NA'AMAT USA Magazine Summer 2012 Edition

Summer 2012

Our cover: Journalist Rahel Musleah at the entrance to the Ben-Gurion Archives in Sde Boker. See article on page 4.

departmentsPresident’s Message by Elizabeth Raider .......................3

Take Action! by Marcia J. Weiss ...................................19

Heart to Heart: Happy Hair by Marilyn Rose ..................20

Book Reviews........................................................24

Around the Country ...............................................29

featuresNegev Diary................................................................................................4A tour of Israel’s south takes a journalist beyond urgent headlines to observe the ingenuity of Israeli innovators and the beauty of the area’s natural diversity. By Rahel Musleah

Helène Aylon ..............................................................................................9Artist, humanist, activist, Jewish feminist, Aylon likes to shake things up. And she does. By Judith A. Sokoloff

A Man of the Old City ...............................................................................14The daughter of a fifth-generation Jerusalemite walks with her father through the city shortly after its reunification. From the memoir of Rachel Berghash

Na’amat News ............................................................................................17Take an up-close look at Israel’s largest women’s organization: stories from the Glickman Center shelter, updates from the staff at Kanot Agriculltural High School and more.

Magazine of Na’amat USaSummer 2012Vol. XXVII No. 3

EditorJudith A. Sokoloff

assistant EditorGloria Gross

art DirectorMarilyn Rose

Editorial CommitteeHarriet GreenSylvia LewisElizabeth RaiderShoshana RiemerEdythe RosenfieldLynn Wax

Na’amat USa Officers

PRESIDENTElizabeth RaiderVICE PRESIDENTSGail SimpsonChellie Goldwater Wilensky

TREASURERDebbie Kohn

FINANCIAL SECRETARYIrene Hack

RECORDING SECRETARYNorma Kirkell Sobel

Na’amat USa ChairsHarriet GreenNational Funds, Gifts, BequestsLynn WaxClub and Council Fund-raising

Na’amat Woman(ISSN 0888-191X) is published quarterly: fall, winter, spring, summer by Na’amat USa, 505 Eighth Ave., Suite 2302New York, NY 10018(212) 563-5222.$5.00 of the membership dues is for one year’s subscription. Non-member subscriptions: $10.00.

Signed articles represent the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of Na’amat USa or its editors. Periodicals class postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster, please send address changes to

Na’amat Woman, 505 Eighth Ave., Suite 2302, New York, NY 10018. E-mail: [email protected] site: www.naamat.org

Na’amat WomaN2 SUMMER 2012

Na’amat USa area officeS

Eastern area505 Eighth Ave., Suite 2302New York, NY [email protected]

Southeast area4400 N. Federal Hwy., Suite 50Boca Raton, FL [email protected]

midwest area10024 N. Skokie Blvd., Suite 226Skokie, IL [email protected]

Western area16161 Ventura Blvd., #101Encino, CA [email protected]

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mission StatementThe mission of Na’amat USa is to enhance the status of women and children in Israel and the United States as part of a worldwide progressive Jewish women’s organization. Its purpose is to help Na’amat Israel provide educational and social services, including day care, vocational training, legal aid for women, absorption of new

immigrants, community centers, and centers for the prevention and treatment of domestic violence. Na’amat USa advocates on issues relating to women’s rights, the welfare of children, education and the United States-Israel relationship. Na’amat USa also helps strengthen Jewish and Zionist life in communities throughout the United States.

Na’amat WomaN 3SUMMER 2012

Na’amat USa area officeS

Eastern area505 Eighth Ave., Suite 2302New York, NY [email protected]

Southeast area4400 N. Federal Hwy., Suite 50Boca Raton, FL [email protected]

midwest area10024 N. Skokie Blvd., Suite 226Skokie, IL [email protected]

Western area16161 Ventura Blvd., #101Encino, CA [email protected]

Dear Haverot,

This past fiscal year has been a time of many positive chang-es for Na’amat USA,

with technological innovations, active advocacy programs, new avenues of membership recruit-ment and connections through our Web site and a new na-tional spokesperson, the actress Mayim Bialik, who has opened many doors for us.

I often wonder if the wom-en who founded our organization could have ever imagined the scope and impact that Na’amat would have in helping to create and maintain the framework for life for women, chil-dren and families in Israel.

