The north and the south of it

Sunday July 16 2006

Dear family and friends,

Having a super active high need baby does make it difficult to sit down for long enough to actually write something coherent, but under the circumstances considering the deluge of e-mails and phone calls we’ve had I thought it might be prudent to at least try.

Everyone wants to know how we are doing, how we are “bearing up”. I admit it’s a little strange being asked that question. Small as Israel is, thank God, living south-east of Tel Aviv, as of now we are nowhere near the front lines or the areas under attack.

After several phone conversations I realize how hard the whole situation is to convey to folks abroad who watch their television sets and don’t understand how where I live in central Israel, life goes on pretty much as normal and an hour and a half drive away to the north people are in their shelters under rocket bombardment.

Still, Israel is the kind of place where everyone is no more, and often far less, than six degrees removed from everyone else and pretty much everyone I know has friends and family somewhere in the country who are directly affected by current events.

Shabbat afternoon in the park the lady pushing her child on the swing next to my daughter's had just received a call from her family up north.

They live in Carmiel, a town in north-west Israel which has been hit several times by Katyushas, and had gone to seek refuge in Tiberias, a town in north-east Israel, which until now had been safe.

That afternoon Hizballah fired rockets at Tiberias. This family were unharmed, but when they called friends in Carmiel to check in, they found out that one of the rockets fired at Carmiel that day scored a direct hit on their house there.

We know people in Sderot, Ashkelon, Carmiel, Haifa, Safed and other "frontline" areas north and south targetted by rocket attacks - ordinary folks living in otherwise ordinary places.

We pray and hope for better news, and for God to keep them safe, and for God to keep us all safe.

Those of us living in so far unaffected areas are well aware of Hizballah’s threats to get us too.

Only yesterday the Israeli Air Force hit a missile launcher carrying an Iranian made Zilzal missile – a weapon with the range to hit the greater Tel Aviv area. The strike on the launcher caused the missile to misfire, sending it careening into a junk yard of old tires where it started a massive fire.

The funny part, if one can find the humour in all this, that Hizballah’s Al Manar TV and other Arabic stations saw this thing falling from the sky and reported that an Israeli aircraft (God forbid) had been shot down, even claiming to have captured two pilots – thank God both reports turned out to be untrue. You could say they had egg on their faces when it turned out that the “Israeli plane” was actually the very missile Hizballah was planning to launch at Tel Aviv.

Just in case there are more of these though we have cleaned out our shelter, set up a tv with Seseame Street and other kids videos in there and stocked up on canned and dry foods and water - things that always come in handy. Odds are I’ll be making a lot of tuna and corn casseroles over the next few months.

I guess that answers your questions about whether we have a shelter. Pretty much everyone in Israel has one: in offices, public buildings, malls, houses and flats or a communal neighbourhood shelter which usually doubles up as a community centre or synagogue. It’s just a fact of life.

For those who say I’m too calm, most everyone I know is, even some people I spoke to in their shelters up north.

It’s kind of scary, but we've been through worse and God willing we will get through this.

Personal joy, national tragedy

This is the summer of my personal joy, one of the happiest most wonderful times I can remember ever.


My family, so long devoid of little children, finally, finally has a future, a little, tiny ball of energy, the first new generation in decades.


She spends much of her time snuggled up to me, nursing for all she is worth, frenetically working on growing. She is only just over a month old, but she is alert much of the time, and between nursing and the rare occasions when she sleeps her eyes are wide open, absorbing the world with such hunger and curiosity that it takes my breath away to see in one so young.


Yes this is the summer of my joy, my motherhood, my family's new start.


But sitting here propped against my comfy cushions as my little girl marathon nurses, I'm witnessing the summer of destruction for the 10,000 Israeli residents of Gaza. My breath catches in my throat, the tears flow down my cheeks, and it isn't post-natal hormonal weepiness (I'm not usually the weepy type), it's the heartache of watching my army, my air force, destroy my fellow citizens communities by governmental decree.

It really does feel surreal, sitting here in my cosy room with its warm colours, my newborn in my arms, all so homey and heimish, and there, on my TV screen similar cosy homes which are slated for destruction, the families who live in them, families just like mine, begging our own soldiers decked out in our own uniforms complete with Star of David adorned flag, our own people, getting ready to evict our own people. The mind simply refuses to comprehend.

And no, I shouldn't say families just like mine, because we've been living in our sleepy dormitory town, which thank God, was pretty much quiet through the Oslo War. These familes, these Israeli residents of Gaza, they have consistently been on the front lines, have absorbed constant barrages of mortars and rockets, have run the gauntlet of some of the most dangerous roads in the country just to get to and from their homes. These people are heroes, brave people who have put their lives where their beliefs are and gone to live in a front line area to protect the rest of us, to farm and create peaceful, beautiful communities which are a model of Israel's pioneering spirit.

