My Israeli Pilgrimage

December 2007–January 2008

By Linda Goldner

 From the moment I danced down the runway towards the El-Al 777, I felt intoxicated with lightness and joy at my return to our Land. And a month later, as I prepared for my return, I just knew that somewhere at Ben Gurion Airport I would find a replacement for my lost copy of our traveler’s prayer Tefillas haDerech and, I did. Following are some snapshots, in words, of my journey a journey filled with miracles, wonders and a deep sense of kiruv with our People.

In the air

Assigned a seat towards the rear of the plane on the flight to Lod, I was among the last to make my way down the aisle through the tangle of luggage straps, elbows and feet. Looking down to a fall that could have made for an uncomfortable trip, I was surprised to see a U.S. bill, neatly folded into quarters, lying on the carpet. I picked it up, for a moment undecided as to what I should do. Then, I remembered my struggle with the Talmud tractate Bava Mitzia with its hair-splitting discussion of the return of an assortment of types of found objects. The rabbis’ advice now had practical application: The dollar was mine, because it was of such a generic nature that its owner could not be verified.

I excitedly unfolded the bill and slipped it into the tzdakah envelope I carried, nesting it among other dollars given by friends for contribution to Israeli charity.

My next puzzlement hours later was the following: how did the plane’s informally assembled morning minyan knew which was the traditional direction in which to face as they davened Shaharit?

And then the answer struck me!

The tefillin-wrapped men would be praying facing Jerusalem literally the direction in which the plane was flying, the direction in which we were being carried! The Hebrew verb for traveling/riding/being carried, le’ensoah, is part of the liturgy of our Torah service. As the Torah is lifted tenderly from the ark to be borne through the congregation just prior to its being read, so we too, the aircraft’s passengers, were similarly borne aloft by our El Al jet through the heavens toward our time in the Holy Land.

I am but dust, and the world was created for ME!

This is my favorite Hassidic koan. Shortly after my arrival in Israel, I learned that smoking in public places had, as of the past month, been banned. And the ban was being enforced! I gave thanks to the exasperated, choking citizens who had waged legal battle for enforcement of the government’s laxly enforced laws on this issue.

My placement

My volunteer assignment in Mishan Avot haNegev was confirmed by Pam Lazarus, Sar-El’s program coordinator with Volunteers for Israel, the organization who coordinated my placement. This senior community is home to independent seniors, the frail elderly, as well as those needing extensive care and support. Mishan is located in Beersheva, once a small Bedouin village since enlarged over the past 80 years by successive waves of Jewish immigrants from North Africa, Russia and, most recently, from Ethiopia. Modern-day Beersheva is now home to over 200,000, as well as to Ben Gurion University of the Negev and the Seroka Medical Center. This small city was an ideal setting in which to practice my Hebrew skills. Unlike the more cosmopolitan Tel Aviv or, even, Jerusalem, there were very few English speakers. I would be truly immersed b’Ivrit. 

As some of you have already heard, I worked in the tumechet/assisted living unit with approximately 16 residents, mostly women. The common languages were Hebrew and, frequently, Yiddish. Other languages spoken included German, Spanish, French, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, and English. Some of the residents were sabras, native-born Israelis. Others came from the Diaspora to Israel as refugees from the Nazis or had fled other sources of anti-Semitic terror and persecution. And others came, simply and magnificently, to make aliyah, despite lives of affluence and comfort elsewhere.

The staff with whom I most closely worked spoke virtually no English again a terrific opportunity for me to speak Hebrew. Despite the challenges of understanding directions as to which resident was to go to what activity at what time, or what I was being asked to do, I managed to cope. My playful body English, broad facial expressions and sense of humor were big advantages!

My work consisted of transporting the unit’s meals from kitchen to dining area, portioning out the food, serving the residents and clearing the table afterwards. I accompanied the frailer residents to on-site activities and appointments. And I also engaged the residents in conversations meant to relieve some of their loneliness, but which provided me with memories that have embedded themselves into my heart and spirit.

Some of these stories and impressions follow, with names changed to protect residents’ privacy.

