Letter to my daughter in Poland

My eldest daughter has spent the past week in Poland with her school. From the time we arrived in Israel and she learned that most schools here make the trip to Poland in 11th or 12th grade, she said she wanted to go. Since last May, when she signed up for the trip, the school has spent days and weeks educating the girls, both historically and psychologically, what to expect. They left before dawn last Monday morning, arriving in a cold, wet Warsaw around 8am, and went immediately to a Jewish cemetery. They have traveled the routes traveled by our own ancestors, visited towns and cities where Judaism once thrived, and seen the horrors of Treblinka, Majdenak, and the woods of Zbylitowska Góra where there are mass graves of Jews, including thousands of children, shot to death by the Nazis. Tomorrow, Sunday, is the final day of the trip, one that is spent at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Parents were asked to send a letter to their daughters for them to read over Shabbat, which they spent in the city of Krakow. Below is an edited version of the letter that I wrote to my daughter. It was originally written 2 weeks ago, but I have modified it slightly to reflect the anti-semitic murderous attack that killed 11 Jews in Pittsburgh just one week ago.

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<<I am writing this on Erev Shabbat Lech Lecha, when Hashem commanded Avram to leave his homeland and his birthplace, and to go the land that Hashem would show him. In the parasha, we see Avram’s blind faith in Hashem, how he was willing to leave behind everything that was familiar to him, to follow Hashem.

For thousands of years, the Jewish people yearned to return to Zion, to the Land of Israel, after the exile and the destruction of the Beit haMikdash. The area that makes up the Promised Land has been controlled by so many different powers during these years of Diaspora, and each of these governing people played some role in making sure there was no official Jewish homeland.

Finally, in 1947, immediately following the genocide committed in Europe by Hitler and the Nazis, the British Mandate came good on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to give the Jewish people their own state. There are those who believe that the only reason the modern state of Israel exists is due to the guilt felt by the world following the Shoah. These people believe that if it weren’t for the Shoah, we would never have our State of Israel, and we would not have been able to establish a Jewish homeland in the Biblical land that was promised to Avraham our patriarch in Parashat Lech Lecha.  I choose to believe differently. I believe that while the Shoah was a factor in us getting back our homeland, the realization of the dream, the establishment of the state, is nothing short of a miracle. You see, as soon as Israel declared independence, all Arab nations surrounding us declared war on us. We had no proper army. Our army was made up of various underground movements who had resisted British, a haphazard group of people with little military training. We had newly arrived immigrants from Europe, (many of whom had arrived illegally, due to British limitations set on the number of Jews allowed to land in Israel in those post-war years) survivors of horrors worse than anyone could imagine, recovering from years of starvation and illness and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who immediately joined forces to fight for their new homeland. It is only by God’s Hand that Israel won that war. As you know, that was only the first war, many more have followed, and still our enemies try to wipe us from the face of the Earth.

When I asked if you were anxious about your trip to Poland, you answered that you were not. You said that you hoped to get some clarity from it, some more understanding of what happened, and to find some connection to your past, to our past.

I have never been to Poland, nor do I have any desire to go. From what I understand from others who have made the trip, the last day is the hardest day.  Auschwitz-Birkenau is always described as devastating – people who didn’t know they could feel such deep emotion, describe how it is impossible not to feel the souls of all those murdered there. Just the sheer size of the place, makes it impossible to digest how many were murdered there.

Yours is the second generation to grow up with the State of Israel as fact and reality, rather than a dream and a prayer. It is difficult to communicate to you and to your siblings and friends, the true meaning of Zionism and why it is so important. Your great-grandparents, and even your grandparents, remember the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. They remember the 1967 Six Day War, which resulted in a unified, free Jerusalem, giving us access to the Old City and the remnants of the Beit haMikdash. It is easy to take this for granted today – that you can hop on a bus and then the light rail in Jerusalem, and show up at the Kotel whenever you feel like it. But we must never take any of it for granted. We must always remember the days when we didn’t have a country of our own, and when we had a country of our own, but no access to the holiest of places for the Jewish people.

