20.12.2023 – WEDNESDAY.
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| Belonging |
I grew up listening to stories from the Exile, to stories from the Bible, and to stories from the history of Infant Israel. Most were action stories. When I think of some of them I am rather surprised that my parents even told them to me. Many of these stories were about the martyrs who died without turning their back on God. Who carried the torch for our Jewish faith and our Jewish culture. That is when I learned that being a Jew is belonging to a race but also to the Jewish religion. The two are not separable. Yet, both of my parents were atheists.
My mother's people arrived in Israel – then Palestine - with the second Aliyah in 1904. The Ottoman Empire, historically and colloquially known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, and West Asia. When the rulers expelled the Jews from Tel Aviv, Savta carried my mom, she was born away from her beloved Tel Aviv, in the Northern settlement Rechavia, and did not forgive the Turks till her dying day. By the time I was born in Tel Aviv, rulers had changed our land and it was under the foot of the great British Empire.
My father's people escaped to Palestine with the Fourth Aliyah in 1924. King Victor Emmanuel III named Mussolini the new prime minister, ushering in more than two decades of Fascist rule in Italy. Dad's family were very rich merchants in Rome, living comfortably. As a result of persecution and antisemitism, they fled to Israel where they became farmers and were reduced to horrendous poverty which debilitated them for a whole generation.
Aba was a follower of Menachem Begin (1913–1992) and served as a fighter in the Etzel militia, with a terrorist-like ideology that suited his personality. An explosive Italian.
Ima was connected to those who built the new Kibbutzim and was a part of the Haganna. Ima was a poet.
The British saw both groups as terrorists and when I was 2 weeks old, they arrived in our house and pushed their bayonet into my crib. My mom snatched me before they sliced me open looking for ammunition. My mother never forgave the British for their cruelty. When I heard at school and from my friends, that the Messiah coming, I asked my mom what she knew about him. Her answer was, “The Messiah arrived – the proof is the state of Israel”. When I asked my parents about God I was told that He left the land to Abraham and took off to play chess with the angels. As far as my parents were concerned, we, the people of Israel, were abandoned by God to do our own fighting and to free our land.
Their love for the land, their hate for those who used their people, and their deep longing to have freedom in this land without foreign rule, kept them civil one to another. When I was 10 they divorced.
Years later, when I escaped the confusion to Canada and raised sons of my own, I began to understand some of the stories I grew up on. Only then were the stories of faith and heroism for the nation melded with atheism. You have to be an Israel Jew to understand.
That longing to belong to our land, to our people, never leaves. I believe it is the call of God, the one who says, “I do not leave you nor forsake you, you are my people and I am your God”. It is a longing that permeates throughout our lives and stops only when the fulfillment comes from God Himself. We war not because we enjoy it, we war because we have no other choice but to survive.
At 30 I made a personal choice. I decided to follow Yeshua and since then a sense of belonging is stronger than a sense of longing. At that point in time, I knew that indeed I am a Jew, in race and in faith. My destiny is to follow Him as an Israel Jew. It is the only way that I can tell “which way to go since I have never been this way before.”
God is my light and my Hope and all things from Alef to Tav.
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