Nora Krug’s Belonging offers a thoughtful and artistic exploration of identity and history. (photo by Nina Subin)
Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Scribner, 2018) opens with a page made to look like it’s written in pencil on yellow graph paper. The illustration of a bandage takes up half the page, which is ostensibly “From the notebook of a homesick émigré: Things German.” Entry No. 1 is about Hansaplast, a type of bandage created in 1922 that Krug associates with safety, her mother having used it, for example, to stop Krug’s knee from bleeding after a roller-skating accident at age 6. “It is the most tenacious bandage on the planet,” writes Krug, “and it hurts when you tear it off to look at your scar.”
Belonging is the written and illustrated account of what happens when Krug decides to rip off the Hansaplast and examine the scars left by the history of her family – which had only been related to her in vague terms – and her country of birth, Germany. It is a creative and engaging memoir about Krug’s efforts to define for herself and reclaim for herself the idea of Heimat, tarnished by the Nazis’ use of it in propaganda.
Heimat can refer to an actual or imagined location with which a person feels familiar or comfortable, or the place in which a person is born, the place that played a large part in shaping their character and perspective. Krug’s exploration of identity comprises archival research, interviews with family members and others, and visits to her mother’s and father’s hometowns – Karlsruhe (where Krug grew up) and Külsheim, respectively.
Alternating with the narrative of her discoveries are several notebook entries, on a range of items, from bread to binders to soap, which are both points of pride, as they are quality-made items, and metaphors. For example, Persil is “a time-tested German laundry detergent invented in 1907,” which Krug uses. However, she writes, “Some referred to the postwar testimonials written by neighbours, colleagues and friends in defence of suspected Nazi sympathizers as Persil Certificates. Persil guarantees your shirts to come out as white as snow.”
As well, Krug includes pages “From the scrapbook of a memory archivist,” which present odd and sometimes disturbing arrays of items found at flea markets on her research trips to Germany. These include Hitler Youth trading cards, a letter from the front containing a lock of hair and photographs of soldiers petting or holding various animals, mostly dogs.
But the main intrigue of the book comes from what Krug shares as she persists in her research, asking questions and scouring documents. She wants to find out all she can about her family’s involvement in the Holocaust, in particular that of her maternal grandfather, who died when Krug was 11, and her paternal uncle, who was drafted at 17 and shot and killed at age 18, before her father, a postwar baby, was born; her father was named after the brother he never knew. Despite her efforts, many of Krug’s questions remain unanswered.
At the end of Belonging, it’s not even clear if Krug – who readers find out early on married into a Jewish family – feels any less guilty or any more secure in her self and in her past. But she does manage to start the healing process on some family rifts. And she highlights a couple of steps towards healing that she witnesses in Germany. For example, of Külsheim – which had, in 1988, the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, abandoned a proposal for a memorial plaque where the synagogue once stood, before it was burned down the night of Nov. 10, 1938 – she writes: “Plans are made to restore Külsheim’s old mikvah, and a memorial stone is erected where the synagogue used to be, ‘as a manifestation of sadness and shame,’ Külsheim’s new mayor says on the day it is installed.”
The book ends as it began, with a notebook entry. No. 8 is Uhu, “invented by a German pharmacist as the first synthetic (bone-glue-free) resin adhesive in the world, in 1932.” Despite its world-record strength, which is why Krug imports it to repair everything from the soles of her shoes to broken dishware, Uhu “cannot cover up the crack.”
Yossi Klein Halevi’s Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour is recently out in paperback. (photo by Ilir Bajraktari / The Tower)
Yossi Klein Halevi grew up in the right-wing Zionist youth movement Betar, the ideological stream of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. As a youth, he wore a silver outline of the land of Israel “as we understood it” that included not only the West Bank but also the area that became the kingdom of Jordan, which the British had severed from historic Palestine. As he’s aged, he’s emphatically mellowed.
His book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour, recently out in paperback, is, he writes, “an attempt to explain the Jewish story and the significance of Israel in Jewish identity to Palestinians who are my next-door neighbours.”
He lives in the French Hill neighbourhood of Jerusalem and repeatedly throughout the book reflects on how he is face-to-face with the division between their places.
Each chapter – essay, really – begins with “Dear neighbour.”
“From my apartment, I can just barely see the checkpoint you must cross – if you have a permit at all – to enter Jerusalem.” He talks about when, “before the wall was built, before so much else that went wrong, I tried to get to know you.”
In 1998, he set out on a pilgrimage into Islam and Christianity, a religious Jew “seeking not so much to understand your theology as to experience something of your devotional life. I wanted to learn how you pray, how you encounter God in your most intimate moments.”
During those comparatively placid times, he recalls, Israelis made little effort to accommodate their neighbours.
“For many years we in Israel ignored you, treated you as invisible, transparent. Just as the Arab world denied the right of the Jews to define themselves as a people deserving national sovereignty, so we denied the Palestinians the right to define themselves as a distinct people within the Arab nation, and likewise deserving national sovereignty. To solve our conflict, we must recognize not only each other’s right to self-determination but also each side’s right to self-definition.”
Klein Halevi made aliyah from the United States in 1982. Now a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute – “Israel’s preeminent centre for pluralistic Jewish research and education” – he co-directs the institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative, is the author of numerous books and is a prolific commentator and former contributing editor of the New Republic. He has made the book’s Arabic translation available to download for free.
He argues that each side must be allowed to define themselves.
“So who are the Jews? A religion? A people? An ethnicity? A race?… That question impacts directly on our conflict. It goes to the heart of the Arab world’s rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Klein Halevi writes. “Even Palestinian moderates I’ve known who want to end the bloodshed tend to deny that the Jews are an authentic nation. So long as Palestinian leaders insist on defining the Jews as a religion rather than allowing us to define ourselves as we have since ancient times – as a people with a particular faith – then Israel will continue to be seen as illegitimate, its existence an open question.”
