The Castel

Tags

Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, Castellum, Operation Nachshon, siege of Jerusalem, War of Independence

 

 

 

The windows of the upper floor of my house look out towards the hill in the Judaean Mountains known as the Castel, which is today the site of a national park. It is green in winter and grey-brown in summer. I love to paint the view, which is never the same throughout the year. The ruins of the castle which gives the summit its name once constituted the fortified stronghold that enabled the Crusaders to control the road from the coast to Jerusalem.

Originally the site of a Roman settlement known as Castellum, the building has long since been dismantled, leaving the blocks of stone strewn here and there on the hilltop. At one point it formed the site of an Arab village, also called Kastel, but most importantly, the Castel was the site of a crucial battle between Arab and Jewish forces in the War of Independence in 1948. A series of inscribed copper plaques affixed to the stones describes the course of the fighting. There is also a memorial for the Israeli soldiers who died there.

Because of its prominent position, when the site was in Arab hands the road to Jerusalem was virtually impassable. The burnt-out hulks of armored cars and troop-carriers that may still be seen as one travels to and from Jerusalem fell victim to the bombs and bullets of the Arab forces, leading to the deaths of many of the young fighters who were endeavouring to relieve the siege of Jerusalem at that time.

Because of its strategic significance, the hill was the object and site of a series of battles, and control of it changed hands several times in the course of the fighting in 1948. Ultimately, however, because the revered Arab commander Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni was killed in one such battle, most of the Arab fighters left their posts and went to Jerusalem to attend his funeral. This enabled the Israeli forces to take the Castel virtually unopposed that same day, in what has since become known as Operation Nachshon.

The suburb of Jerusalem that was built at the site in the 1950s to house new immigrants from North Africa, though officially called Ma’oz Zion, retained the name of Castel used by many of its inhabitants. In recent years it was officially merged with Mevasseret Yerushalayim to become Mevasseret Zion. All the same, perhaps as an act of defiance, some of the locals still call it the Castel.

But as I watch from my window I see a great swathe of concrete marring the line of the hill, fulfilling the need to add yet another, wider road connecting Israel’s inhabitants with one another, thus marking the inexorable march of ‘progress’ across the landscape

 

A Lesson in Holistic Psychotherapy

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Minda Garr

 

 

Minda Garr, a psychotherapist specializing in holistic psychotherapy, recently gave a talk about her work to the group of English-speaking women to which I belong. By being aware of our breathing, ‘breathing into your heart,’ as our speaker put it, the individual can attain a sense of inner peace, gain a higher level of consciousness, and even achieve mental and physical healing.  The basic concept underlying holistic psychotherapy is that mind, body and spirit must be regarded as parts of the whole, and that by relating to them concurrently the individual can attain serenity and greater self-understanding. Ms. Garr has taught at the Hebrew University’s School of Social Work for many years, and her approach to her work has gradually evolved from the pragmatic to the holistic. In her clinical work she places great emphasis on connecting with the client as well as with something greater than the self, something outside our everyday life, whether one calls it God, the soul, the spirit, or anything else. This view is in stark contrast with the detached, non-empathetic method used in Freudian and other psychoanalytical approaches.

Without disclosing personal details of the individuals concerned, Ms. Garr told us about her experiences with clients, and how her approach succeeded in enabling them to overcome childhood traumas and present-day phobias after other methods had failed to help. Individuals who were in denial over certain experiences or unable to correct unwanted character-traits were enabled to better understand what lay behind them, and to cope with them. In some cases clients were even able to overcome the results of ‘birth trauma,’ i.e., the distress caused to the baby by the process of being born. Ms. Garr is a firm believer in the view that the pre-birth, and even pre-conception experience affects the individual in adult life.

The sense of focus that we achieve by closing our eyes and concentrating on our breathing enables us to screen out the ‘chatter’ and ‘clutter’ that tend to occupy our minds, and thus to attain a ‘trance-like’ state. Ms. Garr ended her talk by getting all those present to engage in a ‘gratitude exercise,’ which enabled each one of us to imagine her heart filled with light, which then spread to our whole body, and then further and further outward. That was a truly remarkable experience.

I tried this at the concert I attended on the same evening and found that it enhanced my ability to enjoy the music. My mind was clear, as if it were some kind of reflecting pool, enabling the music to fill it and provide my soul with the sustenance it craved. It was certainly better than being distracted by the irrelevant stimuli created by other members of the audience, or the thoughts that tend to crowd in on me when my mind is not engaged in creative activity.

It appears to be beneficial to be able to clear one’s mind of extraneous matter from time to time and enter a state that is something like a trance, but one that does not remove the individual from his or her surroundings. The various forms of meditation achieve this for some people, as does prayer for others. But this particular mental exercise requires no religious belief or affiliation to a group of any kind. It’s something that anyone can do anywhere, at any time, and so seems to offer a universal panacea to the psychological pressure that everyone feels at one point or another.