This is how such patriotic citizens are being treated, given a few paltry months in which to uproot their lives, their entire communities and start again. Whether you think Israel should pull out of Gaza or not, treating these people like miscreants, like deviants, like garbage to be thrown out brings shame on our country, certainly on our government.

As if decades of successful community building, of thriving agriculture, of top educational institutions are nothing, are so easy to achieve that no one really needs to bother thinking how to rescue it, just uproot the people and plonk them down anywhere, who cares.

It makes my blood boil, and what have I done about it? Well, last summer I demonstrated, yes, I did. It's been quite a while since I've actually demonstrated, but I did, along with thousands of others. Then I was pregnant and not up for demonstrating (though I know many pregnant ladies who did). So it's been arm chair spectating for me.

Thousands and thousands of other people have been demonstrating though. Peacefully, sadly, hopefully. And how did the government react? By demonising and delegitimising the entire opposition, portraying all those who opposed the Gaza pullout as a bunch of violent, dangerous nutters.

That made my blood boil even more, because I, and many of those I know who demonstrated, can see the reasons for a pull out, can understand the motivation for a pull out, we aren't just reacting from the gut, we've tried to see the government's side here and come to the conclusion that despite possibly valid reasons, the Gaza evacuation policy does not make sense.

Yes, Gaza has always been a stronghold for Palestinian terror and fedayeen groups. Yes, Gaza has less spiritual, national significance to the Jewish people than Judea and Samaria. Yes, the terror war has been the hardest there. Yes, there is international pressure for this government to make some kind of move on the negotiation front. Yes, it might help Israel's diplomatic standing to make a grand good will gesture to the Palestinians. Yes, the costs of defending Gaza are huge. Yes, there is more consensus on letting go of Gaza than any other part of the disputed territory.

I've had endless discussions about this with so many friends and so many find themselves agonising over what side to take on the issue of Gaza. I'm talking about people on both the "right" and "left", none of whom are taking this move for granted.

We've just spent the last few years fighting a painful war against the onslaught of terrorism from our Palestinian peace partners. Much of that terror has eminated from Gaza. The precise aim of that terror was the belief that if Israel suffered enough, Israel would surrender, Israelis would flee, Israelis would fear for their lives so much that they would give-up.

Withdrawing from Gaza right now seems like granting victory to those bombers and snipers, a victory to Palestinian terrorism, and more importantly, a disincentive for peaceful negotiation. Many Israelis believe that such a huge gesture should only be part of a negotiated settlement, not a one-sided move.

After fighting so hard to defend ourselves from Palestinian terror it seems counterproductive, to say the least, that the government should embark on a policy that will likely encourage more. It sends the message that fire enough rockets and mortars at us and we'll up sticks and leave. Pulling out from Gaza implies that the Palestinian militias should start the same tactics elsewhere to bring about the end of Israel.

Arguably it was precisely Israel's shambolic withdrawal from Lebanon, including abandonment of its SLA allies, in May 2000, that triggered the Oslo War in the first place, a display of weakness that encouraged Palestinian leaders to resort to violence rather than continue the peace process, despite Ehud Barak's unprecedented concessions at the summer 2000 Camp David talks.

Some respond that if the Palestinian leadership in Gaza respond to Israel's withdrawal with terror Israel will just march in again and fight the terrorists. Like that will be a picnic after Israel has given up its bases, its intelligence networks, so much that gives Israel's security forces the upper hand. Without the IDF presence there will be uncontrolled weapons smuggling, increased fortifications, booby traps and other measures which will make fighting in Gaza after an Israeli pullout much more difficult than it is today. Not to mention that on the diplomatic front reinvading a territory Israel has withdrawn from will be a difficult and unpopular move, never mind the just cause.

Then there is the question of who Israel will be abandoning Gaza to. The supposedly more moderate Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority is weak in Gaza. It is only nominally in control, facing stiff competition from Hamas and other Islamic nationalist groups which are extremely popular. In general, Gaza Palestinians tends to more politically and religiously radical than most residents of Judea and Samaria, and this is also where extremist pan-Islamic splinter groups affiliated with Al-Qaida have a toehold. The chances that Hamas or an alliance of these groups will try to take on the PA once Israel pulls out, or that there will be anarchy and civil war, are high. Such a situation is unlikely to help Israel's security - fighting Israel is often the one thing keeping these groups from fighting each other.

Those who find fault with the Sharon governments Gaza plan are coming from so many different angles.We may not agree with withdrawing from territory, or we may believe that the time is simply not right, oppose the principle of a one-sided move on Israel's part or just disagree with the way the government is handling the whole thing.

