What Happened - About Lucas, parental fear, and Tzuk Eitan

הייתי השבוע בדיון על צוק איתן ועל פחד הורים וישבתי שם ופשוט רעדתי.  הצלחתי להגיד כמה מילים והרגשתי איזה הקלה קלה אבל הרעד המשיך ובסוף רציתי רק להכנס למיטה ולבכות.  בדרך הביתה חשבתי על התמונה הזאת של ילדה מתכרבלת במיטה וגיליתי שזה משהו שאני זוכרת מחברה שלי, ג'יל, שאחרי הלוויה של אביה היתה במיטתה, בוכה.  הייתי בת 10 בערך.  הפגישה הראשונה שלי עם מוות. 

משום מה, הבת שלי גבי משורשת בעולם הזה ואני לא דואגת לה.  פעם, כשהיא היתה בת שנתיים היא רצה אל הכביש.  אני עדיין מקבלת צמרמורת כשאני חושבת על זה.  אבל כעיקרון היא נזהרת, שומרת על עצמה, מתקשרת.
 

הבן שלי הוא משהו אחר.  מתקופת ההריון לא הייתי בטוחה בקיומו.  הייתי בשמירת הריון ומישהי אמרה לי לנצל את הזמן להתחבר עם התינוק שלי והרגשתי "איך?"  עד הרגע שהוא יצא לא האמנתי.  ואז הכל התחיל – האי נוחות שלו בעולם, האסטמה ודלקת הריאות בשנה ראשונה ובהמשך.  מתוך 5 שנים הראשונות 4 פעמים דלקת ריאות.  הלילות עם אסטמה ובמקביל הסיפורים של גיסי וגיסתי על לוקס והאסטמה שלו.  הם היו באותו גיל.  היו לנו משפחות מקבילות, לכל אחת בת ובן, באותם גילאים.

ואז הנורא מכל – הטלפון ב11:30 בלילה.  כשבשרו לנו את הבשורה על לוקס, שמת בתאונת דרכים בגיל 4 וחצי, כל החדר התמלא באור.  לא אשכח – אולי גם זאת סיבה שרציתי לחזור לחדר שלי השבוע.  אני יודעת שיש מעבר מן החדר שלי לטרינידד – שם אנחנו נמצאים עם קרובינו.  ללוויה של לוקס אלן נסעה לבד וגם למות של אביה לא נסעתי – אני נשארתי במיטתי מחוברת איכשהו דרך המעבר הזה.

לוקס היה ילד עטוף בצמר גפן – לא יצא מהבית בלי ליווי מבוגר.  המטפלת שלו חיכתה לו מחוץ לגן כל השעות המעטות שהוא בילה שם.  אמר לאבא שלו זמן קצר לפני מותו שהוא לא צריך ללמוד לקרוא כי הוא לא עולה לבית הספר.

לעומתו סשה היה ילד של סכנות – טיפס על חומות, חיפש גירוי סנסורי בכל מקום.  קבל תלת אופן והתאמן במרפסת על נפילות ממנו – איזה עשרים פעמים נפל, בכה ב"כאלו", הקים את עצמו לעשות שוב.  

אחרי מותו של לוקס שאלתי את עצמי איך?  איך אני אגדל אותו?  אם לוקס ששמרו עליו כל כך מת, איך אשמור על סשה?  אין לי סיכוי להצליח.

כשלוקס נהרג סשה בא מגן ואמר – מצאנו את הנשמה של לוקס בחצר.  זה היה אדום.  נחפור ונוציא אותו ונחזיר לו.  

זה פחד הורים.  חשבתי שהאמנתי בה' אבל גיליתי שהאמנתי בסנטה קלאוס.  חשבתי שיש עסקה ביננו לבין היקום – שמים תמיד את הילד בכסא בטיחות ושום דבר לא יקרה לו.  ה' הפר את עסקתנו.  

מאז מותו קשה לי בכל ברית מילה – כשאומרים "קיים את הילד הזה לאביו ולאמו" אני צועקת בפנים.  מה?  גיסי וגיסתי לא היו ראויים לזה?  באיזה תמימות עומדים ההורים בטקס.  כששרים "המלאך הגואל אותי" אני מתמלא בדמעות.  איפה היה המלאך?