He acknowledges that the problem occurs on both sides.
“Some Jews continue to try to ‘prove’ that Palestinian national identity is a fiction, that you are a contrived people. Of course you are – and so are we. All national identities are, by definition, contrived: at a certain point, groups of people determine that they share more in common than apart and invent themselves as a nation, with a common language, memory and evolving story. The emergence of a nation is an inherently subjective process.”
But he attempts to disabuse Palestinians and Arabic readers of the idea that Israel can be overcome.
“I’ve often heard from Palestinians that, just as the Ottoman Turks came here and left, and the British came here and left, so, too, will the Zionists one day leave. That analogy ignores Zionism’s singular achievement. None of those invaders founded a thriving society, let alone a sovereign state. They eventually went back to their own homelands. More than anything else, I need you to understand this: the Jews succeeded where the Crusaders and the Ottomans and the British failed because we didn’t merely come here. We returned.”
This sense of destiny is evocatively expressed when Klein Halevi writes about the War of Independence.
“Our side began the war with three tanks and four combat planes. And we were alone. That, as it turned out, was a crucial advantage, because desperation forced us to mobilize our entire society for a war of survival. If your side had prevailed, few if any Jews would have been left here. As a result, the Jews fought with such determination that only a handful of our communities fell. There was nowhere left to run; we’d reached the final shore of Jewish history.”
But the author makes an effort to acknowledge some of the harsh realities of that victory and the subsequent Israeli control of Palestinian areas and its effect on people. He recalls a moment during a call-up during his reserve service.
“A chubby teenage Palestinian boy, accused of stone throwing, was brought, blindfolded, into our tent camp. A group of soldiers from the border police unit gathered around. One said to him in Arabic: ‘Repeat after me: one order of hummus, one order of fava beans, I love the border police.’ The young man dutifully repeated the rhymed Arabic ditty. There was laughter.… That last story haunts me most of all. It is, seemingly, insignificant. The prisoner wasn’t physically abused; his captors, young soldiers under enormous strain, shared a joke. But that incident embodies for me the corruption of occupation. When my son was about to be drafted into the army I told him: there are times when as a soldier you may have to kill. But you are never permitted, under any circumstances, to humiliate another human being. That is a core Jewish principle.”
He acknowledges his pain over an eventual partition that would, for example, see the Jewish holy city of Hebron as part of an independent Palestine. But, he says: “The only solution worse than dividing this land into two states is creating one state that would devour itself. No two peoples who fought a 100-year existential war can share the intimate workings of government. The current conflict between us would pale beside the rage that would erupt when competing for the same means of power. The most likely model is the disintegration of Yugoslavia into warring ethnic and religious factions – perhaps even worse. A one-state solution would condemn us to a nightmare entwinement – and deprive us both of that which justice requires: self-determination, to be free peoples in our own sovereign homelands.… If Jaffa belongs to you and Hebron belongs to me, then we have two options. We can continue fighting for another 100 years, in the hope that one side or the other will prevail. Or we can accept the solution that has been on the table almost since the conflict began, and divide the land between us. In accepting partition we are not betraying our histories, neighbour; we are conceding that history has given us no real choice.”
Near the end, Klein Halevi reflects that some simple human goodness could have made a massive historic difference.
“Israel is a restless society of uprooted and re-rooted refugees and children of refugees, and the dark side of our vitality is a frankness that can easily become rudeness, the antithesis of Arab decorousness. Israelis often don’t know how to treat each other with respect, let alone those we are occupying. We are a people in a hurry to compensate for our lost centuries of nationhood, a people that doesn’t pay attention to niceties. Sometimes I think that, if only we’d known how to show your people simple respect, so much could have been different here.”
The new paperback edition includes an epilogue of “letters” in response to his neighbourly missives. Some, the author admits, are predictably harsh, dismissive and threatening. But many are long, thoughtful and inspiring. Klein Halevi has started a conversation. It is invigorating and heartily recommended to be a part of it as a reader.
As I get older, I look forward to my childhood memories of the High Holidays with my original family. This year, Rosh Hashanah begins before sundown on Sept. 29 and ends on nightfall Oct. 1, Yom Kippur.
My parents, four older brothers and I had moved to several rental houses after our arrival in Winnipeg’s legendary North End, but the one on Robinson Street is the earliest in my awareness as a preschooler. The neighbourhood was refuge for a host of other immigrant Jewish families who came from the same geographical area and shared the same culture, language and religion. This bond and kinship brought these landsleit together and they congregated around the Talmud Torah Hebrew Free School, where my father taught the children, and the Chevra Mishnayes Synagogue, directly across from our house, giving us the opportunity to attend services in a building that also acted as an unofficial community centre.
Papa attended all Shabbat services at the shul, which was the centre of many family weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals. Since we observed the Orthodox Jewish religion, women and men did not sit together, so, while the men were seated on the main floor, the women were sequestered in an upstairs oval-shaped balcony overlooking the activity below. Not particularly interested in the liturgy, they tended to talk to one another about their children, their homes and other areas of interest, especially cooking on the High Holidays. This “noise” often interfered with the men as they recited the prayers. At some point, the shamas (the person running the service) would look upward, pound on the podium and shout “Schveig, viber!” (“Quiet, women!”) as if we were all one big family. Things subdued for awhile until the chatter swelled again, requiring intermittent reminders with more pounding, and a commanding, “SHHAA!”
