Sometimes I am really my parents’ child

Get yourselves ready, this one is going to be cheesy…

Holocaust Memorial Day / Yom HaShoah was last Monday. Hard to put into words my feelings on the day. A very different experience to be here vs. in the States – I usually acknowledge when the day rolls around, especially as it falls around my grandmother’s birthday (she would have been 97 on April 4th) and the two days go hand-in-hand for me, but beyond that I don’t know if I find myself thinking about the Holocaust any more on this one day out of the year over any other. I’m told that there were things going on at home to mark the day this year, but to be honest, I haven’t really noticed in the past.

Twas interesting being in Israel on this day. These two weeks contain several holidays which I expected to all sort of be the same, but they’ve each been very unique, perhaps because of how different of a connection the country as a whole has to each day.

There’s a siren that goes off throughout the country, we were told, on Sunday night at 8pm and then again on Monday morning at 10am, so on Sunday night Alex, Paul, and I went out to one of the main roads near our apartment at about 7:45, staked out a good spot on a hill that overlooks where the road meets the highway so lots of cars are constantly whizzing through. We were told that when this siren goes off, everyone in the country stops whatever they’re doing, wherever they are, and has a moment of silence.

At 7:55 we got ready…

At 7:57 I said, “I feel like I’m waiting for the countdown on New Year’s Eve…”

At 7:59 we peeled our ears (is that an expression? I’m thinking not, but let’s pretend for the moment that it is)…

At 8:00 we were waiting…

At 8:02 we waited some more…

At 8:06 we wondered if there would actually be a siren on this night…

At 8:09 we suggested that maybe it was just late, as things in Israel are rarely on time.

At 8:15 we decided that there was probably some misinformation given to us and we headed back home.

The next morning I woke up around 9:40 (shut up, it can be a hard schedule and coming off of a year+ working only in the evenings, I’d say I’m doing well just managing to get up at 9am) and threw on some jeans, a t-shirt, and shoes, grabbed my cameras (yes, cameras plural) and ran out the door, as it seemed that no one else was awake (at 9am, I’m actually one of the more early risers in my apartment). (too many parentheses!)

I was just reaching the little hill that we had been on the night before, walking along a busy street and heading towards this intersection of road and highway, glancing at my watch every couple of minutes to check the time – 9:52…9:56…9:59 – watching the cars driving past me. I looked down at the ground to watch where I was stepping – Israelis have about as much interest in picking up dog shit as WaHi residents, which is to say, very little – when suddenly it started, this low, wailing siren that grew to a steady, unobtrusive pitch.

I looked up, and the whole world had gone still. In that one split second that I was looking at the ground, everyone had stopped their cars and gotten out, stood with their heads bowed by the open doors. I scrambled up on the hill that was right beside me and snapped a couple of pictures with my small camera – had wanted to take more with my larger camera, but once in the m0ment I realized how disruptive that would have been, and even the relative quiet of my little digital camera seemed harsh in the complete, utter silence of the moment.

It was truly one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. Not a single car or person moved, each stopped exactly in place, as if someone had frozen the cars right in the midst of driving. It was a breezy day and trees rustled noisily, dogs barked in a yard just behind me, the traffic lights continued to change from red to green to yellow to red, and not a single person moved or spoke for a full minute. You could feel the impact of this moment as the world just continued on but every single person paused.

A bus was stopped just in front of me and the people didn’t all get off, but I could see through the windows that they were all standing up from their seats. A group of children stood quietly with their teachers beside me. The siren continued to sound. I took a few seconds of video of nothing but the trees moving.

I don’t know exactly what I thought about during that moment. I thought about Oma and Opa. I thought about how amazing it is to see an entire country collectively stop all at once. I thought about why we do things like this, have these day to commemorate events in history now 60+ years past, and how for these kids beside me it’s probably only just entering into their consciousness what happened 60 years ago. I thought about how many victims of the Holocaust have no graves to mark their deaths or family members to remember them, and how important it is, though it feels small, to stop and think about them – almost like paying respect at a headstone in a cemetery.