Today’s fight is different. We have to continue to fight the BDS movement which does its best to put Israel in a negative light all around the world. When we hear people saying that Israel is an apartheid country it is up to us to show the world that this is not the case.  The Palestinians do not want a 2 state solution – their vision is a single state that is devoid of all Jews. As a Jew, and as an Israeli, it is your job and your duty to educate others, to make sure that they see the truth, the real Israel.

As we learned last Saturday night, anti-semitism is alive and well. Exactly one week ago, eleven Jews, praying in their synagogue on Shabbat morning, just as we do every single week, were murdered, in an act not unlike those carried out by Nazis nearly 80 years ago. It can happen in Pittsburgh. It can happen anywhere. Where there are Jews, there are anti-semites.

I have no doubt that you will return from this trip changed. How can anyone visit Poland, and see what was lost, and not come back feeling changed? When we meet up at the Kotel on Monday morning, look at it with new eyes. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t see an ancient wall. Look again, and see all that is left of the Beit HaMikdash. Look again, and see the miracle that enabled us to reunite Jerusalem in 1967. Look again, and see how God is a part of everything that happens in Eretz Yisrael and Medinat  Yisrael. Look again, and see how the existence of the State of Israel is not a direct result of the Shoah, but the realization of a promise, and of a dream of thousands of years.

I can’t wait to see you on Monday morning. I am sure tomorrow will be a tough day, but hopefully you will return empowered, and believing that God exists, even though we may not understand how He works, and why He makes things happen the way that they do.  I pray that this trip has been all that you expected it to be, and that you return feeling proud to be Jewish and proud to be Israeli.>>

 

Reactivated

If you knew me 25 (okay, a little more) years ago, you might remember me a little differently to how you know me now. Most of the people I have met since 1998, when I left Israel after 7 years of living here, likely think of me as a passive, somewhat liberal person. Certainly no one would think of me as a political activist. No one who has known me only post 1998 could imagine me, standing  on a hill opposite the Knesset, or standing in the street near the Prime Minister’s house in Jerusalem, surrounded by like minded people, demonstrating against something we believed would ruin us.

When I arrived in Israel at the tender age of 17, I had minimal knowledge of modern Israeli history beyond the basics. Ottoman Empire. British Mandate. 1948. 1967. 1973. Lebanon War. Gulf War. I came here eager to learn Hebrew, not history,  but history classes were mandated as part of the Mechina (preparatory) programme for overseas students at Hebrew University, so I chose classes I thought would be easy. Within a few months I had learned so much more about this  country we Jews call home.

Towards the very end of my first year there were elections. I remember staying up until the early hours of the morning as the results came in, watching in disbelief with a small group of friends, as it became apparent that a coalition would be formed headed by Yitzhak Rabin and his Labour party. This government brought us the Oslo Accords.

In the weeks leading up to the signing of these accords I spent my every spare moment demonstrating against them. Every night we stood in large groups, for hours, protesting that there would be no peace. How can there be peace with people who don’t recognize our right to exist? How  can there be peace with people who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”?

Our voices weren’t heard. The accords were signed. The Prime Minister of our Jewish country shook hands with the leader of a terrorist organization, a man with so much Jewish and Israeli blood on his hands, that no amount of bleach could clean them. What has Oslo brought us? Only more  violence, more hatred, more senseless murders, suicide bombings on our buses, in our malls, hotels. More recently, since the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip in 2005, rockets hitting deep into Israeli territory, tunnels allowing terrorists to infiltrate into Israel, and since earlier this year, Molotov cocktails attached to kites and balloons.

Somewhere along the way, between September 1993 and October 1998 I stopped fighting. I gave up. I became passive. What’s the point in constantly arguing when no one is listening? Why waste my time, my breath when all around me there is terror. So I just stopped. I moved away. It took me 16 long years to find my way back. I remember watching from far away the protests before the disengagement from Gaza. I cried while watching Jewish soldiers forcibly evict Jewish people from their homes. And I wondered “why are they bothering to resist? Their voice will never be heard. It’s not worth it. Give up”

I barely knew Ari Fuld z”l. I  met him a couple of times when he came to speak in Boca when we still lived there. I ran into him a few times since we moved back to Israel. We chatted on Facebook at length, about 5 years ago when he was considering a trip to the UK to fundraise for Standing Together, and I was trying to get him some connections in London. I would see Ari post on Facebook and wonder “does he never sleep?!” because on the same day he would post photos of the sunrise in Efrat, and then videos from the Kotel in Jerusalem in the middle of the night. His video messages were so passionate and full of energy, you couldn’t help but smile, and I just wished for a little bit of that energy. I can’t quite put into words the shock I felt Sunday when I first heard that it was Ari who was stabbed in the Gush. I got a message on whatsApp from a friend, but it wasn’t until I actually heard his name on the news an hour later that I began to process.