From a single request for mon-ey (actually a loan) to dig a well for a girls’ agricultural school and tree nursery in 1924, Na’amat USA’s foun-dation blossomed into a program that includes social services, agricul-tural, educational and technological schools, preparatory courses for po-lice and veterinary degrees, scholar-ships for university degrees, women’s rights centers, legal aid bureaus, community centers — the list goes on. Where there is a need, Na’amat is there to find and implement the solution.

How proud Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi and her friends — Sophie Udin, Chaya Ehrenreich, Leah Brown, Luba Hurwitz, Eva Berg, Rahel Sie-gel and Nina Zuckerman — would have been if they knew that by their act of kindness to help provide water, they were nourishing both body and soul of a fledgling country through the formation of a unique women’s organization that would help define the modern State of Israel.

One of the most striking achieve-ments in the past few years is the concerted efforts that Na’amat Israel has made to advance women’s rights

in the workplace and in fundamental health care issues. Talia Liv-ni, outgoing Na’amat Israel president, has been a tireless ad-vocate for reform in these areas and in lob-bying the government to provide free child

care for working women.Many of the children who attend

our day care centers come from fami-lies who live at or below the poverty line. A good percentage of these fam-ilies are cared for by single parents, mostly women, rearing their children with little or no financial backup. In response to the needs of these fami-lies, Na’amat has opened 23 multi-purpose centers with extended hours, counseling, after-school care for old-er siblings and hot meals.

Addressing women’s status in the workplace, Na’amat Israel de-

veloped a program to encourage working women to attain manage-rial positions. At first, many women were concerned that they couldn’t do anything that might upset the status quo: doing the same work as the men in a company for about 70 percent of the wages that the men were earning.

However, as they attended these classes, the women gained self-confi-dence and realized that their efforts equaled those of their male counter-parts. They began asserting them-selves and went on to mentor other women to achieve a more equal foot-ing and reach a higher employment level through their own empower-ment.

Na’amat Israel has been at the forefront of advocating preventative health care for women — an issue that was largely neglected during the formative years of the state. Women’s health care has increased on a num-ber of levels through public programs such as breast cancer screening and through interaction with the Komen Foundation to publicize the impor-

NEWS FLaSH! ROCK WItH Na’amat!

Save the date!

Na’amat USa41st National Convention Cleveland, Ohio

July 21-24, 2013

continued on page 28

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The dune-colored map of Israel provided by the Negev Tourism Forum resembles the bottom

of a diamond, a V as in NegeV. Usually, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — the country’s gems — highlight any map of Israel, but here the bustling, fertile regions have been left off. Instead, the topaz expanse of the vast southern desert captures my atten-tion. This is a new perspective for me.

I am a guest of Ben-Gurion Uni-versity of the Negev, the youngest of Is-rael’s seven research universities (estab-lished in 1969). The tour of the south organized for a group of journalists promises to encompass primeval can-yons and Bedouin villages as well as the hi-tech research and innovation that have emerged against the enormous odds and stresses of life in the desert. It is to be a mission that takes us beyond urgent headlines, focusing on the inge-

nuity of Israeli researchers who under unforgiving conditions grow gourmet peppers, produce wine and cheese, de-velop anti-cancer drugs and maximize water efficiency. Evident everywhere is the imprimatur of former Prime Minis-ter David Ben-Gurion, who envisioned that the Negev would blossom and serve as the future of Israel.

Traveling south from Jerusalem, the populated Judean hills turn beige and barren, inhabited mostly by scrub. I anticipate mile after endless mile of arid landscape, reflecting the etymolog-ical “dryness” the word “Negev” implies — and I am not disappointed. But I am unprepared for the richness of the area’s natural diversity that unfolds as the trip progresses: cliffs and craters, warm spa waters, valleys, nature preserves, forests and fortresses, archaeological parks and caves, farms and wineries. At various

times in the space of a few short days, I wear sandals, short-sleeved dresses, boots and a winter coat.

The history embedded in the Ne-gev’s grandeur begins with Abraham, who journeyed south (negbah), ulti-mately settled there and dug a well to draw water for his family and flock. That well gave the city of Beersheva its name (literally, the well where an oath was taken). Today, Beersheva is Israel’s seventh-largest city and houses three of BGU’s five campuses; the other two are in Sde Boker and Eilat.

