what social workers do. "
But for us, we who must find a way to accomplish this task while setting aside our own grief and rage at the injustice and tragedy of it all, it is a trauma upon trauma, our own and that of all the others which we must bear.
I hereby honor all of my colleagues who have donated their time, their strength and their faith to this task, and who willingly face their own feelings while helping others to face and deal with their own. I honor their husbands and children and families, who bear the brunt of their silent pain, and not-so-silent suffering when it burst far from the eyes of their clients and the cameras.
May G-d grant us all strength in these coming days of insanity and may we someday merit to see the sense of it all, though it is hidden from us now. May our pain be the final birth pang that brings the coming of Moshiach Tzidkenu so this horrendous Diaspora may end once and for all. May G-d have mercy on all of us.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
The Bus Driver
The Egged bus from Beersheva to Arad is always packed and yesterday was no exception.
Young soldiers and hotshot teens from the Air Force Tech High School jostle the paying customers pushing their way ahead of everyone to grab seats where they can drift off to sleep on their way home from the bases in the Negev. Old Russian ladies grumble loudly and occasionally shove others aside, indignant that anyone would venture ahead of them. Dark-eyed Bedouin women, their faces framed by beautiful scarves, wait patiently till the others find their places, sometimes holding babies, sometimes gently holding an older child's hand; they never, ever scrabble or fight to find a place the way so many others do. So many different kinds of people packed into one coach-sized bus hand their money or their bus tickets to the driver as they move along. The driver was working as fast as he could to keep the traffic flowing smoothly -- until I climbed aboard.
As usual, I handed him my bus pass with a greeting. He smiled in reply, but did not let go of my ticket. There we were, connected by the small card, trapped together in the front of the bus. I had no idea why and he wasn't talking. I tugged. He held on. Perplexed, I tugged again. Preoccupied, he simply didn't let go.
"What's up?" I inquired. It didn't make sense.
He glanced at a young girl sitting in the front seat. "She doesn't have the money for the fare."
She colored. "I said I will bring it to you later. You know I am good for it."
He shook his head and looked straight at me. "She can't pay for the fare. You have a ticket."
Oh, right. I got it. "So what's the big deal? Just take it out of mine. " It didn't bother me.
"We'll split it," he corrected me. "Half from you and half from me. You pay with your ticket and I will give you change." He smiled. I smiled.
"No no no no NO!!!" the girl wailed. "I can PAY it, I said!! I will bring it to you tonight!"
Meanwhile, the driver punched my ticket and got the bus on the road. I sat next to her. "You don't understand," I said soothingly. "I have a discounted ticket, with two free rides anyway. I didn't pay anything. It was one of the freebies." The driver nodded his approval.
"If you are really worried about it, we can split it three ways, okay? He'll pay 5 shekels, I pay 5 shekels and you can put 5 shekels in the pushka when you get home."
She didn't like this compromise either, but at the end she was outvoted and finally gave up. The driver grinned at me. I grinned back. Anyway it comes out of the kitty," he added. "Big deal."
The girl moved to the back, murmuring her thanks and insistence that she would pay him back. He laughed. "Put it in the pushka," he told her.
I nodded my approval. That's what a Jewish State is all about.
Young soldiers and hotshot teens from the Air Force Tech High School jostle the paying customers pushing their way ahead of everyone to grab seats where they can drift off to sleep on their way home from the bases in the Negev. Old Russian ladies grumble loudly and occasionally shove others aside, indignant that anyone would venture ahead of them. Dark-eyed Bedouin women, their faces framed by beautiful scarves, wait patiently till the others find their places, sometimes holding babies, sometimes gently holding an older child's hand; they never, ever scrabble or fight to find a place the way so many others do. So many different kinds of people packed into one coach-sized bus hand their money or their bus tickets to the driver as they move along. The driver was working as fast as he could to keep the traffic flowing smoothly -- until I climbed aboard.
As usual, I handed him my bus pass with a greeting. He smiled in reply, but did not let go of my ticket. There we were, connected by the small card, trapped together in the front of the bus. I had no idea why and he wasn't talking. I tugged. He held on. Perplexed, I tugged again. Preoccupied, he simply didn't let go.
"What's up?" I inquired. It didn't make sense.
He glanced at a young girl sitting in the front seat. "She doesn't have the money for the fare."
She colored. "I said I will bring it to you later. You know I am good for it."
He shook his head and looked straight at me. "She can't pay for the fare. You have a ticket."
