We’re lovin’ it

April 21, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

A man takes a photograph of air force planes flying over the Mediterranean Sea, as part of a flyover during Israel's 62nd Independence Day celebrations in Tel Aviv yesterday. (Photo: AP)

The holiday period is officially over in Israel, with the end of Remembrance Day and Independence Day – although it’s true we do have Shavuot coming up.

With half the country suffering from smoke inhalation – not from the Iceland volcano – but from the whole population lighting up barbecues yesterday, we’re still in enough of a holiday spirit to laugh, guffaw and chuckle at the annual list of ’62 More Things I Love About Israel’ compiled by humous-bsessed comedian and blogger Benji Lovitt.

Unlike the blue and white-tinted glasses that many recent immigrants see all things Israeli, Benji’s are shaded with paisley, or maybe plaid. No matter, he can see things differently – and with a refreshing insight- than the rest of us can.

Like, for example, number 18 on this year’s list about our multiculturalism.

18. I love walking through Mr. Zol and hearing Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me” as a haredi man walks by. Haven’t you figured it out yet? The Middle East is funny.

Or how about this one to exemplify our spirit of cooperation?

49. I love the feeling of teamwork on the sherut when people pass the money between passenger and driver. It’s like a tiny kibbutz. Without cow dung.

To read the rest of Benji’s reasons for loving Israel this year, go here.

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Window dressing

April 19, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness 

Today’s Yom Hazikaron, Israel Remembrance Day, is just about over, and the signs that tomorrow’s more festive Independence Day are all over the place.

Besides the blue-and-white flags being flown from cars, homes, balconies, strollers, bicycles and, in one sighting, a scooter, all kinds of businesses are also joining in the patriotic fervor, no matter what they’re selling. Here’s a selection:

A local boutique with retro flavor


A more typical Yom Ha'atmaut look of jeans and a white top and jacket

Grill pans for tomorrow's bbq fest

Festive newspapers

Happy celebrating Israel’s 62nd.

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The Siren and I

April 19, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

As I stood last night at our local community center, flanked by my children while waiting for the siren that marks the start of Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day in Israel), I had a chance to reflect on how my relationship to this day has changed over the years.

A siren blares in every corner of the country for one minute at 8:00 PM and then for two minutes the following morning at 11:00 AM. The custom is to stand in silence. Cars stop and their drivers get out. Soldiers put on their kumtot (berets).

When I first arrived in Israel in 1984, Yom Hazikaron was an abstract concept. I was just learning about Israeli history and I didn’t know anyone who’d ever fought, let alone died, in a war.

That changed dramatically in 2002 when our cousin Marla was killed in the terror attack at Hebrew University. The full name for the day is “Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror.” The latter part was added only in recent years.

And now as my children get older – approaching or in the army already – my relationship has changed again. If at one time we hoped (though didn’t really expect) that we’d be at peace by the 62nd anniversary of the state, that’s not even on the agenda today.

As Yom Hazikaron transforms into Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day) this evening, a popular understanding is that we can only celebrate if we commemorate those who sacrificed. But there is another, parallel, concept: there is also the moment within the siren itself when we remember and, at the same time – not celebrate as we do on Independence Day – but dream… dream of a future of peace.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Avraham Dubno

April 18, 2010 by · 9 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, War 

My mother’s brother, Avraham Dubno, was killed in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence at the age of 22. It’s hard for me to think of this phantom person as my uncle; he died long before I was born and even though his short life and death informed my very existence, my mother barely ever spoke of him. In fact, with true Palmachnik stoicism, she barely mentioned any of the tragic circumstances that blew her once-solid family apart as surely as if a bomb had fallen on 47 Melchett Street in Tel Aviv. Instead, she took pride in the fact that she didn’t dwell on the past and never, ever cried.

Here are the things I do know from my mother. Avraham was born in Jerusalem to parents of Polish origin, grew up in Tel Aviv, had a younger sister and brother, was an outstanding student at the legendary Gymnasia Herzliya, a member of the Palmach and completing his studies in architecture at the Technion when he was killed. I know that he was good looking, popular with friends and family, and played the violin. And although she never said so, I know that his sister never, ever recovered from his death.

My mother, Shulamith, died of cancer when I was 14, stoic, angry and desperately sad till the end. And so, it was only after I made aliya in the mid-80s that I began to talk to relatives and fill in some of the gaps in her history, which is my history and that of my sisters.

I didn’t know about their childhood, for example, which seems to have been relatively happy. Avraham’s closest childhood friend was the late writer Amos Kenan, and he is mentioned at several points in Kenan’s biography; “And perhaps this is one of the reasons that Amos likes to visit Dubno. There, in the afternoon, mother serves hot meat and cabbage soup, and the sound of Shlomit’s (sic) piano flows in from the other room. And sometimes, Dubno’s father comes over and asks what happened in school and in the evenings he sits before them and conducts a conversation with them both, something that… Amos’ father has never done.”

Kenan also wrote about Avraham in his book, “Escape To Prison”. But although Avraham seems to have played a large part in Kenan’s internal life, Kenan didn’t seem particularly moved when we met. Even though, by eerie coincidence, I had purchased an apartment in the very same building where Kenan had grown up, and where he and Avraham had spent many hours together.