Water — or the lack of it — remains a daunting issue. Our mini-bus hugs the turquoise shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth (almost 1,400 feet below sea level). For the length of its 42 miles, the Dead Sea serves as the border between Israel and Jordan, and even at its widest point, the Jordanian moun-

Negev DiaryA tour of Israel’s south takes a journalist beyond urgent headlines to

observe the ingenuity of Israeli researchers and innovators and the

beauty of the area’s natural diversity.

by RAHEL MUSLEAH

View of Makhtesh Ramon, often called Israel’s Grand Canyon.

Long, caterpillar-shaped greenhouses serve as indoor fields as well as laboratories.

The Israeli-pioneered method of subsurface drip irrigation nourishes gorgeous tomatoes.


tains are only 11 miles away. Though animal life cannot survive in its salty waters, the Dead Sea thrives with regen-erative and hydrating minerals that have given birth to a multimillion-dollar skin care industry. A sign for Ahava declares “My Skin Reborn.”

At the Dead Sea Skin Laboratory of the Arava Science Center, BGU and Ahava researchers are collaborating in trying to find new compounds for skin care and drug development. They ex-periment with plants that have adapted to the harsh desert conditions as well as with live skin obtained from breast and abdomen reductions. The lab is even in the process of patenting an anti-cancer drug developed from a local plant extract; other plant extracts have been shown to protect against ultraviolet radiation and to increase cellular metabolism.

Dr. Eitan Wine is among the sci-entists trying to unravel why Dead Sea treatments for skin diseases like pso-riasis and atopic dermatitis are so suc-cessful. Hardy bacteria and algae called “extremophiles,” lovers of extreme en-vironments that have adapted to living in the Dead Sea’s high salinity, might provide one answer. Many extremo-philes wouldn’t be able to survive in more “normal” environments. In the context of Middle East politics, it’s hard not to grin at the name.

As devoted as the scientists are to their research, they seem equally com-mitted to the larger project of building the Negev. “We come here with our

families,” says Wine. “We are all part of the enterprise.”

Back on the road, a sign points to-ward S’dom, the biblical site of fire and brimstone, and a glance backward that turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt. There is modern-day destruction here, too, not at God’s hand, but because of man’s intervention in diverting water from the Jordan River and pumping Dead Sea water to evaporation ponds so the residue of salt, potash and min-erals can be used by industry. The water level of the Dead Sea is dropping at a rate of four feet a year, and 4,000 mas-sive sinkholes have opened along the western coastal plain.

Further proof of an environmental crisis is hardly necessary, but it’s difficult to ignore a dying date palm grove in the Ein Gedi oasis. Again, BGU research-ers are at work confronting the interna-tional problem shared by Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The countries don’t agree on a solution: Some argue for more rapid intervention, like building a Dead Sea-Red Sea canal to pump in wa-ter; others support a longer-term reha-bilitation of the water balance system.

The mosaic floor of an ancient synagogue at Ein Gedi that dates back to the Roman-Byzantine period (third century CE) is tiled with an intriguing Hebrew inscription: “Warnings to those who commit sins causing dissension in the community, passing malicious in-formation to the gentiles, or revealing the secrets of the town.” I imagine that the heavily guarded secret is Ein Gedi’s

coveted water supply (it used to be fed by 11 springs), but historians and ar-chaeologists say the secret refers to the oil of persimmon, a valuable commod-ity produced only by Ein Gedi’s Jews.

An example of Jericho balsam — thorny, with date-like fruit — is labeled for visitors, along with other varieties of the area’s flora: the Apple of Sodom tree whose soft yellow fruit explodes with a puff when pressed, and the thorny, pod-bearing acacia. And then there is the caper bush (tzlaf) meaning sharpshoot-er, since it shoots out its seeds when it ripens. I think back to extremophiles, especially when our plans for the next day come under question.

Beersheva, our destination for day 2, is under attack in retaliation for the killing of a terrorist leader. Once consid-ered Israel’s safest city, it is now within the 40 km (25 miles) range of rockets fired from Gaza. Schools — including the BGU campus — have been closed for two days as more than 100 rockets have rained down. A holiday celebration was postponed and 70 exams cancelled. The Iron Dome, Israel’s mobile air de-fense system designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and shells — has demolished most of the rockets. One fell on an empty school building. The trip organizers ask if we want to proceed to Beersheva the next day.

They emphasize that while one person was seriously hurt and two were slightly wounded, nobody who has fol-lowed the safety rules has been hurt. The shelter is seconds away from the guest

Cheerful looking Nubian goats at the Kornmehl Cheese Farm.

At the graves of David and Paula Ben-Gurion, Rahel Musleah meets three soldiers on leave.Enjoying Falakhim hospitality.

