Part Seven  12.17.10  Friday

We started out on our journey to Yad VaShem before we even left the hotel. "Calendar and Memory: An Introduction to the place of the Holocaust in Israeli Consciousness".  It was a riveting presentation about the emotional and philosophical shift of how Israelis thought about Holocaust survivors, from victimhood to accuser to hero. 

The speaker was an educator, Rachel Korazim, an Israeli woman  born on a Kibbutz after WW2.  Her mother was from Budapest, and had managed to survive the war.   I should write more about her illuminating discussion – it gave me fresh insight into post WW2 Jewish thinking about the Holocaust and how could God have let it happen. And about what an engaging storyteller she was.  Instead,  I’ll tell you what happened:

 

As Rachel was talking, I was sitting there, listening and then watching very intently. The more she spoke, the more animated and expressive she was, the more I began to realize she looked very much like my mother. My mom was born in 1936,  in Brooklyn.  Rachel was born after the war, on a kibbutz.   They looked like they could have been sisters, or cousins.  

 

And that was my "Aha! I’m in Israel, now I get it" moment. I’ve been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC.   I was struck by the pre-war photos, the familiarity of the faces in those photos.  The pictures that show what each person really looked like, before the horrors of the war, before they disappeared.  Those people look familiar.  They look like people I know, or could know. 

 

But this woman who was speaking to me is alive, she is living in Israel.  Looking so like the face I haven’t seen in almost 20 years.  I’m here, in a country where Jewish people came from many different places, but ultimately from the same place…  Right.  Here.

 

My "Aha, I’m in Israel" moment wasn’t at the Wall, although I get that, too.   (personally, in a very Jane way, I was a more than a little miffed at having to shove off to the side, to the women’s section.  I knew ahead of time, but was still cranky about it.)

 

It almost was, but then it wasn’t,  at a scenic overlook, where our tour bus stopped, and I took in the big view, the hills, the city of Jerusalem.  The hills that generation after generation of Jews wanted to return to.  I also get that, but the view wasn’t it either.   

 

My moment was looking into the face of this woman who looked so much like my mother.   Did I cry for my mother,  or for the realization of where I was,  or for myself?  For each.

We left soon after for Har Hazikaron, the Mountain of Remembrance.  This is where Yad Vashem is located – Israel’s main Holocaust museum and education center.    I was already a mess, how would I get through the museum?  

 

There is too much to say, so much that has been said, more eloquently and knowledgeably, about Yad VaShem – it’s not the purpose of this post.  We had a frustrating time restriction, so I tried to focus less on historical facts, more on the video testimonies, the photos, the stories of individual people who survived or died in the Holocaust.   One woman from my group asked if I had relatives who’d been in the Holocaust.  Since both sets of my grandparents were born here in the US, and their parents came to the US at fairly early ages, any relatives who still remained  in Europe at that time were fairly distant ones.   A name,  Isabella Leitner came to mind for the first time in years.  Isabella was a child when she and her sisters were taken to Auschwitz.  She escaped during a forced march.  She wrote a book (one of several), called Fragments of Isabella, that was considered for a Pulitzer.  I received a signed copy of that for my Bat Mitzvah.   I hadn’t thought of her in a long time.

  

I somberly and gingerly continued on my way through the museum.  Time was almost up, I was just about half-way through.  Argh.  So I headed toward the end of the exhibits.  On the left, was a darkened, small, rectangular gallery with a stone bench in the center.  The walls looked like stone as well.  On the darkened walls were dimly lit letters, in Hebrew and English.  Every few moments, the letters brightened, to create illuminated quotations.  They would fade up, and after a moment, fade away.  I entered just as one was fading away, too late to read it.  The next one faded up.  I read it, and literally gasped at the name under the quote.  Isabella Leitner.  

 

I’m not making it up.  A shiver ran through me.  Another shock through my body.  I wanted to scream, "ok, I get it, I get it already! Enough!"  Again, with the "Aha!" moment.  The connection.  The history of a mostly scattered people who came back together.  

 

What are the chances that I’d walk into that room and these poetic words from a distant relative would flash up on the wall?   Out of all the words that shine up on the walls of that room in Yad VaShem,  all day, every day.  That of all the museum visitors, who walk in and out of that gallery all day long, it would flash up there at the moment I walked in?   There are no coincidences?   What else can I say?

