When I lived in Alonei Abba (1972-1976) I worked in the dairy (refet).  Along with us moshavniks were two bedouin hired workers sharing the load, Abdullah and Jassem.  When I visited Hanna, Ron, and Abbie recently, they told me that they had told Abdullah that I was now in Haifa and he invited us to visit.  Abdullah and I were work buddies and I recall long conversations about family and life, and several visits to his traditional bedouin hut/tent for great meals, Arab coffee, and conversation.  So I was very much looking forward to seeing him after all these years.

Abdullah is now retired.  He’s not exactly sure when he was born, but sometime between 1930 and 1935.  He remembers the British, he also remembers the German Templars who originally settled in Waldheim, now Alonei Abba.  Abdullah has nine daughters and one son (finally!).  All but three are marrried and live in houses built on land he owns surrounding his own house.  Three remaining daughters live at home.  Since my last visit, he has built a house, but prefers to stay in the bedouin-style permanent tent adjacent to the house.  His wife, Fatma, runs the household with such efficiency that could have kept GM on an even keel through this financial crisis.

Ron, Abbie, Hanna, and I arrived Saturday at around 1 PM.  A table had already been set up outside and was loaded with the beginnings of our meal.  Abdullah was sitting there waiting for us, while the women bustled around setting out food, grilling meat, and making sure all the details were attended to.  When I looked at him, it seemed like we had last talked yesterday, not 30+ years ago.  He did look a bit older, but not much!  We greeted with a warm handshake and a hug, sat down and began a feast to rival any I’ve ever had.  There were an assortment of salads set out, along with humus, home-made pita, olives, various pickled vegetables, and kubbe (ground meat wrapped in bulgar wheat and deep-fried).  Then came the meats – piles of grilled chicken wings and mutton kebabs.  Fatma just kept piling more food onto each of our plates, totally ignoring any pleas that we had enough already!  I finally realized that there was no way I was going to finish what was piled on my plate and just slowly ate to be polite, leaving what I couldn’t touch. 

After a long, leisurely meal, we moved to Abdullah’s tent and sat around a wood stove on pillows and cushions for rounds of sweet Arab coffee, candies, and pastries.  I learned about how life had changed in the two bedouin villages, the conflicts between the various families, local politics, family politics, and much more.  Abdullah retired many years ago and enjoys his life surrounded by family and villagers.  I got an update on others from the village that I remember – Jassem, Mustafa, Yassir (now village muktar).  The family feuds I had heard about long ago still persist.  But Abdullah says life is much better now (under the Israelis) than it used to be (what else would he say?).  He told of how the regional council had organized a bus trip for senior citizens in the villages to the upper Gallilee and the Golan, including lunch! 

Abbie, with her interest in foods and cooking, asked Fatma about recipes, shopping, and how she manages the house.  Fatma doesn’t speak Hebrew, so Abdullah translated.  She doesn’t trust store-made foods and everything must be made from scratch.  She doesn’t even trust flour, prefering to buy wheat berrries and have them ground especially for her, in loads of 100 kilograms.  Abdullah still takes his tractor to Alonei Abba to take some milk directly from the dairy rather than buying at the store. 

He asked about my life since I left Israel.  Several times he asked me how many hours it takes to fly to America.  This is also a question he asked me many times years ago.  I think he can’t fathom someplace so far away!

Last Saturday I took a fifty minute drive to the moshav of Ilaniya near Tiberias to visit my cousin Joe. Joe, his now-deceased wife Zeva, and his three sons, Saul, David, and Michael, made Aliya from Johannesburg around 1968. Joe’s original connection with Israel goes back to 1948, when he was among the volunteers that fought during the War of Independence. The family first settled in the moshav shitufi of Kfar Hittim, whose original founders were Bulgarian Jews who spoke Ladino. After several years there, they moved to the private moshav of Ilaniya nearby and raised dairy cows and grew various feed grasses for cattle. Their daughter Galiya was born while there. When I lived in Israel, Joe and Zeva were very hospitable to me and I visited them at Kfar Hittim many times. The kids were young at that time and enjoyed their American cousin.

