Dvora Waysman – Page 2

Reflecting on Jerusalem Day

The Kotel in Jerusalem. (photo by Marek69)

Jerusalem has been reunited now for 50 years. For five decades, we have had the privilege of praying at the Kotel, the Western Wall. On Jerusalem Day, 28 Iyar, which falls this year on May 13, thousands of worshippers will flock to the city, many before sunrise.

Nothing has ever come easily to the Jewish people. For 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was cut in half and, at the Mandelbaum Gate, outside the Old City, there were signs: “Danger. Frontier ahead. Snipers nearby … stay out of the middle of the street!” Neighbourhoods and streets were split down the middle. Jews were evicted from their homes and synagogues in the Old City, and the Western Wall was out of bounds. Across the dividing line, Jordanian troops stood with rifles at the ready.

Jerusalem’s story covers thousands of years, but this segment began in 1948. Before the ceasefire was signed on Nov. 30 that year, Moshe Dayan, the commander of Israel’s forces in Jerusalem, met with his Jordanian counterpart, Abdullah El-Tel. In a deserted house in Musrara, they marked out their respective positions. These rough, indistinct marks expanded from the heat and blurred over time, yet they were accepted as the borders between Jordan and Israel in Jerusalem. The map was locked up at Government House and referred to in all disputes.

On June 5, 1967, while Israel was still warning King Hussein of Jordan to stay out of the impending war, a foreign radio station announced the conquest of Mount Scopus by Jordanian troops. It was a mistake, but it confirmed Israel’s suspicions of Jordan’s intentions, and that Mount Scopus, with its Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, was in danger. The Jordanians believed that Israeli troops would come from east to west, but instead the Jerusalem Brigade attacked from the opposite direction, taking Armon HaNetziv, three Jordanian positions, the Arab village of Sur Baher and Mutzav HaPaamon, before several Arab troops came out of hiding and killed six Israeli soldiers.

Below, on the road to Bethlehem, stands Kibbutz Ramat Rachel. Jordanians and Egyptians fought Israelis on the southernmost part of the dividing line and the kibbutz changed hands three times. However, the Israelis eventually held it, which helped stop the Arab invasion of southern Jerusalem.

Soldiers of the Jordanian legion conquered the British High Commissioner’s residence, but were driven back by the Israeli Defence Forces, who moved towards the City of David. At dawn on Tuesday, 27 Iyar, a unit of paratroopers advanced, taking the police school, the district of Sheikh Jarrah, the American Colony and the area of the Rockefeller Museum. After a bloody battle at Ammunition Hill, the paratroopers reached Mount Scopus.

Jerusalem’s great day was 28 Iyar. With a daring thrust, Israeli soldiers scaled Mount of Olives, advancing beyond the village of Al-Azariya. Armoured vehicles burst through the Lions’ Gate towards the Temple Mount. At 10 a.m. came the announcement: “The Temple Mount is ours. It is in our hands!” Soldiers, even secular ones, ran towards the Western Wall, caressing its stones, their eyes full of tears and with a prayer on their lips, even if they didn’t know the words. A few minutes later, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, then IDF chaplain, blew the shofar at the holy site. David Rubinger, a military photographer, took the now-famous photo that has been reproduced around the world, of a soldier named Yitzhak Yifat (who is now a gynecologist living in Rishon lesion), removing his helmet and looking up at the wall in awe.

One of the first to reach the Kotel was a former Australian, Mordecai (Mark) Rechtschafner, from my hometown of Melbourne. He told me that, although he was overwhelmed by the sense of history at that moment, he was far from euphoric. Heavy losses had been sustained and he had lost many comrades. “I was exhausted, filled with sadness at the unbearable death of so many of my friends,” he said. “The Six Day War ended swiftly, but we paid a heavy price.” Every year, on Jerusalem Day, he comes to the city from Kibbutz Ein Zurim, where he lives, for the memorial service, to pay tribute to the many friends he lost in the battle.

Until the First Intifada and its ongoing aftermath, the hope of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs seemed a possibility and some believe it still is. Thousands of Arabs used to pour into Western Jerusalem each morning to work. On weekends, the narrow lanes of the Old City’s Arab shuk (market) would be packed with Israeli shoppers, but, today, it is mostly tourists who fill the market. The future is a question mark, as ongoing violence brings renewed tears to families throughout the land.