צוק איתן – בזמן שהתחילה נפילת הטילים, חמי נכנס לבית חולים וגילו ולא גילו את המחלה שהרג אותו בעוד 4 חודשים.  בזמן שהתחילה המבצע אלן העבירה בקושי קייטנה ממקום פתוח לבית ספר סגור ואז יצאה לחופשה מתוכננת לארה"ב עם הילדים והשאירה אותי כאן, לעבוד.  חלמתי על הזמן הזה וציפיתי להרגשה של חופש.  קבלתי פחד, בדידות, ודאגות.  לנסוע דרך חוסן או לנסוע דרך ההרים ב"שטח פתוח" שם לא יורטים בטילים אם שוגרים.  והיו לנו 150 סטודנטים שבאו מחו"ל, לא בטלו, ואני נותנת תדרוכים איך להגיע למרחב מוגן .  מלמדת תהילים ואומרת שאני מחפשת אמונה שימושית – אמונה שתחזיק ותחזק אותי בימים אלה.  

ויוצאת לחופשה, וחוזרת, ואלן בטרינדד עם אביה, והיא חוזרת, החגים, אני פתאום חולה, אז עוד טיסה בבהלה ואלן יושבת ליד אביה ביום האחרון שלו.  ואני מקבלת בשורות במיטה ומתקשרת דרך המעבר הרוחני הזה להיות לצידו ולהיות עדה למעברו.  ומחליטה לשנות את חיי. 

Immigrant Mom musings

I guess I should take comfort in the fact that the experience of being an immigrant parent is something I share with my brother, my mother, and two of my great grandmothers, Pearl Antine & Fannie Diamond.

Today's Bat Mitzvah tekes (ceremony) at Gabi's school began with a learning session.  For the first activity the teacher asked everyone not born in Israel to stand up.  Alen & I stood with about four, yes only four other people, and two of them seemed to be grandmothers.  The other immigrant moms are the moms of my daughter's best friends in her class, who are Russian.

Then she asked everyone whose parents were not born here to stand with us, and then everyone whose grandparents weren't born here, and by then most of the room of parents and kids were standing with us.  Only a small number of kids and parents stood in the place for people whose grandparents were born here.

We learn from this that we were a nation of immigrants, but I learned from it that we are no longer one.   I felt sharply how we are different here and how we stand out, in my daughter's class at least.  She feels it and we feel it.  I know that other schools in town and other towns in Israel have different compositions, but we are mainly around people who were born here.

Then we had a Beit Midrash, which fittingly enough began with a verse from Psalm 126, "When G-d returned the capitivity from Zion we were like dreamers."  I had plenty to say, as did the other parents, but I was conscious how the girls in the group, my daughter and her friends, were not talking much, and of her strictures to me earlier that I was to keep my mouth shut.  We were two men, four women, three girls, and one man did most of the talking.  I would have said more but for the pressure I felt to be quiet from my daughter.

The story was about Honi HaMaagel, who slept 70 years and woke up to a world he couldn't understand.  I can relate.

At the ceremony itself, the 59 Bat Mitzvah girls from her grade in the middle, the boys in two sections on either side.  I'm thinking how much I hate gender, the whole thing about what girls are meant to be and look like, the whole confusion.  The girls are wearing white with garlands of flowers on each girl's long hair.  I'm thinking of all the conflicts and contradictions of this age.

Two moms tried to sum it up in their blessing and couldn't - saying that times have changed, that girls can be anything, knowing full well that if they choose "anything" they will give up on some other parts of things.  They reminded the girls to stay true to what is real in being girls and women, whatever that means.  One mom said that the girls should speak up or be quiet as they wish - could it be I am a mom who speaks up with a daughter who prefers to keep quiet? 

I was emotional all along, but got most emotional hearing the boys sing, with cracking voices, about how "Mashehu hadash matchil achshav" (Something new is happening now).  There was something so cute and poignant.  Each boy gave a girl a plastic flower with a heart, very embarassedly.  And the girls did their dance, and everyone clapped.

Then at the end Hatikva, and me feeling emotional that I am here, and in a Jewish setting, and at the same time wishing I was some place that felt familiar or comfortable in any way.  I'm probably the only person who thinks at the end of Hatikva, "play ball!"

