Here it Comes Again

It came as something of a shock to me a few years to hear that there are some people who have mixed feelings about celebrating the Jewish festival known as Passover (Pesach). For someone like myself who quite likes eating matza this seems strange. But then I remember how things used to be.

In my childhood Pesach was always a time of excitement and renewal. Some time beforehand, my mother, my two younger sisters and I would undertake the long journey by underground from the London suburb where we lived into ‘town,’ i.e., Oxford Street, to buy new clothes for the festival. This invariably involved a lot of walking (Oxford Street itself is several miles long), gazing longingly into shop windows and eventually trying to find some garment (coat, dress) suitable in price, size and style to suit our various tastes. Sometimes this involved getting new shoes as well. All this must have represented a considerable financial burden for our parents, whose income was modest by any standard. But getting new clothes for the festival was considered essential.

Most important, at least for our parents, was the process of cleaning and preparing every nook and cranny of the house so that not a single speck of dust or crumb of food was left. Everything had to be pristine clean, so much so, in fact, that all our crockery and cooking utensils were packed up and put away so that different ones, which had themselves been packed up and put away at the end of the festival the previous year, could be brought out. As well as the interminable cleaning and scrubbing operations, this involved endless trips up and down the stairs to the attic where the Passover things were kept to bring them out and reinstall them. Equally, the everyday dishes and utensils had to be put away in the same fashion.

My poor parents hard to work long into the night to achieve all this. No sooner was all this done, however, than in something akin to a logistical nightmare my mother had to embark on a marathon of cooking and baking in preparation for the impending Seder meal, the massive family dinner that involved providing all the ritual dishes that symbolized aspects of the Exodus story (bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slavery, haroseth, a mixture of apples, wine and nuts commemorating the cement used to bind the bricks together, a hard-boiled egg to symbolize mourning and the circle of life, etc., etc.). Incidentally, any pictorial depiction of Jesus’ Last Supper, i.e., the Seder, in which bread features is by definition a historical travesty as Jesus was an observant Jew and would not have dreamt of eating leavened bread on that occasion.

To make matters worse, ever since the Jews were sent into exile by the Romans, the custom in the diaspora was to hold the Seder twice, as there was no way of knowing which was the correct Hebrew date. Nowadays we know, but the custom has become entrenched nonetheless. That is at least one good reason for moving to Israel, where there has always been only one Seder.

On the actual evening, once all the preparations are over and the ritual reading of the Haggadah, which recounts the sequence of events interspersed by prayers of devotion and praise for the miracle of the escape from bondage by the Children of Israel and even some rabbinical exegesis, all present partake of the traditional unleavened bread (matza) and the other ritual foods, followed by a sumptuous meal, which taxes everyone’s digestive system to the utmost and whose preparation has generally left the long-suffering housewife close to a state of exhaustion.

As devout and observant Jews, my parents and their parents before them did not question the necessity of adhering to every jot and tittle of the traditions and requirements. But I was born into a time when the existence of Israel as an independent Jewish state gives me the option of being Jewish without having to be observant and incurring the displeasure of the community. I feel that I am truly fortunate.

 

 

Whatsapp Baby

 

Some twenty-five years ago our son and his wife presented us with our first grandchild. She was the centre of our life and our pride and joy, and over the subsequent fifteen years she was joined by another six grandchildren, three from the same couple and three from our daughter and her husband. It goes without saying that we adore and cherish each and every one of them.

 

Eventually our youngest son got married and life continued pretty much as before for all concerned. But a week ago that same son and his wife presented us with their first child, a little girl amid general rejoicing.

 

In the ten years since our previous last grandchild was born life and technology have changed. How did we manage to stay in touch with our offspring and other relatives before the days of email, Facebook and above all Whatsapp? How otherwise could we be apprised of every fleeting expression, mood and movement of our nearest and dearest without these essential elements of daily life.

 

And so it is that at our request a special Whatsapp group was formed for the new arrival in which the proud parents post pictures of the little one whenever the fancy takes them, which is quite often. And it also gives the proud grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, whether near or far, to have their say and make comments as to the cuteness, awesomeness, pulchritude and evident intelligence of the newest addition to the family.

 

The wonders of modern technology enable us, the happy entrants into the realm of second grandparenthood (akin to a second childhood), to enjoy the sight but not necessarily the sound of the baby crying, knowing that it isn’t us who’ll be woken up in the night by it, and to marvel at the glorious spectacle of her chubby cheeks and sparkling eyes.

 

So if you happen to meet one of us please don’t be alarmed if we take out our mobile phones to share this newest wonder of the world with you. It’s not our fault. We can’t help it. You can blame Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg if you like, but I personally will be eternally grateful to them.

 

A History Lesson

 

(photo by Haim Zach)

It was very gratifying to hear two of our grandsons (aged 22 and 18) express a desire to be taken on a tour of the exhibition entitled ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ concerning the exile of the Jews of Judea by Nebuchadnezzer II in 586 B.C.E. and currently being held at the Bible Lands Museum, where my husband is a guide.

The tour, in Yigal’s customary thorough fashion, began with a session in front of a large, illuminated wall-map showing the entire Ancient Near East at various stages in its history. Apart from Egypt, the first to establish cities and some form of writing (i.e., ‘civilisation’) were the Sumerians (situated in what is now southern Iraq). Their territory was invaded and conquered by the Akkadians from what was known then as Babylon or Akkad, followed by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Muslims, the Turks, and finally the British, to name but a few. Finally, following the First World War and the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, the entire area was divvied up among the major European colonial nations, only to disintegrate into mutual enmity, chaos and mayhem in recent years.