Our old, wood-framed house had a screened veranda where I played and sometimes slept on warm summer nights. Once I was old enough, on Saturday mornings, I was allowed to cross the street to join Papa after a bar mitzvah celebration. There were always treats after the service, and he would prepare a small plate of schmaltz herring and chickpeas for me, and a piece of honey cake for dessert. I loved schmaltz herring and would devour it quickly while Papa looked on with a broad, proud smile.
But clouds of the Great Depression hung heavy over this North End community and there was widespread poverty. Most women did not work outside the home and, like many other men, my father lost his teaching job for a period during the Depression.
When I accompanied Mama to the grocery store or the kosher butcher shop, I didn’t understand why her face flushed and her eyes looked away as she stammered out in Yiddish, “I need food for the children. Can you put this on credit? We will pay you as soon as we can.” Her embarrassment and humiliation collided with my father’s shame, and resulted in many heated arguments between them over money.
The stress was particularly hard on Mama because she wasn’t well and had a large family to care for. She developed a “milk leg” while pregnant with my youngest older brother, Matty. It created a painful swelling of the leg after giving birth, which caused inflammation and clotting in the veins and affects some postpartum women. I vividly recall the too-numerous times when an ambulance came tearing down Robinson Street to our house with wailing warnings. Big men dressed in white would rush in, lift Mama onto a stretcher and take her away amid the shrieking sirens that were now competing with the high-pitched howls of her two frightened preschoolers, Matty and me.
Back then, children were not allowed to visit in hospitals, for fear of transmitting disease, so we could not see our mother for intermittent periods. On one such occasion, my father had enough money to take us to the ice cream store a few blocks away. Holding Papa’s hand on one side, with Matty on the other, I felt safe as we all walked together. And the tears subsided.
Canada declared war on Germany in September 1939 after Hitler invaded Poland, and, although my parents’ family was safe in Canada, their hearts and minds were with the loved ones they had left behind. Yet, our home was filled with joy and laughter.
My mother played happy, lively Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew songs at the black upright piano that held a place of honour among the flowery wallpaper and sagging couches of our living room. The eldest of the five children would lead us in a conga line with me at the other end, and we would dance from room to room, up and down the stairs, and all around the house. Sometimes, he would pick me up, throw me over his shoulder and call out “A zekele zaltz!” like a peddler. “A sack of salt, I have a sack of salt for sale! Who wants to buy my little sack of salt?” Or sometimes I was “potatoes.” Whether salt or potatoes, he would haggle with whichever of my other brothers offered to “buy” me.
Although I was still a preschooler, I knew that Papa was listening to “the news on the radio.” The worry was in his eyes, his face, his body, and his words expressed his extreme concern for our families back in the homeland. But the true catastrophic human saga that was unfolding, even as he listened, would not emerge until the war ended. We would learn much later that most of the relatives left behind, including my maternal grandfather, died in the Holocaust.
Even Papa’s fears could not have fathomed such destruction. The radio had become so much a central focus and source of news that, when the war ended in 1945, I recall asking, “Papa, now that the war is over, will they close the radio?”
“Why do you think they will close the radio?” he asked with a puzzled look.
“Because what else would they have to talk about?”
Libby Simon, MSW, worked in child welfare services prior to joining the Child Guidance Clinic in Winnipeg as a school social worker and parent educator for 20 years. Also a freelance writer, her writing has appeared in Canada, the United States, and internationally, in such outlets as Canadian Living, CBC, Winnipeg Free Press, PsychCentral and Cardus, a Canadian research and educational public policy think tank.
Planning a three-week trip to Israel last year, I booked a short kibbutz stay near the Sea of Galilee, the Kinneret. I chose Kibbutz Ginosar for no other reason than its location right on the water and ease of access to the various attractions in the area.
When I mentioned to an Israeli-Canadian friend the name of the kibbutz, she said, “Isn’t that Yigal Allon’s kibbutz?”
I like to imagine I have at least a passing knowledge of Israeli history, but the name meant nothing to me. As I have asked around since, I find the man’s name and reputation are not as widely known as they should be.
To back up: I did not go through the conventional kibbutz booking process. I found the charmingly comfortable but rustic cottage on Airbnb, a development around which the socialist Zionists of the Youth Aliyah who founded the place would doubtless have had trouble wrapping their heads.
In any event, I soon learned that Allon, who was born in 1918 in the Yishuv, was one of the founding leaders of the Labour movement. In the 1930s, he commanded field units of the Haganah during the Arab revolt and, during the Second World War, worked with British forces fighting in Syria and Lebanon. He later helped found the Palmach, the elite fighters of the Haganah, becoming deputy commander in 1943, and he was, from 1945 until the creation of the state, its commander. It was on Allon’s orders, received from David Ben-Gurion, that the Haganah shelled the Irgun ship Altalena, in June 1948, a pivotal moment in the creation of a unified Israeli military and, indeed, in Jewish and Israeli history.
Yigal Allon (photo from wikicommons)
During the War of Independence, Allon commanded forces in many major operations. In 1955, he was elected to the Knesset, serving 25 years until his death in 1980. He served, variously, as minister of labour, immigrant absorption, education and culture, as well as deputy prime minister. And here is a footnote to history with which you can entertain guests at your upcoming holiday celebrations: Allon served as prime minister of Israel.
Well … interim prime minister. In the three weeks between the death of Levi Eshkol, in 1969, and the ascension of Golda Meir to the Labour Party leadership and the prime minister’s office, Allon filled in.
Perhaps as intriguing, though, Allon was, in a way, the northern analogue to the southern Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion recognized the necessity of planting both human roots and agricultural roots in the Negev. Allon was an advocate for populating the northern part of the country after the War of Independence.