And my daughter came out smiling, until about two minutes later when she got mad at me for posting a photo I took of her, and stomped off.  And in the car on the way home she told us how the moms who gave the blessing, the kind of moms I like, aren't cool and how I had better never stand up and say anything like that at any event.

And I came home feeling......like an immigrant mom of a teenager, awash in a future and a country I will never understand.

Good To Be In Woods Hole

My kids just left the house with Alen at 4 am to fly to Woods Hole for a month.  This trip was planned since last summer and though I am going to miss them a great deal until I join them in two weeks, I could not be happier that they are going.

Growing up I had two anchors:  Judaism and Woods Hole.  I had the enormous privilege to spend every summer in Woods Hole, and it really was almost like another, non-competing, religion.

The values of Woods Hole began with reverence for Nature.  Louis Agassiz said, "Study Nature, not Books," and that was the motto of the Children's School of Science where we learned each summer.  During the day time the town is criss crossed by groups of kids with buckets, nets, and sometimes cameras, learning from the sea, earth and sky.  Seashore Life, Marine Biology, Oceanographic Electronics, Invertebrate Zoology, Advanced Marine Biology were some of the courses I took.  I'm grateful I had a great biology education before I met my sexist high school biology teacher Mr. DeMarco (maybe I'll write about him one day).  If you know Alen and her work you can understand how deeply I "get" what she does from this amazing aspect of our Woods Hole education.

Woods Hole, of course, is home to adults who study science as well, but my experience was from a child's perspective.  Adults worked in labs, attended lectures, spoke on the beach about their research.  Kids went to science school.

Though there was no synagogue in Woods Hole, there was a "rabbi", Phyllis Goldstein.  She was my childhood hero and even as an adult I held her in awe.  The religion she taught was democracy and human rights, reverence for all cultures and for history, and of course the joy and value of music.  She taught it through folksinging every Tuesday night, each summer for forty years.  She was a living role model who had lived through tragic loss and risen.  She was incredibly charismatic - at times stern (to keep kids quiet) and almost always smiling and laughing.  She seemed like a walking encyclopedia of history and music.  She taught us about the evils of slavery, the music that accompanied the fight for freedom, the labor movement, the history of whaling and New England, songs from Africa and elsewhere around the world, languages and more.  We used to sing "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in about 20 languages.  The message of her songs was that all people have value, all people have songs and stories, all people can care for and about one another.  It's a message that never grows old.

(I wrote more about Phyllis here when she passed away in 2011.)

So now a terrible war is on, and my kids are getting on a plane.  I smiled and hugged them and reminded them that although they are leaving, they are going to be "mini-me".  With tears in my eyes I remember how we traveled to Woods Hole in 2002.  We had made aliyah during the intifada, and for 20 months had not returned home.  We went back to the US at the end of a year we had spent in Jerusalem when 200 people were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and the death toll from the intifada on all sides climbed over 2000.  I remember seeing Phyllis and talking to her, and I remember the look in her eyes when I told her I was living in Israel.  It was a look of incredible compassion, and a moment in which I understood that she felt the pain of what I was living through and she believed in me to continue to stand up for the values she had taught me, even when their realization seems hidden.

Jeremy Korr continues to sing Phyllis's songs in Woods Hole with a new generation of children.  And my kids (who met Phyllis when they were young) are going to sing and to feel the earth, ocean and sky.  And just maybe, they too will find their an anchor.

Who am I in this war?

I wrote this to some colleagues and family and I was asked to share it here.

I was asked to keep writing, both by colleagues and by people outside, so I am trying.  The longer this goes on, the scarier things get, the less sure I am of what to say. 

More than 80 students have just completed the first summer session at the Conservative Yeshiva.  About 50 are leaving now, while another 80 are due to arrive to join us for a bigger second session.  I am working to quickly regain the skills I used in 2001-2003 to support (and recruit) students in Israel during very difficult times.  I am incredibly grateful for my partner and for the wonderful team of people I work with.

Yesterday at our closing program, I gave a dvar Torah along these lines:  These have been very difficult weeks.  During these weeks, I and our whole program have focused on Torah, Avodah (prayer) and Gemilut Hasadim (deeds of kindness).  These are the foundations of our tradition and can always be counted on. 