From doing the rounds of friends (and not a few op-eds) from across the political spectrum I can see that opposition to the government's proposed Gaza evacuation comes from people of many different political stripes and for many different reasons. But Sharon's government has tarred us all with the brush of insanity and extremism, a cruel insult to the intelligent, reasonable thinking people who oppose Sharon's plan for Gaza.

So many people have been arrested at demonstrations, some not even for actually protesting, but for looking like someone who might protest while standing near a road or other area of protest. In particular many children with protest signs have been arrested, on the grounds that they didn't have permits to protest, but then last time I checked one didn't need a permit to be one or two people with a sign standing in the street and voicing an opinion. It's as though the only way Sharon thinks he can get this done is to make opposition to the Gaza withdrawal so illegitimate that people are too embarrassed or scared to take part in the demonstrations against it.

But of course at the moment that is all academic for me anyway. A new mother with a tiny baby in the ferocious heat of midsummer I'm barely leaving home to go to my local grocery store, let alone demonstrations or sit ins near the Gaza border, or trying to infiltrate Gaza itself, where Israeli security forces have implemented a lockdown for fear that non-Gaza residents will flood the Israeli communities there and prevent the pullout. I feel impotent, helpless and kind of hypocritical, watching this all unfold on TV, or in e-mails from friends or in the newspapers or in chatter around the dinner table, but not actually doing anything to make myself heard.

Really though, I just don't have time. Even writing a letter seems to take forever, interrupted by countless nursings and of course the sheer exhaustion of new motherhood which is turning my thought process to complee mush.

So I'm staying home, me and my kid (how weird and wonderful to say that?!), and I'll have to sit this one out as an armchair spectator, no matter how strongly I feel about the enormous wrongness of it all. Be comfortable in my home as I watch families like mine lose theirs.

I guess the difficulty of this balance though is part of what makes some people find Israel a hard place to live. The intensity of life here, local politics that feels more personal, more immediate than elsewhere. Part of the challenge of being a Jew in the place where the Jewish future is being made, where so many life and death issues are being decided in the here and now.

Perhaps for now that is my consolation this summer. As things stand now it seems to me that nothing is going to stop the Israeli government from pushing forward with what to me seems a very misguided policy. Yes, if my personal circumstances were different I would be out there protesting anyway, but they aren't, so I'm not.

I'm working on my own small contribution to a Jewish future, I'm mothering a new generation native born Israeli in my home in Israel.

On the top shelf of the wardrobe in her bedroom there is a box I've put together, a time capsule I suppose, of the events of the summer of her birth. An orange bracelet and t-shirt of those who support the Israeli communities in Gaza. A slew of newspaper articles on the topic, pro and con. A disc of the summer's protest songs. God Willing when she is old enough, she'll know what happened this summer, what was lost, what might have been gained and she'll be able to make her own mind up as to whether it was the right thing to do.








How can I rejoice in my personal, private celebration when my nation faces such a wrenching tragedy?

New mother without mother

I finally did it, or rather my little girl did - I'm an Ima!

Such a wonderful feeling, beyond words, which is a weird feeling for someone who writes.

I did it my way, naturally, and I'm so glad I did, I spent the first few days like a Duracell bunny, boundless energy and joy radiating from every pore. I'm surprised they didn't lock me in a radiation proof room, I was that bright and glowy from the sheer exhileration of it all, from the moment she was born.

Couldn't figure out why they wanted me to take a wheelchair or kept asking if I felt faint. Me, faint?! I'm a new Ima and I'm raring to go, just give me my kid and let me nurse for crying out loud. It's not as if I'd been given any painkillers or what have you, I was naturally high on giving birth - still am, though I must say that physical exhaustion is starting to set in.

No, I couldn't be any happier about giving birth and being a mother, except, except -

My mother isn't here.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. I mean, I had of course hoped to be younger, but what can you do, but I never imagined being motherless as a new mother.

My mother loved kids, really put her whole heart and soul into being a mother to me, the way a mother should. It was criminal that she was denied more children, but I always swore to myself that I would remedy that. She would be an awesome grandmother, she'd live nearby or in the same house, just as we did with my grandmother. That was the plan at least.

Except of course she is dead, died almost exactly two years ago, and damn the way my body works, I didn't manage to produce a kid until now. And my God how those two years hurt.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer she told the oncologist that she would beat it, she had to, she was going to be a grandmother, she had to live to be a grandmother.

But she didn't and now I've just named my little girl in her honour and it feels so strange. Not strange to have chosen her name, but strange that I had to, that she isn't here with me on earth, babe in arms, joyful in my joy, our joy.

