Introducing Golan

Meet Golan. She's one of our 11th graders. She's the one with kind eyes and the good nature.

Golan is a photographer.

When they started high school, I was the one with the camera. "Paparazzi" they called me. They protested and ducked at the glint of the lens, but not so much anymore, 3 years on.

They are all every one beautiful even if they don't believe me, in the spring almost summer of life. I want to capture the season for them, bottle their memories in film and preserve them for the day they will be gold.



I discovered Golan's work by chance while posting mine. She has something, is something I will never be. She's unobtrusive, inconspicuous, observing, has an eye for opportunity – innate qualities no less essential than expensive gear.

She has an eye for color and beauty in the ordinary and mundane details we mortals see and overlook.

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She catches a pregnant moment, tells an entire story at shutter speed.

Golan is a photographer, but she has taken the leap from craft to art. She is able to translate what she sees into ideas, and to give ideas and feelings visual, almost tangible expression.

Like loneliness……….

……….and eternity.

Our11th graders went to Poland this last winter. I didn't go with them, but Golan says without words how it feels as a young modern Israeli to return to the shadow lands of the Holocaust.

She steps into the shoes of new arrivals on the platform in Auschwitz, and she, and you, experience just a shade of uncertainty and finality of the doomed.

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About a year ago I completed "kissing the mirror" and needed to give it visual expression. A cover. Golan agreed to help me. I outlined the idea and let her run with it.

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She came back with this....

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Good, lovely, but too 'sexy'.


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This one was perfect. It said it all. The innocent, egoistic kiss.

But I decided I want something more subtle.So I saved it for a back cover cameo,
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and took this one...

...and cut it to get this for the front cover:

 

Viola'! ("behold" in French)

Walla! ("Wow!" in Arabic)

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"kissing the mirror" has the honor of being Golan's first professional job. Not her last.

Golan's working, and going places. No surprise here; I knew it already last year. The day is coming soon and Golan will be introducing me.

I was one the of teachers at Golan Levyathan's high school.

Yes, that's right, the Golan Levyathan, the photographer.

And thanks to Jeni for lending her beauty to "kissing the mirror".

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You can catch more of Golan's work at:

http://golan-ha.deviantart.com/

Foam

Take me to the seashore,
The waves caress the sand.
Walk me nowhere with you,
In foam where sea meets land.

Footprints melt and mingle,
Dissolve beneath the waves.
And all there is is now,
Sea, foam, me, you, your face.

If our path disappears,
And you sift through my hand,
Then foam lasts forever,
Like our walk on the sand.

Footprints have been covered
By snow and by the waves.
The years have washed away,
And so we keep the days.

I am from the ocean,
And you are from the land,
Meet me on the seashore,
In the foam, on the sand.

Abraham's Children

Warning: I wrote a lot of stuff in this post about religious doctrine that’s real cynical, and it's more than likely to piss you off, so you're better off just reading one of my blogs about flowers and poetry.

The Apostle Paul once made an offhand comment in one of his epistles that since Abraham (the world's first convert to Judaism.) became a Jew by faith, so it figures that Christians are also Jews because they're believers. Paul didn't know it, but his friends let people read his mail and he probably never dreamed the fuss he would stir up when his remarks about who's a Jew (and who ain't) got canonized and became Church doctrine. The doctrine depends on which church you go to.

Catholic Church Doctrine:

The Jews aren't the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that they aren't the Jews.

Protestant Church Doctrine:

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that the Christians are Jews.

There is also 'Replacement Theory' Protestants that have this doctrine:

The Christians are the Jews, the Jews aren't the Jews but the Catholics aren't Jews either.

Naturally the Jews have a religion and they have a doctrine too;

Jewish Doctrine

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Gentiles, but the Gentiles can think what they like.

I'm not sure why everybody wants to be a Jew, but it must be because they all reckon that since Abraham lived a long time ago, sooner or later his heirs (the Jews) will be coming into a lot of money. (That's what I thought when I converted to Judaism, but sadly I was mistaken.)