Oh, right. I got it. "So what's the big deal? Just take it out of mine. " It didn't bother me.
"We'll split it," he corrected me. "Half from you and half from me. You pay with your ticket and I will give you change." He smiled. I smiled.
"No no no no NO!!!" the girl wailed. "I can PAY it, I said!! I will bring it to you tonight!"
Meanwhile, the driver punched my ticket and got the bus on the road. I sat next to her. "You don't understand," I said soothingly. "I have a discounted ticket, with two free rides anyway. I didn't pay anything. It was one of the freebies." The driver nodded his approval.
"If you are really worried about it, we can split it three ways, okay? He'll pay 5 shekels, I pay 5 shekels and you can put 5 shekels in the pushka when you get home."
She didn't like this compromise either, but at the end she was outvoted and finally gave up. The driver grinned at me. I grinned back. Anyway it comes out of the kitty," he added. "Big deal."
The girl moved to the back, murmuring her thanks and insistence that she would pay him back. He laughed. "Put it in the pushka," he told her.
I nodded my approval. That's what a Jewish State is all about.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Urban Thong
There is a new fashion flaunting flesh in Arad this summer -- a new version of The Thong. The way it works is this:
First, you have to wear a thong (you know, those underwear (panties) that really aren't and cover nothing but divide your tush so the cheeks are well defined and prominent to streetside viewers. (I believe this applies primarily to the ladies... then again, you can never tell....) It should be a colorful "garment", one that catches the eye, so to speak.
Then, you wear skin tight hip huggers with the "waistline" as low as possible -- this creates a casual but daring appearance. You really can wear looser hip huggers if you wish; the issue here is "how low can you go"...
Finally, the real crux of the matter: you hike up the thong and you schlep down the hip huggers, so that the top of the thong shows above the "waistline". This is a fashion that has clearly been stolen from American hip hop artists (no pun intended, really!) and rappers, who some ten years ago began to wear loose, low-slung pants with at least two inches of underwear showing above the pants, so that it looks like the pants are falling down but the underwear are still hanging in there (oh gee, that was REALLY terrible, but i just couldn't help it). It was that "come hither and let's pull our pants down together" kind of look. A little sloppy, a little ghetto.
The Urban Thong is the height of fashion here in Israel. Some girls even manage to hike the thong so high and schlep the pants so low that you can actually see not only the top of the thong, but the stringy part too.
In my day, this would have been referred to as "indecent exposure". Now it is "cool". Of course, there are limits as to what constitutes flaunting this fashion in good taste. (No comment.)
For example, a woman over a certain age of maturity looks, um, a little saggy in the back. And females with more than ample glutei maximi have given new meaning to the word plump. (Sigh.)
But the average lady sporting this look here in Arad generally falls into the 16 - 30 age range, Occasionally you get an old bag with a bod with dyed hair or a young wannabe complete with belly and brows pierced, trying to strut her stuff. But it makes me wonder why they bother -- let it all hang out!
Ah, summer in the city..........
First, you have to wear a thong (you know, those underwear (panties) that really aren't and cover nothing but divide your tush so the cheeks are well defined and prominent to streetside viewers. (I believe this applies primarily to the ladies... then again, you can never tell....) It should be a colorful "garment", one that catches the eye, so to speak.
Then, you wear skin tight hip huggers with the "waistline" as low as possible -- this creates a casual but daring appearance. You really can wear looser hip huggers if you wish; the issue here is "how low can you go"...
Finally, the real crux of the matter: you hike up the thong and you schlep down the hip huggers, so that the top of the thong shows above the "waistline". This is a fashion that has clearly been stolen from American hip hop artists (no pun intended, really!) and rappers, who some ten years ago began to wear loose, low-slung pants with at least two inches of underwear showing above the pants, so that it looks like the pants are falling down but the underwear are still hanging in there (oh gee, that was REALLY terrible, but i just couldn't help it). It was that "come hither and let's pull our pants down together" kind of look. A little sloppy, a little ghetto.
The Urban Thong is the height of fashion here in Israel. Some girls even manage to hike the thong so high and schlep the pants so low that you can actually see not only the top of the thong, but the stringy part too.
In my day, this would have been referred to as "indecent exposure". Now it is "cool". Of course, there are limits as to what constitutes flaunting this fashion in good taste. (No comment.)
For example, a woman over a certain age of maturity looks, um, a little saggy in the back. And females with more than ample glutei maximi have given new meaning to the word plump. (Sigh.)