And that’s not true really, to say it feels small – it was one moment before the day continued on relatively as normal, but it actually felt huge – think of those first few days after 9/11, how you’d walk through Times Square and it was just silent and that’s sort of what it was like, though a bit different because it wasn’t unintentional, silence out of grief, but planned, done together, and out of remembrance.

The rest of the day was relatively normal, though I suspect part of that is due to us not having a TV or a radio – I’m told that every program on this day was devoted to Holocaust remembrance – and being a bit cut off from the rest of the country in that sense. Which is maybe part of why the siren felt so huge to me; it was something you could really feel and grasp, no matter where you were or how much access you had to the news.

We had an interesting speaker come for a discussion with our group in the afternoon, Dr. Edward Rettig, who is an American-born Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem, the acting director (according to his card) of the American Jewish Committee. He spoke quite a bit on the relationship between the Holocaust and it’s place in our collective memory, and current conflicts between Israel and other nations. I didn’t agree with everything he said – he spoke a lot about the use of violence and force in protecting ourselves, which made me hedge a bit as I listened – but it was fascinating to hear this perspective from someone who is obviously very intelligent and thoughtful, well spoken (mostly – he got off on the occasional tangent, but managed to bring it back around), yet a slightly different point of view from my own. He spoke quite a bit about the last Intifada and his son’s army service and I got a great sense of how his experience living through that has influenced his perspective – his experiences which are so different from my own living here, and even my own living in post-9/11 New York. I tend to be much more pacifist in my thinking and sensibilities towards world and political conflicts, and while I recognize that non-violent action isn’t always (or perhaps, isn’t often) realistic, I still firmly believe that nothing in the world is ever solved through war and violence alone, nothing is ever solved without discussion and understanding. Which is not to say that Dr. Rettig was telling us that bombs and guns alone will hold Israel’s place in the world, but he touched several times on the necessity of violence in Israel’s defense, which is true, but… something. Hard to articulate. Or maybe it’s just hard for me to acknowledge that violence can be a necessary part of maintaining order in this part of the world, when I want so much to believe that it’s through understanding one another that we’ll achieve peace (hippie moment). Do you ever have those moments in your life, or those beliefs in your life that you stand by so firmly at one point and feel so strongly about, but years later look back on and realize that you’ve come to feel very differently about them? As in, ideas you had as a crazy, emotional teenager that you may still believe in as a 25-year-old, but not in the same way or with the same fervency – I wonder if this will be one of those. So many things throughout your life can influence your ideas and beliefs; I wonder how living here will influence mine.

And now I’ve gone off on a tangent.

Anyway, an interesting discussion that I wish could have gone on a bit longer.

So that was Yom HaShoah.

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On Tuesday evening we went to Nalaga’at Theater, home to the only theater company in the world made up entirely of blind/deaf actors – as in, each actor is both blind and deaf. First we went to Cafe Kapish, one of two eateries attached to the theater, which is staffed entirely by deaf waiters and waitresses. There have been several moments in my life that I have seriously wanted to throttle myself for not having a camera during, and this was one – the waitstaff teaches you a bit of sign language at the end of the meal, and watching everyone practice it was one of the highlights of my evening. The food was excellent and I loved watching the waitstaff talk to each other, saying these normal restaurant things that I’ve said out loud a million times, all through sign language.

The show itself is a bit hard to describe – not like a typical play or musical, but more snapshots of the thoughts and feelings and dreams of each of the actors, pieces of their lives before and after losing these two senses. I find myself totally fascinated by this, by people who live without these two senses most important for communication, and how they learn to build new ways of connection and communication through touch. How frightening and perhaps hopeless that must feel, to be without both sight and hearing – how does someone live through that?

The director of the theater explained afterward that she had started this group simply as a theater class for a group of blind/deaf people and ten (fifteen? I can’t remember) years later she’s still here working with them and has built the group into an acting troupe.