It's nice that everybody wants to be part of Abraham's family, but you can tell who is family and who's not when the going gets rough, and I don't recall very many Catholics and Protestants lining up with the Jews when they were being carted off to concentration camps by the Nazis. (The Nazis' doctrine was that the Jews are the Jews, the Germans are the Aryans and Aryans think they can get away with murder.) You can't blame Christians for not wanting to join Abraham's children when they're getting slaughtered, but on the other hand it seems to me that you can't turn around and claim to be a part of the family only when its fun and you can get an inheritance.

I've been told I'm a cynic and I'm probably a bit cynical when it comes to religion because religions tend to be pretentious and claim to be things they're not. But unless someone is a religious butthead, I try not to be cynical about people because there is nothing more hurtful than telling someone he's not what he says he is, what he believes he is.

Once someone remarked about me (being a convert and all):
"You're not a Jew. What's so Jewish about you?"
The question was cynical and not inquisitive, and didn't even deserve to be honored with an answer. And such is the nature of religions, especially when they question others.

A few years ago we stayed with my sister-in-law for one of the holidays, and my niece (Or I should say, my wife's niece since I'm only an in-law and only think I'm part of the family.) brought Tuviel and Talia, a brother and sister, with her. Seeing that they are black, at first I assumed they were Ethiopian, and then hearing their American accent, that they were African Americans and therefore not Jewish. It turns out that I thought wrong.

Of course I realized that certainly there are blacks that converted to Judaism; after all I did. But I had never heard of 'Black Jews'. Tuviel and Talia explained that centuries ago Jews had migrated to Africa or had been taken there in captivity by the Romans after they destroyed the Second Temple. Their ancestors had lived there for centuries until at some point they had been stolen into slavery in the United States. They even knew what tribe of Israel they belong to – Levi.

In spite of being white and only a convert to Judaism, I felt an immediate connection with Tuviel and Talia. Within minutes, in spite of not knowing their father, I knew the man that had raised them. Their dignity and bearing reflected values and knowledge as plainly as their faces, and while obviously there could be no blood relation, I felt a kinship I don't get from other Jews, not even from the family I'm married into.

And I think its because we have the same father. The Father. We inherited similar traits of faith and the desire to find and serve Him. I sensed that we share the same spiritual DNA.

Tuviel has since moved back to the US and over the Pesach holiday Talia visited us. She told me that sometimes Israeli Jews question her Jewishness. Not out of curiosity, but cynically, hypocritically. Their questions aren't questions, but a thin mask for bigotry, the intention being to derogate and the way asked insulting her intelligence.

Talia describes it as an inheritance dispute. That European Jews in particular don't want to share Abraham's birthright with Black Jews, who are all the more incensed because they suspect that many of their detractors in fact have non-Jewish pedigrees (Their reasoning behind this accusation is yet another doctrine.).

I'm only a guest, an in-law, at Abraham's table, so I probably should just be quiet and just listen to family discussions. But I don't like to hear Abraham's children fighting and bickering over his inheritance. I would like to sit with a family that wonders who inherited Abraham's big heart. Who has his eyes that saw strangers from afar and who got his legs that jumped up to fix them something to eat? Who has Abraham's hands that dropped everything when he heard Lot was in trouble and helped him out? Who inherited a mind that judges a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character? Who has Abraham's faith? Who received his courage to stand up alone against the idol worshipers of his day?

I guess that sounds naïve. Maybe I'm not so cynical.

I think Paul's remarks about Abraham's children were metaphorical, not doctrine. That Abraham's children are faithful and righteous, that the spiteful and narrow-minded aren't really his children and they only think they are.

But then, what do I know. As someone once told me, I'm not really a Jew.

