As the trees are shedding their leaves, I’m thinking about roots. Among the mountains of red maple leaves on my yellowing lawn, I’m feeling thankful.
Last weekend, I sat transfixed by images on Israeli television as 200,000 Jews gathered in Tel Aviv to mark the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. I watched the entire ceremony, listened to the politicians, journalists, family members and friends as they eulogized Rabin and roused the crowd.
I listened to the perfect Israeli songs of grief and hope — the kind Israelis have become too adept at creating, and that fill the radio waves after terrorist attacks — and felt connected.
And I remembered Israel more than a decade ago. I was sitting in a neighbor’s home on our kibbutz in 1993, watching the historic handshake between Rabin and the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
We were so hopeful — indeed the entire country felt swollen with hope — that maybe this would really be a beginning of peace. Maybe Rabin was right and this marked the end of bloodshed and tears.
And I remembered Nov. 4, 1995. My father-in-law attended the huge peace rally in Tel Aviv where Rabin was murdered, and my husband and I were running on treadmills at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center in Milwaukee. I watched soundless images of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reporting from Tel Aviv and knew that something was terribly wrong.
I remembered the melted candles that filled the square where Rabin was shot, as young people gathered to grieve. I remembered personal and national heartbreak.
As I watched the televised memorial this year, I was thankful. Again I saw history through the screen, and I wept, in grief and also in gratitude for the deep emotions Israel stirs in me: Pain, love, hope, despair, an orphan’s longing.
An American Jew, I found my Jewish soul in the dusty and blossoming, in the prickly and forthright and sweet, soulful home of my people.
Yes, I was moved by the Western Wall. But my heart was captured on Rehov HaMadregot, a little street made up of hundreds of stairs on uneven stones, by stray cats and guitar music; shuk spices and tubs of olives; by a people unafraid to speak in poetry.
There I learned, got married, gave birth and built a house. By uncovering my roots, I also found a sort of liberation.
Today, living again in Milwaukee, I ask myself, what kind of Jew would I be without having discovered my home in Israel? Would I have found my place as a Jew?
As a mother and community member, I know that Israel often sparks a living Judaism in young people. As a people desperately concerned with its survival, we must ensure that our children have the opportunity to receive that spark.
Changing and colorful patchwork
In addition, last week I spent a surprising and wonderful hour contemplating roots of another sort. I was privileged to interview 90-year-old Rosalyn Zaret for the Milwaukee Jewish Historical Society’s Oral History Project.
Zaret, like the hundreds of others who have so far participated in this project, talked about her family and life, her values and memories. And though I had heard much about the project before, I finally understood its value.
Each participant shares his or her life story, one square in a changing and colorful patchwork of our community. Regardless of achievement or social status, education or fame, each story is a part of the whole, a particular, a face.
When I got excited about this project, I phoned my family members and urged them to participate. Each of them, without exception, answered, “But who am I? What do I have to say? I’m nobody important.”
“There is not a single person who doesn’t have something to say,” said MJHS director Kathleen Bernstein. “Everybody has a story.”
Telling that story is a gift for today’s community and future generations. It is one way to leave a legacy.
The project began in 1988 and has recorded 296 stories since, most of them in weeklong sessions since October 2004. The next week of recording will be summer 2006.
I urge interested community members to make an appointment, to share their stories and help record the history of our people in Milwaukee. By knowing our history, living and past, we are made stronger.
As we sit with our families this year to celebrate Thanksgiving, I wish for us the wisdom to be thankful daily. May we treasure our roots throughout the seasons. Happy holiday.
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