A Love Affair
This blog post is dedicated to Steven Fox Z''L, may his memory always be a blessing. Particularly when we are thinking about this summer- the best of our lives. (cue up Bryan Adams- It was the Summer of '69)
Let me tell you a secret:
I've been having a love affair with Israel since I was 17 years old.
I realized after I wrote yesterday's blog that I set out to describe why I was in Israel for 6 weeks and felt I needed to explain my love story with my husband and how that "kept" me from moving here in 1993. In that writing I realized I've been having an affair with Israel this whole time. Sorry Mike!
I grew up in Marblehead, MA and we had an Israel trip in the summer that everyone went on. We had our own Israeli Shaliach (emissary from Israel), Nadav Bartura, and he organized Israel programming in our community.
It won't surprise most of you that I actually loved Hebrew school. Mostly because I got to spend time with friends who lived in the town next to me. I went all the way through 10th grade confirmation. My camp career had come to an end the previous summer and so I signed up with 50 other kids including two of my best friends, Debi Katz, and Shari Frank. There were another 20 or so kids that we knew from the JCC pre-school and our Hebrew school too.
The group met several times before we left to learn about Israel; its history, its people, its culture, and the land. About a week before we left, in preparation for the trip, we all climbed Mount Washington to see "Lake in the Clouds". Sheri Rosenberg and I happily took up the rear, climbing and singing in the rain. Alas, when we got to the summit, there was no view due to the rain. I remember we slept in triple bunk beds, piled one on top of the other and we had bonded as a group.
July something, 1985, off we flew to Israel. There were many shenanigans on the plane with some liquor stolen from the flight attendant's cart and Nadav and our other counselors (including Julie Newburg who I now do some work with at Hadassah) knew they had their hands full.
I'm not sure I can describe how I felt when we landed. It was hot- really hot. There were signs on stores in Hebrew which up until then I only saw in a prayer book or on the kosher for Passover Bazooka gum that my mother let us buy at Leshners, the local kosher market. There were mezuzahs (it holds the Shema a Jewish prayer in a decorative container) on every doorway. Our group was so big that we were divided on to two Kibbutzim (socialist farming communities that helped to establish the state of Israel and protect it's borders). I was lucky to be assigned to Gadot, the sister Kibbutz for our home community, in the north of Israel in the Upper Galilee.
We got to the Kibbutz and got off the bus at our rooms. To say they were not the nicest is a compliment. We joked that they had been the horse stables before we lived there. Basically it was 2 rows of rooms each with 3-4 beds inside. We had to walk to a separate building with the bathrooms. It didn't have a dirt floor but felt that way. We taped paper to the wall to lean against- I laugh when I think about how quickly we got used to it. It was so hot that when I got out of the shower I immediately started sweating again. And if you went to Israel back then you'll remember the brightly colored toilet paper (pink, blue, or green) which felt like you were wiping with a paper towel. We rationed the few rolls we brought from home to get us through the inevitable "shul- shul" (diarrhea)!
We quickly forgot about our rooms because the Kibbutz kids came out to meet us. I don't remember how it happened or who broke the ice, but I do remember we were instant best friends. We spent many nights drinking on the roof of their dorm style rooms and hiding from our counselors. In those days, kids didn't live with their parents on a Kibbutz. When they were small, they lived together in a Children's House and as teens they had this freedom to live with their peers. They visited with their parents after school and maybe had dinner with them in the communal dining hall. Seemed like heaven! I now understand that it caused a lot of pain for the children who grew up in these communities.
Me drinking on the roof:
I remember being thin and tan and walking everywhere barefoot. I felt like I belonged.
(Looking back, it's funny because I stayed up late, slacked off at my job weeding cotton, and partied a lot.) We lived on the Kibbutz for 3 short weeks: working some days, meeting up with the other half of our group and taking "tiyulim" (daytrips), and hanging out at the pool. It felt like a lifetime.