But the city of Jerusalem remains unforgettable and heartbreakingly beautiful. To me, it is a poem. One night, as darkness descended, I was moved to write these lines:

Black velvet spangled with stars
Is night in Jerusalem.
Splashes of silver,
The sob of the wind,
An ancient perfume,
A taste of nectar.
Skyline of turrets and domes
Is night in Jerusalem.
Pine trees are sighing.
Through a tracery of leaves
Golden lights dot
A midnight canvas.
Landscape of enchantment
Is night in Jerusalem.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She has written 14 books, including The Pomegranate Pendant, which was made into a movie, and her latest novella, Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

The bond between Israelis

This photograph by Ziv Koren is from My Jerusalem: The Eternal City, a collection of reflections on the city by notable Israeli and Diaspora (mainly American) Jews edited by Ilan Greenfield and published by Gefen Publishing House last year.

I read a lovely quotation recently: “I met a hundred people going to Delhi. And every one of them was my brother.” I often feel that way in Israel. In the 40 years I have lived here, I have met saints and sinners, business tycoons and homemakers, and many, many others. But, by the very fact of them pulling up their roots, leaving behind their birthplaces and culture, here they become ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. I once had a friend, sadly passed on, who used to say that he stood on the corner and watched all the poems walk by.

Israel makes demands on us. We don’t just drift along acquiring more and more material possessions – a bigger home, a more luxurious car, a wardrobe of designer clothing. No matter how rich or poor we may be, when our children turn 18, they are expected to serve their country, either in the Israel Defence Forces or national service (Sherut Leumi). Almost everyone I know is a mother, father, grandparent, sister, brother, wife or daughter of a soldier, and there is always the fear for their safety, or of terrorist attacks that can occur anywhere, changing lives forever. And the six-day work week doesn’t leave much time for leisure, or keeping up with friends and family scattered around the country. Yet there is a resilience here. On the whole, we are optimists. It is almost a cliché that, if you live in Israel and don’t believe in miracles, then you are not a realist. We live on miracles and expect them – the Entebbe rescue and the Six Day War victory are just two examples.

Stand on the corner of any Jerusalem street and, in the space of 10 minutes, you can hear several languages. There might be a monk in a long habit; a soldier whose face is etched in weariness; a teenager with earrings and tattoos; tourists with cameras slung around their necks; a housewife trundling a shopping cart; a Charedi Jew with peyot; and everywhere people talking on their mobile phones. A gregarious lot contributing to the rich mosaic of our society. Each one unique.

They may be strangers, but Israelis won’t hesitate to speak to you … on a bus, waiting in a queue, sitting at your doctor’s office. They may ask you where you bought your shoes, where you work, how much you earn, and why haven’t you dressed your child warmly enough. One big family. It’s not just idle curiosity – they are really interested.

This is what’s so endearing about living in Israel. We all express our identity differently, in the way we dress and the words we speak, but, in the end, it’s a similar identity. We are bonded by birth, by choice or by belief and it creates a link – invisible perhaps but, when needed, we will help each other. It’s an unspoken commitment. How lucky we are!

Why I collect

I never set out to be a collector. Whenever I read about millionaires with fabulous private collections of art and sculpture, I thought, why not just keep a few pieces you really love and give the rest on loan to a museum or gallery so that others can share their beauty?

Yet, I find now that I do have collections. They’re not worth any money and probably no one else would want them. Most people in my age group have accumulated possessions they can’t bear to part with, despite moving homes and maybe even countries several times in their lives.

Who remembers that song of yesteryear: “Among My Souvenirs”? Part of the lyrics were: “Some letters tied with blue, a photograph or two, I find a rose from you, among my souvenirs.”

What we are collecting are memories. There are moments we want to hold on to forever and, when we handle these mementoes, they bring a smile, a tear, a bittersweet wave of nostalgia.

I have more than a thousand books, and nowhere to put them all. Many are paperbacks, yellowed pages and tattered covers. But, to throw them out would be like disposing of dear friends. Lots of poetry – some by almost-forgotten writers like Alice Duer Miller, Rupert Brooke, A.E. Housman, Dorothy Parker. Novels by Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, Steinbeck. Volumes of Jewish essays, which provide great divrei Torah. Books on philosophy, psychology, the craft of writing. They all represent my youth, when I discovered the world and the wonders it contained. No, I can’t throw them away!