The aspect that was the most striking to me, though, is that all of the actors are Jewish, Arab, Christian – not  just Jewish Israelis, but people from every community in Israel, which is amazing to see. It’s another one of those instances when you realize how small the differences between you are, how there’s so much more that unifies than divides you (hippie moment #2). It made me think about how these differences between us are significant – religion, belief, ideas on how the world should be run and how we exist within the world – but how we let them become literally larger than life, let them eclipse everything that we have in common, even right down to the simple fact that we’re all human. The show really helps remind you that there are things bigger than our differences – how we communicate, how we connect to each other as people rather than just as Jews, as Arabs, as Christians, as secular, etc, how we live our lives through our personal boundaries and hardships.

It made me think of Holland House, one of the volunteer placements Tikkun Olam participants can work at, which is a Jewish and Arab run center for young children (0-3 years) with various physical and mental disabilities. The first time I went there, taking a tour with our group, I got a bit choked up upon seeing the teachers – some Arab, some Jewish – working with the kids, and how dedicated and caring they were towards each of the children; how the religion and background of the kids wasn’t any kind of factor in the care given, and everyone was just working together to care for and educate them. It was amazing to see, and amazing to think about how these people really put everything else aside for something more important, for problems more immediate than racial or religious differences.

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Monday was Fallen Soldier Memorial Day / Yom HaZikaron, which began Sunday evening with a siren – the same as on Yom HaShoah – at 8pm and a huge memorial service in Rabin Square in the center of town. There were memorials all over the city Sunday evening and into Monday, but this was the largest, most centralized.

Some of the crowd at Rabin Square

Memorial Day here is a very, very different thing than in the U.S. It’s taken very seriously, considered not a day to relax and BBQ, go to the beach, as it is in the States, but rather a very solemn day during which many shops, bars, restaurants are closed, the streets are calm and quiet, no one plays loud music or chatters above low tones. Even the shop owners below our apartment, who wake me up each and every morning around 7am with their raucous conversation, were silent on Monday.

Anyway, Spenser and I went to the ceremony at Rabin Square, along with several thousand others. Everything was in Hebrew, so I couldn’t understand most of it, but it was pretty straightforward – someone came up to speak a few words, then a musician would play, then more words, than another singer, then more words, then there would be a video clip of a family speaking about their lost loved one, which was very sad to watch. They had several of them interspersed throughout the ceremony, and again, I couldn’t understand the specifics of what they were saying, but it was very emotional nonetheless to see mothers and fathers choking back tears as they spoke of their children, seeing how young some of them were when they died.

One thing that really struck me during all of this is just how prevalent war and conflict and the threat of death has been in this country since it’s birth – while the US has specific generations that have lost large portions of the population to war, for Israel it’s every generation – every family, every person has some relationship with conflicts that have gone on in some form or another for 60+ years. These videos highlighted soldiers killed at all different times in the past several decades – one in 1988, one in 2005, another in 1968, one in 1977, another just a few months ago – and it made me think about just how much it’s been a part of life and the culture here for so long. Again I feel I’m doing a terrible job putting my thoughts into words, but essentially it really drove home how different this culture, this holiday, the general regard for the military is here vs. the U.S. I felt at times like an outsider – people wept openly all around me while I tried to make sense of my thoughts and tried to take things in. I thought about Daniel and tried to relate to that kind of concern for a family member in the military, but even that couldn’t quite bridge the connection for me. It felt a bit like being at a funeral for someone I didn’t know.

It’s interesting, the different relationships the people here have with each of these holidays, vs. my own relationships with these holidays. Yom HaShoah was very significant to me, and I really felt the impact of it even as the rest of the world seemed to go on fairly as normal. Memorial Day, however, I felt less of a connection to despite how much more all-consuming this day felt. But it’s much more prevalent in their lives at this point, the IDF and loss of friends, the fear of losing friends, whereas I have no real personal connection to the IDF short of empathy for families of soldiers, but feel more of a relationship to events of the Holocaust.