But first, I want to acknowledge the cheerful exchanges of boker tov, boker ohr.

These words floated over each morning encounter among staff, visitors and residents, brightening hallways and rooms. Implicit in the greeting was the speaker’s sincere gratefulness at the gift of yet another new day.

Thank you, G-d, for restoring my soul to me.

Here, among the elderly, one could truly appreciate the miracle of awaking and living the Modeh Ani prayer.

Zimra

I was mesmerized by the story of Zimra’s 1940 slip off the deck of the Haganah-sabotaged liner Patria into Haifa’s harbor, her swim to shore and her newfound safety in Palestine.

She recounted how the British had bundled her and approximately 1700 other illegal Jewish immigrants, newly arrived in Palestine from Nazi-controlled Europe, onto the ship to assuage the hostile Arab population. Aboard this vessel, they were to be transported out of Palestine and on to Mauritius and Trinidad.

In an attempt to permit immediate disembarkation and, by international maritime law, acceptance of its passengers into the British Mandate, the Haganah had smuggled aboard what they had calculated to be sufficient explosives to damage the 12,000 ton vessel, forcing it to shore.

Tragically, the explosives were far too powerful, succeeding in sinking the ship within 15 minutes of the discharge and trapping and killing 260 of those aboard. Twenty- year old Zimra was one of the survivors.

Hesitant to jump off the deck as had other passengers, the terrified woman actually slipped as the ship listed sharply before sinking. The accidental nature of this fall turned out to be a benefit to her. Those passengers who jumped had removed their shoes for what they thought would be ease in the water. But they arrived onshore, bare feet bloody and torn from the shallow harbor’s ragged bottom. Zimra, on the other hand, arrived with feet protected by the shoes that she was still wore. She was wet and exhausted, but eager to start her new life. She was placed on a kibbutz where she worked, married, and bore two daughters, continuing to live there until her move to Mishan Beit Avot.

Lena

I was constantly warmed by Lena’s joy in tutoring me in Hebrew a joy that quickly reverted to the anxiety and depression that otherwise clouded her days when she was not engaged in this challenge. Tiny Lena had taught both Hebrew and Yiddish to severely retarded children in her native Argentina. Aside from those languages and Spanish, she spoke no other. With her pinched little face, she challenged staff with tantrums and frequent refusals to take her medications or to eat. She sat at meals, her tray of food untouched on the autumn gold tablecloth, and stared out the window at people, places and events others could not see.

Only when she was engaged with me, along with my Hebrew flashcards, did she smile a broad, full-mouthed gleam that echoed a brief vitality filling her body and her mind. Once in the midst of a tantrum, as she cried and pounded her walker into the floor so hard that I feared she might crack one of its metal legs, I struggled to comfort her. But I felt helpless. I wrapped her in my arms and repeated, in Hebrew, “I’m sorry, Lena. I’m so, so sorry.” Suddenly, her tears and the pounding stopped. She cocked her head to look up at me and I was startled to see the curve of a smile beginning to form on her lips. “Ahni MITZTA-AIR-ET, ahni mitzta-AIRE-et,” she gently corrected.

Another pleasure in our relationship was our “threesomes” the times when Lena’s personal aide joined our lessons. Our trio would hunch over the apartment’s tiny dining table, me composing Hebrew sentences triggered by the hipheal and hitpa’el verbs on my flashcards as Lena commended or corrected, and Luba, her Russian aide, struggling to pronounce the English in my Hebrew-English conversational phrase book to my commendation or correction. All simultaneously!

Mita

Another woman, never a formal teacher, but a Hebrew instructor to me just the same, was Mita. A seamstress back in the Old Country, Mita now spent large parts of her days adding color to black-outlined drawings of landscapes and still life's and entertaining anyone within earshot with a running Yiddish-Hebrew-Romanian commentary. Each art session began as she gathered the tumechet unit’s box of color markers, she would then carefully place an old plastic placemat under the latest page of her artwork to protect the table beneath from the color dyes. Meticulously, she filled the outlined shapes with dots and streaks of brilliant yellows and oranges. A solid of bright green gave life to a leaf. A delicate herringbone pattern of red and pink decorated a petal. As Mita carefully selected each of her markers, she would hold it up before me as my cue.