The Yigal Allon Centre, located on the kibbutz, celebrates “The Man in the Galilee.” In addition to telling the story of his life and career, the museum features an unrelated attraction that has become a must-see on Christian pilgrimages in the area.
Somewhat serendipitously – bashert might be the better word – the kibbutz has enjoyed a giant spike in Christian tourism after the discovery, in 1986, of an ancient boat. During a terrible drought, when the waters of the Kinneret receded, local fishermen – brothers Moshe and Yuval Lufan – discovered the remains of a boat about 27 feet long and seven-and-a-half feet wide. Carbon dating indicated that it was probably from around the first century CE.
A 12-day, around-the-clock operation excavated the boat from the mud and prevented exposure to the atmosphere by wrapping it in insulating foam, which allowed the vessel to be transported safely and buoyantly. It was then submerged in a bath of wax for a dozen years, preventing the internal water and external air from disintegrating the structure.
There is not, of course, any evidence to say that the boat was ever touched by Jesus or his disciples, but the carbon dating to that time period has allowed entrepreneurial tourism officials to market the exhibit as of particular interest to Christian visitors.
The Sea of Galilee Boat or “Jesus Boat” on a metal frame in the Yigal Allon Museum in Kibbutz Ginosar, Tiberias, Israel. (photo by Travellers & Tinkers/wikicommons)
In Christian tradition, Jesus called on another pair of brothers – Peter and Andrew, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, later beatified – to follow him and become “fishers of men,” proselytizers for the new religion, Christianity.
In the way that public relations can sometimes stretch credulity, the admittedly intriguing ancient find is sometimes marketed as “the Jesus boat,” which does nothing to discourage the backlog of tour buses that pile into Kibbutz Ginosar any given day of the week and whose passengers pack the adjacent gift shop.
With Ginosar as a base, travelers can easily drive south to Tiberias or north to the mesmerizing holy city of Tzfat, a centre of mysticism and kabbalah. The laid-back atmosphere of the kibbutz can also be a refuge from the hectic pace of Israeli tourism. Ginosar is home to Israel’s legendary Jacob’s Ladder music festival.
On our visit, our host invited us to an open-mic night. Not sure what to expect, we were greeted with one of the most memorable celebrations of our entire trip. Apparently, almost every kibbutz resident, human, canine and feline, plus visitors, showed up for a multigenerational celebration that seemed not so much about the music, although that was great, but about the utter joy of community.
The mountains of Sitka, Alaska. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
“You have to look at Jews like Bina Gelbfish, to explain the wide range and persistence of the race. Jews who carry their homes in an old cowhide bag, on the back of a camel, in the bubble of air at the centre of their brains. Jews who land on their feet, hit the ground running, ride out the vicissitudes and make the best of what falls to hand, from Egypt to Babylon, from Minsk Gubernya to the district of Sitka.” (from Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union)
Unlike Bina Gelbfish, Lisa Busch is not a fictional character living in Sitka, Alaska. The executive director of the Sitka Sound Science Centre, she has lived in the city for 30 years. She and her husband have two daughters and are active in the local Jewish community. Busch described her congregation as laid-back.
A Tlingit totem pole on grounds of Sitka’s Totem Park. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
The congregation functions out of people’s homes. It does not have its own building. What it lacks in a physical facility, however, it makes up for in creativity. “We share Shabbat and holidays,” said Busch. “When my kids were little, we had a tot Shabbat group of moms and kids and the kids did mitzvot, making challah for neighbours, etc.”
Also when her “kids were little, we put on a Purim play every year,” she said. “My family hosts a Passover seder every year and my husband makes homemade gefilte fish out of rock fish or halibut.”
Both of Busch’s daughters had bat mitzvah celebrations. They learned Hebrew via Skype and the family brought up a rabbi to oversee. Accordingly, the ceremonies were a mix of Jewish traditions and local ones.
Busch said Hebrew lessons are taught by whomever “we could find in town who was willing. For example, we have a Coast Guard air station and buoy tender here and, sometimes, someone was just in town for a few years and willing to pitch in with the teaching. Also, one of the more observant Jews here, David Voluck, spent time with my kids when they were older and met with them over Torah studies and Jewish ideas.”
Busch said, “I am so very appreciative of all the community members who helped educate our kids. I was raised a humanist Jew and, while I am confident in our Jewish values, there is always so much more to know, and having people around us who were willing to share what they know was so wonderful. I’m not sure I could have accessed those kinds of people or those kinds of lessons in a larger city.”
When asked who leads the congregation’s prayers and/or Torah reading, Busch said it’s the task of the person who suggests the event.
The Sitka Jewish community has contact with the congregations in Juneau and Anchorage. The city has had visiting rabbis from both places.
Nowadays, with her daughters grown up, Busch participates in Shabbat and holiday gatherings. What she likes best about her congregation is it casualness and flexibility.
A Tlingit bib from a display at Sitka’s Sheldon Jackson Museum. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
The flexibility of the Jewish congregation is reflected in the town as a whole, as today’s Sitka honours diversity. While this was not always the case – especially during the period of Russian rule (1799-1867) and when Alaska was a United States territory (statehood was achieved in 1960) – the culture of the indigenous Tlingit people is now highly respected.
There are examples, though, of acceptance that hearken to the past. One of the more humourous incidents involves St. Peter’s by the Sea, a small Episcopal church that is more than 100 years old. Before it opened in 1899, Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe and his congregants decided to include a rose window in the construction of the sanctuary. They placed an order with a glass company located in the eastern United States. They waited many months for the window to arrive. When the window finally came, they found that, instead of the Christian symbol that had been ordered as the focal point, there was a six-pointed Star of David. Considering the time it took to manufacture the window and the window’s complex dimensions, they decided to keep it. The church’s website notes that the Star of David window reminds congregants that Christianity grew out of Judaism.