Joe is now a feisty eighty years old, retired and living on a minimal pension plus rental income from his property. Saul and Micky are both married, live on the moshav, and have seven kids between them. David works as a driver for the US embassy and lives in Tel Aviv and was visiting the moshav that Shabbat. Galiya was engaged a few years ago but her fiance died in an accident, so she now lives with her father and works as a nurse/EMT for Mogan David Adom. Zeva died several years ago from lung cancer after a life of heavy smoking.

It was great to reconnect with my only relatives in Israel and to see the kids now grown up. Saul, along with working in some sort of sales position and farming, is a reservist in the border patrol and looks like someone I wouldn’t want to cross with. As we all sat around in Mickey’s living room (with the TV on in the background), as usual the conversation turned to Israeli politics. I immediately realized that I was sitting with a group of former South Africans from the apartheid era, transplanting their biases from the blacks back home to the Arabs of this region. Far right wing would be a good description of their views. I was pummelled by the standard right arguments, which include the fact that the Palestinians are just biding their time, playing around with insincere peace negotiatons until the time is right to wipe out all the Jews. Of course their criticisms of the weakness of this and past Israeli leaders is unrelenting, especially against current president, Shimon Peres, whom they blame for Oslo and all subsequent naive peace talks. I kept my mouth shut and waited to move on to another topic.

Saul and his family are off to the local swimming pool. Mickey and his family are off to Nazareth for a day of shopping. Joe offers to make me lunch but I suggest I take him out for lunch. He, David, and I head off to an Arab restaurant down the road from the moshav. The food is certainly to my liking. As usual I enjoy my humos and fool with assorted salads while they tackle their meat dishes. Joe then begins with much animation to describe to me the genealogy project he has been working on for the past few years, with David’s assistance. He has actually visited Lithuania twice and has found some amazing documentation of our family history in his research. He has completed his father’s side and asked me to help him on his mother’s (and my) side. Both sides are almost complete going back to the early 1700’s. Needless to say, I was blown away.

Joe’s mother and my father’s mother (my bubbe) were sisters. The family had lived for a couple hundred years in the Lithuanian village (shtetle) of Shat (or Seta in Lithuanian). There were three sisters – Ida, Bessie (my bubbe), and Olga (Joe’s mother) – and two brothers – Yankele and Yitzhak. Bessie and Ida were sent to the United States in 1908, sponsored by a Silverman family, with marriage arrangements. Joe has found entry documents for both sisters via Ellis Island, then to Boston. Olga and the brothers were much younger and remained in the village. Olga later married and Joe was born there. As the tensions mounted in the early 1930’s (not that it was ever easy for Jews in that area) attempts were made to get the family to America, but immigration was very limited. So Olga, her husband, and Joe, along with one of the brothers, emmigrated to South Africa, as did any other members of that side of my family that survived. One of the brothers, along with their parents and everyone else in the village, were massacred in 1941 and buried in a mass grave. Joe has visited that site, along with the house the family lived in, and much more. He has collaborated with another researcher from the village now in the US. Joe’s dining room table is piled high with photographs, binders of photocopies of birth and death certificates, immigration papers, etc. In addition he has created a genealogy tree on a poster-sized chart for both his father’s and mother’s sides. With David’s help, he has also uploaded the father’s side to a genealogy website and asked me to help with his mother’s side.

My grandmother died when I was 13. Nobody in my family ever was willing to talk about anything to do with their past in Eastern Europe, so I knew very little of this stuff. In addition it is very rare to be able to trace Jewish lineage back to the 1700’s, given the history of expulsions, pogroms, and worse. I was so moved by what Joe had accomplished.