Our students have been volunteering around Jerusalem, many working with and tutoring children in a mixture of programs at Kol HaNeshama, YMCA, the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and Merkaz Klass.  They have been working at a community garden and a wonderful group have been going with me each week to the Idan Hazahav nursing home (where RRC grad Alex Lazarus first introduced me 13 years ago).  Yesterday, the atmosphere of heaviness was palpable on both floors we visited.  We talked and sang, gave and gained strength.  Shortly after we left, a siren went off. 

Last week we sent 25 students to Tel Aviv for a program with Bina to learn about asylum seekers in Israel.  This week, more than 45 people attended a program with Ronit Sela, the East Jerusalem director for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.  More than 20 of our students have been learning a new Torah of Human Rights curriculum with Dr. Shaiya Rothberg.  Our center is currently collecting supplies for soldiers and for people in the south.

On the Avodah front, we have been holding a vibrant daily minyan.  As part of mincha, we include special memorial days of study and this week we gained strength hearing about a wonderful “rebbetzin of the old school”, a couple, parents of a colleague, who owed their longevity to either junk food or procrastination (or both), and the burning of the Gogol Street synagogue in Riga, Latvia, on 9 Tammuz 1941, a memorial donated by a man whose family came from Latvia to the US in the late 1800s who wanted to memorialize this community.

I got up on Wednesday after the sirens here and could not remember how to start my day.  My son reminded me to start my day with Tehilim (Psalms).

I ended my remarks by speaking about 1 Chronicles 10-15.  I am more and more holding the idea that the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.  We don’t know what we are doing here.  I came here because I wanted to be part of the experiment when the Jewish people came back to their ancestral land.  Now that I am here, I am just one of all the people who belong to this land. 

“David blessed the Lord in front of all the assemblage.  David said, “Blessed are You, Lord, G-d of Israel our father, from eternity to eternity.  Yours, Lord, are greatness, might, splendor, triumph, and majesty – yes, all that is in heaven and earth, to You, Lord, belong kingship and preeminence above all.  Riches and honor are in Your hand, You have dominion over all, with You are strength and might, and it is in Your power to make anyone great and strong.  Now, God, we praise You and extol Your glorious name.  Who am I and who are my people, that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering, but all is from You, and it is Your gift that we have given to you.  For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers, our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope.”

This last line, which ends on a stark note, is the one I have been carrying with me the past few years.  I heard last week (and may have written here) that hope is a beggar.  Hope can help you walk through things.  But faith can help you jump over them.  So I am digging deep for faith today. 

My facebook feed is full of the words of politicians, and many of us are searching for the right political interpretation of these devastating events, but I don’t have a job in politics.  My job is (still) to be a mom and partner, to recruit students to come to Israel and support them while they are here, including raising funds for their scholarships, and to teach Torah and be a religious leader.  I am praying for the strength to do that job in these times.

Geography of present and past

I still don’t completely understand the geography of the murder of 3 boys who were hitchhiking and killed, but I spent a good deal of time with google maps today.  As far as I can tell, from what I read in the Times of Israel, the boys were hoping to head down route 367, out of Gush Etzion and down to Aviezer, reaching route 375 and heading through Beit Shemesh to the center of the country.

I drove down route 367 once.  It’s a long, winding road.  It was daytime.  I was coming from the funeral of Avraham David Moses in 2008 after he and 7 other boys were shot at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva.  I did not feel safe on this long winding road, passing by few towns, mostly all Arab towns, and finally a checkpoint, and then Neve Michael and Aviezer.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the familiar route 375 and headed home, and I promised myself if I travelled to the Gush again I would go up route 60 and the main road to Alon Shvut, through the more travelled area at the top of the hills.

Near Aviezer, at the base of route 367, is Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Hey.  The village was established on 16 August 1949 by demobilised members of the Daled Company of the Palmach's Harel Brigade, and was initially named Peled (an acronym for Plugot Daled, lit. Daled Company). It was later renamed after the 35 Haganah soldiers killed in a convoy to resupply the Gush Etzion kibbutzim during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine (Lamed-Heh is 35 in Hebrew numerals).

We drive near here often to go to the pool at Beit Guvrin.  We go down route 375 to Tzomet HaEla (corner of routes 375 and 38) and down route 38 to route 35.  But if you head east on route 35 from Beit Guvrin, you’ll be in the West Bank in about 2 kilometers, and you’ll pass Tarkumiya.  That was the home of the men who killed Christine Logan when she was hiking with a friend in the woods near our house in 2010.  Near Beit Guvrin, the road (Route 35) heads into the hills west of Hebron. 

