In the last 2 chepters , I wrote about Ettie ( I can't promise its her real name) , an Israeli and a Jewish girl , who lived with a Norwegian man who had come to Israel to help the Palestinians . She joined my college and the department of English , and so , I shared with her quite a few courses and was very disturbed by her views and things she said.
It all happened through a dramatic period in Israel's history , the time before and after the "disengagement" .
What bothered me a lot about this person was something she said offhand , but heart my feelings deeply- she basically thought , that to be a Jew means to bear the cross , to suffer .
What was more bothering was that it seemed that she had searched for a "goy" to marry - that is to say , she didn't run into a person on the street , fell in love and it happened so that he was not Jewish. She was looking for someone not-Jewish to begin with, to help her in her escape from her Jewish-Israeli identety. G-d is merciful ,and so he found her what her heart had desired - your "ultimate Goy" in a nice shiny rap.
Now , I am going to talk a little bit about the notion "hate" (with the sincere hope I'm not repeating myself): According to the holy book of Tora /
hate\ is not what you think-it's not to wish for someones demise ,and to haunt him - the definitions of the Tora are much more subtle: The Tora gives an example of a person who refrains from speaking to someone close to him for 3 days ,as an action of hate. In other words
hate is indifference. Hate is about being emotionally disengaged from the other. I believe what had enabled the killing of 6 million Jews was exactly that. Most people didn't participate in the killing - they simply didn't care. I felt the same thing about Ettie - visiting Yad va shem was a nice way to feel that you are a moral caring person , but Ettie was aiming to care for the Jewish people like a Goy would care , from a distance . Shading a warm tear would be nice as long as safely in her pocket lay the long wished forighn passport ,and she didn't want a Marrocan one.
Here are some of the things she said ; "It's not like I hate Jews , but I think circumcision is immoral " (In other words 97% of the Jewish people , including her forefathers are, were immoral people) , " I love Israel , its the religious people that I can't stand" , " Israel is a primitive country because shops don't operate on Saturday " ...
" Israelis are rude people " and all sorts of other jams that revealed Etties feelings toward her people and her country.
And so , I sat and thought , what made an Israeli turn like this against her own people ,and my conclusion was , , that this self -hatred stemmed in a Topsy turvy way as an emotional result to the holocaust - or rather , the way the holocaust was taught in Israeli schools in the late 70's -early 90's . The basic massage was that a horrifying mass murder had happened to us , the Jewish people and....that's that.So what our teachers basically said was , " It's an ugly world ,and you need to survive in it ". Isn't assimilation and looking for a better place on the globe , a logical conclusion? why , that's exactly what Ettie did ,and she was about to educate Jewish children to follow her ways , celebrate christmass and little by little become a non-Jew . Forget about all the Jewish laws , or better -mock them .
and so I decided that I will teach the children of Israel , how sweet it is to be a Jew , how pleasurable even in the times of the holocaust ,and that's how I wrote my first stroy
" In the Darkness before Dawn " , which I taught in a few schools .
and here it is for you to read :-)
In the darkness before
dawn
Nira
Eisenstadt
English Translation:
Yonatan Silver
Aunt Rachel is a woman with a
friendly disposition, who is over sixty years old. She has a charming husband,
five children and a few grandchildren. She enjoys smoking and cleaning and
polishing her home until the floors shine with a special gleam; and even the
telephone receiver sparkles.
But this is not what I want to
write about. I want to tell you about the start of Aunt Rachel's life; which
was not as pleasant.
Aunt Rachel was born in the Giado
concentration camp in Libya. This was where the Germans interned the Jews from
Benghazi, intending to send them from there to extermination camps in Europe
(and, in some cases, they actually did - A small number of Lybian Jews ended in Treblinka and Bergen Belsen.)
Conditions in the camp were
difficult: hunger, disease and forced labor.
Grandmother Rivka, Aunt Rachel's
mother, arrived at the camp pregnant, together with her husband, grandpaYossef, and her other four children. There, under those harsh conditions, in the
darkness before dawn, she gave birth to her fifth baby – Rachel.
Into this reality of fear and
death, electric fences, and German soldiers, little Rachel was born.
That very night, shortly after
Rachel came into the world, a German soldier passed by her mother-Rivka and directed
his flashlight at her.
He flashed the light in her eyes,
shouted at her in his strange language that she couldn't understand, and scared
her.
Rivka was in a state of shock; and
the next morning she was no longer able to take care of the baby. She was ill,
exhausted, and feverish.
Rivka's father in law and husband (Grandpa Yossef) stood by her bed and read Psalms - but
who would take care of the baby? Rachel's older siblings, who were themselves
only children, took the little baby and searched for a solution. There was practically no food in the camp,
but they found someone able to suckle the child – a relative called Esther.
Esther had her own child, Chaim,
who was about a year old. He was still suckling, but was already able to talk,
and even to complain "I don't want that little one!" Despite his protestations,
goodhearted Esther willingly suckled the infant Rachel.
And don't imagine that this was a
simple matter: hunger in the camp was intense.
After about two weeks, Rachel's
mother had recovered. Everyone had read a lot of Psalms, and they had helped!
But she couldn't provide milk. So Esther continued to suckle Rachel; and
Rachel's siblings occasionally gave her wet pieces of cloth to suck on or stale
biscuits crushed in water. And on that Rachel lived and grew.
Finally, by the grace of God, the Jews
were liberated from Giado, and Rachel and her family were free.
After a while, the family
emigrated to Israel; and some years later Rachel married.
Who did she marry? Chaim, the baby
who was suckled together with her in the concentration camp.
To
this very day, now grandparents, they are a very happy, joyous couple – even
though the first time they met they didn't exactly hit it off.