Then there are the photos. They started out in albums, but there are too many and I’m too lazy. Beloved family no longer with us. Friends from long ago. Weddings. Babies, bright-eyed and dimpled. Rites of passage – first day at kindergarten and school, b’nai mitzvahs, graduations. Grandchildren. Holidays. They are all cherished, and overflow from drawers and cabinets.

Bric-à-brac. One earring (the other lost), given by my first boyfriend. Small children’s drawings. Their clumsy efforts at making you things from wood or papier mâché. A challah cloth with crooked stitches. A letter on a torn page that proclaims in shaky Hebrew letters, “Savta, I love you.” How could you ever toss those?

I also have a collection of shells and rocks. Most were gifts from grandchildren who wanted to give me something in return for the toys I gave them. There is a pinecone. There are stones I gathered at the Dead Sea on my sister’s last visit, when we spent a perfect, quiet day together, exchanging memories of our parents and siblings, our childhood, the dreams we realized and the ones we lost along the way. All precious. All irreplaceable.

“Get rid of the clutter,” we’re told. Not me. I shall go on collecting mementoes and memories until I die. And I hope my children, even then, will save a few of them. Because some things are worth more than money.

Despair tempered by hope

On the Sabbath preceding the fast of Tisha b’Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, we read in our synagogues from Isaiah, and this reading is one of the three “Haftorahs of Rebuke.” The fast completes the cycle of the Jewish year and commemorates the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and, 656 years later, on the same date, when the

Romans destroyed the Second Temple.

The prophet Isaiah, from whose book we read, was the son of Amos, a native of Jerusalem. He came from a respected family that moved in royal circles and was a prophet in Israel from 740 to 701 BCE. These were stirring years, for the kingdoms of Syria and Israel both fell to the Assyrians in 721 and only by a miracle was Jerusalem delivered from their grasp 20 years later. Isaiah brought the message of the holiness and sovereignty of God, seeking to interpret the crises of history in the light of Divine guidance.

On Tisha b’Av, we read from Lamentations and the writings of another prophet, Hosea. In describing Jerusalem, he wrote: “for their mother hath played the harlot … she that conceived them hath done shamefully….” (Hosea 11:7)

There is an interesting story connected with Hosea. He was married to a woman called Gomer, beautiful but faithless, who eventually ran off with one of her lovers, later becoming a slave and a concubine. Despite her degradation, Hosea continued to love her and bought her back from slavery. He did not take her back as his wife, but as a ward who he hoped would one day repent and be worthy of his protection.

During this period, Hosea had a strange awakening. He felt that this traumatic personal experience was symbolic of God’s love for Israel. The loving husband who had been abandoned by a faithless wife could be compared to God’s beneficence towards Israel, who repaid Him by worshipping the golden calf. God had redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and made them His special people. Yet, instead of keeping their part of the covenant made at Mount Sinai with God, they adopted the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites, forsaking their God for heathen idols.

However, just as Hosea continued to feel love for Gomer, he realized that God’s love for His people would not change. Just as he did not despair that his wife would one day repent, he believed that God’s everlasting mercies also encompassed His sinning people and that their exile would lead to self-knowledge and a return to God.

When Hosea realized the similarity between his wife’s conduct and that of Israel, he felt that his marriage to Gomer had been preordained and was God’s way of speaking to him.

So, while we mourn the destruction of the Temple and the many tragedies that have befallen our people through history, we can still take comfort in the fact that God’s compassion is ever available to us when we truly repent. In Judaism, despair is always tempered by hope. Because of this, we conclude the Tisha b’Av reading with the words: “Turn us unto Thee O Lord, that we may be turned. Renew our days as of old.”

Jerusalem, the Eternal City

Today I arose early and took a few minutes to look at the pearly dawn through my bedroom window. A bit later, I walked to the nearest grocery store and bought fresh bread for breakfast before I began my work day. All trivial, mundane things? Yes, but there is a difference, for I was doing them in Jerusalem.

No matter what ordinary events shape my day, the fact that they are happening here, in the Eternal City, somehow endows them with an extra dimension.

Jerusalem got its name because it has been the city of the Jewish people since the days of King David and his son Solomon, who built the First Temple here. Generation after generation continues to pray: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning.” Devout Jews the world over turn towards Jerusalem three times a day in prayer, as the focus of their longing.

