the boom and the cockroach

            Around ten o’clock, Hanna and I began to head down the narrow residential road towards the bus station on Ahuza, the main street in Ra’anana. The night air was warm, thick, and humid; trees and shrubs lined the street, quite unlike the barren, hot city of Be’er Sheva. We had yet to adjust, after moving from Be’er Sheva late Sunday night because of the rockets.

             Waahhhhh. The tzeva adom siren sounded, loud and blaring, and leaving Hanna and me frozen in the middle of the dark street.

            “Run,” I said to no one in particular; but we were already running, and there was nowhere to run. Following a group of new olim that appeared around our age, to the nearest apartment building, we banged and banged on the glass door. Nobody answered.

            Waahhhhh.

            “Behind,” someone ordered. We obeyed, and ran around the side of the apartment building. There was a dark space between two walls, about two feet wide. The six of us scurried inside.

Waahhhhh.

I sank to my knees, inhaling. This wasn’t the first time I had heard a tzeva adom siren and needed to run for shelter, but it was the first time I was caught outside and didn’t know where to go.

“She looks like she needs a cigarette,” one of the girls remarked, clearly unfazed by the situation. “Breathe, girl.”

The olim continued to chat coolly, casually for the next couple minutes.

“Wait for it,” another one of the girls whispered. “Wait for the boom.”

Less of a boom, it seemed more of a vague and dull thud in the sky, as the Iron Dome intercepted the rocket over the greater Tel Aviv area. It felt as though someone had smacked you across the face, but you weren’t quite sure where on the face. You had nevertheless reacted, and blinked.

“Better luck next time, suckers,” one of the girls commented cheerfully, as she crawled out of the crack. “Who’s ready to go out?”

Back at the absorption center in Ra’anana, a few of my friends and I sat in the lobby with more new olim, currently in ulpan before joining the army in the fall. Hanna and I had not ventured out again to catch the bus to Herzliya for our night shift on the ambulance. I watched a large cockroach skitter down the wall.

“Allo?” Sapir answered, as she picked up her phone. “Tomer?”

It was our shift coordinator, wondering where the hell we were. As per usual, life goes on in Israel without missing a beat, and accordingly, Israel’s ambulance service, Magen David Adom, as well.

An ambulance came by the absorption center to pick up Hanna and Sapir for the night shift. I stayed back; characteristic of my usual neuroticism, I had yet to recover from the siren catching us in the street. I sat in the lobby for four more hours; I tried to avoid thinking of Syrian long-range missiles and bombing Gaza. Instead, I talked to the future lone soldiers. Someone offered me a plum. I politely refused, and watched two cats fight over the cockroach.

Til next time.

return to ha'aretz

Today is Shabbat, and my activity on this holy day of rest has comprised of lying in my sweat-ridden bed, listening to a strange mishmash (مشمش, משמש, mishmish anyone?) of Lorde and Ofra Haza, and reading Jane Eyre. As the buses stop running on Shabbat, in combination with the 100-degree heat, I have ventured out of the apartment today only to take out the trash and eavesdrop on my neighbors.

The above picture was taken from my room in the Mercaz Klitah, or the Immigrant Absorption Center in Be’er Sheva, a part of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

My neighbors are all recent olim, new immigrants to Israel. Most are Yemeni Jews, straight out of Frederic Brenner’s Diaspora. The women wear black abayas, some niqabs, and sometimes complete with green Crocs – visible beginnings of Israeli assimilation. The men don black pants, white shirts, tzitzit, thick peyot, and black velvet kippot atop closely cropped hair.

From Frederic Brenner's Diaspora, a
Yemeni Jewish woman

The first day, leaving the apartment to buy bed sheets and groceries, I noticed an elderly Yemeni man perched on a chair, overlooking the balcony. His dark skin contrasted with his long, bright white beard, which reached his knees. Five hours later, my roommates and I returned; he was still perched on the chair in the same exact position.

“Smells like my grandmother’s kitchen,” sighed one of my roommates, the first night. Her family had immigrated to Israel from Tunisia, and later Canada. Indeed, wafts of rich spices envelop our apartment morning and night, and I am amazed; our kitchen consists of only a refrigerator and a plug-in stove. There is no air conditioning. Yet the women cook full, hot meals daily.

This morning I awoke to singing, chanting in addition to the usual aroma of Yemeni food. It seemed more like Hebrew than Arabic, but it was no Carlebach melody I had ever encountered. Climbing on the kitchen counter, I stuck my head out the window and looked down. I understood nothing; I had read that not only is Yemeni Hebrew different from Israeli Hebrew, but also they speak Judeo-Yemeni Arabic, dissimilar to traditional dialects of Yemeni Arabic.

Tomorrow, my roommates and I meet with the Be’er Sheva Magen David Adom station’s coordinator; we begin volunteering on the ambulances Monday.