 

O, Brave New World!

Tags

Amazoon, ebook-pro, The Balancing Game, Time Out of Joint

 

 

 

Since time immemorial (well, since the invention of printing) the production and distribution of books has been in the hands of specialists, the people who see to the editing, printing, publishing, and distribution of books. Each of those activities requires specialized knowledge and expertise, and so for hundreds of years the world of publishing remained in the hands of an elite band of cognoscenti, the professional publishing industry.

Then, in the wake of the internet revolution, Amazon burst on the world, bringing with it a radically new approach to the production and selling of books. Thus, it is no longer only a privileged few authors who manage to get accepted by an established publisher. Today anyone can publish his or her own book and put it up on the internet for sale, both as a physical book and as an ebook.

However, while it is relatively easy (for some people) to write a book, and not all that difficult to self-publish it, getting it into the public eye and accessible to the vast potential market that Amazon represents is quite another matter.

That is where a new sphere of specialization, book-promotion, comes into the picture. I was fortunate enough to be in touch with the company run by Benny and Tali Carmi, ebook-pro, which specializes in just that area.

I have heard of many cases of writers whose books have been accepted by recognized publishers but have not been given public exposure, and hence have not managed to sell. In fact, this happened to me with my first book, ‘The Balancing Game,’ which I published with the help of an American publisher. Both the physical book and the ebook were good products (in my opinion), but because there was no publicity campaign, sales were weak.

These days, the way a book is promoted focuses on getting a good ranking for a book on one or more of the various categories in which Amazon lists its books. This involves obtaining reviews, making the book available for free on various sites, and undertaking a series of actions which expose the book to the vast Amazon reading public. Thus, to my delight and surprise, after Benny’s campaign to promote my book ‘Time Out of Joint, the Fate of a Family,’ it was Amazon’s no.1 best-seller in three categories for a while.

After the initial campaign, which creates an internet buzz and gives the book an initial boost, sales are ‘in the hands of the public,’ to quote Benny. A month after my book was first launched on the internet sales seem to have settled at a fairly steady rate, and if this continues for some time I for one will be very happy.

 

Fifty Years of Living in Israel

 

 

 

 It is now almost exactly fifty years since I came to Israel to live. So I suppose you could say that I came on aliyah in September 1964, though I did not get my official status as a new immigrant until June 1967, but that’s another story.

When people ask me why I left England’s green and pleasant land to come and live in what they imagine to be an arid desert in one of the most dangerous parts of the world my answer consists of two words: ‘climate’ and ‘men.’

But of course I must have had weightier reasons than those. The fact that I grew up in a home where Zionism was a fact of life, attended a Zionist youth movement and had relatives in Israel played an undeniable role in my decision. My first visit to Israel, in 1959, within the framework of a youth tour organized by the Jewish Agency was an eye-opener for me, an impressionable teenager. I had never experienced anything like it before. Six weeks of touring sunny Israel, visiting sites, cities and kibbutzim, finding smiling bronzed faces wherever we turned and being welcomed into people’s homes made a deep and lasting impression on me. In addition, the climate really did serve to lift my spirits, which seemed to have been perpetually dormant in the grey and rainy London streets in which I had grown up.

I visited Israel twice in my vacations from university, and managed to make contact with people in the Sociology Department of the Hebrew University, so that when I came for my second visit I was given a holiday job and even earned some money (which I found to my chagrin that I was unable to take home). As a result of those visits I was offered a position as a research assistant in that department when I decided to continue for an M.A. after graduating in London. So I suppose I could be said to have had one of the easiest transitions imaginable in moving to a different country. I had employment, albeit with minimal income, I could stay with relatives until I found a place to rent, and I was meeting intelligent and pleasant people. I didn’t know much Hebrew, and was too busy working and studying to go to an ulpan, but I managed to get by with the little I knew. There were organizations catering to English-speaking people and there were student parties, so my social life was not totally uninteresting.

Israel was a very different place fifty years ago, and this was especially the case with Jerusalem. Before the Six-Day War it was a small, intimate place where everyone knew everyone else and the central ‘triangle’ formed by the three main streets was where one went to eat falafel, meet friends or just enjoy the cool evening air. ‘The third time we meet on the same day we’ll go and get ice-cream,’ was the slogan of the day. Religion played a part in some people’s lives, but nothing was extreme and everyone appeared tolerant of everyone else.

The political atmosphere was one of socialism, idealism and mutual support. Today it is capitalist, entrepreneurial and right-wing. Those early days of naiveté and perhaps even innocence are long gone, due to both internal and external processes. Personally, I find that regrettable, but it is foolish to try to stem the tide of change.

What about men? I hear you cry. I found the love of my life at a student party in Jerusalem, got married and produced three children. We lived through times of peace and war, sickness and health, poverty and relative prosperity and now also have seven grandchildren, all living in Israel.

All in all, Israel has been good to me, and I hope I’ve been good to it.