Five thousand years ago, a group of settlers chose to make their homes on the steep ridge called the Ophel, south of today’s Old City. Two thousand years later, David captured it from the Jebusites and, by bringing the Holy Ark here, he established forever its sanctity for Jews.

Jerusalem’s history spans 4,000 years. In 2000 BCE, Abraham offered his son Isaac for a sacrifice on Mount Moriah – ready to carry out the ultimate renunciation until the angel stayed his hand. A thousand years later, David captured the city and, from 961 BCE to 922 BCE, Solomon constructed the First Temple. In 537 BCE, Jews returned from Babylon, where they had been exiled by Nebuchadnezzar and, in 517 BCE, the Second Temple was completed. After that, Alexander the Great took the city and then Antiochus ruled it, until the Maccabees liberated it. In 63 BCE, Pompey captured Jerusalem and, over a period of 33 years, Herod reconstructed the Second Temple.

Jerusalem’s history continued to be a story of conquest and destruction by a chain of occupiers lusting for this precious jewel: the Romans, the Greeks, the Crusaders, the Mamelukes, the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, the Jordanians … a succession of nations who wanted to rule this battle-worn city that possesses no material riches – no gold, no precious metals, no minerals, no oil, nothing to enrich their coffers. So what does it possess?

I don’t know the answer but, in 1907, Hermann Cohen, in his Religiose Postulate, put forward the idea that they had no choice: “All nations, without exception, must go up with the Jews towards Jerusalem.”

Prior to that, in 1882, Peretz Smolenskin wrote, in Nekam Brith, a prophecy about its conquerors: “This shall be our revenge; we shall quicken what they shall kill and raise what they shall fell…. This is the banner of vengeance which we shall set up, and its name is – Jerusalem.”

Jews and non-Jews alike have always felt a magnetic pull towards the Holy City. It is written in Midrash Tehillim 91:7: “Praying in Jerusalem is like praying before the Throne of Glory, for the gate of heaven is there.” Every Jew who prays at the Western Wall feels an unusual closeness to G-d. Judah Stampfer, in his book Jerusalem has Many Faces (1950), expressed it poetically: “I have seen a city chiseled out of moonlight / Its buildings beautiful as silver foothills / While universes shimmered in its corners.”

There are many enchanting cities in the world, and I have visited many – Venice, Avignon, Bruges, Hong Kong, Paris, all have a magic that transforms the senses. Yet there is something extra in Jerusalem that I simply can’t define. It is a beautiful city, but there are many that exceed it. It is dignified, ancient, historic – all adjectives that can be applied to other cities, like London and Rome. Jerusalem, however, is an emotion, a state of mind even more than a place. It arouses dormant passions. It nurtures the soul. It is spiritual and inspiring.

To call Jerusalem home for the past 46 years is, for me, an enormous privilege. I am always aware of the history under my feet. I never forget the nameless heroes who fought to retain it for the Jewish people. And so, let us pay homage to the Maccabees, to those who withstood the Crusaders and Saladin and the Ottomans. And, in our own time, our Jewish soldiers who reunited Jerusalem in the Six Day War in 1967, 50 years ago. So many heroes, who made the ultimate sacrifice so that those of us in Jerusalem today could live out our lives in the Eternal City.

Dvora Waysman is the Australian-born author of 14 books. She came with her family to live in Jerusalem in 1971. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

Israel at 69 – “love forever”

Jews all over the world celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day – even those who have no intention of ever making aliyah and many of whom have never even visited Israel.

“It’s a kind of insurance policy,” one overseas friend told me. “By supporting Israel financially and emotionally, I know that its sanctuary is available to me or my children or grandchildren should the need ever arise.”

I find this kind of thinking very sad, because Israel is so much more than a refuge for persecuted Jews. Not every immigrant who has built a life here was escaping from the horror of the Holocaust, the tyranny behind the Iron Curtain or the cruelty of life in an Arab country. Many of us – the ones Israelis refer to as “Anglo-Saxim” – lowered their standard of living significantly when they settled in Israel, yet found something here that enhanced our quality of life even as we struggled with inflation, mortgages and trying to make miniscule salaries stretch to the end of the month.

We have found here a family – our own people. Of course, just like any family, we fight – about religion, politics, the settlements. The fights can be very bitter yet, at bottom, we care about each other and bond together when we face a common problem or enemy. We celebrate together and sometimes even have to grieve together. Basically, when the going gets rough, we are on the same side. We express our identity as Jews in different ways, but it is the same identity.