Letter from America: Paradise

San Francisco, California

Sunday, November 30, 2008

A week or so before I set out for America, we read the story of creation from the Torah scroll in our synagogue. It goes like this: God creates a paradise, and lets a man and a woman live there. He gives them free will, a choice. This freedom is the man and woman's undoing as they end up choosing to eat fruit of a tree forbidden them and are sent out from Eden.

The United States of America was founded by 13 colonies on the Atlantic coast and over the space of less than a century expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean. On a bay at frontier's end is San Francisco.

The city is a monument to the achievement of the human will over the elements. She is built on a peninsula connected to the mainland by the Golden Gate Bridge suspended on enormous cables and further south by more bridges that run for miles over the bay. San Francisco was the perfect place to build a deep water harbor, but her steep hills would have normally precluded it as a site to found a city. Undeterred, the city fathers overcame the obstacles in their way. The famous trolleys made it possible to climb hills too steep for horse and carriage and homes were built almost one on top of the other. At the mercy of frequent earthquakes, they have built skyscrapers designed to stand even the most violent quakes. But more striking than the city's victory over the physical elements is the diversity of the population; Asian, African, Hispanic and European descendants make up the indigenous population.

My friend Mary lives in a quiet suburb on the bay just south of the city. Mary is one of my favorite Americans. I've known her since seventh grade and we've kept in touch over the years. My daughter Maayan and I visited her on the last leg of our journey in America. She took us to see her sister Barbara who lives in the city.

Barbara lives with an obese cat she rescued from the animal shelter in a building called 'The Thick House'. It's like a kibbutz for artists. Each of the residents is in some way an artist; poets, painters, sculptors. They display their creations in the hallways and stairwells of the building that is in itself a work of art.

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Barbara wasn't always an artist. Thirty years ago she was my boss in the men's department at JC Pennys where I worked while I was in college. After 20 years in the retail business, she chose to recreate herself in the middle of life and learn a new craft. Artists usually use their art to express themselves, but Barbara is different. She is a graphic artist that works for the city's public library. She has the gift of reaching into the mind of another person and creating images that can be understood by others. She is like a translator using a visual language.

Mary's family is a metaphor for what I think is most beautiful about America. Mary is the almost youngest of seven brothers and sisters. Each and every one is dramatically unlike the other, each a different hue of opinion, occupation, lifestyle, and personality. Yet as a family they are a rainbow, close and harmonious, accepting and appreciative of one another.

What is America? It is the ongoing fusion of the entire gamut of the human race into one nation. This truth, self-evident, that all men were created equal was a stone big enough to bridge the gulf that divides people and peoples, and to built on it a new civilization founded on tolerance.

America is a paradise. A paradise created by human beings out of the only thing man took with him when he was sent out of the Garden of Eden – freedom. Freedom to be what and whom they will regardless of race or religion or age or gender. Freedom may be America's undoing, but without it Americans wouldn't be who they are.

Americans have a choice.

We Happy Few

A friend of mine once referred to me as a warrior. I told her that my buddies in the army would never let me hear the end of it if they got wind of that. We don't think of ourselves as warriors.

We come from all walks of life. Nir, my crew commander is an insurance agent and our crew is made up of a bus driver, some high tech geeks, a guy that gives marketing seminars and I am an English teacher/farmer/landscaper.

This week the brigade my battalion belongs to carried out an exercise designed to simulate a scenario where Israel has been attacked and the reserves have been called up to push back an invasion.

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On Sunday we made the transition from civilians to soldiers and the next day we set off to meet the enemy.

The idea was to refresh our skills as artillerymen and to test our ability to function under stress, deprived of sleep and even proper food. But they didn't have to teach us to work as a team.

I don't recall ever receiving a direct command, and that goes for the rest as far as I know. We know what is expected of us and the job gets done on a basis of mutual respect between the ranks and concern for each other.