Further north, route 375 heads up to Tzur Hadassah where I live, past the Hanot mosaic (Roman, now destroyed by vandals).  The path from the mosaic (thought to be a Roman roadside shop), heads down to Mayan Mata, and the ruins of an Arab town, I believe called Hanot.  That town was probably abandoned/evacuated/destroyed in October 1948 when most of the Arab towns in this area were attacked/cleared/vacated.  On the path going down is where Christine was murdered.  Before you head up the hills of route 375 coming from Emek HaEla, you can also see Roman pillars, collapsed, on the right side of the road. 

Somewhere between routes 375 and route 35 is where the boys bodies were found yesterday.  From what I saw in pictures, it seemed it was a hilly area, but maybe towards the lower end of the hills.  One article said it was terraces.  If you look on the map, you’ll see between routes 375 and 35 a pretty big and hilly area, and route 367 cuts diagonally through it heading northwest.  The Green Line cuts pretty sharply West here, meaning that the wide area inside the Green Line near 375 (we live at the northeast edge of it), narrows to a much smaller western area within the green line as you go south.  I don’t know what happened here in 1948-49, or to what extent the Green Line is following the contour of the hills.  I do know there aren’t really any Jewish settlements on route 35 between Beit Guvrin and Kiryat Arba (next to Hevron).   But south of route 35, I had not realized, is Tapuah, a settlement known for radical views and Kahanist politics.

Karmei Tzur is also in this area, but pretty far East near Route 60 and closer to Hebron/Kiryat Arba.  It’s important historically because it’s on the site of Beit Tzur, which figures heavily in 1 Maccabees as a southern entry point to the area of Judea.

Looking at the map now, it’s striking to me how this southern West Bank area is isolated from other areas – for both Arab and Jewish populations.  This southwest corner looks both empty and cut off.  For the Arab population, it is at quite a distance from Jerusalem and Beit Lehem, and farther still from Ramallah and Jenin in the northern West Bank.  There would geographically be connections from here to the low lands, the Ekron plain and the places ruled by Philistines in the past along the lowlands and the coast, all the way to Gaza.  Trade routes of Nabateans cut across this far north I think.  Idumeans were pushed out of the south-eastern areas and made their capital Maresha, near Beit Guvrin, in the second Temple period.  Earlier, in the time of the prophet Micah, Assyrians came down the coast, attacked these same areas, and pushed eastwards toward Hebron, across but maybe just across what is now the Green Line.  At the same time, the hill culture will have been different from the coastal culture.  (See the Geopolitics of Israel, Stratfor.)

One last geographic point – Rav Steinsaltz recommended we read Psalm 142, which is linked by tradition to David’s flight from Saul into the caves of Adulam.  These also fall in this region.  The Adulam caves park is found just east of route 38, near Nehusha, within the Green Line, north of route 35 and south of route 375.

May the memories of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach be blessed and their souls elevated, and may we all take time to learn more about the geography and history of the lands in which they lived and died.

עליה לצור הדסה

This is something I read at our shul for Yom HaAtzma'ut - סיפור עליה

עליה לצור הדסה

בלילה הראשון שלי בארץ ישראל, בשנת 1977, שתיתי הרבה ויסקי עם החבר שלי לאותו קיץ שהכרתי אותו באותו ערב.

טיפסנו בגדר הבריכה של חוות הנוער בסן סימון בירושלים, גדר די גבוה.  שחינו, יצאנו, נתפסנו על ידי המדריכים.  זאת היתה תקופה יותר סובלנית להרפתקאות ולא נזרקנו מיד מתוכנית הקיץ.

כמה שבועות לאחר מכן, ביקרנו לשבוע במושב ליד בית שמש, שהשנה גיליתי היה מושב נוחם.  וכמה שבועות אחרי כן טיילנו בהר שמשם ראינו את המושב מלמעלה – אולי זה קרוב לנו כאן אך איניני יודעת איפה זה היה.  אני וחברה ראינו את המושב "שלנו" מרחוק ויצאנו דרך היער לקפוץ לשם להגיד שלום.  אחד המדריכים היה צריך ללכת אחרינו ולהחזיר אותנו באוטובוס.