Other observations about Be’er Sheva:

This city’s population is about 200,000, and has way more malls than a city should. It recently opened a massive, American-style mall, dryly referred to as Grand Kenyon. Grand Kenyon consists of five floors, a train that runs throughout the mall, and fake grass and fake rocks to adorn a fake front garden.

It’s too hot to do much outside in the summer. Yesterday I went to a park, with real grass and trees, that was completely empty except two Russian women. I asked them if they were normally more people in the winter; one of them responded that she didn’t care, because she had moved to the desert for a reason.

Until next time.

"it will catch you by the ear” – emanuel nashon

Our last full day, March 12, consisted of a day in Kreuzberg, a visit to the Pergamon Museum, and a hot chocolate with lactose-free milk at the Cutie Pie Café. Aze kef.

Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, encompasses many minorities and immigrants (particularly many Turks). Visiting the Kreuzberg Museum, Kivunim met with a representative of Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism who elucidated the mission to prevent and combat anti-Semitism in Berlin. She mentioned the intimidation teachers feel in addressing the increasingly relevant issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (with a growing number of 23,000 Palestinians in Berlin).

We then met with Emanuel Nashon, an Israeli diplomat and Deputy Chief of Mission for the Israeli Embassy to Germany. Speaking of the German-Israeli relationship, Nashon identified the Shoah, the Holocaust, as the most impactful in creating dialogue and emphasizing the significance of Germany to Israel historically. Though I disagree that the Holocaust should wholly define Jewish history and Israel’s inception, Nashon underscored that all of Berlin’s remnants reveal Germany’s dark history.

 

“The past is always here, even if you try to ignore it – it will catch you by the ear.”

– Nashon

Furthermore, Nashon stressed that German Holocaust education should not teach guilt but rather the responsibility of German history. Producing a dialogue between friends and equals, the education should accentuate “one foot in the past, and one foot in the future.”

Nashon mentioned the approximately 15,000 Israelis living in Berlin – the so-called “godless” place – that the Berlin mayor has referred to as “poor but sexy.”

After an outing to the Pergamon Museum, we concluded the day and week with a nice dinner (beetroot and horseradish soup) and a summary discussion at the Cutie Pie Café. The café proved as adorable with its name, with its mini desserts and fruit and frothy drinks.

We filled out an evaluation form for Germany Close Up, whose staff then instructed us to write what we experienced most meaningfully within the trip.

I struggled – I fortunately do not have any family members who endured the immediate atrocities of the Holocaust. I do not have a personal connection – simply as personal as collective Jewish memory. However, I connected to the Jewish historical aspect of Berlin as well as the modern city it now is. What a strange contradiction, I thought, experiencing both aspects of the city separately but meaningfully. How could I so fluidly detach the past from the present? Yet I never felt repulsed or guilty for enjoying my trip – maybe this proves a symptom of a generation too far removed from the Holocaust.

 

Either way, I feel that Berlin has proved my favorite experience and city, meaningfully and enjoyably, thus far. I connected so much to this new city so unexpectedly.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim – www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

"diversity destroyed" der berlinischen galerie

The following day, March 11, Kivunim braved the cold and hurried off the bus into the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A German official met with us to introduce German international policy and so forth. Extremely articulate and knowledgable, he spoke English probably better than a lot of us and even a few phrases of Hebrew.

Upon asked why Germany has failed to recognize Hezbollah (as its militant and political wings are virtually one) as a terrorist organization, he insisted that evidence "was needed," or otherwise "there could be a strong case against it." Bulgaria (in reference to the bombing of an Israeli tour bus last year) has failed, he said, to "[provide] the adequate evidence." If they succeeded in proving Hezbollah's role, "Germany would be willing to push for it."

On Germany's abstention on Palestinian observer status at the UN last year, our speaker began that "Germany is a staunch ally of Israel." However, he remarked, Germany wanted to act in accordance with other European Union countries as recommended upon. He implied if it were not for the EU block strategy, Germany would have voted against the UN bid. This, perhaps, also reflects Germany's post-war hesitance to exert too much influence within the sphere of the EU and the world. In addition, he emphasized Germany would have supported the 40-year anniversary memorial service at the 2012 Olympics.

The German-Israeli relationship proves patently unusual. Our speaker mentioned Germany "does not see its role as a party to condemn Israel" - in contrast with the rest of the world - only to occasionally "voice criticism" (for instance, that the Israeli settlement policy hinders the possibility of a two-state solution).

When pressed as to why the Hezbollah terror during the 2006 Second Lebanon War does not adequately serve as evidence, our speaker ambiguously mentioned that "previous actions [for reasons he did not know] were not being discussed." Moreover, the EU would only list the military section of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and they fear isolating the political wing of Hezbollah and thus preventing any further political interaction (with Hezbollah's stronghold in Lebanon).