We have found here a beautiful country, unique in the variety of its scenery and climate. Mediterranean beaches banded by azure and indigo water and white sands, coral reefs, dense forests, wooded mountains, deserts and rivers and waterfalls, the shimmering mirrored glass of the Dead Sea, fields carpeted with wildflowers – and Jerusalem, the priceless jewel.

Some of us have found here a spirituality that we would never have been able to achieve abroad. Anyone who has been in Israel on Yom Kippur, when the whole country comes to a standstill for the day, cannot doubt the kedushah, the holiness of Eretz Israel. It is intangible, yet it is an undeniable presence.

We have found here a pride in the remarkable achievements of our relatively smaller and less-developed nation. We teach agriculture to the world, and come to other people’s rescue in times of natural or human-made disasters. We are rich in poets, writers, musicians, actors and artists. We can boast industrial and high-tech entrepreneurs and brilliant scientists. When any new Israeli invention captures the world’s imagination, somehow we all bask in the reflected glory.

Israelis have always been compared to the sabra, the cactus with the thorny exterior but the soft heart. We celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut in many ways: campfires and singing, picnics, a Bible quiz, concerts, music and dancing in the streets. We spend the day with family and friends and relish every moment of it. But it is more than just enjoyment.

On every building and on almost every balcony flies the Israeli flag, its blue stripes and Magen David bright against the white background. For days beforehand and a week afterwards, the flag flies from every car on the road. Ceremonies open with the singing of Hatikvah, The Hope, Israel’s national anthem. Most of us sing it standing straight and proud, and often with tears in our eyes as we remember the broken people who found a safe haven here, and those who never managed to reach its shores and died with the dream of Zion in their hearts. And we also remember the brave men and women who gave their lives in all of Israel’s wars and in the pre-state days, the fighters and pioneers who fashioned this wonderful land that we have inherited.

Shin Shalom, one of Israel’s greatest poets, expressed it for all of us in “Mother Jerusalem Singing,” which he wrote a day after the Yom Kippur War in 1973: “Love forever, glow forever / cherish, yearn, preserve the kernel / of an everlasting nation, of a heritage eternal.”

Familiar sounds of Passover

Heron among the flowers near Kibbutz Be’eri, in southern Israel. (photo by Aliza Reshef via PikiWiki)

There is something about Passover that speaks to almost every Jew. In 1840, in a book titled Der Rabbi von Bacharach, Heinrich Heine wrote: “Jews who have long drifted from the faith of their fathers are stirred in their inmost parts when the old, familiar Passover sounds chance to fall upon their ears.”

Although my family was not Orthodox, we always held a seder in Australia, and the singing after reading the Haggadah (and eating lots of knaidel and drinking the cups of wine) was very spirited. As a child, I loved the lively “Dayeinu” and the last song, “Chad Gadya,” which we sang in English, “Only one kid, only one kid which my father bought for two zuzim….” The words seemed very funny to me, until the mood suddenly changed at the end – when we began to sing about the Angel of Death, I remember my mother’s eyes used to fill with tears.

Many years later, when I became observant and began practising mitzvot that, at first, were strange and unfamiliar to me, the seder was like coming home. No one had to explain it to me, or tell me what to do. Etched into my consciousness were the memories of the seder table … the three matzot arranged between the folds of a white cloth so that no two were touching; the dish of parsley with the bowl of salt water; the bitter herbs, the shank bone and the roasted egg.

I remember helping to make the charoset, a delicious mixture of apples and almonds moistened with wine. Passover is so rich in ritual and, that is, after all, the Jews’ survival system.

Without the seder, there’d be no reason for the family to come together at this time. Not every family is religious but, at Pesach, most are traditional. There is a special feeling about the snowy tablecloth with new dishes, the big cup of wine for Elijah, the opening of the door for the prophet to come in, and sweet children’s voices chanting “Mah Nishtanah,” like it’s a favourite pop song. “Memories are made of this”!

In Israel, Passover is a spring festival. After the cold, rainy winter, the air becomes a warm caress. The almond flaunts its white blossom and all the trees are bedecked with new green lace. Cyclamens and wild violets peep shyly from crevices in the rocks, while purple irises and scarlet poppies dot the fields. The cereal harvest season has begun.