6 Na’amat WomaN SUMMER 2012

rooms where we will be staying. This is reality for Israelis, I think, so why not try to understand it? I picture my kids, so I am more hesitant than a fellow jour-nalist who is excited to ride into the eye of the storm. But I trust that we will be safe. We decide to show solidarity with Israel and with the university.

Day 2: Farmers, Bedouins and B-G UniversityWe have much to do before we reach Beersheva. The sun bursts white and hot as its rises in a pewter sky over the Dead Sea. Its reflection silvers the water between two palm trees, fringed sentinels of the morning. Though tour-ism has suffered because of the eco-logical problems, it’s still fun to float in the water. In fact, it requires effort not to. The salt slicks my skin and leaves a layer of salt on my face when it finally dries. It’s a stark example of what hap-pens in the soil.

One of the extraordinary aspects of the Arava, Israel’s long, eastern valley between the Dead Sea and Eilat, is that although it is mainly desert, 90 percent of its residents are successful farmers, many of whom are also scientists or who collaborate closely with scientists. Greenhouses that resemble white plas-tic caterpillars serve as indoor fields as well as laboratories. “The main idea,” says Naftali Lazarovitch, a specialist in irrigation at BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, “is how to make crops with less drops.” Before he even explains the technology that al-lows crops to grow with saline irrigation water, he offers us the tangible results of his research: a gorgeous array of or-ange, purple, yellow and red bell pep-pers packed with crispness, crunch and flavor. A decided un-lover of peppers, even I am won over.

The peppers grow in small contain-ers of perlite, a soil-less culture made of a mixture of stones, coconut powder and crushed building material. The area is disconnected from the main water supply, and desalinated water is only available by pipe when municipalities and factories have an overage, so farm-ers have learned to use the saline water below the soil. Sometimes the harsh conditions that Negev scientists tend to call “stress” creates good things in

Once or twice a month, BGU students and Bedouin residents work together on the project. We journalists pretend to be a council of village elders as we recline on pillows and sip sweet tea in the shig, the tent of meeting, where all important issues are discussed and gos-sip also has its day.

The 200,000 Bedouins in the Ne-gev now live a sedentary rather than nomadic lifestyle. About half live in of-ficial towns built for the Bedouins by the state; the rest live unrecognized vil-lages where they are not entitled to the infrastructure of water and electricity and where they are considered illegal trespassers on what they affirm is their own land. Solar panels are installed on most roofs in the village. Complex po-litical disputes over land and relocation issues remain unresolved. “We want to improve the way the state works with the Bedouins,” says Yodan Rofe, an ar-chitect and urban planner from BGU’s Sde Boker campus.

I listen to Rofe discussing how ur-ban planners can learn from the settle-ment patterns of the Bedouins, that their seemingly disorganized settlements, created from their day-to-day needs, are better suited to their way of life than what might be imposed by plan-ners based on an outside vision. “We might learn things we can apply in our own communities,” he says, “because in many places planning doesn’t work. For-ty percent of humanity lives in informal settlements on the edge of cities or in semirural areas. We can use our research for the development of such areas.”

As I turn Rofe’s business card over in my hand, his name suddenly sounds familiar. When I was a 12-year-old at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadel-phia, there were two Israeli kids in my class. One was named Ehud and one was named Yodan. How many Yodans could there be? I tried to see the ado-lescent face I vaguely recalled in Rofe’s adult one. When he finished speaking we played a short game of Jewish geog-raphy, concluding with my announce-ment: “You were in my class!” He was completely shocked. It happens on the streets of Jerusalem, but in a remote Bedouin village in the Negev?

plants: more antioxidants, better color. But the yield is reduced.

The Israeli-pioneered method of subsurface drip irrigation — which al-lows water to trickle slowly to the roots of plants — nourishes fat red tomatoes planted in soil, agricultural guinea pigs of sorts for experiments on water use, evaporation, irrigation and salinity levels. Melons and sweet basil grow in other net-houses. “If we figure out how to solve the combined stresses of drought and salinity, we can feed the world,” says Lazarovitch.

The need for farm hands to replace Palestinian workers since the intifada has resulted in an influx of thousands of Thai migrants willing to labor for low pay — though they still earn much more than in Thailand. The Thais are not as trained to follow the safety measures that are in-grained in every Israeli: A worker playing basketball is wounded by a rocket, and a few days after our trip ends, a worker at Moshav Netiv HaAsarah on the border with Gaza is killed. Israel’s use of foreign labor has resulted in a host of social, psy-chological, cultural, legal and ethical is-sues that demand attention.

