For Israel's 70th

It’s my 23^rd year in Israel. Let’s see what I remember.

In 1991 I was hiding a copper Magen-David necklace under my clothes. Because if “they” see it, I will be beaten. Again. I will get stones thrown at me. I will get a “dirty Jew” - “Zhidovka”, and the rest of the package. They did see it… but this time, to my surprise, there were no fists in my solar plexus. “You are so lucky, you have your country to go to”. Lucky? Me? Well, isn’t Ukraine your country? You will grow up and make it wonderful, yeah… But I do have my country, and I will move there as soon as I can. Away from you lot.

In 1990, someone gave me a Jewish calendar - but it only ran until 1999. How will I ever know when Chanukah is, if the calendar runs out before I find other Jews? Or Yom Kippur? Who would tell me, nobody knows and nobody cares. Those were my worries.

In 1993, a proud owner of a real frum denim skirt and a real Siddur from America, accented English and basic Hebrew, I landed here for the first time.

A spiralling serpentine of the old road to Jerusalem. Chalk rocks, sliced through. And the light - so bright, I didn’t know it could be this light in this world. A whole city of light, the ivory buildings turning pink when they reflect the sunset. Bright blue sky and the ringing silence hugging the Kotel. The smell of “Fantastic” cleaning solution, the sound of a sing-song learning that hasn’t been interrupted here for 2000 years, and lots of “special” kids on the street. I’ve never seen a Downs kid before. What, sick or different people get to live here just like everybody, and not beg for kopecks in the underground? Unreal.

Kids here get to move and talk and be silly, and nobody yells at them. Kids are allowed to exist. They are real. They are loved. They don’t carry a weight of fear in their eyes. And they are so gorgeous my breath catches. I want to have kids like that one day.

A city of light and sharp shadows, I fell in love with you from the first second I saw you, and forever. The city of the wailing shofar and slippery fish scales at the Shuk. The city of colourful crazies and whispering stones, piercing drafts and a song carried by the wind.

Back in Kiev, I dreamed of the city of light awake and asleep. Every day in the grey dimness seemed to last a year. And only the letters with funny crowns at them reminded me that the city of light, where they came from, was real, and I was going back there.

Autumn 1995. I am finally back.

The new reality is confusing, I am washing floors to buy some more food and film for my camera, and to call home once a month. People from all over the world in our dorm, USA and Denmark and France and Argentina, and we all communicate in Hebrew.

People help each other, as if they were family, and not a cursing drunk family I’ve seen before, a real family… they wear such funny slippers, they talk loudly, and I learn to strategically imitate a temper tantrum, just like they do. Accent included.

I cannot and will not ever get lost in Jerusalem - it’s impossible. The city is tiny, and you can always ask… and it waits to show you its secrets. Just come…

Novermber 4^th 1995. My door opens.

-Rabin was killed! - she yells in and runs on.

- Who is Rabin? Why is everybody so agitated? Please, somebody explain to me what’s going on.

A roof of the bus on Rehov Hertzl. The rest of it, burnt away, stands on Rehov Yaffo. There’s shattered glass in the bushes. Police sirens slice through the air. People, silent and powerful, cling to the tape, someone is chanting Tehillim out loud. I feel the separate individuals merging together into a Shimshon, ready to rip a lion. Candles on the floor. Flowers. Tears and prayers. Again and again and again…

1999

A police officer is walking towards us. The old Soviet part of me tenses, even though we’re just chilling in the Safra square with a three-months old baby.

-          Geveret, - he says… (who, me? I am 21… ) - cover your baby’s head. Jerusalem isn’t a joke, you know. Just saying. - and he walks off.

It rains and it shines, and I’ve brought a baby to this city, where there are thousands of people, but even more ghosts. A city like a layered cake, sitting on its past, and hugs you so tight you choke.

Your eyes are shining emeralds

when the sun rays touch you

you are soft and smell of milk

And your hair is curly and golden

like Yerushalayim in evening sun,

I want to always understand you,

be near and listen, and feel as close as now,

my little darling daughter.

2002

A man sitting right in front of us on the bus has long peyot.. a regular chassid. Or not? Oh my God, they are glued to his hat. We roll off the bus in a total panic. Only to realize that we got scared of a man with alopecia. But… there is an explosion a day. Buses, trains, stations, restaurants, streets. Blood pouring out, my country is bleeding, can anyone please stop this? I learn to listen to the radio at all hours. My Walkman fits in my pocket, and I’m glued. Ten prevented, one not. The stuttering and confused testimonies of eye witnesses. I figure out the Right and the Left, the Knesset and the Prime Minister. Am I Israeli now? Chadera, Haifa, Jerusalem. Again and again - Jerusalem.

7^th of July 2005

It’s our wedding anniversary, and we’re going out in London. Vacation time.

Just kidding, we are not. For once, the Brits got to experience what Israel lives through every day. We’re hoping they’ll get it… but of course, they don’t. The museum doors stay open two meters wide, and no one is checking our bags. Are they crazy, I ask?