One person who was excited was the late Elisha Gat, who was both Avraham’s neighborhood buddy and Technion roommate. He heard from someone that I had moved to the Sheinkin neighborhood and left a scrawled note in my mailbox telling me to find him at Cafe Tamar, my local hangout. It turned out that Gat was a fixture there; I’d actually seen him for the better part of a year already without realizing who he was. Once an architect and man about town, a car accident and year-long coma in the 1970s had left Gat physically disabled and brain damaged. He wanted to talk to me about Avraham, he said, but I should be prepared for the fact that when he spoke about these things, he might experience emotions as if they were happening in the here and now.

What I remember from that conversation — aside from the fact that I did end up feeling uncomfortable — are tidbits: how he and Avraham shared a room as lodgers with a family in Haifa, how he always liked my mother but that she was “ambitious” (this was apparently not a good thing), something about a mix-up with the mail which delayed the notice that Avraham was missing in action.

Here is what Private Avraham Dubno’s official Ministry of Defense biography says: “The eldest child of Rachel and Jacob was born on June 1, 1926 in Jerusalem. He began his education in Jerusalem, after which he moved with his parents to Tel Aviv where he completed the Ahad Haam Elementary School. He was a motivated, talented student and won a stipend to the Herzliya Gymnasium where he had a deep affinity and understanding for art and music. Avraham was loved and accepted by friends and acquaintances, a noble soul who exuded good-heartedness. He devoted himself to the development of a Hebrew air force and was an active member of the Herzliya Gymnasium auxiliary flight club, and after a time, joined the Eretz Yisrael Flight Club where he was a gliding instructor. After completing his studies, he served for a year as a guard at Kibbutz Tel Amal and Kibbutz Messilot. After completing his service, he began studying architecture at the Technion in Haifa. His comprehension and talent immediately made him one of the outstanding students in his department. Avraham had even finished his third year.

“With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he was taken from his studies and sent to a course for support weapons instructors. He served in the Carmeli division and participated in the conquest of Haifa, retaliatory actions against riots in the village of Balad-a-Sheikh, was among the conquerors of Acco (Acre), and participated in the battles at Jenin. However, he hoped to be transferred to the air force — his heart’s desire. On July 16, 1948, during the Brosh campaign, an attempt to rout the Syrians from the Mishmar Yarden region, he was at the observation point at Pardes Houry. Armed Syrian forces attacked the lookout. Avraham ordered his men to retreat while he stayed on to treat a wounded comrade. During this battle, he was struck by Syrian tank fire and fell. Avraham was buried at the cemetery in Rosh Pina.

“On December 7, 1950, [his body] was transferred for eternal rest at the Nahalat Yitzhak Military Cemetery.”

No mention here of the two bodies that stayed for a week on the Mishmar Hayarden battlefield because it was too dangerous to go in, the body Elisha Gat told me he was called on to identify, (he said it looked “charred”). Or the fact that Avraham was first reported missing in action and that his father, my grandfather Yaakov, died that week without knowing if his son was alive or dead.

Kenan writes in “Escape To Prison”, “I bid farewell to his corpse, which lay rotting for seven days on the battlefield of Mishmar Hayarden during the great war for Israel’s independence, and was returned after his father was buried for several days and one body did not know of the other’s existence, although it too was a rotting corpse.”

“Now, I am bidding farewell to the deaths of Avraham Dubno, his father, his sister, his brother and his mother. I bid farewell to the death of what was in life a family and became in death, a dead family.”

My mother’s cousin Bruria called the Dubnos “An Accursed Family”, in a loving if inaccurate account in her lively self-published autobiography, “Caspit”. That feels very odd. I’m sure my mother did believe she was cursed. But I would also like to believe that, if there is a curse, it has been lifted. A more likely explanation is that shit happens — bad things happen to good, decent people too. Tomorrow’s memorial ceremonies are proof of that.

I would also like to believe that Israel’s 62nd celebration of independence and the fact that I am here writing about it would please Avraham, who wrote, “I am a very simple man and want to build something here in my country, want to give in simplicity all that is in my ability to give, so that things one day will be good for those who come after me.”

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Remember Alex Singer

April 18, 2010 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

The city is very quiet right now, just about two hours after Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, began with a one-minute siren at eight o’clock pm. There’s something almost comforting in knowing that many people are doing the same thing right now, watching documentaries about those who have fallen in Israel’s 62 years of existence. And yet, as you listen to the family members — the widows, siblings, parents and children of those who died — you know that a very wide gulf exists between you and those who have lost someone in a war, in a terrorist attack, in an event that had tragic circumstances.

One of the few families I know personally that has experienced this kind of tragedy is the Singer family, Max and Suzanne, and their sons, Saul, Daniel and Benjy, whose son and brother, Alex, was killed on September 15, 1987 in southern Lebanon. Alex was a very gifted guy, a Cornell graduate, a former gymnast, an artist, a thinker. I never knew him; he was serving as an officer in the paratroops when I was in college. But like many families seeking to create a lasting remembrance of their loved one, the Singers have created The Alex Singer Project, a non-profit organization that seeks to continue the work that Alex was doing when he was alive.

When reading Alex’s letters or looking at his art, both of which are in video and book format, you gain a sense of this person, who he was, and who he would have been. I’ll let Alex’s words and art tell you who he was; there are photos and letters as well, and even directions to his grave on Mount Herzl.

May his memory be a blessing.

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