Yes of course everyone has told me how she is here in spirit, she's looking down on us, blah blah blah with the usualy platitudes of comfort, but it's not the same, and they know it. Even better have been the folks who say the timing is no coincidence, afterall, I got pregnant almost exactly one year after my mother's death, quite clearly it was my mother's saintly intervention in Heaven that granted me a baby. I know these are meant to be words of consolation, but I find it pretty cruel to think of a bargain in which I exchange my mother for my child.

But there you have it, I'm a mother, and my mother is no more.

So my joy is not quite boundless. My joy at being a mother, at having my wonderful baby girl nursing at my breast, that is everything I dreamed of and more, no question. But doing so without my mother, not having her hold my girl, her grandchild, that without doubt makes this bittersweet.

That is what is though, so I've made my peace with what is despite the loss, because all my life I've waited for this moment and never, until I finally had my daughter in my arms, had her nursing at my breast, had my husband glowing with happiness at my side, never could I have fully understood the magnitude of the status of mother, of parent.

And my mother may not be here in person, and I hope she is watching from above, but more than anything she is here in my memory, in everything she taught me about motherhood, from her opinion of dummies (no way) to her world view on how to talk to your children (don't talk down to them, listen and expect them to surprise you).

One of her guiding principles, don't be self-conscious, grown-ups can be silly too, even if the folks at the supermarket think you're nuts for chatting to your newborn about how to pick a ripe watermelon, everything can be a learning experience, just because you think the baby is too young to gain anything from what you're saying, doesn't mean she isn't.

Above all though, she taught me to always show love.

I hope that I'll merit to do as good a job as she did.

Building over the past

Tuesday, November 9, 2004

At 3:30 this afternoon four of us packed into a car and drove off to the outskirts of Modi'in, the site of the rapidly expanding new Buchman neighbourhood.

Turning off the main road towards a sign marked "No Entry: Work Vehicles Only", the little car bounced along a dirt road through a building site, eliciting quizzical looks from a few workmen before arriving at a pastoral hillside. The scars of the building work had already gashed one side of the valley, but the slopes ahead of us were still in their natural state. Bright red tapes marking two archaeological sites were easy to make out against the vegetation and stone.

It's a cliche here that everywhere you walk is an archaeological site from some period, but the Modi'in area is especially rich, with continuous human settlement going back at least 6000 years to the Chalcolithic period. We are lucky enough to have the dawn of modern human civilisation in our backyard.

On the ridge above us in the distance, giant drills and diggers were visible, their din breaking the pleasant stillness of the place. They warned of the fate awaiting these hillside archaeological sites, slated to be built over in the next phase of the construction project. This may have been our last chance to see them before they are destroyed.

We tramped up to the first site, a field strewn with primitive flint tools, the kind we learnt about when we did a project on prehistoric man in school. This site was indeed Chalcolithic. The area is scattered with strange shallow dish shapes, gouged right out of the bedrock, flowing into each other to form some kind of complex.. The people who made this vast network didn't even have chisels - the rough marks of their flints are still visible.

The layout of the basins reminded me of a primitive olive press. The eastern Mediterranean is after all the cradle of the olive civilisation, the region where the olive tree was first domesticated.

Above some of the Chalcolithic remains are rough stone structures, dating from the Early Bronze period, a strange network of curved walls rather than a regular shape. In the centre is a circular

structure, perhaps the base of a tower. No one has quite worked out what this is yet, but a chill washed over me standing so close to something so ancient.

A short walk from there is a second excavation of a much more recent settlement from "only" about 2000 years ago. It dates from the Hasmonean period, the dynasty of priestly kings who made Modi'in famous as their home town and the scene of the Hannukah story.

This site is even more impressive, with more easily identifiable stone ruins. Though it is still millennia old it is much more familiar. Here archaeologists found coins, jugs, pottery - everyday objects familiar to modern people.

I was most struck by the mikve, a ritual bath which is at the centre of every religious Jewish community to this day. Unlike those I've seen at other archaeological sites, this one is generously sized with wide, boldly carved steps leading down to a vaulted room, traces of the original plaster still just visible on the walls. Next door is the cistern used to collect rainwater for the bath.

Other than a large fortlike structure above, though, there are no dwellings in the immediate vicinity, save possibly for some cave homes, still under excavation. Why the huge mikve then?

The answer seems to lie in the industrial olive oil press at the heart of the site. The grindstone alone must weigh several tonnes. The thought of carving and transporting such a
massive object without the aid of modern machinery is awe inspiring. The adjacent basin for collecting the oil is equally huge. Our guide noted that it is one of the largest found in the region, even though olive oil production was a major industry in ancient Israel and Judea, and large presses have been uncovered across the country, including several in and around Modi'in.