אותו המדריך גר כיום ברחוב הפלמ"ח, בבנין שגרים בו חברים שלנו מקורס הכנה ללידה שעשינו לפני הלידה של גבי.  ראיתי אותו לפני כמה שנים והיה נדמה לי שהוא זוכר אותי - לא לשבח.

בשנת 1990-1991 גרתי בירושלים ברחוב וושינגטון.  כשחזרתי לארץ עם אלן במסגרת עליה, התקבלתי לעבודה כמעט ליד המקום שגרתי בו אז, וגרנו ברחוב טשרניחובסקי, לא רחוק ממקום ההרפתקאה הראשונה שלי בארץ.

כשהגענו לצור הדסה ולקהילה, בא אלינו להציג את עצמו דוד קריגר.  הדוד שלו, Seymour, היה מורה של אלן אחרי הגיור שלה ב1995 ולימד אותה להגיד שמע ישראל וואהבת בעל פה. 

אחרי שהגענו לצור הדסה, גילינו שאבא של רחל שבת ואבא שלי למדו ביחד באוניברסיטה, שסיימו ב1950 ו1951.

בשנת 1999 כתבתי שיר שדמיתי את עצמי לרקפת צומחת ליד אבן בהרי יהודה.  כל הרקפות שאי פעם נתנו לי בארה"ב מתו בקלות.  כאן נדמה לי שהן צומחות בלי שום מאמץ של אדם.

לא קשה לי להאמין במושג של "unseen hands",ידיים שמובילות אותנו למרות שאנו לא רואים אותם.

The End of Exile

The End of Exile

There’s a woman or man like me

Waking up this morning

In Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver

In London, Berlin, Amsterdam

In Stockholm, in Sydney, maybe even in Tokyo

Waking up next to a lover, a partner, a soulmate

She’s thinking of California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida

He’s thinking of how they met in Provincetown, Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami

In Rio, or Jamaica or Amsterdam

It’s been 5 years, 10 years, 15 or like us 20

Of falling in love, of worry, of lawyers bills, of fears and new horizons

Of losses greater than could be borne – of learning greater than ever dreamed

They have friends, family, new roots of all sorts

They have bills, mortgages, contracts, commitments

Is this home? They wonder
 

For years home has been where you are, choices limited, decisions made by others
For years I have held injustice, reached for acceptance, tried to understand G-d’s plan

For years we have missed loved ones, family events, a sense of all that’s familiar

It has been a kind of wall at each side, defining a narrow path

 

And suddenly, in an instant, what has held, constrained, controlled us for decades has fallen away
I am left standing, wondering, laughing, crying

Reaching for meaning in all we have walked through

Knowing that wherever you are is home

Standing on earth

I have been thinking for some time about coming clean and writing what I am really thinking about on this blog.  It’s a hard thing to do because I think that some people, including people I love very much, think I am crazy.  On the other hand, I also think that my experience might help some people. 

When Lucas died two years ago in a car accident I went into a profound spiritual crisis.  After six months, my best friend told me that I had to do something.  Not wanting to go speak to a therapist, I chose to go to a cranial-sacral healer.

During the healing, I understood many things.  I understood that the car accident that killed Lucas also shocked me out of balance on earth.  The healer worked on grounding me and I understood that I had somehow, since the accident, been not grounded.

I understood that some part of me was jealous that Lucas got to leave the earth.  I understood that I knew Lucas and Sasha from a previous life, a life I had seen before.  I understood that Lucas was a very high soul, who had been a monk in that life. 

I understood what I have known for many years, that I was ambivalent (that’s too soft a word) about being alive.  Many years ago I came to understand my traumatic birth (I had the cord around me), as not wanting to be born.  I connected this with the fact that I died in the Holocaust in my last life.  I have seen these things since 1988.

After this healing, I became motivated to want to be here.  I understood that Lucas had left the earth and that I was still here.  I wanted to work on wanting to be here.

I went to another healer I see who understands these things.  We spent some sessions on this issue of “wanting to be here”.  While I was working on this, on January 9, 2012, I said, “I have to stop taking responsibility for other souls.”  I have to claim my journey.  Other people, even my own children, have their own journeys.  That was on Monday.