And its not all hardship either. There is the ritual of making Turkish coffee on a primus and sleeping around a bonfire made of ammo bundles after dark when the desert gets cold. (I crawled up with Zacki on to the grating over the engine, which was still warm, and nodded off looking up at the Milky Way in a crystal desert sky.)

I think that people who are awed by warriors or the idea of the warrior are people that have never been at war. For us war isn't about glory. It's a job and a dirty one at that. The truth is that we have better things to do. And in modern Israel, more and more of the burden of national defense is borne by less and less of us.

My friends and I in the 670th aren't warriors. War isn't what defines us by a long shot. I think I would call us citizen soldiers, with an emphasis on citizen. We take up arms out of a sense of responsibility, not lust for battle. We reluctantly leave our homes and change into uniform because somebody has to. Because if we don't, we won't have a home to return to.

The ordinary citizen is the foundation our country is built on, the mortar that holds society together and the reservists are what stand between home and obliteration.

I think that the reserve army is one of the things that are still good about Israel. One of the things that are still beautiful and unspoiled. And even if there are fewer and fewer of us, I believe its worth it.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

(William Shakespeare)

(I have created a new blog called "Six Seventy" - http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/ - where I will down load pictures from our various adventures in the army. It is for and I hope will be by the soldiers of the 670th, so it's in Hebrew. You are welcome to visit.)

יצרתי בלוג חדש על מנת להוריד תמונות שלנו צהתעסוקות השונות

http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/

Changing of the Guard

Last week my battalion, the 670th Artillery Bat. took a refresher course. They had first aid lessons and ammunition updates, and we got to practice loading, aiming and firing on squeaky clean simulators designed to replicate our ancient M-109 self propelled howitzers.

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I don't know what it is, but something was missing. Was it being covered with dust, the blast of gunpowder when the ol' girl fires, the smell of men that haven't bathed for a week or the taste of the Turkish coffee we make when we think the CO isn't looking? (But he really knows, 'cause he always just happens to show up when it's ready.)
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Soldiers have stories they can't tell. There are things about being in the army that you can't explain. You can't understand if you weren't there.




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Israeli soldiers have this tough macho image, but it's not true. Lior (on the right) came out of the closet recently. I don't usually use the G-word to describe people because I believe a person's preference is a personal matter, but Lior final admitted what I've suspected for some time. He's a Geek.

The crazy thing is that Lior snagged a wife most men can only dream about. A couple of weeks ago he brought her to a brother soldier's wedding and she stole the show. She gave the Vulcan salute and said, "Live long and prosper." How many female Trekys live on planet Earth? (It blew me away; after she did that I hardly noticed the bride.)

Tzachi (on the left) lives in an institution for the criminally insane in Tel Aviv called Florentine. The rational behind releasing him for reserve duty (and letting him bear arms) is that when he's in the army he's off the streets. I know exactly how long he's been in the 670th - he arrived to do his first tour of duty as a reservist at an outpost I commanded on the Syrian border two weeks before my youngest Odelia was born.


I'm something of a dinosaur in uniform. Nir, my crew commander was on vacation in Holland, so Ori took his place. Ori hadn't been born yet when I joined the army.

(And the cute blond is younger than my daughter. She also out ranks me. Note the officer bars.)

Serving in the Israeli Army has been a significant part of my life - it is one of the reasons I came here. I don't know how much time I have left before my soldiering days will be over. Sooner or later my body will betray me, or they will just kick me out.

There's never been much ceremony at the changing of the guard in the 670th. The guys I knew when I joined got tired and then you didn't see them anymore, and new faces took their place. One day I will be gone, and then I will be just another one of the stories the guys tell to pass the time.

to die a little

Almost exactly 2 years ago, Maayan returned from India and Nepal. It ended one of the most anxious 8 months of my life, more than even her army service when she rode the bus every day from platoon to platoon everywhere from Ramallah to Gaza and suicide bombers were the evenement de jour.

Before and during Maayan's travels to India, her friends were happy for her. They cheered her on, encouraged her – and I grumbled.