However, Pesach is more than a link in the agricultural cycle of

Israel. Its true significance is historical, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt and our release from slavery. The matzah symbolizes the unleavened bread, which did not have time to rise in our hasty flight from Egypt.

The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, the root of which is tzur, meaning narrow or constrained. To say that we must leave Egypt is to say that each of us must struggle to break out of our own narrowness to obtain our full potential – spiritually, emotionally, psychologically.

The main lesson of Passover is freedom. At Passover, we celebrate it on three levels: seasonally, as we mark the release of the earth from the grip of winter; historically, as we commemorate the Exodus; and, on a broader human plane, our emergence from bondage.

In Judaism, events transcend the moments of their happening – they are part of a continuous process that involves not just a single generation, but all who went before and all who follow after. The cycle of the Jewish year is also the cycle of our survival.

May the old, familiar sounds of Passover be woven into the consciousness of you and your family. And may you truly consider the possibility when you conclude your celebration with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem!”

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She has written 14 books, including The Pomegranate Pendant, which was made into a movie, and her latest novella, Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

The strength of family circle

There is a wise Jewish saying: “A little hurt from a kin is worse than a big hurt from a stranger.” (Zohar, Genesis 151b) Why is that? Strangers come and go in our lives. Some remain to become friends, others are barely remembered and, as we move on in life, we leave them behind. But family – that’s a different story.

The closest bonds we will ever form are with our parents and our siblings. They know us intimately and, even with all our faults, they still love us. (Though, admittedly, not everyone is so lucky to have a loving family.)

Next comes the extended family – cousins, aunts, uncles, et al. Some of them we just tolerate, often in an amused way, because families are like fudge – mostly sweet with a few nuts! But we do care about them because they are kin.

Within our own close family circle, we are proud of each other’s accomplishments and boast of them. We hurt when a family member is unhappy. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and we try to be together for important Jewish holidays. That is what family should mean.

I’ve always loved the description of her family by the late Erma Bombeck: “We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” I think most families can relate to this warm-hearted description.

When there is a break in a family circle, it can be unbearable. It’s not just a matter of location, for, these days, communication has never been easier and we can connect with family wherever they live. But, when there is a misunderstanding and angry words are exchanged, it can be heartbreaking. We feel as though we have a deep fracture in our very being and life will never be the same again if the family member we once loved is lost to us.

Teenagers are known to be rebellious and that is considered normal. It is necessary for them to become independent, to break away from the sheltering family structure. It can be very hurtful for parents to see them break away, but if they were nourished with your morals and standards of ethical behavior in their childhood, and educated with love, they won’t stray too far. Siblings may have very different ideas from each other as adults, but no one – not even a spouse – can have the same kind of bond, with its childhood memories, shared experiences, old family jokes. It is special.

When strangers hurt you, you may become disappointed or angry, but it doesn’t tear at the fabric of your being. You are not obsessed by it and whatever has happened, you know that you will get over it in time.

It is not the same with families. When there is a break between parents and children or brothers and sisters, it colors every aspect of your life, for the family is your haven, your soft resting-place. When there is a break, your emotional security is gone. We need to feel ourselves one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, yet allied to us by an indissoluble bond, which nature has welded before we are even born. A family quarrel does not just leave aches or wounds; it is more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material. Author Dodie Smith described her family as “that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”

So, cherish your family while you still have them. Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family, which is one of G-d’s masterpieces. Having a place to go is your home. Having someone to love is your family. Having both is a blessing.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog at dvorawaysman.com.

Determination key to continuity

“The power above is set in motion by the impulse from below, even as vapor ascends to form the cloud. If the community of Israel did not first give the impulse, the One above would not move to meet her, for yearning below makes completion above.” – Zohar, Genesis 35a

I have always believed the secret of Jewish survival is exemplified in the life of my grandmother, of blessed memory, who I never met. She died when my mother – the second youngest of 11 children – was only 7 years old. Young as she was, my mother, Sarah Rebecca Opas, never forgot her mother, or the spirit of Yiddishkeit she left behind.

My grandmother’s name was Mila and she was betrothed to my grandfather David from the age of 3, when her parents in Plotsk, Poland, called her in from playing to tell her that, when she grew up, she was to marry the little boy next door. This was back in the early 1800s when betrothals were arranged by parents as a matter of course.