But the average lady sporting this look here in Arad generally falls into the 16 - 30 age range, Occasionally you get an old bag with a bod with dyed hair or a young wannabe complete with belly and brows pierced, trying to strut her stuff. But it makes me wonder why they bother -- let it all hang out!
Ah, summer in the city..........
Monday, May 30, 2005
The Garden
This past Shabbat, as the sun gently set over the hills of the Negev, I sat with my husband on the patio behind our house, gazing at the view and singing the 23rd psalm together. The blessing which thanks G-d for the fruit trees was recently said in its season, just before Pesach when the flowers have bloomed before giving way to their fruit.
"The fig tree is huge," I observed after the song ended. "What fig tree?" said my husband. He had not noticed it, hiding behind the blossoming honeysuckle against the fence. "The fig tree," I repeated patiently. "It's full of fruit." He went over to take a look. "So it is," he agreed. "We have to figure out a way to prevent the worms from getting in there. They come up from the ground and invade the fruit. It's gross."
The thought made me squirm. I had seen those little things last year at our previous residence. They looked like maggots.
"And the olive tree too," I reminded him. Last year's olives were gorgeous, but when I soaked them prior to pickling, hundreds of little white worms emerged. Gross. We have a very large olive tree in our yard across from Adam's first pair of underwear, and I could not bear the thought of another year of wasted olives.
"What is that bush?," I asked him, peering at a beautiful leafy little tree with bright orange-red flowers nearby. I had almost uprooted it a couple of months ago, thinking it was a dead shrub. When I saw the flowers, I had decided it might be honeysuckle, but the color was wrong.
"Pomegranates," he answered. I could not believe that I had missed that. Such a beautiful fruit, and sure enough when I went to look, the little tree was bursting with small green globes just starting the hint of a blush.
"The lemons are coming out," I commented. There were three of those, marching along the side of the house between our front and back yards. They were short but full, having somehow been cut down almost to destruction before we had moved in, and their leaves were curled, some with the scars of past disease. Careful nurturing has brought them back slowly, and I was surprised last week to see those tiny little green balls at the ends of some of the branches.
"Really?" Disbelief appeared in my husband's eyes. He knew the condition of those trees.
This beautiful garden, a real paradise, looked like real hell just three months ago, and I had been tempted to cut everything down and start over again.
And so it is with Israel.
There have been 500 anti-semitic incidents here in this country, the homeland of the Jewish people, within the past two years according to statistics gathered by Yad Vashem. In Arad, our own little town, there were ten such cases in the past year alone.
The State of Israel leads the world in annual incidence of anti-semitism, NOT BY ARABS, but rather by gentile immigrants claiming one Jewish grandparent in order to come in under the Law of Return. The last wave of Russians, in fact, included more such gentiles than Jews -- and many of them are outright anti-semites.
The representative of Misrad HaKlita (the Ministry of Absorption) here in Arad is herself a Russian Jew, one who looks like a "shikseh" as she describes her appearance. She has blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, the warmest manner you could possibly imagine and the sharpest glance I have ever seen. Several months ago, she warned my husband that many of the new Russian immigrants here in Arad were rabid anti-semites. How did she know?
It seems that she hears all kinds of interesting things from the new immigrants who come to her office for help with the benefits they are entitled to under the Law of Return. Like how they hate the Jews, how they managed to get out of Russia by faking the one Jewish grandparent that was their ticket to freedom in the Holy Land. Their eventual goal? A visa for entry to the United States of America, where they will live and work and spread their poison in Brooklyn, Queens and all the other meccas of Russian immigration.
Be warned, she said. This town is 45% Russian; of those, literally half do not meet halachic criteria to be defined as Jews -- nor do they want to be. This was their ticket out, and our naive Israeli government used Hitler's definition of who is a Jew to import this cancer into our midst.
The thought that Jewish tzedaka, Jewish taxes and Jewish blood has gone to support and protect the lives of this scum sickens my soul. In the one place a Jew should expect to be surrounded -- at least within our own borders -- by Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge our right to this Land and our existence, we have somehow managed to surround ourself with enemies from within. Not from Arabs, fighting for their own right to be here, having lived here themselves for hundreds of years -- from foreign anti-semites, goyim who would love nothing more than to see us dead while sucking our country dry of its scarce and precious resources.
"Should we leave?" asked my husband in despair. "It is so hard here; the salaries are slave wages and the expenses double what they were in the States. The bureacracy is a nightmare. The red tape is indescribable. Our kids are having such a hard time adjusting to school -- maybe this was a mistake. Maybe it's time to go."