I didn't get in her way, I even facilitated, but never once pretended that I liked the idea.
I respected her enough to let her do what she decided to do without trying to stop her, but I loved her enough to die a little every time I thought of the danger. While she was there, I couldn't bear to even talk to her when she called, to hear her voice. The anxiety was too much for me.

When she came back, we found out things that wisely she had kept from us while away. In Nepal she had been inches from death. (See the story on Avital) Maayan sees the adventure as a great life experience; I see it as a near brush with tragedy.

Who were Maayan's friends? I mean, her real friends? Were they the ones that told her what she wanted to hear, encouraged her to take chances and were happy for her? Did any of them care enough about her to warn her? To be worried?

And if Maayan hadn't survived Nepal; what would her friends be worth then?

Who is a friend?

My best friend is Barry, who happens to also be my brother. Barry injured an eye when he was six years old doing the only stupid thing he's ever done in his life, but he sees me. I'm about as good as a wet T-shirt at concealing anything from him. Barry is my critic. He says the things that people think but are too polite (but really just too cowardly) to say. I listen to Barry because even though he doesn't like everything I do and almost nothing that I say, I know the bottom line is that he loves me nevertheless.

Real friends are honest. They say what they think. They aren't yes-men and they aren't cheerleaders. They aren't "almost always nice". They assume that you know that no matter what they say about what you do, their opinion of you is unconditional. Real friends will do or say what they believe you need, even if it isn't something you like. To be a real friend you have to have guts. Or nerve.

Who were Maayan's friends? Avital certainly was. But I wonder how many of the others cheered her on because they really believed it was good for her, and how many because it was an easy way to win her smile.

I wonder if any of them loved her enough to die a little inside.

The Language of Romeo

I teach English at our local high school. I hope Mrs. Finster, my English teacher from days of old, never finds out. She would be the first to testify to my lack of qualifications for the job; but in Israel it is enough that English be your mother tongue and the language they speak in the USA is close enough and so I got the job.

Israeli kids study English the way their American peers learn French and German, as a foreign language, and barely scratch the surface of American literature, let alone the classic works of our British cousins over the sea. There are a few English speakers in the student body and I suggested that we read Shakespeare together after school. Three girls in the 9th grade took me up on my offer and we sit together in the library every Tuesday afternoon. By popular demand we started with Romeo and Juliet.

I think that Shakespeare wrote the play in an international language that only the young and romantic can understand. I help the girls with the Elizabethan English, but it's obvious that the girls are much more fluent than I. I can read Shakespeare, but they understand Romeo and Juliet. They giggle and sigh and pick up on every detail. The guest list for Capulet's masquerade ball refers to Rosaline, Romeo's "ex", as a lady of the house of Capulet.
"Oh…" The girls exchange meaningful glances. Romeo likes the Capulet girls. These territorial nuances are very important in the 9th grade. I wouldn't know. It's been a long time since I was in high school.


Today someone reminded me of something long ago.
She had given me some ribbon, and I returned it with a bow.
Something small that she has treasured, some 30 years or so.
It was romantic; once I knew the language of Romeo.

Perhaps if I would have known how precious something small can be, I would have given more. Given more, remembered more. But back then I was forgetting more and remembering less; and now I teach English and little girls understand the words I used to know.

It's not as if I'm deaf and dumb. I've learned another language. One word and a hand on my hand can mean more than line after line of declarations of undying love. I didn't learn how to speak less and say more over night, and I didn't learn it alone. We learned it together, my Juliet and I. We created it word by word and it's a language that only two can know.

Only Love

The head of the English department at the school where I teach made a curious choice for the required reading for the advanced level students.

The Color of Water by the black journalist James McBride. His mother, Ruth McBride Jordan was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska). Her father was a Rabbi that brought his family to America and made his living peddling religion and cheating the impoverished blacks in a backwater Southern town. Fleeing her abusive father, she escaped to New York and would have been vanished into the cesspool of drugs and prostitution had not she been rescued by a black man that eventually became her husband and a pastor of a church in Harlem.

