Morning Day 4/5

This is our last full day in Israel

Schedule for the day:

1. Cemetery Mount Herzl
2. Yehuda Market and Uri Cohen, a speaker added last minute who is a friend of our rabbi
3. The Old City of Jerusalem, including the Armenian quarter, the Jewish Quarter, and the Western Wall
4. The new city of Jerusalem, meeting a Palestinian-Israeli who had just been nominated with his team for a Nobel Peace Prize because of their Environmental Diplomacy work
5. Early dinner with Y 
6. Doing something at night, somehow getting to the airport

Poem of the Day by a woman living in Shvaim Kibbutz in 1969.
The poet is a woman in her 20’s capturing her feelings after the Yom Kippur War

Early early in the morning

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning
He feels he is a nation and begins to walk
And to all he meets on his way he calls out ‘Shalom!’

Corn stalks are growing up behind him
Between the cracks in the sidewalks and lilac trees
Shower down rich fragrance on his head
The dew drops are sparkling and the hills are a myriad of rays
They will give birth to a canopy of sunlight for his wedding

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning…

And he laughts with the strength of generations in the mountains,
and the shamed wars bow down to the ground,
to the glory of a thousand years flowing forth from the hiding places,
a thousand young years in front of him
like a cold book, like a shepherd’s song, like a branch.

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning

He feels he is a nation and begins to walk,
and he sees that the spring has returned
and the tree is turning green since last fall’s tree shedding.

Poem set to music

 From another blog about this song:

That’s what’s needed now in the Jewish State – more singing, less polarization, more unity of purpose, less divisive politicking, more affirmation of the state’s founding generation’s vision of a Jewish democratic State of Israel, and less right-wing fanatical legislation.

Pitom Kam Adam – Suddenly a man awakes in the morning

We had a short discussion about being a first-timer in Jerusalem.  That was me.  Everyone else had been to Jerusalem before.  Y lives in Jerusalem.  So does Eyad, our driver.  Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are very different cities.  One old, one young.  One of dogs, the other of cats. A thousand different comparisons we could make. What do you, dear reader, think?

Tel Aviv is the friendliest city in the world for dogs, with 1 dog for every 17 residents, making it the city with the highest amount of dogs per capita in the world.

Perhaps one of history and the past, the other of possibility and the future. 

Y shared the poem from Yehuda Amichai, from the book that my cousin Micah had given Natasha decades ago:

Tourists
Verse 1
So condolence visits is what they’re here for,
Sitting around at the Holocaust Memorial, putting on a serious face
At the Wailing Wall,
Laughing behind heavy curtains in hotel rooms.

They get themselves photographed with the important dead
At Rachel’s Tomb and Herzl’s Tomb, and up on Ammunition Hill.
They weep at the beautiful prowess of our boys,
Lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly 
In cool blue bathrooms.

Verse 2

Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David’s Citadel and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there around their guide, and I became their point of reference.  “You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there’s an arch from the RomanPeriod.  A little to the right of his head.” :But he’s moving, he’s moving!” I said to myself:  Redemption will come only when they are told, “Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period?  It doesn’t matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there’s a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family.”

And here is another poem from the same author that I love about Jerusalem:

Jerusalem is Full of Used Jews

Jerusalem is full of used Jews, worn out by history,
Jews secondhand, slightly damaged, at bargain prices.
And the eye yearns toward Zion all the time.  And all the eyes
of the living and the dead are cracked like eggs
on the rim of the bowl, to make the city
puff up rich and fat.

Jerusalem is full of tired Jews,
always goaded on again for holidays, for memorial days,
like circus bears dancing on aching legs.

What does Jerusalem need?  It doesn’t need a mayor,
it needs a ringmaster, whip in hand,
who can tame the prophecies, train prophets to gallop
around and around in a circle, teach its stones to line up
in a bold, risky formation for the grand finale.

Later they’ll jump back down again
to the sound of applause and wars.

And the eye yearns toward Zion, and weeps.

___________________________________

First stop is the cemetery.  I don’t have many written notes from this experience.  I didn’t have my hands out, notebook and pen at the ready.  I walked around, climbing stairs, taking in the graves of the men and women fallen to fight for this ideal of Zion. 

Y observed that one of the saddest places before October 7th were the empty areas, waiting for the next round of bodies to arrive.  The cemetery is a resting place for both soldiers of the IDF and Israelis killed in terrorist attacks.  When we visited, about 3% of all of the graves were occupied by victims of the October 7 war.

One of the most often visited sites before October 7 was the grave of Michael Levin, an American from Pennsylvania who made Aliyah to Israel and, according to the story, managed to sneak his way in to the IDF.  He was young and skinny and they didn’t want him in the army and he managed to sneak in to prove that he could do it. He became what the IDF calls a “Lone Soldier,” meaning he did not have residency or family in Israel.  Lone Soldiers are given one month of leave each year to go visit family.  Michael was in Pennsylvania when the second Lebanese war broke out, and he immediately returned to join his paratrooper unit.  He was killed 7 days later in battle.  A number of initiatives to support other Lone Soldiers have been launched in his memory.

Today we walked through rows and rows of memorials to people struck down on October 7th.  We observed a man in front of the grave of his friend, in full army uniform, crying at the feet of his dead friend. 

Most of our time was spent with the father of one of the people killed on October 7th.

He and his son were both artists.  His son died covering the body of another soldier in a safe house when Hamas terrorists threw in a grenade.  He said that everyone loved his son.  He created art.  He played instruments.  He had a kind heart.  The father thanked us for spending time with him and listening to the stories about his son.

As we were leaving, there was a daily ceremony about to start for fallen soldiers.  We stayed and listened to the Hebrew of families remembering their loved ones, and what I imagine were appreciation of the defenders of Israel. I was surprised at how many women dressed in uniform were part of the service.