At the Bedouin village of Qasr al-Sir, south of Dimona, the poorest segment of Israeli society is trying to improve its lot through tourism. The village has an ambitious plan to trans-form itself into an eco-tourism site, reclaiming the tradition of Bedouin hospitality and combining it with eco-nomic and social empowerment as well as environmental sensitivity. Spear-headed by Bustan, an Israeli NGO that promotes sustainability and social de-velopment in the Bedouin community, the eco-site will feature dorms powered by solar panels that will use gray water (recycled waste water from domestic activities like laundry and bathing), out-door compost toilets and small gardens.

Daniel Kish, sculptor and maker of organic boutique wines.

Qasr al-Sir can probably learn a les-son or two from the Falakhim who oper-ate “Drejat: Hospitality in a Cave.” The tribe of Arab farmers originally from Saudi Arabia moved to Hebron and then relocated south to the foothills of the Yatir mountains in the mid-19th century. They offer charming tours of their an-cient residential caves, with mouthwa-tering feasts, humorous stories, and bit-ter coffee spiced with cardamom.

Though they are not obligated to serve in the army, they do so. “Anahnu hayyim bim’dinat yisrael v’zeh hame-dinah shelanu,” says our guide, Nasser. “We live in the state of Israel and this is our country.” But the Falakhim also fought for their right to open day care centers, kindergartens and schools. Many of Drejat’s 900 residents are now pursuing degrees in higher education. Nasser reels off statistics that sound like a version of the Passover song “Ehad Mi Yodea”: 40 medical students, 35 teach-ers, 10 doctors (including 2 women), 10 tour guides, 8 lawyers, and 950,000 visi-tors to the cave, owned by his brother-in-law. The moral, he says, is that if you set a goal, you can achieve it. Sounds a lot like Theodor Herzl.

When we finally arrive at BGU’s Beersheva campus, it is eerily quiet —

not a student in sight.

We stop for a hurried group photo be-fore meeting with Rivka Carmi, the first woman president of an Israeli university and an acclaimed geneticist. She tells us proudly that the university was voted the number one choice in undergradu-ate education by its 20,000 students; that it serves as a regional catalyst for physical, economic and educational de-velopment; participates in many con-sortiums with government agencies and private corporations; and provides out-reach to underprivileged Bedouin, Ethi-opian and Russian immigrants. “Other universities are not as involved in these areas,” she says.

As the new front, Beersheva must deal with the psychological toll, she notes. “We can’t just shut down an econ-omy and a country.” The university is tapping its own student body to develop and train a cadre of crisis volunteers in collaboration with the city of Beershe-va. A recent questionnaire elicited 400 volunteers in one day for 19 types of positions that included staffing day care centers for children of first responders; providing support for the elderly; open-ing shelters; working as engineers and security personnel. They will also be trained to reinforce “resilience centers,” separate clinics that help “stress pa-tients” normalize their feelings and map out support systems. Developed by IDF social workers and psychiatrists, this

alternative to hospitalization has also helped minimize post-

traumatic stress dis-orders in the

general population. Resilience, hope, optimism — the Israeli trademark.

We enjoy dinner at a restaurant with a safe room, and on our return to our dorms, identify the shelter we might have to run to within 40 seconds of any si-ren sounding. I sleep with my room key in my coat pocket, my shoes facing the bed so I can slip them on quickly. I am ner-vous, but the night passes quietly. In the morning a cease-fire is announced. But some rockets contin-ue to be fired.

Day 3: Wine, Cheese and a CraterToday is a day for wine, olives and cheese. The ancient spice route tra-versed by the nomadic Nabatean tribes who traded in myrrh and frankincense has been revitalized, offering visitors the chance to stop at 35 ranches that specialize in olives, goat cheese and fish, and a dozen different vineyards that produce anywhere from 1,000 to 150,000 bottles a year as well as organic teas and spices.

A grove of 250 olive trees newly planted at the experimental Wadi Ma-shash Farm, 20 miles south of Beersheva, is growing miraculously in seem-ingly parched sand.