Modi'in is known to have been on the major ancient highway to Jerusalem. A hill close to my home in Modi'in is covered with over 100 water cisterns and several columbaria (dove cotes) - far more than would have been needed for a single town at that time. It also features a couple of large, though not as impressive, mikve baths. The site appears to have been some kind of pilgrims' rest stop where they prepared and purified themselves for the last leg of their journey, Modi'in being about a day's walk to ancient

Jerusalem.

The Mishnah, the ancient book of Jewish law, mentions that Modi'in is the first town along the route where pilgrims could buy earthenware for use in Temple rituals as it was close enough to Jerusalem that local potters kept themselves and their vessels in a permanent state of ritual purity.

It is possible that this giant olive oil press was also producing for the Temple, hence the adjacent mikve and bath, so that all those working the press could keep themselves ritually pure. Likewise this would explain stone utensils found at the site - according to Jewish law stone could not contract ritual defilement the way pottery could, and thus was often used for ritual purposes.

Could this site have belonged to the Temple or to Cohanim, priests who worked at the Temple? Could this have belonged to the Hasmonean monarchy, who were themselves priests? It would perhaps explain the fort guarding the site.

It is still early days and there are many questions to be answered. Artifacts from the site are still being dated to determine which part of the Hasmonean era they are from. Already one silver coin has been found from the late Hasmonean period. Other coins need to be cleaned and studied. The archaeological report on the site has yet to be issued.

Time is not on the side of the researchers though. As in many parts of Modi'in the Ministry of Housing and the powerful contractors who greatly influence development policy in Modi'in have brought pressure to bear on the Antiquities Authority, and, like so many other interesting sites in the town, this too is slated for a new housing

project.

Dr Ofra Auerbach, a local conservationist, has seen this story play out too many times. A resident of the neighbouring older town of Makkabim, now annexed to the Modi'in municipality, she has watched the new town of Modi'in swallow up the rocky hillsides on her doorstep.

She has seen countless emergency excavations, required by Israeli law before land can be developed. Several of these digs uncovered fascinating finds, including a Canaanite watchtower and a Hasmonean-era industrial zone and farmhouse, all of which were filled in and built over. Not far from the site she showed us today, one of the most ancient synagogues in the world was discovered, alongside a town square, a luxury villa and a row of alley houses. Only the synagogue and adjacent alley were preserved, and though protected by fencing, they are being rapidly hemmed in by roads and construction work, parts of the site already buried by the widening of a key Modi'in access road.

This time though, Dr Auerbach is determined to put a stop to the eradication of Modi'in's heritage. How can modern Modi'in, named for the ancient Modi'in of the Hasmoneans and the Hannukah story, be so blase about blotting out its own Hasmonean history? With all the parks in this town, surely some of the archaeological sites could be preserved, the town plan slightly altered to make room for historic Modi'in to find a place within the fast growing "city of the future"?

To date, her pleas, and those of fellow conservation campaigners have fallen on indifferent ears. Several members of the town council have taken up her cause and citizens are organising a petition to be sent to city

hall and the Antiquities Authority.

The growth of Modi'in may bring in more money for the contractors, but it also means more concerned citizens, shocked to discover that their homes were built over, rather than alongside, such rich archaeological sites. A savvy municipality could surely develop a thriving tourist industry around these finds which are of particular interest to Jews and Christians around the world.

We don't know if this story will have a happy ending. If once again the influential building lobby wins, at least some of the town's residents will be able to show their children photos and tell them the story of what was once here.

Residents of Modi'in are rooting for Ofra though, and her dream that generations of Modi'in school children will yet learn about olive oil making and the Hannukah story at this very site.

We certainly hope so.

Seam Lines

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Driving home from the Judean desert recently, we stumbled across an English-language oldies station calling itself Mood 92 FM. It didn't sound like any Israeli station we knew of, so we guessed that it was Jordanian. Jordan used to have an English language music station a few years ago. We stayed tuned out of curiosity.

Suddenly and without warning, another station cut in on the frequency. Strident, Arabic martial music blared out, with heavy male voices bellowing a defiant song. My Arabic is extremely rusty, but I could pick out enough words to figure out the gist: "our people", "revolution", and, finally, "Hamas".

We were tuned to a pro-Hamas radio station.

And then, just as suddenly, the mellow tones of Mood 92 returned: "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

We couldn't stop laughing. Half-seriously I looked around for the hidden camera. Surely this was someone's idea of a practical joke?!

We drove through the French Hill junction, with Arab Jerusalem neighbourhoods to one side, Jewish Jerusalem ahead of us, and heavily-guarded bus stops full of Jewish travellers by the side of the road.