As I drove back to Haifa late in the afternoon I was thinking about the many-faceted intensity of the day – reconnecting with all those relatives past and present.

For several years I worked in the foreign currency department of Jerusalem’s main branch of Bank Leumi. One of my co-workers was Avi Pfeffer. Avi had made aliyah from the US with his family when he was 11 years old and was recently married to Tsili when I knew him. We were good buddies, and even after I left Jerusalem and moved to Alonei Abba, we remained in contact. Avi was seriously wounded during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, taking the brunt of an explosion which hit his mid-section. As a result, he lost a couple of organs (as he puts it) and still has pieces of shrapnel in his body. Avi’s younger brother, Nupi, was also seriously injured in the war. Nupi was in the tank corp and his tank was hit. The other three in his tank were killed instantly. In order for Nupi to get out of the inferno, he had to climb out of the top of the tank, through massive flames. He had a fireprooof suit on, but sustained severe burns on his head, face, and hands. Nupi underwent numerous rounds of plastic surgery and skin grafts for several years after the war, and is now a cardiologist living in Baltimore.

When I arrived in Israel I looked at the on-line phone directory for Avraham Pfeffer in Jerusalem. There were two listings, so I tried the first. In Hebrew I asked, is the the Avi Pfeffer that worked in Bank Leumi many years ago? Yes. Is this the Avi Pfeffer who came for the US? Yes. Then switching to English, I ask him if he knows who this might be. Are you tall with a beard? Yes. Then we spent the next hour on the phone catching up on the past 33 years. Avi retired from the bank five years ago, is still married to Tsili, has a son and two daughters and two grandchildren. His health is good.

So last Wednesday, Avi picked me up in his black VW near my hotel with the plan to spend the day together. When I had mentioned that I had visited Bethlehem and Beit Sahor, he had bristled. He was going to show me the other side. He took me around Jerusalem proper on Rehov Begin (which didn’t exist back then) to his neighborhood of Gonen, built on former Palestinian land. His home, which he had built in the early 1980s, was very nice, in a growing suburb of the city. He drove me around to the other side of Gonen where you can look directly across to the next hill and the Arab village of Beit Jalla. From Beit Jalla, Gonen was severely hit by rockets for several weeks a few years ago, resulting in a massive Israeli military response and the construction of yet another massive concrete wall protecting the suburb from further attacks. Although all the apartments that had been hit are now totally repaired, Avi pointed out houses that had been hit.

We then took a ride along the settler road heading toward Gush Emunim (the Hebron area occupied by the most militant of the religious settlers). He showed me how concrete barriers had been erected on both sides of the road to protect from rock-throwers. We went through two long tunnels, built to keep from driving through or close to Arab villages (one can wonder whether for security reasons or to protect the Arabs from visible signs of intrusion). Since I had already seen enough of this stuff, I suggested we return to Jerusalem and have lunch.

Avi took me to a very trendy street in Emek Refayim (imagine Centre St., Jamaica Plain) with cafes and restaurants on both sides of the street. We went to Tal’s Bagels, an American style cafe serving light meals, complete with young people sitting at tables with coffee drinks and laptops connected to the free wifi. The salad I ordered was great, as was the whole wheat bagel (bagels weren’t part of the cuisine 35 years ago!). And the lunch conversation was great – two 60ish men talking about their lives, their fears, getting old, their feelings. Gone was any tension about Israeli politics.

After lunch I asked Avi if we could swing by Ir Ganim, the neighborhood next to Kiryat Yovel where I received a new immigrant apartment after declaring Israeli citizenship. He said he hadn’t been there in years, but had heard that it had turned into a slum. So off we went looking for the neighborhood. We weaved up the road past Ein Kerem leading to Hadassah Hospital and turned left at the Ir Ganim sign. I didn’t remember the name of the street and many more streets had since been built. But by gut I directed Avi and soon we came upon the apartment building, which I recognized immediately. It was brand-new when we moved in. It now looked quite run-down and appeared to be now occupied by Russian and Ethiopian new immigrants.