Na’amat WomaN88 Na’amat WomaN SUMMER 2012SUMMER 2012

He has named his wines for the four lo-cal riverbeds: Paran, Rimon, Neqorot and Ardon. BGU researcher Aaron Fait is working with Kish to test the impact of intense light, temperature and mild drought conditions on the grapes, and to determine how those variables affect the quality of the wine and the presence of anti-inflammatory compounds like resveratrol. The low humidity prevents fungi and bacteria, so pesticides are un-necessary. Birds are the biggest nuisance. “If you are the only wet and colorful thing in desert, you will be eaten!” says Fait. Kish’s sculptures dot the path that winds down to the vineyards. “Wine is like good art, it’s from my belly,” he says.

On to the Kornmehl Cheese Farm, yet another collaboration between farmer and scientist centering on how to manage water in the desert. Micheal Travis is the Wisconsin-born scientist who moved to Israel in 2005 to get his Ph.D. degree from BGU, specializ-ing in wastewater reuse. Amazingly, 80 percent of water in Israel is reused; the percentage in the United States is tiny. Eighth-generation Jerusalemite Anat Kornmehl and her Argentinian-born husband Danny are the farmers and cheese makers who moved to the Ne-gev highlands in 1997 and want to grow grass for their 100 Nubian goats. They believe that the health of the goats is of utmost importance, and the quality of the milk — 4,000 gallons a year, anti-

biotic and hormone-free — comes from the goats’ living

conditions and good food. With their long, floppy ears, smiling eyes, wide mouths and expressive, camel-like faces, the goats do look awfully cheerful — in fact, many pose comically for the camera.

The Kornmehls’ land faces rem-nants of terraces belonging to an an-cient farm from the Middle Bronze period (2100-1550 BCE). Their small restaurant, opened four years ago, serves specialties like goat-cheese pizza, phyllo stuffed with cheese, camembert on potato slices in a garlic yogurt sauce, and Edna cheese sticks served in sweet wine apple sauce. “We are farmers, but we cannot disconnect from tourism,” says Anat. When tourists who arrive af-ter us cannot be accommodated in the restaurant, she sends them to a nearby farm. “We are all colleagues. There’s no competition,” she explains.

Next: A feast for the eyes at Makhtesh Ramon, often called Israel’s Grand Canyon. I learn that a makhtesh is a geological formation distinctive to the Negev and Sinai; the word has no exact translation. I’ve heard the 1,000-foot-deep makhtesh referred to as the Ramon Crater, but now I delete my vision of an asteroid crashing into the Negev and leaving behind a lunar landscape.

Crater/Creator: The awe-inspiring vista evokes a sense of primeval space and creation echoed in the name of the luxurious new Beresheet Hotel, built on high cliffs that look down into the panorama (“Beresheet” is the first word of the Bible). Built of indigenous rock and Brazilian wood, the 111 individual chalets were designed to blend organi-cally into the environment. Visitors can

Pedro Berliner, director of the Blaustein Institute, explains that mod-ern agroforestry is reclaiming Nabatean methods of water harvesting, a cheap, robust and efficient system. The amount of rainfall in the area is low — only four inches, he says, but there are a few “high intensity events.” Instead of being ab-sorbed immediately into the ground, the heavy rains flow to low-lying areas and pool in previously prepared plots surrounded by dikes. The soil slowly ab-sorbs and stores the water so crops can grow throughout the summer.

Using the same technology, an ad-jacent acacia forest provides fodder for animals as well as firewood; maize will be planted in between the trees. The techniques developed at Wadi Mashash are helping Third World countries com-bat desertification, the further degrada-tion of arid lands.

From a purely gastronomic point of view, I’m bowled over. I can’t get enough of the extra-virgin, cold-pressed olive oil from a nearby grove that we sample with Bedouin pita. I must say that I like this combination of tourism and technology. And it’s far from over.

We meet Daniel Kish next, a tanned and bearded sculptor in denim overalls and a wide white kippah, who has turned his artistry to the creation of boutique organic wines. Kish grows and blendsCabernet, Petit Verdot, Shiraz, Zinfandel and Merlot grapes.



The standout mag-net on my clut-tered refrigerator

door makes a simple but powerful statement: IN G-D WE TRUST. The hyphen is pink. The cre-ator of the original image and many decades’ worth of other compelling art is Helène Aylon. The image is part of her “The G-d Project: Nine Houses Without Women.” Twen-ty years in the making, it is Aylon’s effort to “res-cue God.” Through her art, she has also worked to rescue the body and the earth — and ulti-mately herself. Both cau-tious and intrepid, Aylon is a woman who is able to contain paradoxes. She poses difficult and disturbing questions, challenging her audiences to think and talk about the world and themselves in ways they never thought before.