The exhibition itself, about which I have written before, is well done, attempting to arouse interest and provide food for thought for visitors of all ages, with animated films that explain how and why the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzer II eventually decided he had had enough of the fractious Judeans and their rebellious kings (particularly Joakin, Joachim, and Zedekiah), who rebelled and refused to pay their tribute taxes. After laying siege to and conquering Jerusalem, the troops dealt with the defeated enemy in the manner customary at the time, namely, total destruction of everything in sight, including the (First) Temple, and forced ethnic cleansing by means of mass massacre and exile of the remaining population.

But, as the exhibition shows, the Israelites’ ability to adapt to changing circumstances came to the fore in Babylon. Exhorted by their leaders to display obedience to and cooperation with the authorities, the Jews farmed the land they were granted, established families, adhered to their religion and prospered. When the Persians under Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 B.C.E. all exiled nations were allowed to return to their lands. but not all the Jews undertook the journey back to Judea. The exhibition displays dozens of clay tablets from the Soffer collection recording transactions undertaken at the time by Jews, primarily in the Jewish settlement of El Yahudo in the region of Babylon.

Those Jews who remained in Babylon flourished for two thousand years, producing inter alia the renowned Babylonian Talmud. Those who returned merged with those who had managed to remain behind in Judea, and eventually built the (Second) Temple, and hung on to it for some five hundred years. Once again, however, internecine conflict and rebelliousness caused the all-powerful Romans to come down upon them with the full force of their might. As everyone knows, this led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and the exile that lasted two thousand years and ended only 67 years ago. In a nice touch, the exhibition ends with the reggae song ‘By the Rivers of Babylon,’ recorded by Boney M and popular in the 1970s. The last Iraqi Jews were deprived of their property and expelled from Iraq shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel. Like the many thousands of other Jews who were turned overnight into refugees, they were absorbed into the general population.

No one knows whether the people currently inhabiting the various regions of what was once the Ancient Near East share the same genetic make-up as the original inhabitants of the region. What we do know, however, is that the tendency to engage in mutual warfare involving massacre and enmity on a gigantic scale has endured. Sadly, our newspapers and TV screens are filled on a daily basis with the tragic results of what appears to be a longstanding tradition of mutual intolerance and the desire to dominate others.

Plus ça change…

[This article first appeared in the April 2016 edition of the AJR Journal/]

 

 

Time Passes

 

When I was eighteen I had all the answers.

I knew where my political allegiance lay and which party I supported. I knew where I should go to live for my future wellbeing. I marched in favour of nuclear disarmament, in England and spoke out on behalf of my beliefs in friendly forums. I even knew what I wanted to study at university, who were my friends and who I preferred to avoid.

Then, in line with my conviction that all Jews should go and live in their national homeland, I went to live in Israel in 1964.

My first few years in Israel were not always easy. Like most immigrants, I struggled with the language and the culture, and found many things that grated on my delicate British sensibilities. But I persevered, weathered the various storms, wars, children and other obstacles to self-fulfillment, and now that all that is behind me I seem to suddenly find myself on the wrong side of seventy, falling into ‘the sere and yellow leaf,’ as Macbeth puts it, and far less sure of all the things I used to be certain about.

I was here before the Six Day War broke out and felt perfectly happy about living in Israel as it was then, its borders defined by ‘the green line.’ After the war, when the euphoria of our victory over three Arab armies had begun to wear off, I was all in favour of giving the territories back, and was quite horrified when religious right-wing extremists defied official government policy and insisted on establishing settlements in the territory that the IDF had conquered.

Then came Hebron, where even more extreme extremists insisted on settling, asserting some kind of ‘right of return’ to a place that had formerly seen Jewish habitation for centuries. The need to protect them placed an additional burden on the IDF and Israel’s limited resources, but gradually the government line shifted, first towards acceptance and then to encouragement, of this and other settlement activity.

Today Jewish settlements are to be found pretty much everywhere throughout the area that was either liberated, conquered or occupied, according to your political stance, and the facts established on the ground cannot be denied. I avoid going to those areas to the best of my ability, but judging by the results of the last few elections, I now find myself in an ever-shrinking minority of Israelis.

But today, when I look back over Israel’s sixty-eight years of existence, awkward questions arise in my mind. In 1947, when the UN Partition Plan was proposed, the Arab countries refused to accept this, and sought to annihilate the fledgling State of Israel before it came into existence, with considerable loss of life on all sides. Israel prevailed, but was subjected to continuous infiltrations and terrorist attacks by what were then known as Fedayeen, inflicting more loss of life.

Then came the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the Six Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Lebanon War, the constant attacks, first within and then from the Gaza Strip, and devastating terrorist attacks inside Israel. The common thread that unites all those events was the desire to destroy Israel and, failing that, to cause as much physical and psychological damage as possible. Threats to Israel’s existence continue to emerge from various other quarters, causing us to live in a constant state of being ‘on guard.’

The belief that peace with our neighbours is possible is gradually being eroded by the actions of settlers, on the one hand, and Palestinians, on the other. Religious and nationalist radicalization seems to have taken hold on both sides, and the prospect of any peaceful settlement of the dispute appears to be moving ever further away.

The thought of living in a perpetual state of war is depressing, though a long-term view of European history gives some hope that in the very, very long term some solution will eventually emerge. How much war and bloodshed we will have to endure till then is not clear, and as Maynard Keynes pronounced ‘in the long term we are all dead.’

But let’s look on the bright side. Perhaps in less than the one thousand years it has taken for the major European countries to settle their differences some of our descendants will be able to live in peace.