I think one day I would like to write a blog about The Color of Water and about how unexpected was the choice of a Jewish woman's faith in Jesus as a message to Jewish students in an Israeli high school. But Ruth McBride came to my mind today for another reason.

A friend told me about how she came to know God only after meeting His people. At first she was drawn by their love, and then slowly and in the little things in life she began to feel God's love as well. If you hear her today, God is a real person in her life; her father. She talks to Him, pours her heart out to Him and sometimes gets mad at Him. There's real love there, and it started with the love of the people that are today her brothers and sisters.

I read not long ago this:
"I've also learned that nobody - ever - not ever one time - was argued into faith. Faith isn't ever a matter of argument. It's a matter of choice and obedience and will - stuff much sturdier in the end than mere "reasons" or just being "right" about things. Humans can't live on reasons alone.It's charity first. Take your limited understanding, feeble strength, and puny needs for validation off of it, and just be nice. That's really what it more often boils down to." (Stephanie)

It's charity, love. We can't know God through religion, we know Him through love. And we we'll never be able to explain the God we know to others with words, only with love. I think that was what I was trying to say to my daughter Maayan in "Sons or Servants"; that it's not the things we do, the religion, but the relationship itself, love, that God wants with us.

Ruth McBride grew up in a house full of religion. It was rules and laws, but also a house of abuse and selfishness. She ran away to people dissimilar in every way to herself and those she left behind, and found a home, a place where God dwells. And she found that place through love.

Tranquility

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My battalion, the 670th Artillery, has a mascot. His name is Shalva, which means "tranquility" in Hebrew. It's hard to imagine what Shalva's dad was thinking but easy to guess what he was drinking the night he named his boy; because tranquility isn't what comes to mind when you think of Shalva.

His story is that when he was a young man in Russian Georgia, he vowed that if the good Lord would allow him to live in the holy land, he would serve in the Israeli Army until the end of his days. God kept His end of the deal and Georgians are men of their word. The scuttlebutt is that Shalva is 61 years old and he has never missed a tour of duty since the 670th was formed in the late 70's.

Shalva swore to serve, but he never said how he would serve. When I first encountered him in the mid 80's, he was the terror of the battalion. You had to go through Shalva to get uniforms and gear. About 50% his limited vocabulary in Hebrew was swear words, which he reserved for those of us he liked, and he used his huge, shaved belly to literally bounce everybody else out of his way. Sometimes it was easier to go a few weeks in uniforms big enough for two of me or so tight that they crawled up to my knees and barely reached my elbows than to try my luck with his temper.

Wisely, our officers usually didn't trust Shalva with any duties involving weapons, but from time to time he was needed to do guard duty and he would show up fully loaded and with two water canteens full of vodka. Fortunately, he was always assigned to posts chosen for their distance from anyone he might harm. Relieving him of duty was a risky business and done with care.

The 670th finished another tour of duty this week. I had been released this time, but showed up on the last day to see how my friends had fared. I found Shalva for once living up to his name, fast asleep on a pile of winter gear. Time has taken its toll on Shalva and he's not nearly as fearsome as he used to be. You can find him in the mess hall at the officers' table; he cusses them out even more than he does the rest of us, but they know that just about the only thing he fears more than the Almighty is rank, and they know that he will be in the battalion long after they're gone.

There are many legends about Shalva in our battalion. To this day, nobody knows his last name, or even if he has a last name. Maybe he is an angel; a drunken, smoking, foul mouthed, grumpy angel, but our guardian angel nevertheless.

Perhaps Shalva's dad named him well after all. Because in the close to quarter of a century that I have been in the 670th, we have know tranquility. We have made lifelong friendships, served our country and without exception returned everyone, every time safely to our families.

That's tranquil enough for me.