"Go where?" I know from my own experiences as a child that there IS nowhere to go. You can't run from this. There is nowhere to hide. We brought this scourge upon ourselves -- not me, not my husband, but other Jews who were stupid and desperate to prove their righteousness to the world by its own vicious criteria. But it exists everywhere, and I was not raised by my parents to run. I was taught to stand my ground and fight for what is right.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, was the only Jew in Crown Heights to stay during the "white flight" of the sixties that followed a huge influx of African-American and Carribean-American tenement dwellers. Six other Brooklyn neighborhoods had already fallen, four Jewish and two Italian. But the Rebbe would not run, nor would he allow his Chassidim to either. And Crown Heights today has been regentrified, with houses that sell at astronomical, ridiculous prices -- and they barely make it to the market, usually snatched up through word of mouth within days.
So too will it be with our beautiful garden here in Arad and in the Land of Israel. Stupid Jews, willing to cut their own throats to please those who will never be pleased with us, no matter what we do simply because we are Jews, have led their own people down the path of self-destruction. It was what the Lubavitcher Rebbe screamed about more than ten years ago, when the Who Is A Jew issue was raised in the discussion of the Law of Return. It was what the Satmar Rebbe, of blessed memory, predicted when he ordered his Chassidim never to acknowledge the establishment of this State, predicated as it was and is on goyische standards of living, and goyische threats as a result.
Some say the Jewish state does not exist. I sometimes wonder as well. But it has in fact been born, although it is still in the neonatal intensive care unit and needs all the prayers and fight it can muster.
Like my garden in the winter.
G-d willing, Israel will bloom once more in the spring.
"The fig tree is huge," I observed after the song ended. "What fig tree?" said my husband. He had not noticed it, hiding behind the blossoming honeysuckle against the fence. "The fig tree," I repeated patiently. "It's full of fruit." He went over to take a look. "So it is," he agreed. "We have to figure out a way to prevent the worms from getting in there. They come up from the ground and invade the fruit. It's gross."
The thought made me squirm. I had seen those little things last year at our previous residence. They looked like maggots.
"And the olive tree too," I reminded him. Last year's olives were gorgeous, but when I soaked them prior to pickling, hundreds of little white worms emerged. Gross. We have a very large olive tree in our yard across from Adam's first pair of underwear, and I could not bear the thought of another year of wasted olives.
"What is that bush?," I asked him, peering at a beautiful leafy little tree with bright orange-red flowers nearby. I had almost uprooted it a couple of months ago, thinking it was a dead shrub. When I saw the flowers, I had decided it might be honeysuckle, but the color was wrong.
"Pomegranates," he answered. I could not believe that I had missed that. Such a beautiful fruit, and sure enough when I went to look, the little tree was bursting with small green globes just starting the hint of a blush.
"The lemons are coming out," I commented. There were three of those, marching along the side of the house between our front and back yards. They were short but full, having somehow been cut down almost to destruction before we had moved in, and their leaves were curled, some with the scars of past disease. Careful nurturing has brought them back slowly, and I was surprised last week to see those tiny little green balls at the ends of some of the branches.
"Really?" Disbelief appeared in my husband's eyes. He knew the condition of those trees.
This beautiful garden, a real paradise, looked like real hell just three months ago, and I had been tempted to cut everything down and start over again.
And so it is with Israel.
There have been 500 anti-semitic incidents here in this country, the homeland of the Jewish people, within the past two years according to statistics gathered by Yad Vashem. In Arad, our own little town, there were ten such cases in the past year alone.
The State of Israel leads the world in annual incidence of anti-semitism, NOT BY ARABS, but rather by gentile immigrants claiming one Jewish grandparent in order to come in under the Law of Return. The last wave of Russians, in fact, included more such gentiles than Jews -- and many of them are outright anti-semites.
The representative of Misrad HaKlita (the Ministry of Absorption) here in Arad is herself a Russian Jew, one who looks like a "shikseh" as she describes her appearance. She has blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, the warmest manner you could possibly imagine and the sharpest glance I have ever seen. Several months ago, she warned my husband that many of the new Russian immigrants here in Arad were rabid anti-semites. How did she know?
It seems that she hears all kinds of interesting things from the new immigrants who come to her office for help with the benefits they are entitled to under the Law of Return. Like how they hate the Jews, how they managed to get out of Russia by faking the one Jewish grandparent that was their ticket to freedom in the Holy Land. Their eventual goal? A visa for entry to the United States of America, where they will live and work and spread their poison in Brooklyn, Queens and all the other meccas of Russian immigration.