If that makes any sense. Christ, I’m rambly today. This post needs more pictures.

This is Ben, for those who haven't met him. He's not in Israel (unfortunately).

Anyway, the whole ceremony was really nice and very sad to watch. With all of the musicians and singers and so many spectators it felt like a huge outdoor concert, except totally quiet, as the mood was very somber.

The next day we had a class which focused on grief and different ways of grieving, and remembrance within the context of Israeli culture, which I found really interesting. Again it was something that I wish it could have gone on longer – we read Israeli poems and songs from different time periods and by authors with very different perspectives and discussed what each one was trying to convey and how they relate to this day and the loss of soldiers. There was a really interesting contrast between poems about the loss of soldiers and sacrifice for one’s country and the greater good, and poems which focused more on personal loss and lives interrupted.

Next we split into groups to go to Memorial Day ceremonies at different schools. The one I went to was… interesting. I don’t volunteer at any schools, as most of the other group participants do, s0 it was great to see what this school in particular was like. Two of my roommates volunteer there so it was nice to put an image to the place they’ve talked about so often and see some of the kids they work with.

However, as with many young, pre-teen kids, they seemed to have a lot of trouble focusing on what was going on, and I felt a lot of disconnect between them and the solemnity of the day. It was a bit hard for me to understand, because like I said, everyone here has a connection to this day and we were told beforehand to be very respectful and understanding at these memorials, as they are taken very seriously and many of the schools have lost former students, many of the current students have family members currently in the military or have lost brothers and sisters already – and then the whole time at ours the kids were wandering around, talking, fighting, staring at me (they looked about 12 years old and I think they don’t see girls that often), talking some more, being shushed and reprimanded by their teachers. I wish they’d been a bit more respectful themselves, but then I really shouldn’t expect adolescent kids to quiet down and focus just for my own interests, so c’est la vie (which, sidebar, suddenly made me think of this really crappy pop song that I heard the other night that is now in my head and must be downloaded immediately – say you will, say you won’t, say you’ll do what I don’t, say you’re true, say to me, C’est la vie! B*Witched, anyone?), it was a very interesting day nonetheless.

And good lord, I need to learn to be less long-winded – shorter winded? – these things just go on for freaking ever. I think it’s time for another picture.

Here's a picture of Nick cheering after winning Apples to Apples

Tuesday was Independence Day, ushered in by tons of partying after sundown on Monday night. We went to Florentine, one of the neighborhoods near our own and where we often end up on nights out. The crowd was a bit odd – all seemed to be either 16 – 19 years old or 55 – 65 years old. But fun anyway, even though I think we stayed in one spot on the street for about three hours.

Me, Mark, Pauly

Spenser, Josh (my fellow Gingie), another Rachel, me, Becky, Alex

I think there were more people here on Monday night than on Purim, which I would not have though possible before

On Tuesday we took a stab at celebrating Independence Day like the locals do and BBQed on our roof (Independence Day here is pretty similar to Independence Day in the US, all parties and music and BBQs and fireworks, which makes it all the more interesting that it comes on the heels of Memorial Day), but everyone was a little sluggish (not hungover, of course, not at all) so it was a nice, laid back meal out on the roof and that was about all we did for the day.

Now I'm just starting to enjoy putting random pictures in here. Here, have one of me, Barbara, and Elmo.

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Our apartment has become a house of refugees.

So there’s this country off in the middle of nowhere, pretty unassuming, out of the way… or so we thought, before the Eayyyjjafvjjjjaeallllajiiockckkuuull (or some such) volcano errupted.

Pauly, Alex’s boyfriend, came to visit us all from London about sixty-seven years ago for what was supposed to be a ten-day trip.

In actuality, he’s now entering day seventeen of his ten day trip. And it honestly feels like he’s been here for years (even though we haven’t even been here that long). He is soon going to head to the UN offices to apply for refugee status, maybe call the Migrant Worker’s Hotline and see about getting hooked up with a job. He has been paying us rent in the form of rugelach and good conversation, but another week and he may qualify for residency.