To this day I have this longing for what I felt like that summer only my longing is that I wish my parents had picked up in the 70's and made aliyah (moving to Israel, literally "going up") to a kibbutz. I wanted to speak Hebrew fluently, live in this community, and walk barefoot all the days of my life.
The new friends joined us on part two of our trip; three incredible weeks of touring. We went north to the Syrian and Lebanon borders, and south to Eilat and the Red Sea. We hiked Masada for the sunrise (and Sheri Rosenberg and I once again took up the rear, laughing at the girls from New York whining about how they "had to get down the mountain" - insert whiny Jewish accent here). During this entire summer we were being filmed for a program that would later air on Evening Magazine, a local news program. You can watch it here if you're interested: https://app.box.com/s/2e5eorauo0owdntjovduilf053vzl3ar It won't surprise you that I'm in the process of planning a 40th reunion trip to Israel for this group and my friend, Lisa Shactman Grissom, will be using this footage and new footage to make a documentary about us; the lifelong friends we made, and the impact of the trip on our futures as Jewish citizens of the world.
Our Israelis friends would say to us, "You're Jewish, why don't you live in Israel? You need to come live here. You need to learn Hebrew." One day, my friend, Jan Kanosky's, older brother Richard (Z''L) came to the Kibbutz in his army uniform and spoke fluent Hebrew (he had been on the trip years before and returned to join the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). I decided then and there that I was going to come back and speak Hebrew too.
We understood for the first time that we lived a very privileged life in the US as Jews. Our new friends had one more year of high school before they drafted into the army, and we were going to continue our party at "Anywhere" University the following year. That had a huge impact on me.
When I got to college at George Washington, we had to take a language, and of course I signed up for Hebrew. Two years later, I came back to study at Haifa University and spent the first two months of the program on Kibbutz Beit Haemek which is next to Nahariya, north of Haifa. This Kibbutz experience was to immerse ourselves in Hebrew, work, and have some more tiyulim to learn about the country. A few nights into my kibbutz experience, a handsome Israeli soldier showed up to see me! It was Danny- my kibbutz boyfriend from 1985. We had a lot of fun reminiscing, and I had the chance to go back to Gadot and see some of the old friends AND SPEAK HEBREW WITH THEM!
Remember that line about destiny yesterday? Well, when I got back to school (I had since transferred to UMASS), I was walking through the student union and came across a table with material about Israel. I talked with the guy and learned that it was HIS JOB to promote Israel on campus. Of course, I applied for this as my dream job- he was leaving to go onto something else. That was the beginning of 25 years working in the Boston Jewish Community and 5 more trips (I led two LGI trips like mine and went three times for work) to Israel. This now catches you up to what I wrote yesterday.
Footnote: When leading one of the Momentum trips, my teacher, Nili Couzens, had us think about a time in our life that really impacted us and try to make a connection to something we do today to try to make up for a mistake we had made (paraphrasing but it took me 2 times of hearing the lecture to figure it out). I remember sitting on the bus and realizing that I had "failed" my Bat Mitzvah and to this day it's still the most embarrassing moment of my life. By failing my Bat Mitzvah, apparently, I was now on a crusade to prove to everyone I know how Jewishly knowledgeable I am.
This is what happened: We were cleaning the house to get ready for company and I had tossed my Hebrew school book bag in my closet not remembering that it had to go to temple with us on the big day (and no helicopter parent to remind me). When I was on the bima (stage), I realized I didn't have the paper with my Haftorah on it. When the Rabbi asked me to start, I told him I couldn't because I didn't have my materials with me.
The entire congregation laughed. I felt like I was naked on the stage in front of everyone I knew.
If that happened today, the Rabbi would have taken a pause, brought me the the book with the Haftorah in it, and showed me where to start and stop, unfortunately, our Rabbi was a performer and I had broken the 4th wall. He had me read the prayer before the Haftorah, HE READ MY HAFTORAH, and I recited the prayer afterward.
So, I failed my Bat Mitzvah....
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