Be warned, she said. This town is 45% Russian; of those, literally half do not meet halachic criteria to be defined as Jews -- nor do they want to be. This was their ticket out, and our naive Israeli government used Hitler's definition of who is a Jew to import this cancer into our midst.
The thought that Jewish tzedaka, Jewish taxes and Jewish blood has gone to support and protect the lives of this scum sickens my soul. In the one place a Jew should expect to be surrounded -- at least within our own borders -- by Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge our right to this Land and our existence, we have somehow managed to surround ourself with enemies from within. Not from Arabs, fighting for their own right to be here, having lived here themselves for hundreds of years -- from foreign anti-semites, goyim who would love nothing more than to see us dead while sucking our country dry of its scarce and precious resources.
"Should we leave?" asked my husband in despair. "It is so hard here; the salaries are slave wages and the expenses double what they were in the States. The bureacracy is a nightmare. The red tape is indescribable. Our kids are having such a hard time adjusting to school -- maybe this was a mistake. Maybe it's time to go."
"Go where?" I know from my own experiences as a child that there IS nowhere to go. You can't run from this. There is nowhere to hide. We brought this scourge upon ourselves -- not me, not my husband, but other Jews who were stupid and desperate to prove their righteousness to the world by its own vicious criteria. But it exists everywhere, and I was not raised by my parents to run. I was taught to stand my ground and fight for what is right.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, was the only Jew in Crown Heights to stay during the "white flight" of the sixties that followed a huge influx of African-American and Carribean-American tenement dwellers. Six other Brooklyn neighborhoods had already fallen, four Jewish and two Italian. But the Rebbe would not run, nor would he allow his Chassidim to either. And Crown Heights today has been regentrified, with houses that sell at astronomical, ridiculous prices -- and they barely make it to the market, usually snatched up through word of mouth within days.
So too will it be with our beautiful garden here in Arad and in the Land of Israel. Stupid Jews, willing to cut their own throats to please those who will never be pleased with us, no matter what we do simply because we are Jews, have led their own people down the path of self-destruction. It was what the Lubavitcher Rebbe screamed about more than ten years ago, when the Who Is A Jew issue was raised in the discussion of the Law of Return. It was what the Satmar Rebbe, of blessed memory, predicted when he ordered his Chassidim never to acknowledge the establishment of this State, predicated as it was and is on goyische standards of living, and goyische threats as a result.
Some say the Jewish state does not exist. I sometimes wonder as well. But it has in fact been born, although it is still in the neonatal intensive care unit and needs all the prayers and fight it can muster.
Like my garden in the winter.
G-d willing, Israel will bloom once more in the spring.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Flowers, Felines and Dogs
I cannot find even one street in Arad that does not have flowers. My entire neighborhood is named for flowers, every street. And every yard has flowers too. It is incredible. Every traffic circle, every public place -- hundreds of them, in every possible color and shape combination. The air is intoxicating, in fact. I walk by and breathe in lavendar, rosemary, honeysuckle, dark red roses.... you name, it is there. The entire town is one big fragrant bouquet.
And then there are the dogs.
They are present, too. In every neighborhood, some more than others. Even I, a stalwart supporter of the feline experience (we have four to our credit), finally had to give in and get one, when as a little puppy covered in ticks my kids brought her home half dead. So of course I couldn't just let her die. A vet bill of over $500 later, tick free and spayed, Sussie joined the family. That was less than a year ago and she is now the size of a minature pony, one that my seven year son could easily ride.
Our youngest cat, Pippin, himself a maturing kitten almost the same age, is her best friend. They sleep together and she washes that cat every day, whether or not he needs it. It is too weird for words, but awfully cute to see.
At first, she did not realize that as a dog, she has certain responsibilities -- to be in our yard, to protect hearth and home, and bark like crazy when strangers appear. The other dogs in the neighborhood have tutored her assiduously, however. Today she is an official protector-in-training, barking like a maniac when anyone has the audacity to walk down our street, let alone near the house. The alarm goes out and every single dog in every yard (and on my street every yard but two has a dog) joins the chorus regardless of hour of day. It is amazing. And no one gets bitten, and no one cares about the noise. They see it as an inexpensive and much nicer burglar alarm.