Adom, ka’khol, yaroke and varod, the name of each color b’Ivrit, I would respond.

The power of song

I can’t forget the enraptured expressions on the faces of the European-born residents during the regularly held, live classical music concerts performed in the Mishan Avot auditorium.

And I can’t forget 98-year old Mendel, who shuffled around the facility softly crooning the first few lines of Sim Shalom, a prayer asking G-d to put peace, goodness and blessing, grace, love, and mercy into the world, over us and over all G-d’s people Israel. He and I couldn’t communicate through words. Born in Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the same city as my late father, Mendel slurred together a sweet, but unintelligible mix of Polish-Yiddish-Hebrew. Instead of conversation, I would join him in song. But I was aware that both he and I were “fudging” a few of the words, stuffing others in their places. I made a mental note to find the prayer in a siddur to check the correct sequence of words…later.

Then, one morning, after a rather lackluster attempt to down his breakfast, Mendel … just … stopped. He sat motionless in his chair, responsive to neither the calling of his name nor to the gentle shaking of his arm. A nurse dashed over, placed a blood pressure cuff on his arm and checked his pulse.

We placed the inert Mendel in a wheelchair and rolled him into his room. There, he was placed tenderly into his bed, and his son was called. After several hours of vigil, Mendel again came to life. When he “returned”, joining the other residents at the communal table for the next meal, I was determined to locate the correct words to Sim Shalom. Impulsively, I called one of my congregational rabbis who amazingly was available to take my call at just that moment. He directed me to the place in the prayer service in which to locate the prayer and I quickly found it in a nearby siddur. 

From then on, Mendel and I could join in the correct words. And I felt the joy of having “given” that sweet, strong man back his life-celebrating prayer.  

Outside (Mercantile encounters)

I could see from signs posted on the windows of the NewPharm that the Ahava brand of hand cream and shower gel I love were on sale. I wanted to take advantage of the cost savings. But deciphering the terms of the sale, b’Ivrit, were too much of a challenge for me. The saleswoman, a Russian, knew little English. But I suspect she was as eager to help as she was to make a sale. And so she enlisted the aid of a customer whom she apparently knew whose English was a bit better than hers. Between the three of us, the assistance of the barcode scanner and a lot of hand gesturing, I learned the terms of the offer and left with a bagful of those soothing potions!

Culture

The community had various types of security. In addition to a locked front gate, opened after an intercom-delivered identification, at the property’s main entrance on Rehov Alfasey, Mishan had a few non-uniformed security staff who regularly walked the grounds.

I had been introduced to the men on duty my first day. However, it was not until I had been volunteering a few days that one of the guards, Moshe, came into the common room of our tumechet unit. He dropped himself into the comfort of our large sofa to chat and rest his feet.

After 15 minutes or so, he hoisted himself from the soft cushions and headed towards the door, I noticed what I thought was a cell phone tucked into the rear waistband of his jeans. As I looked more closely, I realized that the cell phone was actually a pistol, un-holstered. In the U.S., I know I would have felt queasy at the thought of a gun so close to me. But here in Israel, my only reaction was a chuckle. I imagined that, had Moshe flung himself into that sofa with any more vigor, he could have blown off his own butt! 

G-dincidences

My first Shabbat in Beersheva I was invited to Kehillat Eshel Avraham, the only Masorti congregation in the city, by Ehud and Irit Zmora, friend’s of friends of mine back in Philadelphia. As we entered the lobby of the shul, Irit located a Hebrew-English siddur for me. As is my habit, I immediately opened the prayer book to its inside front cover, casually glancing at the dedication plate pasted there. I almost dropped the book. The inscription read with the name of a Conservative synagogue from the neighborhood in which I grew up in a nearby suburb of Philadelphia Har Zion Temple! I soon learned that Eshel Avraham and Har Zion were paired as sister congregations....