“I like to shake things up,” says the 80-year-old Aylon in her loft in West-beth, a residence for artists in New York’s West Village. And she’s been keeping things roiling for the past 50 years as a visual, conceptual, multime-dia, performance and installation artist. “I pretty much make up my own rules — I’m my own guide.” Her lovely, peaceful face, her soft movements, calm words and gentle laugh belie her inside rebel.

Aylon walks me through her loft — a museum. I’m entranced. There are enigmatic photographs of her as a small part of vast landscapes; a synagogue pew from a work titled “Alone With My Mother”; some of the books from her installation “My Notebooks,” each

with lined empty pages signifying the dearth of female commentary during her schooling; abstract paintings from her early years; two of her “Paintings That Change With Time,” first exhibit-ed in the 1970s; army stretchers from an anti-war work; a pillar from “My Bridal Chamber” installation; magazines with articles about her, including the recent last edition, sadly, of the Jewish femi-nist journal Bridges, which features a dialogue with Aylon and her friend, the poet Rachel Berghash (see her memoir excerpt in this issue); DVDs and mu-seum catalogs of her work.

Aylon’s long list of exhibitions cov-ers the world, and her work is in the per-manent collections of the Whitney Mu-seum, the Museum of Modern Art, the

San Francisco Museum of Art and The Jewish Museum in New York. Her own memoir, What-ever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Or-thodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist, was published in April by The Feminist Press. It is a riveting look at her re-markable life, swathed in her strong sense of humor and compassion.

Aylon’s latest proj-ect, now being shown at the San Francisco Con-temporary Jewish muse-um, concerns the biblical Hagar and addresses the background from which Jewish-Arab hostility has sprung. “Hagar is a fore-mother,” observes Aylon,

“a stepmother, but also a foremother.” Created for Tu BiSh’vat, she placed a large bowl of water, a kos Hagar, on a table, surrounded by three napkins. Written on the napkins, in Hebrew, Ara-bic and English, is a proclamation that apologizes for the banishing of Hagar and her son Ishmael. “It’s a metaphor, a gesture,” Aylon points out. “It says we’re sorry, we have chesed (kindness). Hagar was humiliated, used like a Shabbes Goy. God felt sorry for Hagar — we, too, should have empathy for her.”

“As a Jew, I’m full of pride and shame,” states the “post-Orthodox” art-ist. Much of her work reflects complex, antithetical feelings.

Aylon’s busy schedule of exhibitions took her to the Andy Warhol Mu-

seum in Pittsburgh in spring 2011 for a solo show “The Liberation of G-d.”

Helène AylonArtist, humanist, activist, Jewish feminist — Aylon likes to shake things up.

And she does.by JUDITH A. SOKOLOFF

Text from Jewish sources is projected on the face of Helène Aylon, from a series titled

“Self-Portrait: The Unmentionable.”

Courtesy, H

elène Aylon


This past February, she traveled to Is-rael for an exhibition at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, titled “Matronita: Jew-ish Feminist Art” (Matronita is a Tal-mudic term for an important woman, a woman who engages in discussion with rabbinic sages). Examining feminist consciousness in the Jewish world, it featured the work of female artists who come from traditional religious back-grounds. Three of Aylon’s large installa-tions were shown, including “My Mar-riage Bed/My Clean Days.”

Aylon stayed on Kibbutz Ein Har-od for a month, giving her the chance to see Israel for the first time in 20 years, to rediscover the country she once de-sired to live in. There, she felt the “rich-ness” of life, as compared to the “thin-ness” in the United States.

“Just looking out the window of the car on the highway and seeing the word, yetzia, exit, gave me a thrill,” Aylon says. “The words assume extended meanings. They are layered. There is this duality, the two cultures twisting and braiding. The past and the future and the pres-ent all seen in a glance like an epiphany every moment of the day.

“I constantly asked myself the question — could I have lived here? Could I have done it? There’s a section in my memoir comparing the all-Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park [Brook-lyn} to the Israeli Jewish neighborhood. I guess I found Israel more sensual!”

Digging into her deep well of uto-pian notions, Aylon has some ideas for improving Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. She wants to “humanize check-points until they cease to exist.” Her plan involves providing delicious free food for those detained; chairs for mothers and elders and anyone who wants to sit; apologetic soldiers with manners; free books for Arab children to replace incendiary ones, along with other amenities.