Too soon, the Hamas station regained control of the frequency. More martial music, which faded to an enraged orator. I picked up the word "Palestine" over and over again, interspersed with assorted vocabulary words from my old Arabic newspaper reading homework: "homeland", "nation", "army". The speaker worked himself into a frenzy. Then a woman's voice came on, apparently identifying the station by the name Al-Manar - also the name of a TV and radio network run by Hezbollah in Lebanon, one of the organisation's propaganda vehicles against Israel. I wonder if they're connected.

And then it was back to Mood 92. Gloria Gaynor was belting out "I Will Survive". If only it were always this easy to get rid of Hamas.

We were returning home from a day trip to Ein Prat, just east of Jerusalem, a little Garden of Eden hidden away in the Judean desert, a refuge of water and greenery amidst the rocky barrenness of the desert cliffs.

The nature reserve is a narrow valley with a refreshing stream trickling through its floor, fed by springs which gush year round. Lush figs and shady eucalyptus trees grow here and there, seemingly from the middle of the stream. A hiking trail leads up to the rockier end of the wadi, towards the springs themselves. Emerald patches of natural grass - a rarity here - are dotted between sections of the streams.

Pools form between natural rock pavements, and agile fish glide and leap in the water, glinting and gleaming in the mellow gold glow of the afternoon autumn sun. They share their home with tiny black water snails and an occasional river crab, both creatures making their homes by the rocky ledges of the pools.

A gentle breeze stirs the luxurious foliage in the damp canyon bed, rustling the dried grasses on higher ledges, remnants of the fertility brought by last winter's rains. In a small meadow, white stalks of squill flowers wave meditatively, heralds of this year's approaching wet season.

It was Friday, part of the weekend for both Jews and Muslims. Several families, Jewish and Arab, were picnicking separately under the trees by the stream. Teenage Palestinian boys basked in the sun just beyond the glade, while a religious Israeli family found a shady spot right by the water under a huge fig tree.

Suddenly one of their young boys let out an excited cry, pointing to the water's edge: "Scorpion, scorpion! A big one! Here, here!"

It was, of course, a crab, desert scorpions not being especially fond of ponds. And with that settled, peaceful relaxation returned to the reserve.

I found my own personal paradise up by the flat stone slabs at the narrow end of the valley. Above I could watch hyrax, small furry brown mammals, nimbly scrambling over the rocks and grazing in the trees. Ravens soared overhead and small flocks of Tristram's grackles, a common local bird, congregated along the cliff, their characteristic whistles echoing down the canyon as they swooped across it in a flash of orange wings.

Below me a religious Israeli family was enjoying one of the larger, deeper, rock pools, an odd elliptical shape caught between flat sheets of bare stone. The teenage girls climbed in to the water fully clad, trousers under billowing skirts to protect their modesty. The father joined them, leaving his gun on the bank within easy reach.

Above us on yet another ledge an Arab family had laid out a large picnic, and they nestled together on the small promontory, slightly too many of them to fit comfortably onto their scenic, breezy perch.

Some Israeli teenagers clambered over the steeper rocks at the head of the canyon, moving on from there to inspect one of the many caves in the cliff walls.

A young secular Israeli family ambled along the edge of the stream, the mother with her baby strapped to her chest as she negotiated the stepping stones.

In the distance, a black-robed, pony-tailed, Russian Orthodox priest made his way up the path with a bag of groceries, heading towards the steep stone steps where a small, ancient monastery balanced on a high vantage point, a relic of the many hermits who inhabited this region in the early years of Christianity.

On the hiking trail skirting the valley side, a pair of IDF soldiers in dusty combat fatigues and floppy army-issue sun hats patrolled the reserve, regularly pacing up and down the path, protecting the peace of this idyll, keeping watch for any sign of trouble.

For this is also a "seam" between Israeli and Palestinian areas. The Israeli village of Anatot is clustered haphazardly high above the reserve, while further along the road lies the Palestinian village of Hizmeh.

Walking back to the car I paused for a photograph, trying out my new digital camera. I suddenly found a small hand thrust into my face. It belonged to a smiling twelve-year-old girl clad in a red tracksuit, a short dark braid at her neck. "Hello," she greeted me with a thick Arabic accent, keen to shake my hand. Behind her another girl stood shyly looking over her shoulder.

Their eyes were focused on my head, just above my face. Ahhh, the hat. My trusty broad brimmed brown felt tiyul hat. It is a fraction on the cowboyish side. I'm not a John Wayne impersonator, but it does keep the sun off my easily scorched skin.

"Do you speak Arab?" she asked me. I don't know which was worse, my basic college Arabic or their rudimentary schoolroom English. They didn't know Hebrew. Somehow we managed a brief conversation.