Sussie is all bark and almost no bite. She does bite, however, when she plays with you, and also knocks you down in her enthusiasm. She scared the life out of the 5 year old spoiled brat across the street. The brat's older brother, on the other hand, loves Sussie and plays with her all the time. That is, when he is not throwing rocks at her or at my son, one of his best friends. (He has a problem with impulsivity and anger control.)
The dog has been impossible to train until lately, because it took this long to figure out what would entice her to listen. I finally found out, by accident, in the desert one day. I had brought a sandwich and some dry bread for the birds. I scattered the bread and she carefully picked it all up and trotted home with it, and proceed to bury every last piece in the yard. And now all I have to do to get her to come home with me is brandish a little bread. Amazing, given the money I have spent on "treats" which she ignored. Go figure.
Our cat Boo Boo is also a bread fanatic. I have to hide the bread I buy for the kids; if not, she will rip the bag to pieces to get to it. She was the one who came home as a kitten with my 14 year old, who felt bad because her thigh bone was broken and she looked so forlorn. Well, after $450 and a hospital stay, one month in my bedroom to convalesce from surgery and countless cuddles, she is here too.
Tuli, our oldest cat (12 until 120) is a gourmet; she prefers green olives in paprika hot sauce. For real.
Pippin eats chocolate cake.
Lucky, so named for having survived nine attempts on his life by the Fates thus far, will not eat cottage cheese but will eat almost anything else.
Thank G-d for the dog, who is not nearly as picky.
Flowers and animals and fruit trees and desert breezes, dust and moonlight -- Arad is a place of contradictions, of mavericks and sculpture, which can be seen at any major intersection or other busy area. Unreal. An artist's paradise.
A city person would die here.
For the rest of us, it is where we were meant to be.
And then there are the dogs.
They are present, too. In every neighborhood, some more than others. Even I, a stalwart supporter of the feline experience (we have four to our credit), finally had to give in and get one, when as a little puppy covered in ticks my kids brought her home half dead. So of course I couldn't just let her die. A vet bill of over $500 later, tick free and spayed, Sussie joined the family. That was less than a year ago and she is now the size of a minature pony, one that my seven year son could easily ride.
Our youngest cat, Pippin, himself a maturing kitten almost the same age, is her best friend. They sleep together and she washes that cat every day, whether or not he needs it. It is too weird for words, but awfully cute to see.
At first, she did not realize that as a dog, she has certain responsibilities -- to be in our yard, to protect hearth and home, and bark like crazy when strangers appear. The other dogs in the neighborhood have tutored her assiduously, however. Today she is an official protector-in-training, barking like a maniac when anyone has the audacity to walk down our street, let alone near the house. The alarm goes out and every single dog in every yard (and on my street every yard but two has a dog) joins the chorus regardless of hour of day. It is amazing. And no one gets bitten, and no one cares about the noise. They see it as an inexpensive and much nicer burglar alarm.
Sussie is all bark and almost no bite. She does bite, however, when she plays with you, and also knocks you down in her enthusiasm. She scared the life out of the 5 year old spoiled brat across the street. The brat's older brother, on the other hand, loves Sussie and plays with her all the time. That is, when he is not throwing rocks at her or at my son, one of his best friends. (He has a problem with impulsivity and anger control.)
The dog has been impossible to train until lately, because it took this long to figure out what would entice her to listen. I finally found out, by accident, in the desert one day. I had brought a sandwich and some dry bread for the birds. I scattered the bread and she carefully picked it all up and trotted home with it, and proceed to bury every last piece in the yard. And now all I have to do to get her to come home with me is brandish a little bread. Amazing, given the money I have spent on "treats" which she ignored. Go figure.
Our cat Boo Boo is also a bread fanatic. I have to hide the bread I buy for the kids; if not, she will rip the bag to pieces to get to it. She was the one who came home as a kitten with my 14 year old, who felt bad because her thigh bone was broken and she looked so forlorn. Well, after $450 and a hospital stay, one month in my bedroom to convalesce from surgery and countless cuddles, she is here too.
Tuli, our oldest cat (12 until 120) is a gourmet; she prefers green olives in paprika hot sauce. For real.
Pippin eats chocolate cake.
Lucky, so named for having survived nine attempts on his life by the Fates thus far, will not eat cottage cheese but will eat almost anything else.
Thank G-d for the dog, who is not nearly as picky.
Flowers and animals and fruit trees and desert breezes, dust and moonlight -- Arad is a place of contradictions, of mavericks and sculpture, which can be seen at any major intersection or other busy area. Unreal. An artist's paradise.
A city person would die here.
For the rest of us, it is where we were meant to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)