The United States used Sitka as a defensive base in the Second World War. Ammunition magazines, gun emplacements and the headquarters command centre may still be seen at Fort Rousseau historic site. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)
Jews apparently began to live in Alaska shortly after the United States purchased the territory from the Russian Empire. A small group of Jews opened up shops in Sitka and, in 1868, a year after the U.S. purchase, Emil Teichman sailed to the city on behalf of the London Fur Co. He wrote in his diary: “the traders, keepers of billiard saloons and dealers in spirits … were mostly of the Jewish race and carried on a more or less illicit trade with the soldiers and Indians, evaded customs and excise duties, and were liable to prosecution at any moment had the administration of the law not been so lax.” (A Journey to Alaska) Interestingly, one Friday night, by chance, he passed a warehouse where some 20 Jewish men were conducting Sabbath eve prayers. Teichman commented: “Jews everywhere, even in the most remote countries, practise their devotional exercises. I should scarcely have expected it in Sitka among a community which engaged in such very disreputable occupations.”
Surrounded by water, temperate rainforests, wildlife and mountains, Sitka (visitsitka.org) is a very pleasant, picturesque and friendly town. It is not hard to understand why Jews have chosen to make it their home.
Deborah Rubin Fieldsis an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
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Historic decision
In 1938, Harold L. Ickes, U.S. secretary of the interior department visited various parts of Alaska. He wanted to see whether the Alaskan territory could be used as a resettlement sanctuary for persecuted German Jews. Ickes maintained much of Alaska was uninhabited and underdeveloped. He believed that mass Jewish resettlement could potentially strengthen security in a U.S. territory then deemed vulnerable to attack. He had interior undersecretary Harry A. Slattery write a report, The Problem of Alaskan Development. The proposal advocated for the relocation of incoming European refugees into four main parts of Alaska. Opposition came from both within the American Jewish community and from without. Ultimately, the proposal failed, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not give it his backing. Knowing today what happened to European Jewry over the next seven years, this was indeed a sad decision. See Gerald S. Berman’s article, “Reaction to the Resettlement of World War II Refugees in Alaska,” Jewish Social Studies 44 (Summer- Autumn, 1982): 271-282.
Patch cultivation, or box fields, in the Judean Lowlands. Image is from the 2017 article “The Origin of Terracing in the Southern Levant and Patch Cultivation/Box Fields” by Shimon Gibson and Rafael Lewis in the Journal of Landscape Ecology. (photo from Rafael Lewis)
Rosh Hashanah is upon us and that means time for a special seder with blessings over eight different fruits and vegetables. One of the chosen fruits is the pomegranate (rimon in Hebrew), most likely because the Israeli pomegranate ripens around the Jewish New Year. Over the pomegranate, we recite the following blessing: “May it be Your will, G-d and the G-d of our ancestors, that we be filled with mitzvot like a pomegranate [is filled with seeds].”
Interestingly, the pomegranate is one of the seven species mentioned in the Torah (Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25). Jerusalem has never been considered prime agricultural land, but farmers of old actually grew pomegranates and other fruits – once they had cleared the rocky hills for cultivation.
How challenging was ancient Jerusalem’s topography and climate? Jerusalem has no natural resources (including water) or fertile land. It is situated on a range of hills running north to south between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Jordan Rift Valley to the east. The Hills of Ephraim extend from the Jezreel Valley southward through Shechem (Nablus) and Ramallah. The Judean Hills run southward from Jerusalem through Bethlehem and Hebron down to Beersheva. The watershed runs through the heart of the range. Jerusalem is about 800 metres above sea level; the hills to the north, Shechem, 950 metres; and, to the south, Hebron, 1,000 metres.
Today, Jerusalem’s annual rainfall is about 553 millimetres, with rainfall limited to the months of November through March. Historically, however, while there were fluctuations – including two periods of severe drought – it still appears that, until the Middle Ages, Jerusalem was receiving more precipitation than it does today.
Given that less-than-compelling physical description, it is somewhat amazing that any early people stuck around to farm on Jerusalem’s hillsides. Those who stayed applied the ancient technique of terracing, which, as Haaretz’s Nir Hasson has stated, is simply “a series of steps, with the earth held back by a wall of stones to enable tilling the mountainside.”
Setting up and maintaining the terracing, however, is easier said than done. After you manually clear the rocks (a process called izuq in Hebrew), you have to haul over a layer of fertile soil. But your preparations still aren’t complete. You then have to lug back the cleared rocks to create retaining walls. The retaining walls keep the terraces from collapsing during Israel’s rainy season. Only then could you get down to planting.
Most of the farming on the terraced areas of the Judean Mountains was done without artificial irrigation. Farmers harvested pomegranates, grapes, olives and figs watered solely by rainfall.
How do we know people used terraces so long ago? Jon Seligman, an archeologist and the Israel Antiquities Authority’s director of external relations and archeological licensing, wrote his doctorate on the “rural hinterland” of Jerusalem during the Byzantine period. He concluded that, given Jerusalem’s hilly and rocky topography, there must have been terraces. In fact, in Hebrew, the word step also refers to terrace.
Other scholars have noted that, at some Judean Mountain sites, such as Mevasseret Yerushalayim, the terraces were natural features of the landscape. That the terraces were already there did not rule out all the problems, though. For instance, archeologists discovered that the soil in this area was a different colour, implying farmers had dragged in earth from other locations. When the terrace was wide enough, the farmer worked with a plow. When it was very narrow, the farmer was forced to use a hoe or mattock.
