For me, being in Israel is as much (or more) about connecting with my Middle Eastern roots as it is about my Jewish heritage. The smell of familiar Arabian spices, dishes and delicacies my grandparents loved, the sound of Arabic language and music that filled their homes, the Arak my grandfather liked to sip, the dates, the roasted seeds, the mud-like coffee, the backgammon games, the loud voices -- is all around me in a way I don't remember from my time here 40 years ago. Today, the Jewish market Machne Yehuda in Jerusalem is culinarily almost indistinguishable from the souk in the Muslim quarter of the Old City. But besides these impressionistic feelings, I've had some powerful moments of deep connection, like when I discovered that one young shopkeeper had been among the very last Jews to leave my grandparents' hometown of Aleppo, Syria, only 8 years ago. Like my mother's father, he had first gone to Argentina and Mexico before finding a new home in Israel. In his shop he sold the same kind of apricot "leather" (we called it amardine) I treasured as a child, and so many other sweet temptations. Then there was the experience of seeing the Aleppo Codex at the marvelous Israel Museum. This treasured ancient manuscript (http://www.aleppocodex.org/links/6.html) is the oldest existing complete Hebrew bible and was kept for centuries in the crypts of a synagogue in the city where my ancestors lived from the time they were run out of Spain during the Inquisition. It was thrilling to think that I was looking at a manuscript that might have been touched by my very kin in the Middle Ages or that my grandfathers might have been instructed from it while training for their bar mitzvahs at the Central Synagogue of Aleppo, where the codex was so guardedly kept. Three years after his bar mitzvah -- around the time of World War I -- my father's father left Syria to build a better life in New York. But he never for a minute forgot his Sephardic roots and while growing a successful garment business, he began funding Jewish causes both at home and in his spiritual home, Israel. His proudest achievement was helping found a school for disadvantaged immigrant children in Jerusalem called Boys Town. It has grown into an 18-acre technical training institute, housing and educating more than 1,000 boys from 45 countries, 75% of them on full scholarship. Many of them live there year-round. Seeing my grandparents' names on the academic high school building was another one of those powerful moments of connection. My grandfather signed the diplomas of every Boys Town graduate every year from 1948 until he died at the age of 96. Now my father has taken up the mantle. When I stood only a few miles from the Syrian border last week, looking at the plumes of smoke representing the sectarian strife that has torn the country apart and ruined Aleppo, I was overcome by sadness. The proverb "Plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose" seemed apt -- and not just because my grandparents probably learned this in their French schools. Translated, it means, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Here in the Middle East, this truth seems encoded like some kind of cultural DNA and as imperishable as the Aleppo codex itself.
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The last time I was in Israel was four decades ago -- a newly-minted high school graduate. On the advice of a much-loved English teacher, I went to live and work for four months on a kibbutz where some of her relatives lived, midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. While many kibbutzim have drifted out of existence, their communal way of living no longer popular in this increasingly consumer-oriented society, "my" kibbutz, called Na'an, is still alive and thriving -- home to some 1300 people. Yes, like many of the other surviving kibbutzim, they've privatized some of their operations and have added some country club-like amenities. But when I paid a visit, I found many things surprisingly the same. Husband Jeff sportingly agreed to accompany me on my nostalgia tour of Na'an. We picked Shabbat, when many businesses are closed in Tel Aviv. I went prepared with pictures on my phone to prove I had once lived and worked there, in case security wanted to keep me out. And I hoped those pictures would lead me to reunions with members of my kibbutz family. When we arrived, the security gate was formidable looking, but the first car that came along let us trail them in. Among some impressive new buildings, I found the old dining/multi-purpose hall, looking exactly the same and hosting a chess tournament. A hundred or so people milled about. The first person I approached wasn't a resident, but he directed me to a woman who looked to be in her 70s who might be able to help me. She didn't speak English, but she looked at the picture on my phone of me with my adoptive kibbutz mother, father and brother. Her steely expression brightened. "Yes I know them," she said, nodding excitedly. "They are my family." I quickly engaged a translator from the chess spectators and learned that, as I had expected, Chayala and Aryea had died some years back, but their son Giddy was still living on the kibbutz with his family. The woman promptly dialed him on her cell phone. He was away from the kibbutz and wouldn't be back for some time. From her end of the conversation and my limited understanding of Hebrew, I gathered he didn't really remember me. Who knows how many kibbutz volunteers his family had hosted over the years. Jeff and I pushed on to find the cement shed out near the chicken coop where I was housed with some of the other volunteers. And lo and behold, we found it -- abandoned but recognizable. A rooster crowed incessantly in the background. And at that moment, among all the strangeness and after four long decades, I felt very much at home. |
AuthorSusan. Traveling again. And writing about it. ArchivesCategories
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