It was the time of pogroms in Europe and, when he reached the age of 17, David informed his parents he was leaving for the New World and had secured a job on a ship. “What about Mila?” he was asked. “I will send for her when I get settled,” he assured them. “No you won’t, you’ll take her with you.” So, Mila, then 16, and David were married by the rabbi before sailing to the New World, which David believed to be America, but was in fact Australia.

The ship took six months to reach Port Adelaide in Australia. David was hired to be a handy man on the vessel, and his first job was to look after the food. As there was no refrigeration then, the whole supply of meat was lowered on cables into the ocean, where the salt water would preserve it. However, he failed to secure it properly, and it all sank to the bottom of the sea – no meat for the crew for the entire trip. His next job on board was to sew any sails that had been torn in the strong winds. He had no idea how to sew, so his young wife did it for him, as well as keeping the captain and crew’s clothing repaired.

Before they reached Australian shores, Mila was already expecting her first child.

Both having come from Orthodox homes, it was a terrible shock to them when they landed. No synagogues, no kosher butchers, no established Jewish communities. They settled in a little country town, Bombala, near the border between Victoria and New South Wales. David opened a store to provide fodder and dry goods to the farmers in the surrounding districts and, gradually, as they learned English, the business prospered enough to give the family a comfortable lifestyle.

But Mila’s heart was always sad, because she did not know how to keep her family Jewish, as there were no other Jews for them to meet and marry. So, she made a plan.

Mila had heard that there was a small Jewish community in the city of Sydney. As each of her older children turned 18, she would travel to Sydney and stay there until she found a Jewish boy or girl willing to go back with her to Bombala and marry one of her children, sight unseen. Her love of her Jewish heritage was such that achieving this became the most important part of her life, and she was amazingly successful. Of the 11 children, only one of them married a non-Jew; there were no divorces. Sadly, Mila died of scarlet fever still relatively young, before the penicillin was invented that would have saved her life.

My mother and her little brother were raised by their older sisters, who by then were all married. They never let her forget her mother and the importance of remaining Jewish even in near-impossible situations where Jewish rituals are almost nonexistent.

In retelling my grandmother’s story to me so many years later, my mother always stressed that the Jewish soul is unquenchable. No matter how far one strays from observance, the spark remains and it is something precious that must be cherished and passed on from generation to generation. By making my home in Israel, becoming an observant Jewish woman, and being blessed with 18 Israeli grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren here, I hope my mother and grandmother can be at rest.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

Glimpses of happiness

Many people have read an enormous amount of Holocaust literature during their lifetime. The stories are tragic, horrifying, heartbreaking. No matter how many books you read, or films and documentaries you see, you can never come to terms with the fact that such evil exists in the world.

But Dr. Anthony D. Bellen’s book – After Auschwitz: The Unasked Question (Mazo Publishers, 2016) – is different. He is a clinical psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, moral resilience and restorative processes. He lives in Israel, is a husband, father and grandfather, and has retired from the Israel Prison Service, where he headed the department of treatment and rehabilitation. He now works with people who have suffered trauma.

The unasked question in the book’s title is: “Do you remember any positive experience from your time in the concentration camp? Was there ever a positive interaction – a brief moment of happiness in the midst of that evil abyss?”

Bellen has chosen six survivor interviews for this book from 56 he conducted with Holocaust survivors in 2004 for his doctoral research study in the department of criminology at Bar Ilan University. The six gave him permission to share their stories, although their names have been changed for privacy.

I don’t think I will ever forget any of these stories. Motti’s moment of happiness occurred on the day of liberation from Theresienstadt, when a Russian soldier stood on a wooden crate and called out in Yiddish: “Has anyone seen my mother?” For Ida, it was finding a friend from her village – Miryam. For Eva, it was finding her hairbrush from home that her brother managed to give her before he was gassed in Majdanek. Reuven’s moment of happiness came in a swimming pool with two friends. Ya’acov’s joy came from meeting the love of his life, Sonya, in a laundry in Brintz. Sarah’s positive memory came from a Christmas in Bromberg, where she and some friends “performed” a song for the SS and later for the inmates of the camp.

These were just miniscule moments of happiness, gone in a flash, but powerfully remembered decades later – and never shared before.

The book concludes with a bibliography and references, as well as the seven questions Bellen asked each interviewee. These remarkable stories may help other people with different traumas find the strength to overcome them. They may even change your perceptions and understanding of your own life.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.