Like so many others, I have spent this week grieving, praying on Yom Kippur perhaps with more fervor, but also with more questioning (why? why do You always take the best ones?). At the end of Yom  Kippur, when we sang “Next Year in a rebuilt Jerusalem” I meant it more than ever before. I’ve also spent this week thinking about what I can do. I can share Ari’s messages, I can post on social media, I can donate to the fund set up in his memory. But I want to do more.

Something inside me has been reactivated. The me from 25 years ago is fighting her way out from deep within. I no longer want to be regarded as passive. I don’t know how to start, but I’m going to find a way. Last night I went to the Kotel. It was late, it was easy to get up to the old wall and touch the stones as I davened, and from the angle I looked up, it was like there was nothing on top, just an empty space waiting for the Beit haMikdash to be rebuilt. May it be Your will, God, that the Temple is rebuilt soon, and that Mashiach comes to redeem us all.

Empty space on Har HaBayit just waiting for the 3rd Temple to be built

Ben Gamla, definitely an excellent option

It’s been a while since my blog related to schools. I’ve just come home from a morning spent at Ben Gamla Charter School in Plantation. The event was “Mother’s Day”, and given the proximity of Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), the performances were what the children did for their fellow students on Tuesday, which was actually Yom Ha’Atzmaut.

I left the school feeling so incredibly happy and proud, that I just had to share on my blog.

As the Principal of the elementary school, Mrs. Toni Weissberg, put it so eloquently, Ben Gamla is a charter school, and the charter of the school is not only Hebrew language, but also the culture and history of Israel. The younger children danced carefully choreographed dances to Israeli music (1st grade below)

but the older grades went above and beyond in this show. Fifth grade did an incredible “Daglanut” show – performed twice this morning, once before each grouping of class shows – a traditional dance with the Israeli flags. I love Daglanut, my heart always fills with enormous pride for Israel when I watch it, and this year was no different, seeing the smiles on these kids’ faces as they showed respect to the Israeli flag, culminating in a 66 for the 66th birthday of the State of Israel, using the flags.

Third grade read historical poems in Hebrew, and translated them to English, that talked about the land of Israel, and how she grows annually – by population and by forests.

Fourth grade reenacted the United Nations vote in November of 1947, that resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel. This was followed by “David Ben-Gurion” declaring the State of Israel in 1948, at which point the entire fourth grade broke into celebratory Hora dancing on the stage.

Credit for the choreography goes to the Hebrew teachers at Ben Gamla, and to the wonderful Bnot Sherut – National Service Girls – who come to serve a second year of National Service here and work in schools. But the performance could not have been so spectacular if the children hadn’t taken so much pride in what they did.

Public school is not for everyone, that much is true. And a Hebrew language charter school can never take the place of a true yeshiva education. However, a Hebrew language charter school can absolutely educate children to have a love of Israel and of Zionism, as something completely apart from religion, and this is no bad thing. Remember, a large proportion of children at Ben Gamla in Plantation are not Jewish, and now they too are learning about Israel, about Israeli culture and about Israeli history. With the BDS movement, and anti-Israel sentiment on the rise, this can only be positive.

We have had a good year at Ben Gamla, it’s a choice I’m glad we made.

I want to wish Mrs. Weissberg a wonderful retirement, and thank her for all the wonderful things she has done for the school in the time she has been there. I know you will be missed!

I also want to thank all my children’s teachers, because they have learned so much this year, and that is down to you.

And thank you to the B’not Sherut – Yael, Dikla, Maya & the other Yael – my kids love you, and we look forward to seeing all of you in Israel.

Shabbat Shalom