So it was now late afternoon and I needed to catch a bus back to Haifa. Avi drove me to the central bus station, we said our goodbyes, promised to keep in touch, and I hopped on the next direct bus home. My visit to Jerusalem – clearly a success.

When I first arrived in Israel in 1968, I enrolled in a program at Tel Aviv University and stayed there only for a month or two before dropping out.  My dorm roommate was Jonathan Katz, a nice Jewish boy from Long Island.  Jon met an Israeli woman a few years older than him named Tsvia Gottesdiner who worked at a downtown shop selling posters and records and who soon became his girlfriend.  When Jon finished his year abroad in Israel and returned to college in the US, Tsvia and I become close friends.  First, while I attended an ulpan at Kibbutz Ein Shemer (near Hadera), I would take a bus to Tel Aviv to visit her and stay at her roof-top apartment on Hamelech George St.  Tsvia was and is politically very much to the left (even by Israeli standards) and a member of the Israeli communist party.  Her political activism and a very early marriage kept her from military service.  She would take me to parties with her hip, leftist friends and I made some great connections through her.  Then when I moved to Kibbutz Gezer, Tsvia would come to the kibbutz hear Ramle to spend Shabbats.  While at Gezer, I met Liza, whom I eventually married.  We moved to Jerusalem, where I worked as a clerk then manager in the main branch of Bank Leumi.  I pretty much lost contact with Tsvia by then.  And I certainly didn’t keep up contact with Jon Katz.

However, about fifteen years ago while swimming at an outdoor pool in Newton, a man about my age recognized me from his past.  Jon had since gotten a doctorate at Brandeis, married, and was settled in Newton.  We renewed our friendship.  When I knew I was going to be spending time in Israel, I asked Jon to get me Tsvia’s contact information.  She has marrried and was still living in Tel Aviv.  During my first week here, I called her (quite a surprise to her!) and arranged to meet her in Tel Aviv yesterday.

Getting from my home in Mercaz HaCarmel to Tel Aviv couldn’t be easier.  I drove down the mountain to the new Hof HaCarmel bus and train station, parked the car in the lot, and bought a round trip rail ticket to Tel Aviv (about $13).  The train is modern, air conditioned, and sleek.  The trip to Tel Aviv along with a lot of commuters and soldiers (traveling for free) took less than one hour.  Since I arrived very early, I decided to walk (and walk and walk).  I headed down Kaplan St. to the center of the city.  At Diezengoff I turned left down Hamelech George, part of the oldest section of this huge, cosmopolitan city.  To me it looked very much the same as it did 35 years ago.  At the end of Hamelech George is the Carmel Market.  Although once devoted to fruits and vegetables, this crowded, bustling market now also sells everything from foods to clothes to arts and crafts.  Some of the stalls are even staffed by Africans (generally either Ethiopian Israelis or Sudanese refugees allowed to enter Israel).  I then headed up Allenby to Ben Gurion to Diezengoff (once the most trendy street in the city but now a bit worn) to meet Tsvia as she finished her haircut on upper Diezengoff. 

Other than looking a bit older, Tsvia hadn’t changed a bit!  It was great to see her and to hear about her life.  She had married Merek, a new immigrant (family originally Polish/German who had fled to China during WWII) who is a  French trained gynecologist and now a high-level manager of a multi-hospital department.  They have three daughters, two married, and two grandchildren.  Despite living at the top of Israeli economic and social levels, she and her husband maintain their political leanings and are active in many initiatives, including illegal immigration, bedouin and Palestinian rights, etc. 