Throughout the morning, I found his multiple references to examples of Germany's reluctance to exhibit individual nationalism intriguing. I didn't know that mentality still existed in Germany, with their nationalistic popularity in soccer and such.

That afternoon, we visited Der Berlinischen Galerie, a modern art museum in Kreuzberg. Holding a temporary exhibit, "Diversity Destroyed" depicted the degenerate art confiscated by the Nazis during World War II. The artists or their work violated the Nazis' "cultural policies" - "decadent" art, Jewish art or Jewish artists' work, anything associated with communism or expressionism, anything abstract, and so forth. Utilized as resistance, this art depicts a historical and political era.

Defined as anti-art, or DADA, these reactionary works illustrate mutilated, dehumanized, or even perverse images. The chaos and irrationality reflects the frustration and entropy (chemistry nostalgia) of the time. For example, a mannequin possessed a revolver as a shoulder as well as a fork and knife sticking out of its body. A lightbulb constituted its head and dentures modified other features of its body. Moreover, DADA artists intended this provocation and shock, depicted in a work such as this one, to stimulate self-reflection within society. Some of the DADA movement's most famous artists include Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield, and George Grosz.

"DADA ist die willentliche Zersetzung der bürgerlichen Begriffswelt.
DADA is the conscious disintegration of the bourgeois idea of concepts."

Between the Germany Ministry of Foreign Affairs and this art museum, today constituted one of my favorite days of the Central Europe trip.

I continue to India, but the blog posts will continue! Stay tuned.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Right: Robert Abbott at the Berlin Wall just to the right of Checkpoint Charlie (West Berlin, FRG May 1988).

On Sunday (March 10), we visited the remnants of the Berlin Wall. It persuaded me to think of the "walls" I've encountered, their purposes, and their implications: mechitzas, the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, the Western Wall, the Israeli security fence that runs along the West Bank, and so forth.

It also began to snow today, thickly and heavily without abate for the next two days. The snow, too, helped crystallize the living history of the Berlin Wall for me.

The cold weather had become so piercing we could not stand outside longer than a few minutes to listen to our guide. While I pulled wool socks and fleece socks over two other pairs of socks, my  RA Sarah managed to pile on four jackets over her fleece and sweatshirt. Germans, to me, however, seemed only mildly aware of the cold, with their noses cheerily pink because they hadn't buried their faces under an assortment of Moroccan scarves and multiple hoods like Kivunim kids. They walked and walked and biked around the city, while Kivunim kids would scramble on the bus after ten minutes in front of the Berlin Wall and swear to never step off the bus again. My Lithuanian-Russian ancestors had failed to prepare me for Central Europe.

We passed the second oldest cemetery in Berlin, which housed the grave of Abraham Geiger, another leader of Reform Judaism and another nod to the apparent failure and contradiction of Reform Judaism in its place of inception.

Our city bus tour concluded with a visit to the Old Royal Library. In May 1933, National Socialist students took out 20,000 books, stacked them, and burned them. In this main square, central to the city, a monument remains; a glass window in the cobblestone ground reveals a large, white room, filled with empty shelves and shelves and shelves. The monument bears an inscription that reads in English:

"Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." - Heinrich Heine

This "sunken library" succeeds in evoking the eerie feeling of memory of the past as well as immense loss. Heine's words, written over a hundred years before the Third Reich, proved anticipatorily allusive. His own works were burned by the Nazis.

Among the many stumbling stones we stumbled over throughout the day, Germany Close Up lead us to one in particular. Sonja, one of the Germany Close Up staff, had two Jewish family members deported from their home in Berlin: her maternal great-grandmother and her maternal grandmother. To the right, her great-grandmother's stumbling stone appears. Able to personify a name on one of these blocks on the ground, we lit a yarzheit candle and said kaddish for her. Her memory remains part of the fabric of Berlin, both the city itself and its history.

We then visited the German Jewish Museum, a place which I wrote in my journal that I felt I "was walking through a large piece of barbed wire." Designed by Daniel Liebeskind, the museum bore resemblance to Eisenmann's Holocaust memorial with its arbitrary zigzag construction, stone-gray interior, and open symbolism.

Below are two famous murals on the Berlin Wall that I really liked. The "Fraternal Kiss" sharply depicts the iconic embrace between Honecker and Brezhnev. The second illustrates the combined German and Israeli flag and the strength of their relationship. At the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the next day, a German official emphasized "Germany as a staunch ally of Israel" (more on his remarks, on the UN and EU and Hezbollah as an identified terrorist organization, next time).

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

"in berlin, by the wall..." lou reed

Mishegas has returned from its two-month respite. Iberia will continue after Europe/Turkey. Guten tag!