It started innocuously enough: Paul was supposed to leave for London on Thursday evening. Thursday morning I woke up, wandered into the kitchen and ran into Paul with this stumbling sort of grin on his face as he said, “I may be here a bit longer – there’s been a volcano eruption in Iceland and all the airports in England are closed.”

I blinked at him.

“…What?”

He repeated himself and I broke into a grin, because much as I realize he has an actual life to go home to and a pretty serious job that requires his actual presence on the continent, I’ve really enjoyed having him here and was happy that we’d all have him around for a few more days. The earliest flight he could get re-booked on was for Sunday, so it looked like he had the weekend, most of which was taken up by lesson planning (teacher, religious studies, and don’t even get me started on how brilliant it is that religious studies is a required course throughout all schools, public or private, in the UK) – one sad irony of the whole situation is that he purposely left all of his work at home because he didn’t want to worry about it while on vacation, and then he ended up totally frustrated at having to do all of this work without any of his materials. Maybe that’s not actually ironic, maybe that’s just the Alanis Morissette definition of ironic. Either way, pretty annoying for him, and I think about the only thing during the weekend that really bugged him.

He kept a very upbeat attitude about the whole thing. “I’m stuck in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend by the beach. There are far worse places to be stuck for a few days.”

Then Sunday rolled around, and the volcano kept spewing ash. Sunday flight: canceled.

We got more European refugees – two friends of Anya’s coming off of a week’s vacation in Eilat were headed off on their way back to St. Petersberg by the volcano. They took up residence in the upstairs. We thought about opening a hostel and starting our own volunteer place, where soon other MASA programs would send participants to work with foreign refugees.

Last night when I was writing this I had this long, ridiculous paragraph about all the different groups of people that we were supposedly housing that was totally fictional and random so I stuck this picture of fireworks in just because. This morning I nixed the whole paragraph, but I like this picture, so it's staying put. Enjoy!

In reality, we did have three people – Pauly and Anya’s two friends – stuck with us for several days. Every day Paul and Alex got up, checked the news, checked the weather, and every day it just got more and more bleak. More airports around Europe closed. We laughed at the insanity of it all. Paul alternated between serene and stressed, happy to still be on holiday with his girlfriend but concerned about missing necessary classtime with his students.

Day 12 of a 10 day trip: We went to the beach.

Day 14 of a 10 day trip: We went to Budda Burger.

Day 15 of a 10 day trip: We partied in Florentine. “I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Paul exclaimed several times, arms spread open and eyes dazed. “I’m supposed to be in class right now and I’m at a street party in the middle of Tel Aviv!”

Day 16 of a 10 day trip: The Russians had sushi. We had BBQ. Airspace over Europe seemed to clear up a bit. Then there was threat of another volcano eruption. Pauly started gathering paperwork for his upcoming immigration to Israel.

Finally today things started to clear up, and here’s where the real twist comes: Alex has a wedding back in London to attend this weekend, so she’d had a flight for tonight already booked weeks ago. The next flight Paul was able to get on is on Friday. So Alex had to leave tonight for London, while Paul is with us for another two days. The Russians left us this morning, and are now finally home. The whole thing has been one of the oddest, most absurd situations. But I quite enjoy having Pauly around, so it’s been fun (for us more so than him, I suspect, though he’s stayed in very good humor, all things considered).

Pauly through a water bottle. I was going to put up a picture of him in Florentine from Monday night, but that seemed weird.

And now, having updated you all on the past week or so of life here, I’m off to bed. Or maybe to watch a movie, I haven’t decided yet. But either way, RVR out.

*I have very limited space on my computer’s harddrive, so I only have a random handful of pictures pre-February, such as Game Night at the Poelle’s and pictures of my pets at home. Just wanted to let y’all know.

Here, have one more: Jen eating sushi.