July 2006

From a comfortable couch in London, the deserted streets of Haifa look even more absurd. Sirens and bombs and… totally chilled British life outside, where a burst pipe in some borough or a lost duck makes national headlines. Why is the BBC reporter so calm? Our soldiers are getting killed, my country is bleeding again. My heart… Why are we not going back? I am trying to imagine my people as they were in 1996, huddled together, forming One Big Jew - Shimshon Ha-Gibor - once again. My heart yearns to be included, even if we are in England. I am with you, my country, praying for you, holding onto the edge of your tallit, in awe of you. Pray for Jerusalem.

Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence, they blur in my mind. Why are they not calling it a war, when it’s exactly what it is, - a war? I am trying to imagine those boys in tanks, in collapsing buildings, those wailing mothers, it’s not Sisra’s mother’s cry, it’s our everyday neighbours and friends ripping their clothes for the dead. For them the time stops and never ticks again… they fall off the cliff of destiny. And then I hear them on the radio, inspiring others to live. I hug my kids tighter, so so tight, and put on the radio again.

Steel cold gaze of an Arab holding a pickaxe. No, I am not afraid, the fear stayed in Ukraine, I tell myself. But if eyes could kill, we’d all be dead by now. In this country time is measured from one chag to another, birth-wedding-kids-death, repeat…  from one war to another… tick-tock, three to the next war.

Protective Edge. The three boys who united us more than anything before or after.

Every pair of eyes meeting asks first - “nu?” - “nothing”. - “nu-nu…” Crowds taking chala, the street is blocked. Crowds saying tehillim, crying and begging, bring the boys back. Our boys. Where are our boys?

The day they were found, a blanket of lead silence covered Jerusalem. “Nu?” - “I know”. - “You know?” - “Nu…” There were no words and no tears left, just a huge chasm, anger bubbling forth, in Hebrew Israel is a she, and that day she wept. She wept for all the boys and all the girls, for all the thousands and millions who will never come home again. The tune of Eicha and ashes raining from the sky.

My three year old knows about the rockets and the anti-rockets of the Iron Dome, she knows the airplanes cracking the zenith are ours, there are our boys piloting them, and we mustn’t be afraid. “Tili” - a cartoon for the kids who are afraid of the air raid sirens. The ground shakes from the 200kg bombs we are dropping on Gaza - barely 40 km away. And we aren’t afraid, but when we walk on the street, I am obsessively searching for where I will run if a siren goes off. “I will cover you, and mommy will cover the baby, if there is a bomb”, - says my 11 year old son to his 7 year old brother. As if that’s so normal. “I will cover you, don’t worry”. My sons, these brothers, will be soldiers one day…

My teenage daughter flips the light on. “Mommy, it’s a siren! Get up!”

“Are you OK?” - “yes, I am OK”. Messages from one closed bomb shelter room to another. “The kids OK?” And the Brits walking during an air raid, as if nothing, as if it’s a soft British drizzle that will make their national news… but no, it’s our molten Israeli drizzle of cast lead and “we have no other land”. Tili against the bad rockets, look, somebody filmed it. Look, we outsmarted the death itself. It’s the good Tili, not the bad one, don’t cry, my baby. And people helping, helping one another. Hosting, collecting food, nobody is forgotten. The elderly, the disabled, new immigrants, patients in hospitals. The dogs abandoned by terrified owners. Piles of socks and wipes spilling over. It’s us, yes, it’s our land, our home, our people. Forever and ever - our people.

I have finally learned to cry. It’s as easy as sweating in the chamsin, you know. Seventy-three funerals, one after another, faces in the newspaper, young smiling faces. You just learn, you know. And then you cannot stop, because it’s so easy.
2018
My two nealry adult children are wiping tears during the commemoration ceremony for the soldiers. One of mine will don the olive-green uniform, get a gun, and go serve the country all in three months time... My mute respect for her, a person who thinks for herself, is too great to fit even in tears.

When my children have those round-the-year parties in gan and school, I remember my calendar, and my biggest fear of not knowing when the holidays might fall out. It’s OK, I tell myself. I have kids who will remind me. The costumes blend into a veil of tears, because who’d ever believe I would merit this. A country to feel safe in. Even during an air raid siren. A country where the bomber airplanes are piloted by Jews, and the policemen are not anti-Semites - because they are Semites. We walk without fearing a drunken fist in the middle of the night, if we die - there is a purpose to our death, what more could a person wish for? Who would believe? A country protected by miracles. It’s real, and I can have as many calendars as I want, and I will always know when the chaggim are.

Is it me, or people have really softened to each other over the last 20 years? I’d like to hope so.

I’d like to hope that because we all live our days as if each one was the last, we are living them fully, to the last drop of shoko, squeezing the bag until no more comes out.

I hope we appreciate the gift that this Land is, breathe its air with relish and savour its water, for all the ancestors who didn’t, and all the heroes who will never taste it again.

Is it me, or the sky here is more blue, and the sweetness is sweeter, and the pain is more piercing, and the love is more loving? The leaves born every spring are so pulsing with green, and the heartbeat of life itself counts pace in our ears. The flowers open and hang down to you, when you need them most, the kids here are the most beautiful in the world, they don’t wear the fear of Galut on their souls and around their necks, and the time runs with the kids, wearing the iron weights of centuries in its shoes. For God is your shadow here, you cannot escape His breath on the top of your head, his Hugs and His slaps. Here He is - right behind the Wall.