Overall, the size of the irrigated areas in the Judean Mountains was quite small. In these irrigated terraces, farmers chose to grow vegetables, rather than to cultivate orchards. The irrigated areas consisted of three parts: construction of a storage system to hold spring water, slightly raised channels to convey the spring water and level terraces.
In the valleys of the mountains, farmers occasionally had to deal with draining off excess water caused by floods or heavy rains. They did this by extending the terracing deep into the valley. Where necessary, they built drain lines. The drain lines were built at levels lower than the channels. On a needs basis, farmers constructed stone walls to divert excess water.
There is evidence that early terracing took place initially in the lower parts of hill slopes, closer to the wadi (valley or ravine which is dry except in the rainy season) beds, which were also terraced, with newer terraces later being built further up the slopes following woodland removal.
Apparently, the chief consideration in ancient and Arab settlements in the Judean Mountains was on preserving cultivatable areas. Hence, most of these settlements ended up on mountain plateaus and adjoining ridge crests.
But how did early people come to consider terracing? For more than 100 years now, some archeologists have been suggesting box fields or patch cultivation may have sparked early attempts at terracing. Box fields or patch cultivation denote the natural step-like appearance of the rocky slopes of hills, with thin layers of chalky marl interposed between limestone or dolomite strata.
Some researchers contend that these box fields were used on deforested slopes. Shimon Gibson and Rafael Lewis write in a 2017 article in the Journal of Landscape Ecology that their appearance on Jerusalem’s hilly slopes (and in other parts of ancient Israel and Jordan) were “sufficiently broad and deep enough to accommodate the root systems of one or sometimes two trees, usually olive trees. While limited in size, they constitute leveled cultivable soils on sloping rocky ground.”
Moreover, “box fields were also recorded as a phenomenon on the hill slope of Sataf, west of Jerusalem. During excavations at this site, the remains of houses and installations dating from the Chalcolithic period (4800-3500 BCE) were found adjacent to two springs of water. Due to the very steep angle of the Sataf hill slope, there can be no doubt some form of retained fields must have existed there during that period…. Indeed, an agricultural terrace from the Early Bronze I (3330-3050 BCE) was excavated at the site, and it too may have been a development of a box field.”
Terraces at Sataf in the Jerusalem Corridor. (photo from Photo Archive of JNF)
About 35 years ago, at the Sataf Spring, the Jewish National Fund began to reestablish the ancient terraced fields. The organization’s purpose was to preserve the cultural heritage of terracing and to preserve the landscape. The terraces are more or less the same size as the ancient steps. The trees found at the terraces are from the original species – basically, the biblical seven species, which includes olives, pomegranates, dates, grapes and figs.
Part of the terraces have trees, which grow from rainfall only, and part of the terraces contain organic vegetables and herbs irrigated by Sataf’s springs. Spring water travels to the vegetable plots via channels. These channels are simply opened and closed by earth and stone banking. When Jerusalem has a “wet winter,” i.e. with plenty of rain, the fields are watered solely by rain.
The terraces are maintained by a small staff headed by Gidi Bashan and a large number of volunteers. The work is all done by hand. There is no mortar used in the stone walls. Consequently, heavy rains occasionally seep in between the stones, eventually pushing out the stones. The collapsed walls must then be rebuilt, one stone at a time. In addition, there are some 55 small allotments, which allow Jerusalem residents – for a token fee – to farm in their spare time.
Terracing in the Judean Mountains has altered the flow of both the spring water and the run-off water. It has largely halted the growth of the area’s natural vegetation. It has changed the course of paths and roads.
South and west of Jerusalem, Arab villages have continued to employ terracing. Thus, according to EcoPeace Middle East (formerly known as Friends of the Earth Middle East), Battir, a village south of Jerusalem, still uses irrigated terraces, which date back 4,000 years. The terraces are the product of centuries of work. With the billion collected stones “piled one on top of another, generations have engaged in traditional farming. Spring water – stored in small pools – is channeled to the terraced fields by open canals. Today, Battir families grow olives, cabbage and eggplant just as was done in antiquity.
Terraces in any given area will look different, as it depends on what on-site raw materials are available.
From the First Temple period onward, thousands of agricultural terraces were in use around the Judean Mountains. They were destroyed and rebuilt during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods. Farmers – including Arab families, until Israel’s War of Independence – and Jerusalem residents were able to make a living from a small number of repaired ancient Jerusalem-area terraces. While terraced farming will no longer provide enough produce to feed a large and expanding population, it is hoped that some terraces will continue to be part of Israel’s cultural heritage.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
A mosaic revealed during the excavation of the “Burnt Church” in Hippos. (photos by Michael Eisenberg via Ashernet)
A mosaic was revealed during the excavation of the “Burnt Church” in Hippos, which was built in the second half of the fifth or in the early sixth century CE and was probably burnt down during the Sasanian conquest in the beginning of the seventh century. According to the researchers, the descriptions in the mosaic, along with the location of the church, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, raise the connection to the “Feeding the Multitude,” the miracle performed by Jesus in the area, according to the New Testament. “There can certainly be different explanations to the descriptions of loaves and fish in the mosaic, but you cannot ignore the similarity to the description in the New Testament: for example, from the fact that the New Testament has a description of five loaves in a basket, or the two fish depicted in the apse, as we find in the mosaic,” said Dr. Michael Eisenberg, head of the excavation team in Hippos on behalf of the Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa, along with colleague Arleta Kowalewska. The excavation of the church specifically was placed in the hands of Jessica Rentz from the United States, who has exposed its entire internal area.