 

I wish I could give you the quote verbatim – I’ve searched and searched online, and can’t find it.   I was so shaken at that moment,  that within a few more minutes, I couldn’t pull the her words out of my head properly.  It was something to the effect of, "we were not dead, but not really alive" or the reverse, "we were not really alive, but not yet dead"…  I wish I’d had the presence of mind to read it more carefully and mentally tuck it away.   

As if I weren’t already a mess from earlier that morning.  All day, you could have gently poked me with your little finger, and I’d have fallen over.  I’m not usually a cryer.  I was a weepy mess the rest of the afternoon.  

 

And then the pieces I’d fallen to,  got glued back together.  

Friday, early afternoon, before Shabbat.   We were at Machaneh Yehudah- the open air market, or shuk.  Jerusalem was in the weekly mad rush before everything comes to a screeching halt Friday evening.   Our bus stopped, we poured out, and I found myself in the middle of this cacophony of voices, scents, sights, and what felt like a gazillion racing Israelis.  Even for most secular Jews,  Friday night means dinner with family or friends.   Who need to shop for their Friday night meal.  The market was a surging swell of people rushing, shopping, preparing for Shabbat.  Bread, fruits and vegetables, fish and meat, sweets, pastries…  A kippah from The Kippah Man, or a silver menorah from the next stall.  I typically react in two ways in this sort of sensory saturation: I either plunge in and enjoy, or I get seriously overloaded.  I was a already a little overloaded, from my emotional morning.  So I plunged in.  Lost my friends (again, sigh) but knew where I had to be in an hour (or so?).  I tried to peruse the offerings, but this was not the time or place for a meandering shopping stroll.  What would ground me in the middle of this?  Shopping.  Bought a kippah for my self, one for a friend who just converted.  What else would ground me?  Food.  Specifically, lunch.  A delicious frozen fruit smoothie, and a spicy falafel pita, eaten while perched on a low stool in a small spot of warm sunshine.  Watching the chaos worked better for me than wading through it.  I was glad I’d plunged in, and I found my friends, too.  (just in time to buy a few ruggelah.  Yummm…)   

 

[note from Jane: if you follow the links in the above paragraph, they'll take you to some beautiful photographs of the open air market - can't speak to the prose in between,  but the pictures are so evocative.  Enjoy them  - but after you finish this post! ha...]

After a quick visit to the Wall, we reconvened at the hotel.  Washed up, dressed for Shabbat dinner.  But first a few of us headed out for a Kabbalat Shabbat service.  (This is the Friday night service that welcomes the Sabbath Bride, and ushers in the special time and space that is Shabbat).  We went to Beit Knesset Moreshet Yisrael, a Masorti-Conservative shul.  Still regaining myself, it was comforting to find my familiar siddur in the pews.  Rabbi Adam Frank (originally from Atlanta) gave us a very warm welcome.  Before the Shabbat service, the Mincha (weekday afternoon) service is recited.  The prayers I knew so well grounded me a little bit, after a very unsettling day.  I began to relax,  after the fast-paced (but amazing) week.  After this, comes Kabbalat Shabbat.  

 

The prayers for this service always sound special to me.  There is a mitzah, or commandment, called hiddur mitzah.  This means, take what you are obligated to do, and make it as special, or beautiful,  as you can.  For me, this means pretty Shabbat candlesticks, a nice challah or matzah cover,  a special chanukkiah (Chanukah menorah), or wearing something nice to shul on a Friday night. (A fun or pretty top over nicer jeans, ha ha).  You get it.  And the tunes to the prayers of the Kabbalat Shabbat service seem to fufill this mitzvah.    

 

The gorgeous voice of Ahuva Batz, the Schlichat Tzibur ("emissary of the congregation" in Hebrew; a cantor or chazzan) soared upward in an indescribable way.  Her voice was joyful, shimmering round and full.   Her prayers sounded so middle eastern to me; different than home. Ahuva Batz sounded just like a Shabbat service in Israel should sound.  It was new, it was familiar, it was beautiful.  I could breathe again, and the fragility of my day fell off of me, as I lifted up.  

 

Aha!  I’m in Israel, and I definitely get it.