I was sick at the time.  I went home and came down with pneumonia.  On Thursday night I was lying in bed and I had a feeling.  I was about to go on a trip to California.  I had a feeling that an important message about my trip was about to arrive by email.  I kept getting up to check.  Around 10:30 pm a message came from the mother of a friend of mine.  I had been meant to see him, for the first time after 30 years, during my upcoming trip.  The message was that he had killed himself.  On January 9.

In the following days, I was sick in bed and thought only of him.  I began to see him in our last life, in the Holocaust.  He was my cousin.  I began to understand his story – how hard that life was for him and how that was behind much of what happened to him in this life.  How he was also someone like me who lived somehow not fully here.  How he had to leave.

What I see now, in these days when his image and life are coming back to me again, is how in this life we re-create scenes from past lives to re-do them.  Do-over. 

When Lucas died in March 2011, I was teaching Hallel in an online course.  In Psalm 115 it says, “Lo hametim yehallelu Y-h – The dead will not praise G-d”.    We had studied and discussed that phrase in class just before Lucas died.    A student of mine pointed us to a paper, which analyzed Yakov Gladstein’s 1946 poem, Dead Men’s Praise.  Since Lucas died, I have held that poem, taught that poem, and the words of Hallel together. 

In the poem, Gladstein describes the deaths at Maidenek as a reverse Sinai image – “we received the Torah at Sinai and at Lublin we gave it back.”  The central image in the poem is a Jewish child. 

This year another layer that has been added for me has to do with how we stand on the earth.  What does it mean to be “strangers and sojourners with G-d” on a land that belongs to G-d.  David said, “I am a stranger here on earth like my fathers before me, our lives are like a shadow and there is no hope.”   No hope, that is, of holding on to the things that we hold precious.  The word “shmor” – guard or take care of – keeps coming back in our songs and ceremonies.  I know that this is not promised in any literal way.  I believe that G-d is keeping Lucas’s soul – and my soul, and Sasha’s soul, and Gabi’s soul, and Alen’s soul.  But life on this earth is not guaranteed to us and nor is being able to protect our children.

Today, standing at Sasha’s kabbalat sefer Torah ceremony all this was with me – Sasha, Lucas, my friend Alan.  What it means to receive it all and to be standing here, on earth, in this moment, with my feet on the ground. 

Please explain this song!

מדורת השבט

מילים ולחן: שי דקל

לא יודע מה יהיה. הולך ברחוב ומשתהה.
באמצע היום לחות וחום.
נעצר בתחנת האוטובוס באותו מקום.
רואה חבר בגלגל הזמן חולפות תמונות בעיני
מרחוב קטן בניו יורק ובן יהודה כאן
קצת געגוע וסיפור ישן.

איפה הם אומרים שבט אחים גם יחד
מדורת השבט נעלמה נשאר הפחד
לא משעמם בארץ המובטחת
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד

ריקוד ההורה כבר נדם. מהשרשרת מה נשאר.
החיבוק נעלם כמו לא קיים.
אולי נשאל את הזקן ודרומה ניסע לשם.
חוזר מהר למציאות ומחר עוד יום של תחרות
כמו שתיל נטוע כאן איך שחולף לו הזמן
כי עוד נשאר חלום חלום קטן


Let me know if you have any ideas what this song is about. Now that I'm reading the actual lyrics, I'm not sure if it's an Israeli writing from being away, or someone who is here. People in the know, please advise. Meanwhile, I greatly enjoyed the Lag B'Omer Tekes where Gabi's class sang this!

Mikvah, Safety and more

A visit from Aliza Kline of the Mayyim Hayyim community mikvah brought up a kind of intense and weird nostalgia and homesickness in me today.

When Aliza arrived at my work, she called to ask about parking. I said I'd meet her outside and when I got there, the driveway was blocked by a van. After I yelled and got the van moved, the driveway was still made very difficult by cars parked on either side. Then she had to take her car down the steep, curved incline to our parking, while I was simultaneously berating the man who was blocking easy entrance (he said he wasn't) and talking to a student who wanted to talk to me.

Later, after the presentation, her entrance seemed like a metaphor to me about my life in Israel. There was one moment during it when I thought "wait, she's not an olah, she may not be able to handle this".