During the preservation process, headed by Yana Vitkalov from the Israel Antiquities Authority, most of the mosaic area was cleaned and preserved, and most of its decorations and two inscriptions in Greek were exposed. The first one tells about the two fathers of the church, Theodoros and Petros, constructing a sanctuary for a martyr, while the second one, which is located inside a medallion at the centre of the mosaic, exposes the name of the martyr, Theodoros. An initial reading of the inscriptions was done by Dr. Gregor Staab from the University of Cologne in Germany, expedition epigraphist.
Eisenberg continues to be cautious about the interpretation of the new mosaic. “Nowadays, we tend to regard the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha, on the northwest of the Sea of Galilee, as the location of the miracle, but with careful reading of the New Testament, it is evident that it might have taken place north of Hippos within the city’s region.”
This diary note from Molly Dexall, recalling events from Sept. 2, 1939, was found by her son, Fred Dexall, and Alex Krasniak, community support worker at Yaffa House, in one of Dexall’s old binders. It was written by his mother, who was 19 at the time; she died in 1977. It is reprinted here with permission, marking 80 years since the outbreak of the Second World War on Sept. 1, 1939.
September 2, 1939
In Prince Albert, we got the news that there would be a young Judaean Convention in Saskatoon. I wanted to go very badly and my parents agreed to it.
It was to be held in the Bessborough Hotel and to be opened by a formal dinner and dance. As I had no formal gown, I worked some Saturdays for Mr. Barsky at the Blue Chain Stores to earn enough money to buy one. The gown I bought there was pale pink taffeta and cost six dollars.
I stayed with the Sugarmans in Saskatoon and a blind date was arranged for me for the big dinner and dance. His name was Macey Milner and I thought him very handsome and charming.
In the ballroom, shortly before we were requested to find our tables, someone came up and asked me to make the toast to Junior Hadassah. Macey asked if I wanted help in deciding what to say but I told him it was simple and I had it figured out already.
When we were seated and I was asked to do my part, I stood up majestically in my six dollar pink taffeta gown, held up my glass of water and in a loud, triumphant voice I hollered “Here’s to Junior Hadassah” took a long drink of water and sat down. Simple it was – probably the simplest toast that Junior Hadassah has ever received.
After the dinner and dance we went car riding with Lloyd Mallin and his date and a little innocent kissing ensued with a car radio playing gentle tender music when suddenly a harsh, hoarse voice broke in
“War has just been declared”
We sat stunned and there seemed nothing more to do but go home.
I had some sleep and about noon Macey phoned to ask if I’d care to walk in the park with him and some other people. That scene remains imprinted on my memory like a movie still. That little group of five teenage young Judaeans seems almost to have gravitated together on that day like a point in time.
We strolled solemnly and almost silently under the warm sun, over the green grass and through the trees, Macey and I, Maishel Teitlebaum, now one of Canada’s leading artists, Neil Chotem, one of Canada’s leading musicians and Macey’s sister, now Simma Holt, author, journalist and MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway. We knew that something beautiful had ended and something terrible had begun, September 2, 1939.
A group of people at a Hillel gathering, 1970. Back row, left to right: unidentified, Richard Bass, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Bob Golden, unidentified, unidentified. Front row, from left: unidentified, unidentified, unidentified, Hildy Groberman. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.11673)
If you know someone in these photos, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected] or 604-257-5199. To find out who has been identified in the photos, visit jewishmuseum.ca/blog.
Joseph’s Tomb, inside the gate. (photo by Gil Zohar)
“The bones of Joseph, which the Children of Israel brought up from Egypt, were buried in Shechem in the portion of the field that had been purchased by Jacob.” – Joshua 24:32
“‘And he bought the field where he pitched his tent.’ (Genesis 13:19) Said Rav Yudan bar Simon, ‘This is one of the three places regarding which the nations of the world cannot slander Israel and say, “You stole them!” The places are the Cave of Machpelah [in Hebron], the Temple [in Jerusalem] and the Tomb of Joseph [in Shechem/Nablus].” – Bereshit Rabba, 79:4
There’s little inspiration to be found in the unadorned tomb of Joseph, the favourite of Jacob’s 12 sons. The holy site, located in the gritty eastern outskirts of Nablus among parched olive groves and graveyards of wrecked cars, is today a flashpoint between those who revere the site – Israeli Jews, Palestinian Muslims, Christians of all stripes, and the 600-member Samaritan community living on Mount Gerizim overlooking this West Bank city of 160,000. The traditional anniversary of Joseph’s death on Tammuz 27 (which fell on July 31 this year) is considered an especially auspicious pilgrimage time.
The group of 1,200 pious Jews, armed with permits and prayer books, arrived at the shrine in a convoy of bulletproof buses protected by the Israel Defence Forces. Most were Bratslaver Chassidim, who set great store in their practice of praying at the graves of tzadikim (righteous ones).
The IDF-escorted pilgrimage on the first Tuesday of every month often leads to riots. IDF sappers neutralized a pipe bomb hidden at Joseph’s Tomb prior to the visit of the 1,200 pilgrims and 12 Palestinians were injured during clashes with the IDF. The list of security incidents, arson and terrorism is long and bloody.
In the secular West, the story of Joseph – whose 11 jealous brothers sold their 17-year-old sibling into slavery in Egypt – has been popularized by the rock opera Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Librettist Tim Rice and fellow Academy Award-winning composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, along with actor Donny Osmond as Joseph, captivated audiences from Broadway to the West End with their account of Joseph’s rise to become the vizier, second only to Pharaoh in the Egyptian empire.
But Joseph, the hero of Bible and Quran stories, has hardly been given the royal treatment by Middle East politics. Dotan, where Joseph was thrown into a pit, called Jubb Yussef (Joseph’s Well) today is a ruined caravanserai that collapsed in an earthquake in 1837. Joseph’s tomb, enshrining the bones brought back from Egypt by the Children of Israel some 3,300 years ago together with the remains of Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh, has fared better.
