When I go onto Facebook, at least half of the posts I see are about Israel, or about Occupied Palestine, depending on who is writing the post.
And many of them are so toxic it makes me want to throw up. Filled with hate for the other, overwhelmingly intellectually a wasteland, throwing phrases around, rejoicing in hurting those who disagree with them.
When I am asked to talk about Israel to different groups of people, the news dominates, which is reasonable, as I am supposed to know about what lies behind the headlines that we all consume. It has become our 21st century digital equivalent of our ‘Daily Bread’ (Did I just give away the fact that I went to a very Christian high school?).
The wonderful thing about writing for the Chronicle is that I am able to take you all on a journey to other parts of the reality which is Israel. A more nuanced journey, not an easy or escapist journey, but one which includes complexity, joy, celebration and pain. Let’s go for just one evening at the beginning of July, July 4th in fact.
We last ‘met’ in the Chronicle around the beginning of July, just days before the big party I had with family and friends to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my Aliyah to Israel. It was an extremely powerful day – by chance and not by design – as I arrived in Israel, my new home, on a day which coincided not only with the 200th Anniversary of the United States, but also the day that Israeli Commandos rescued the Jewish Hostages being held in Entebbe, Uganda, which was overwhelming and unforgettable.
Why did I leave on July 4th? Well, my birthday is July 2nd, and I wanted to celebrate with my maternal grandparents (my Resnick grandparents had passed away many years before, on Tisha B’Av in 1960 – but that is another story), because it was the 1970s, way before digital media allowed us to communicate easily with those left behind, and who knew when I would see them again? And, also, I needed to get out of South Africa as soon as possible after my birthday as I was just one hop, skip and a jump ahead of reporting for my military service in the SADF – and there was no way I was going to serve in the army of Apartheid.
What an extraordinary 48 hours the 3rd and 4th of July turned out to be. When I flew to Johannesburg on the 3rd, the hostages were still being held by the terrorists in Entebbe, and when I woke up to leave for my ElAl flight the next day, I heard to my great joy that the IDF had freed them.
I realised something when I decided to celebrate my Aliyah, and that is that I remain – with all the difficulties that life in Israel involves right now – delighted to have moved here, and really still wanted to celebrate the most crucial decision I ever made.
Besides wonderful food made by family and friends, there was of course content to the evening – and lots of it. We started with a Kabbalat Shabbat doing the blessings on the candles, blessing the children, kiddush and a Motzi. My wife Orly spoke, followed by her 94-year-old father who arrived in Israel as a 5-year-old boy from Vienna and eventually became the head of the Physics Department in Israel’s premier science university, the Technion. He had, as he always does, written a piece in rhyming couplets.
And then I spoke about my great love for this place, my great fears for this place and about the world of inclusivity and diversity I still long for and work for. I am not sure why, but I really wanted to end my speech with a song and, for some reason, the song I wanted to sing was actually the final verse of the traditional version of Birkat Hamazon, the Lithuanian tune of course. I knew I would cry when I began to sing, so I got my good friend, David, whose father was an Orthodox Lithuanian Rabbi in Cape Town, and who is a music teacher with a wonderful voice, to join me.
Join me:
נער היתי וגם זקנתי ולא ראיתי צדיק נעזב
Just one night. Just one family and some friends. In my only home. Israel.