Our Central Europe/Turkey trip commenced with a week in Berlin, where Germany Close Up hosted and guided us. Partially funded by the government, Germany Close Up introduces American Jews to modern Germany and contemporary German Jewish life. The programming sought to delve into the contradictions of the German experience: Germany as the origin of progressive and Reform Judaism, as well as ultimately the site of destruction of Judaism; and Berlin as the city that cultivated racism and facilitated mass-murder, as well as the same, newly-built city that promotes openness and tolerance. Fewer than a hundred years since World War II ended, memory remains something inevitably that one struggles with.

Walking through pristine modern Berlin, one inescapably endures the burden and heaviness of the past. Monuments in residential areas, such as the one to the above right, commemorate a square in which German women protested their Jewish husbands' imminent deportations and ultimately won. Gold "stumbling stones" pervade the cobblestone sidewalks of Berlin to evoke the memory of the Jews who once worked, lived, and thrived throughout the city.

One of our first stops consisted of a Jewish cemetery, built in 1672 and destroyed in World War II, that houses the grave of Moses Mendelssohn, a philosopher and forefather of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) in the eighteenth century. Constructing the foundations of Reform Judaism, he sought to integrate Jews into secular society while maintaining their faith. This ultimately backfired, as only two of Mendelssohn's six children remained Jewish. In addition, his experiment of full integration and assimilation into German culture patently failed as evidenced by the cemetery itself: this cemetery harbored German Jews before their deportation to concentration camps.

After the initial walking tour of the city, we visited the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, where the senior officials of the Third Reich established the Final Solution to the Jewish question. The villa, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, now serves as a museum and memorial. Cobblestone walking paths, white sitting benches, and trimmed bushes that act as walls line the innocuous-looking Wannsee villa. Its stone-gray front and heavy metal gates present an aura of regality and poise. Yet even in the bitter winter, the foreboding element inside house contrasts starkly alongside the beauty of its backdrop, Lake Wannsee.  The weather reminded me of my days in Poland on my senior trip, where the coldness and biting wind enlivened, however morbidly, the experience.

Thereafter, we drove to Berlin-Grunewald Track 17, or Gleis 17, where the majority of deportations from October 1941 to February 1945 occurred. Most trains ventured to the Litzmannstadt and Warsaw ghettos until 1942, and afterwards directly to the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt extermination camps. The Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company, instituted this memorial in 1998.

Someone later expressed their anger and incomprehension of "living at the whim of another people."

Conversely, the following day introduced the theme of the moving forward, the future; we visited Lauder Beit Zion (another European Jewish school funded by Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress). Headed by Rabbi Josh Spinner (Baltimore-born and Toronto-raised), the school is part of a greater Jewish outreach organization that boasts a yeshiva and midrasha. Formally at 220,000, the number of speculated Jews in Germany has attained 300,000 (70 to 80 percent whom are Russian speakers).

He spoke of the growing Jewish community in Germany, his ambivalence towards his daughter rooting for German teams, and, upon request, modern anti-Semitism in Germany. Employing the recent circumcision scandal as an example, Rabbi Spinner cited the fundamental problem in German society as one of pluralism and tolerance, rather than anti-Semitism. Rabbi Spinner expressed that the anti-circumcision support stemmed from anti-religious and xenophobic sentiment, as Germany increasingly becomes a "melting pot" country.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, or the Field of Stelae, remains in the heart of Berlin. Designed by Peter Eisenman, the memorial constitutes 2,711 concrete slabs in grid-like pattern and initially bears resemblance to a cemetery. Walking down through the slabs, the "tombs" mount higher and higher and produce a sense of chaos and loss of control. Supposedly, Eisenman constructed the site with no symbolism in mind; he left his design open to interpretation. In contrast to Holocaust memorials all over the world I've seen, this one proved unusually provocative and effective to me.

Finally, before Shabbos preparations, we visited the German Historical Museum. This experience provided a history of World War II from a German perspective, and, additionally, our tour guide did not know we were Jewish, which afforded another unusual perspective (after nine years of Jewish education).

For Kabbalat Shabbat, we walked to the Joachimstaler Strasse Synagogue, an Orthodox shul with many young people and much ruach (spirit). Our dinner with them afterwards last five hours. The irony, of course, is that one of the most vivacious, effervescent shuls I've been to remains situated in the heart of the city that once promised the destruction of the Jews.

The following morning, we walked to the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue, a "liberal" (Reform in America) shul complete with a mixed choir and an organ. However, depicting another contradiction, the congregation appeared almost entirely elderly; in the birthplace of Reform Judaism, Reform Judaism no longer thrives.

After Shabbos, we watched "The Reader" with German students and had dinner with them.

The Central Europe/Turkey experience to progress.

Gute Nacht!

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard