לא קלה היא דרכנו

As the bus rolled past farmland and little groves of forest, it dawned upon me how much the countryside looked like Columbus. Then I shivered and shook the thought from my mind. Poland and Ohio could not have anything in common if I was to have any peace when I returned.

We’d been in Poland five days, and had three more to go. Our group of seminary girls, in Israel for a year of post-high school Torah study, had taken advantage of the Heritage program’s pre-Passover Poland tour to both learn about the Holocaust and affirm that we remember.

After only half a day, I wanted nothing less than to return to Israel already. I felt dirtied by Poland. Driving through its pretty landscape I sat glued to the windows of the bus, intrigued by the phantom blood that I saw running alongside the roads. I hadn’t wanted to go. I’d felt that a trip to Poland would merely be outlet for histrionics and somehow unfairly appropriate the Holocaust for myself, using those who died in an emotional game. But my own idiocies couldn’t let me keep from respecting the memories of those who perished there, nor from making the statement to the world that yet another person would never forget, so I found myself on a bus filled with Orot, Migdal Oz, Shaalvot, and MMY girls intent on capturing Poland on their cameras already filled with photos of a happy year spent learning in Israel.

We trundled along from cemetery to concentration camp, abandoned synagogue to derelict ghetto. The mud squelched into the boots we’d bought specially for this trip (who packs boots when they’re going to Israel for the year?) and clung to the Israeli flags dangling damply from our backpacks. Exhausted by a max of three hours of sleep a night and even more by the emotional barrage thrown at us, we marched along in a sort of numbness from horror to horror, subsisting solely on mapah chamahs and the knowledge that at the end of the week we’d be on a flight back to beautiful Israel.

Belzec left me gasping: too much death thrown in my face on a sunny day. Majdanek left me disgusted: it looked like my summer camp, except for the smiling empty gas chambers. Birkenau resembled the University of Maryland with its brick dormitories, a comparison I still try not to make whenever I notice the chimneys on the buildings here. Auschwitz II was too massive: I couldn’t see the end of it from the entrance, nor comprehend its enormity until four days after returning to Israel, when I woke gasping one night in my bed in Elqana, my mind reeling from suddenly being hit with all of Auschwitz.

The cemeteries were friendlier. Many of them pre-war, they marked my ancestors’ remains beneath mossy stones inscribed with the legend “Isha tznuah” –a modest woman. Often I wished that the engravers had left more of a record; besides modesty, who the hell was she? But modesty was all I got. Something that has survived Hitler’s purge to this day.

The eight days I spent in Poland were mostly spent yearning to get back to Israel. Never had I felt so strongly my position as a Diasporic Jew. My most terrifying moment was awakening alone in a grassy cemetery on a small hill where I’d sat down for “just a moment” to regain some energy. I assumed that everyone was at the top of the cemetery, and only upon gaining the crest did I realize that they’d left me behind, and the bus was nowhere in sight. I flew over the Polish potato fields, mentally running over all the Polish words I knew: “jenkuya,” thank you, and “rynik,” marketplace. I cursed myself for not having rented a phone that would work internationally instead of only in Israel. Strangely, the fear that I started to give great gasping sobs for was that I might dehydrate. Obviously I’d spent too much time hiking in the Holy Land.

If I am stuck in Poland… If I am stuck in Poland… Forever. Of course if I could have thought about it rationally I would have foreseen the bus’ return up the hill, the wiry Israeli security guard flying out and shouting “ayfoh hayit, Chanahleh?” as my friends poured out to hug me. But at the moment, I thought I was facing a very real sojourn in Poland for possibly the rest of my life, or at least until I learned enough Polish to tell someone I wanted to go home. To Israel.

Three days later, when the plane touched down in Tel Aviv and its hatch disgorged us onto the hot pavement, I finally did what I’ve wanted to do for years and never dared to, since my first trip to Israel at the age of ten; I knelt down and kissed the tarmac. Home at last.

Before we entered Auschwitz II, walking down the railroad tracks with a sefer Torah in front of us, the wrinkled survivor with us told us “komemiyut. Walk komemiyut.” Upright, he said. Enter the murder-grounds of your ancestors with heads held high. I wanted to shout to him that he was wrong. That’s not the context! It’s from bentching, the prayer after the meal, and the word is slipped in thus: “V’Hu yolichanu komemiyut l’arzaynu” –“He (G-d) will bring us upright to our land.” I walked into Auschwitz painfully erect when all I really wanted was to curl into a fetal position, but I strode into Ben Gurion Airport with my head held high and glad. Komemiyut.

Israel is coming up on its 60th birthday this week. It’s hard to go from the terrible misery of remembering the Holocaust, to joyous celebration of Israel’s birth, and within the same week mourn Israel’s fallen on Yom Hazikaron, the national Day of Remembrance. But it is also fitting. Israel stands a country young in age but old in memory: born out of the ashes of European Jewry it now exists a safe haven of refuge to Jews worldwide. So that if ever Maryland or Ohio begin to resemble Poland in more than appearance, there is somewhere to go.

לזכר

In memory of the six million.


Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. -USHMM plaque

לא נשכך ולא נסלח: We Will Not Forget, Nor Forgive

Last Thursday night the Hoff theater showed the film “Unsettled” by Adam Hootnick. It is a film about the hitnatkut, the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, that took place three summers ago, from the perspective of six twenty year-olds. It divides up perspectives equably (three for, three against disengagement) and does its best to make everyone seem personable and likable.

I did not go.

I sat in my room, beating my fists against the fake wood of my desk, whisking tears out of my eyes as fast as they could form, and pummeling my mind over and over against the news that Olmert wants to give away the Golan to Syria.

The Golan.

The Golan, that Israeli boys fought and died for during the Six Day War. The Golan, overlooking the vulnerable farmers in the Chuleh valley below. The Golan, breathtaking mountains with cascades of almond and crocus blossoms spilling over on the heights. Give away the Golan, after the spectacular fallout (bad pun, I know) from the Gaza withdrawal. Give it away to Syria, which so clearly wants peace with Israel that it built a nuclear reactor in secret. Good idea. Do you not remember Gaza?

It has been three years since the hitnatkut, and the dominating emotion now is the same as it was then, with a little nostalgia added to the mix: lo nishkach v’lo nislach. We will not forget. We will not forgive.

I remember that summer. I was young, mid-teens, palms sweaty from linking hands in the human protest chain we made stretching from Gaza to Jerusalem. My voice hoarse from shouting the obvious; “Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi!” (One Jew does not exile another). My eyes smarting from the sea of bright orange shirts and bands that were the symbol of protest. My heart convinced that G-d would not allow this outrage to happen. And if He screwed up, I knew Sharon (the then prime minister) was not a big enough idiot to actually give away land for peace! We all knew Oslo had been a big fat failure- there’s no such thing as land for peace. We gave away Gaza, and rockets rained on Sderot and Ashkelon and Iranian militants smuggled weapons into Gaza. Giving away the Golan or Jerusalem are equally stupid ideas. While I’m debunking myths, let’s do another: there’s no such thing as a ceasefire. As Noam Bedein of Sderot Media Center said: We cease, they fire.

The more than 800 refugees who were kicked out of their homes by their own country, by their own army that had sworn to protect them, in some cases by their own friends and cousins and lovers, are still living in shanty towns throughout Israel. They are fighting hopeless, endless legal battles with the Israeli government for the payment they were promised for their land. Their belongings are still kept in huge crates by the sides of the highways because they have no room for them in their houses. And Olmert wants to give away more. Land for peace, land for peace. It’s become the mantra of the left wing.

Israelis want peace more than anything else. I grew up singing popular Israeli songs, “Noladeti lashalom” (I was born for peace), “Shir lashalom” (Song of peace), “Od yavo shalom aleinu” (Peace will come upon us), and my favorite, “Hinay ba hashalom” (Here comes the peace). Can you spot the trend? Whereas the most played video shown on Arab TV this past year was a music video celebrating the act of becoming a shahid- martyrdom by murder. Palestinian MediaWatch shows alarming trends in their newspapers, TV shows, and textbooks. They do not want peace. If they did, then we could talk about peace in that little spot in the Middle East that is causing so much trouble. But till then, no land for a nonexistent peace.

Olmert, listen to the slogans that are raging through the country. Lech labaitah, Olmert! (Olmert, go home!). HaAm im haGolan! (The nation stands with the Golan). Lo nishkach v’lo nislach— we will not forget, nor will we forgive. Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi. Please, Olmert. Listen.

I am in America. I am not yet an Israeli citizen. I have no say. Were the Golan to be given away, I would cry, and I would throb with pain, and I would scream to the high heavens, but I would be two thousand miles away. Jerusalem… is different.