She took me to a new section of the city along the northern waterfront that is being developed with high-end restaurants and coffee shops, boutiques, and a beautiful boardwalk that will eventually extent all the way to Herzliya.  We had lunch at a fancy place serving traditional Arabic food with a flair (and price tag to match).  We sat for several hours eating slowly, catching up on our lives, discussing politics (local and global), and my getting her take on today’s Israel.  It was great.  We then wandered some more, bought some delicious sorbet (it seems like everyone in Israel enjoys sitting outdoors eating, drinking coffee, and talking), and then I headed back to the train station to catch the express train back to Haifa. 

Despite it being what I have since found out was the hottest day of the year and the fact that I walked many miles in that heat, I had a delightful, moving, stimulating day, doing something I really hoped would happen during this sabbatical – renewing friendships and learning intimately about life here.

For about three years (1973-1976) we lived in a small Moshav Shitufi (collective/private agricultural village) in the Galil.  Today I drove from Haifa to Alonei Abba to see if I could find anyone remaining from the period I lived there.  It’s about a 30 minute drive from Haifa, first weaving down from the top of Carmel to sea level, then heading east towards Nazareth.  As I entered the highway leaving Haifa, nothing seemed familiar to me.  However as I climbed the hill to Kiriat Tivon and then down into the valley, it did start looking like I remember it.  Of course, at the turn-off onto the road up to the village, the little shopping mall with the MacDonald’s (all run by Kibbutz Alonim) was new. 

After about five kilometers I turned right into the village.  I parked next to the hundred and fifty year old deserted Templar church in the center of the village.  Alonei Abba was originally settled by Romanian Jewish immigrants in 1948, when they expelled a group of German Christians (templars) who had sympathized with the Nazis during WWII.  Several of the original buildings were either used as houses or left to deteriorate.  The church is one of the latter.  It was a very hot Shabbat morning and the village was very quiet.  I didn’t see anyone around, so I just wandered the few streets recognizing some of the old houses and noticing that several new, quite fancy, houses had been built or were under construction.  I even walked down the road to the refet (dairy) where I spent many very early mornings milking cows.  It was much larger than it was in the 1970’s, but otherwise largely unchanged.  I finally asked a woman if anyone remained from the era that I was there.  She mentioned a few names, most of which I recognized.  However most of these folk weren’t there that day.  Hannah Rosner (now Hannah Levav), an artist and sculptor, had just left for India (not sure whether it was for three months or a year).  Many, of course, had passed away.  The woman told me that Feivel and Joyce  Falk, Americans from Baltimore, were still on the village. However their oldest daughter had recently died in an auto accident and they had become quite reclusive since then.  I would guess they are in their late 70’s by now.  I went and knocked on their door, but no answer. 

I wandered further and finally encountered a guy about my age named Eli who had lived there for about fifty years.  He vaguely remembered me and I vaguely remembered him.  He was, I suspect as usual, was in a very chatty mood.   As we stood in his yard (with a run-down Appalachian look) he expounded in detail on who died, who moved away, who had fights with others, how the community had deteriorated and turned into a commuter community for people working outside.  Apparently in the early 1990’s there was a bit of a revolution in the community and they had transformed from a collective settlement to a more capitalistic model.  Residents were given three choices.  They could  work in the village (mixed agriculture and light industry) and receive a stipend depending on family size.  They could work outside the village, contribute their entire salary to the community and receive a similar stipend.  Or they could work outside, keep their salary, and pay a resident fee to live in the village.  The process of switching to this model caused a major split in the community and most people opted for option #3.  Eli himself originally worked in the village but now works as a construction supervisor for a private company.  He still lives in one of the expropriated templar buidings that he has lived in since he first immigrated.  Eli also expounded on his take on all the problems with Israel (I’ll save those for another conversation) and was basically a pretty cynical man. 

I was left with a lot of thoughts and emotions as I drove back to Haifa.  I was glad that I had revisited an important part of my past.  I was also really disappointed that the very close community and friends I had there were now dispersed and I most likely won’t be able to track them down very easily.

A stop at my new favorite Arab restaurant for lunch did much to lift my mood. ]