They had hoped I was a "real" American. I was sorry to disappoint them.

They giggled and pointed to the stream: "Fishhhhh?" And then something I couldn't make out. "Yes, fish," I replied. "Fishhhh," they responded.

I asked where they were from. One of them pointed in the general direction of Hizmeh, though she might have meant to indicate Jerusalem, hard to tell. Then we shook hands again and bade one another farewell, as they frolicked off to play by the stream with their picnicking family.

Note to self: I must brush up on my Arabic. You never know when it will come in handy.

Music of prayer

Friday, September 24, 2004
Erev Yom Kippur

The holiday prayer book, though devoid of notes, is like a musical archive, each verse conjuring up the tunes which frame it.

We each have our own, deeply ingrained, "home" versions of the High Holiday prayers - arrangements and melodies we heard as children which will forever be our ideal yom tov davening, no matter how far we later roam.

I find there are so many that I can't remember, fragments of melodies for the Yamim Noraim and Shabbat davening which refuse to be recalled, which nag each time I see the familiar text. How did my grandmother sing that? What was my grandfather's nigun? Melodies that I fear may now be gone forever.

The modest, but moving service at our local synagogue in Israel is a far cry from my childhood's elaborate choral services, the prayers there dramatically framed by the cantor's operatic voice and the choir's harmonies.

Ashkenazi services in Israel tend to prefer functionality over passion or pageantry. Few synagogues of any sort retain a traditional chazan, and few congregants have the patience for the drawn-out cantorial melodies. Professional chazanim are a dwindling breed, their craft today reaching more people in the concert hall than in the synagogue. True, some chazanim do drag the service out too much, but so many more bring out the meaning of our prayers with their beautifully tailored melodies.

Even the recent growth of Carlebach-inspired singalong services remains a fringe phenomenon, and their melodies tend towards the modern rather than the traditional styles. At least they infuse the prayers with a depth of feeling often absent in ordinary synagogues. Still, it seems to me a shame to reject the rich musical tradition of the Ashkenazi synagogue in favour of the new and populist. Increasingly, even on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur only a few of the most classic old melodies continue to be universally sung.

My mother and her mother, a chazan's daughter, were both blessed with inspiring voices. In the build-up to the Days of Awe our home was filled with melodies for the Yamim Noraim: Old tunes, now long forgotten, which my grandmother learned in her youth in London's East End; Sfardi tunes from her schooling at Bevis Marks Jewish day school; Ashkenazi pieces from her home; and the traditional mainstream nusach of British Jewry. The nigunim of Shlomo Carlebach and Modzitz, Yossele Rosenblatt, Malovany, the Malevsky family and Koussevitzky - all were equally at home.

When my grandfather passed away over twenty years ago my family stopped singing the melodies from his shtetl, Sassov. When my grandmother passed away two years ago, my mother found it hard to sing the chazanut pieces she had adored so much. I can understand them. Last year it was hard to see the words and hear in my head my mother's voice, my grandmother's voice.

This year I find it's different. It's a comfort to think of those words in my grandmother's voice. At home I put on a classic chazanut recording of "her" music and listen to some of her favourite prayers. Somehow, instead of the deep voice of renowned Chazan Zawel Kwartin, I hear my grandmother's beautifully high soprano soaring over the notes in a style half-song, half-wail: "Haneshama lakh, vehaguf po'alakh...", the soul is Yours, and the body is Your creation.

I don't even have a recording of my childhood chazan, Moshe Korn, z"l, who formed my concept of what a chazan should sound like. He had a fantastic voice, rich and powerful, but more importantly, he had soul, and that, more than anything, was what made him an inspiring chazan. Each word, each oy, each trill, came from the heart. Sadly professional recordings were against his contract with the synagogue, so that wonderful voice was never properly captured for future generations.

Yom Kippur is a whole night and day of aural reminders of all that is now gone. In the last two decades of her life my grandmother's arthritis prevented her from walking up the hill to shul. She would spend Yom Kippur in prayer at home and we would take it in turns to join her, so that she wouldn't spend the day alone. I was often there for the end of Mussaf, Minha or sometimes Neila and she would go through the prayers aloud, singing in the mournful, plaintive voice she reserved for the Days of Awe. The amount of soul she packed into that prayer must surely have burst open the gates of heaven.

During her final few years she ended up spending a lot of time in hospitals. Gradually losing her sight, unable to read or watch TV, she would sing, and all the nurses would come running to find out where the incredible music in a strange language was coming from. They would stand in shock and awe at the door to the room, stunned at this frail little old lady who in her 90s could still melt hearts with her passionate song.