I wear a golden ribbon knotted onto my knapsack. Here in Maryland, nobody has the slightest clue what it means though bags in Israel sport them routinely. It is golden for Jerusalem, and I tied it to my bag as a silent protest against the idea of dividing Jerusalem, the golden city. Remember before ’67, when Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city? It was under Jordanian control, and no Jew or Christian could enter the city. Now it is a beautiful metropolitan capital, filled with people of diverse religions and the ubiquitous Asian tourists who cover the world. Give that away, and no Jew or Christian will be able to enter. Give that away, and I will be on a plane and latched to that ground until they pry me off kicking.

The other area that Olmert has been discussing giving away is the West Bank: Yesha (Yehuda and Samaria). I lived in Samaria last year, in the beautiful little community of Elqana. I took long walks on its brick sidewalks overshadowed by calyonim blossoms. I visited its red-roofed, sprawling white houses and taught the children English at the local middle school. I hiked among the empty hills and looked out over the Arab and Jewish towns. I want to live on a hilltop in the Shomron, in a caravan with one wall covered with books and the other just a wide window with a view of quiet, peaceful rolling hills. And regardless of green line, security fence, assholes named Olmert, or American pressure, I will.

Holy Land Baseball

Check out this link for a discussion about... baseball in Israel! That's right, we know you've all walked past Gan Sacher and gotten that little thrill of home when you heard the crack of the American yeshiva boys swinging their bats, but now you can watch Israel's own baseball league play!
Go to:
http://exportingbaseball.blogspot.com/

The Sin of the Spies: חטא המרגלים

And Moshe sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and he said to them: Go up, see the land, what it is, and what the people are who dwell on it. -Bamidbar 13:17

This Tuesday, an 84 year-old man was arrested for passing information on the United States military to Israel. Twenty-three years ago.

Ben-Ami Kadish worked in the U.S. Army as a civilian engineer. He engaged in espionage for Israel while working in a military arsenal until 1985. The twist? His control agent was the same as Jonathan Pollard’s.

Pollard’s face has loomed at me from the sides of buses, t-shirts, and stickers, but perhaps you’re less familiar with him. The facts: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/

Pollard was a civilian American Naval intelligence analyst, who found information that was being withheld from Israel despite the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding, which made Israel legally entitled to it. The information included planned attacks against Israel by Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran. When he approached American officials about it, he was brushed off. Idealistically tied to Eretz Hakadosh, he gave the information directly to Israel.

Pollard was arrested in 1985, entered a plea agreement, and was given a life sentence without parole, though the charge he was indicted on was merely that of passing information to an ally without intent to harm the States. He is the only person in the history of the U.S. to receive a life sentence for spying for a U.S. ally. His sentence is much harsher than even most of those convicted of treason –those who spied for an enemy.

Kadish’s arrest brings up the Pollard case with a vengeance. There are those who worry that it will further delay Pollard’s pardon, which Jews in both America and Israel have been agitating for with increased vehemence recently. The Jewish concept of pidyon shvuyim, a responsibility to release innocent Jewish captives, has assumed great importance. Just as when Jews nationwide protested the incarceration of Natan Sharanksy in the Soviet Union and made him a symbol of human rights, supporters of Jonathan Pollard are hoping that he will be likewise freed if enough publicity and pressure is generated.

Letter-writing campaigns have burgeoned across the States. Everyone pelts their personal congressmen with love notes about the idiocy of keeping Pollard, the agent of a friendly country, locked up forever. When I visited Israel this winter, coinciding with Bush’s (unwelcome) visit, buses had photos of kidnapped Israeli soldiers Ron Arad and Ehud Goldwasser underneath pictures of their captors, and a picture of Bush above Jonathan Pollard. I attended the ceremony changing the name of Paris Square to “Free Jonathan Pollard” Square, where emotions escalated and Israelis cried for Bush to pardon the man who did not hurt America, but was loyal to Israel.

Israel claims that it has not spied in the United States since the Pollard affair. Regardless of whether this is true, it has decided that using the American Jewish community to spy would be a bad idea. But the question remains: where do our loyalties lie? Were we in Pollard’s situation, what would we do? It’s a question that every person must answer individually.

As children, we all asked ourselves whom we would support were America to war with Israel. More mature, we now ask ourselves how we should vote: with Israel’s best interests at heart, or America’s? There is a definite Jewish idea of dina d’malchutah dina –obeying the law of the land— and linked with that is a loyalty to and respect for the country that has given one the right to live and practice Judaism freely. So we can’t dismiss America’s claim on us. At the same time, Israel is and will always be the Jewish homeland, the place we have dreamed of for two thousand years of exile. It doesn’t have to be either/or —enter Soleveitchik. The debate begins…