Aliza started her presentation talking about what makes a ritual work. In 11 years in Israel, I feel I have not heard people ask this kind of question. I had trouble understanding it - rituals work and don't work - it's rarely one or the other to me. She asked the students what a ritual was and they had answers - I could not remember what a ritual is. I was trying to figure out which parts of my life are ritual and which are not, and did not feel sure I could distinguish.

But I should back up. That was after another conversation on our way over to the Beit Midrash. My boss had mentioned the old mikvah in Brighton, and I said I had been there before my wedding, and then started on thinking about that and about what it has meant to me to pass at the mikvah - pass for straight that is, because I've never been to the mikvah when I was not a lesbian, and I've never been out at a mikvah, whatever that would mean.

Aliza talked a lot about safe space and what it means to create a space where people are going to feel safe taking off their clothes. I didn't even feel safe talking about it. I noticed most faculty were not there, and I noticed the relative ease with which the students participated, and I thought about how much more restrained a culture Israel is when it comes to talking about sexuality.

I thought about my kids, and about how I went to the mikvah before I got pregnant, for a period of months each time, and about how I was always passing as a straight person. I thought, and almost said something, about how the mikvah lady told me "livriut" and about how I prayed to get pregnant each time. I thought of the Reform rabbi who married us and who had recommended mikvah to me when I was trying to get pregnant, and I thought of the ultrasound technician who, the day after the first time I went to the mikvah in that process, asked me, "did you go to the mikvah?" Could she see it on my face? It was the one and only time in the fertility process that I was asked. I didn't think of, but think of now, the kavannah a friend gave me for mikvah, and how I prayed for everyone who was trying to get pregnant, and how until this day I have a track record - all the people I have prayed for, there and elsewhere, that they be blessed to become parents, have received that blessing.

I listened to Aliza talk about making mikvah in Massachusetts safe and accessible space for everyone. It kind of reminded me of how I feel when I daven with a Reconstructionist siddur - like, oh, my spirituality used to be like that - open, full of possibilities. Aliza had asked for an example of what doesn't work and when I said, "when you can't bring your whole self there" she said, "like maybe when a mechitza isn't done in a way that can work for you," and I thought of the many Shabbat mornings I spend in a mechitza shul where I daven and what it means to try to bring my whole self there to a space that doesn't reflect my values and what it means to pray or be part of any ritual moment and not be all of me but still feel transformed and uplifted. And what it means to sit with contradictions and discomfort and not knowing.

I thought of the parking lot entrance, and how much that feels like my ritual life here. I wondered if I will one day experience some reclamation of mikvah. Alen said maybe we shouldn't be planning a trip to disney world and instead should be thinking of going back to Massachusetts for a trip to Mayyim Hayyim. Then I think of my very real moments in the mikvah, and my very real kids, and thank G-d.

Coming out again!

Those of you who know me or read this blog regularly probably know that to get lots of medical services I drive about 5 km to an ultra-orthodox west bank settlement.

Today after I got home from work and dropped the kids to their sport, I ran to get a prescription filled for Alen. I didn't have her health insurance card with me.

At the pharmacy were 2 orthodox or ultra-orthodox women behind the counter, the pharmacist whom I don't know and the well-baby/child nurse whom I do know but have not seen for awhile.

So I asked the pharmacist could she put the charge on my card (it goes direct to my bank account) and she said, but who is Anne (Alen)? Who is she to you? So I said, she's my partner (bat-zug) and she says, she's your friend? Where's her card? What's her ID number?

So I said, it's here on the prescription and she's my partner. And she says, they will want to know, who is she to you, and I say again, as if I'm talking to a 2 year old, she's my partner. And I see her writing in the computer "haverot" (friends). And I said, "what, is it forbidden for you to write partner?"

She's flustered and I'm getting pissed off and the well baby nurse says, "Oh hi, how are your kids, your son is Alex right?" And the pharmacist says, "one pill four times a day." And me and the nurse say, "these are eye drops". Then the pharmacist goes off to answer the phone and the nurse and I continue talking about Sasha and whether he gets another appointment and I give her my phone number to call me.

This nurse really saved me from myself and from feeling bad. I try not to make waves in Beitar, but at the same time, if someone asks me directly, I'm going to say and stand up for my family. The nurse gave me a very positive message, "I know you, I see your family, I recognize you. This community may be homophobic but I'm not - I know you and I like you."

Enough coming out for today.