The plain one-storey is called Qabr an-Nabi Yúsuf (Tomb of the Prophet Yúsuf) in Arabic and is revered by Jews as Kever Yosef ha-Tzadik (Tomb of Yosef the Righteous). The whitewashed limestone building is capped with a cupula and protected by a massive black gate. Barbed wire crowns the looming walls. Signposts in Arabic and English indicate the nearby sites of Tel Balata and Jacob’s Well. None directs visitors to Joseph’s Tomb.
Balata refugee camp. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Tel Balata is the nondescript Canaanite/Israelite Iron Age stratified archeological mound that few tourists bother to visit. Jacob’s Well is covered by a 20th-century Greek Orthodox basilica marking where the patriarch camped when returning to Shechem (ancient Nablus) from Paddan Aram in today’s Iraq. In one of the Torah’s three real estate deals – along with Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron and David’s acquiring of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem – Jacob bought the plot of land from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. There, Jacob pitched his tent and erected an altar (Genesis 33:18-20).
Some 1,500 years later, Jesus “came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s Well was there.” (John 4:5-10) Drinking water, he chatted up a Samaritan woman, known in Greek as Photine (the luminous one; hence, the church’s name, St. Photini). Christian pilgrims flock to the site to reverently drink drafts of cool water from the deep well in the church’s vault.
Across the street is Balata Refugee Camp, administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Today the largest camp in the West Bank, it houses 27,000 people in a quarter-square-kilometre site that was designated for 5,000 refugees when it was established in 1950.
Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s clocktower, erected in 1906. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Even for an intrepid, multilingual tour guide like this writer, it is daunting to find the unmarked way to the holy site. The drab building is located next to the Qadari Tuqan School, along a dusty unnamed road where only recently were sidewalks laid. The easiest way to find the landmark is to look for the Palestinian Authority police vehicle parked outside the locked gate. Then, one must locate the pair of PA police officers loitering in the shade nearby, smoking cigarettes and nervously fidgeting with their rifles. Ask politely in Arabic and they’ll let you in, no questions asked, no baksheesh (tip or bribe) required – just don’t mention that you’re Jewish.
Inside the locked gate, you’ll find a simple barrel tomb and the stump of a column of indeterminate age. There’s no evidence of the repeated vandalism that has punctuated the tragic history of Joseph’s Tomb since 1995, when Israel withdrew from the West Bank city, ending the occupation that began in 1967 with the Six Day War.
A photo from 1900 shows the well-maintained compound around Joseph’s Tomb. A carriage road facilitated the pilgrimage of pious Jews from the Old Yishuv who regularly came to pray there. The holy site stood in isolation. Nearby was the Arab hamlet of Balata, with eight houses.
The name Nablus is a corruption of the Latin Colonia Julia Neapolis, which was founded by the Roman emperor Vespasian in 72 CE. In the old city, in 1906, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II erected a clocktower to celebrate 30 years on the throne of the Sublime Porte.
In the Six Day War, Israel captured the territory, which had been occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan since 1948. Once-somnolent Nablus experienced a burst of prosperity, though today, under PA self-rule, the Palestinian economy is floundering. Expanding from a population of 30,000, the city spread out to swallow the nearby villages, including Balata. Joseph’s Tomb became entangled in urban sprawl.
Jewish settlers began to frequent the mausoleum. By 1975, Muslims were prohibited from visiting the site, which some claimed was the tomb of Sheikh Yúsuf Dawiqat, an 18th-century Sufi saint. In 1982, St. Louis, Mo.-born kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh established the Od Yosef Chai (Joseph Still Lives) yeshivah at the site.
Palestinian Authority police by Joseph’s Tomb. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Conflict mounted following the Oslo Accords. Tensions boiled over in September 2000, in the wake of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s controversial visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. A full-scale battle broke out.
On Oct. 1, 2000, Border Police Cpl. Madhat Yusuf, 19, of Beit Jann in the Upper Galilee, was wounded in the neck in a clash with Palestinians at Joseph’s Tomb. Over the course of four hours, the Druze warrior bled to death because the IDF considered it too risky to evacuate him without a ceasefire.
A week later, on Oct. 7, 2000, the site was handed over to PA police. Within hours, Joseph’s Tomb was pillaged by Palestinian protesters. Using pickaxes, sledgehammers and their bare hands, they demolished the holy site. It was rebuilt by Italian stonemasons.
In the Bible, Joseph – the chaste and handsome prisoner – is wooed by an unnamed would-be lover only identified as Potiphar’s wife. Though many midrashim about Joseph are incorporated in the Quran’s 12th chapter, known as Surat Yusuf, the lady’s name is similarly omitted. However, within several centuries, various Islamic sources identified her as Zuleika. Among these medieval texts, the most popular was the epic Farsi poem “Yusuf and Zulaikha,” composed in 7,000 Persian couplets by 15th-century poet Jami.
The Sufi master regarded the story of Joseph’s temptations as an allegory for the mystical striving after divinity. In Nablus today, pilgrims continue to come to Joseph’s Tomb seeking that union. Alas, Israelis and Palestinians have not found a coat of many cultures to fit them both equally.
Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem, Israel.
Heimat can refer to an actual or imagined location with which a person feels familiar or comfortable, or the place in which a person is born, the place that played a large part in shaping their character and perspective. Krug’s exploration of identity comprises archival research, interviews with family members and others, and visits to her mother’s and father’s hometowns – Karlsruhe (where Krug grew up) and Külsheim, respectively.