The week before she passed away, I was visiting her in hospital, more accurately singing at her bedside. My DH had just phoned to say that he'd been accepted to our local chazanut choir. As I told her the news, her withered, wan face lit up, glowing with pride. Finally, another man in the family to continue the tradition.

Once again my DH has been asked to be one of the chazanim for Yom Kippur in our neighbourhood synagogue. This time he will lead the morning prayers, and he has been busy practicing a selection of nigunim, inspired by his own very different synagogue heritage, but also by that of his sojourn with mine.

May we all merit this Yom Kippur to be stirred to a complete and sincere teshuva.

Gmar hatima tova and shana tova,

Horse Route

Sunday, August 29, 2004

The more I see of Israel, the more I discover the surprises hidden away in this tiny country. I had no idea what was in store last Friday when my friend invited us to visit her new place of work.

Driving into the village outside Netanya, the scenery reminded me of a typical Nahum Guttman painting: fields of ruddy terra rossa soil, citrus groves and shady eucalyptus-lined lanes with pastel stucco houses nestling under terracotta tiled roofs. There are hundreds of places like it all over central Israel.

Arriving at our destination the scene was more John Constable than Guttman. Though flanked in typical Israeli fashion by fuchsia bougainvillea, the barred metal gate bore a green English language sign: "Horse Route".

Beyond it a short path led to an immaculate paved farmyard. A small brown Welsh pony leant inquisitively over the half-door of his loosebox. Bales of hay were stacked nearby. A pair of towering majestic horses were being led away from the spacious paddock by efficient stable girls wearing jodhpurs and knee-high riding boots, their hair neatly tied into plaits and buns.

We entered the very English-looking stables, complete with a welcome sign adorned with horseshoes. Three large farm cats lounged in the shade of its eaved roof and a shaggy muppet-like guard dog ambled out to greet us.

Indoors, a neat tack room was well stocked with black velvet riding helmets and English saddles. Spacious stalls housed the sort of impressive horses you see on the professional European show jumping and dressage circuit - evocative breeds such as Westphalian, Holstein, Wurrtemberg and Trakehner.

If you shut your eyes to the adjacent orange orchard, you could have been in England.

Only instead of being called Charlotte or Imogen, the stable girls had names like Anat and Noa, and their language was biblical, not Shakespearean.

A pair of wild mongooses had taken up residence in the straw barn. Good for keeping snakes at bay, as anyone familiar with Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi knows.

In general, the scene reminded me of Kipling. Surely the British imperial India that he knew must have been something like this, incongruous slices of England implanted in an oriental land, native creatures intruding on the semblance of Britishness. The English romantic poet Rupert Brooke came to mind with his visions of English rural idylls. I felt as though I'd happened upon a remnant of the British mandate.

As a child I had devoured books about such places, so exotic to me in their goyish country Englishness. Places where girls named Jill and Kate competed at the village pony club, treating their mounts to Polo mints from the village shop, while their parents went along to the local foxhunt.

I never imagined that my first visit to a prim and proper rural English riding school would be around the corner from Netanya.

My mind spun with a flood of pent-up horsy knowledge, untapped for years - obscure vocabulary, breed details, correct saddle posture - never mind that I've never had a riding lesson in my life.

I chatted in a Hebrew peppered with foreign jargon to the very English-looking - yet Israeli - proprietor. Her mission is to promote the discipline and elegance of English riding, in particular that most refined of equestrian arts, dressage. Akin to ballet on horseback, this dignified sport requires a perfect fusion of horse and rider to achieve the appearance of effortless coordination.

Israel, I learnt, has a small but devoted dressage community, competing in events in Israel and abroad. We even had an entrant in this year's Olympics, though injury to his horse prevented him from competing. While Israel is nowhere near western European standards, we have won tournaments within our regional group, which includes Cyprus, Egypt and Turkey.

I was taken aback to discover that dressage even exists here. Its formal style, with horses with plaited manes and competitors clad in smart tailored jackets, trim breeches and sleek boots, seems utterly at odds with the regional culture.

I knew there was a thriving Western riding scene in Israel, and even rodeos. The small beef cattle industry supports a modest group of professional Israeli cowboys, which has inspired a growing culture of recreational Western horsemanship. This easygoing style, with its macho overtones, gung-ho vocal commands, casual riding attire, and big, comfortable saddles seems to better suit the rough and ready Israeli character.

There is apparently little love lost between advocates of the English and Western schools in Israel. The stable's proprietor bemoaned the pervasiveness of the Western style here, how uncouth it was, how unaesthetic. She ran her stables as an example of how she thought things ought to be.

As Herzl said, "If you will it, it is no dream".

And as Rupert Brooke wrote, "There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England."

Shavua tov.