Aylon grew up in a “Modern Or-thodox” home in Borough Park;

she studied at the Shulamith School for Girls and attended Young Israel synagogue. She shared a room with her grandmother, who spoke only Yiddish.

Her youth was a time when she thought there were answers, when her mother al-ways encouraged her to “belong, belong” (Aylon’s mother played a large part in her life until her death at age 100). She couldn’t imagine life without faith.

Aylon married a rabbi at 18. From a very young age, she knew she wanted to be an artist, but in her married years, her main work was illustrating the newsletter of her husband’s shul. On the week of her 30th birthday, she became a widow with a daughter and a son. Soon after, she began studying art at Brooklyn College, where the abstract expression-ist Ad Reinhardt was a mentor.

She wanted to be both “in and out” of the Borough Park community. But even-tually, she writes in her memoir, “My de-

The artist used a pink marker to cross out words in the Five Books of Moses that she found inhumane, misogynist and cruel.

“My Marriage Contract” shows Aylon as a bride of 18, holding up a canopy. She dedicated it to the mothers whose names were omitted on the occasions of the marriage of a child and the death of a child.

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gree in art would be a degree in freedom.” She coined a new surname — Aylon, from the Hebrew name for Helène, Aylonna. After graduation, she rented a stu-dio in the East Village, always feeling conflicted and guilty that she wasn’t spending more time with her children and also more time creating art. Around 1970, she was “rescued by feminism,” in-spired by women like Maya Angelou, Andrea Dworkin, Adrienne Rich and Mary Daly, who, she writes, “inhab-ited the world in a new way,” threatening “to turn it upside down and inside out.” Aylon realized it was okay to be both a mother and an artist.

When did she know she was a feminist Jew? Aylon tells me about her turning point. In San Fran-cisco in the early 70s, some secular friends insisted she attend a Chabad Shabbat — their delinquent son had been “cured” by Chabad. She was reluctant to go. To her surprise, when she saw all the candles burning, she started crying profusely, out of nos-talgia for the Shabbat candlelight of her youth. “Well,” she recalls, “I was saved by looking over the mechitza and see-ing the men huddled together in their exclusivity, away from the vayber, the wives — and my tears completely dried.” At that moment, she realized she was a feminist, and more, a Jewish feminist.

Aylon divides her work over the last 50 years into three categories, she explains. “The 1970s were about the body; the 1980s, about the Earth; the 1990s, God.” The “three landscapes of feminist thought” in her oeuvre, in oth-er words, are “bio-logical,” “eco-logical,” and “theo-logical.”

In the ’70s, when she lived in San Francisco, Aylon turned from abstract art, which she found “too arbitrary,” to process art, centering on the “visceral

and orgasmic body and the inevitabil-ity of change.” She focused on the con-nection between the human body and the body of the land: “its arteries of riv-ers, its oceanic heartbeat, its vein-like branch forms, its oval female forms — the handwriting of the universe.” Her metaphoric use of sacs filled with liquid, her pourings, and her “Paintings That Change in Time” (designed to change over time) reflected the flow of life.

Her series “Breakings” incorpo-rated sacs that participants broke in a way that resembled the release of amni-otic fluid at birth. Aylon would “accept” what was released unconditionally, as she accepted all the ongoing turnings of nature. And she was making the distinc-tion between the visceral body, the one that lives and dies; and the idealized or sexualized body, as defined by men, the body that men want to control.

In 1979, she was part of the first

conference on eco-feminism in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her eco-feminist worldview has persisted through the years. One sees her ethe-real figure in a series of pan-oramic otherworldy land-scapes (like salt flats). She is “going to the land,” she explains, “walking, crouch-ing, crawling, looking for unnamed foremothers she yearns for. I felt the land could tell me something, answer questions that I was not going to get from God.” The photos, taken in 1980, weren’t shown until 2005. Since then, Aylon “goes into nature” every year and continues her search. Does she get answers? She tells me that she experiences “turnings” and now visual-izes herself as a “future fore-mother, greeting those that will follow. This is daunt-ing, the continuity!” Maybe that’s an answer.

Back in New York in the early 1980s, Aylon’s

work became “less metaphoric, more activist, more tikkun olam,” she ex-plains. It was about healing the earth, halting the arms race, uniting women from warring nations. In 1981, women carried Aylon’s sand-filled sacs in San Francisco in support of a Friends of the Earth event. Later in the year, during the intifada, she gathered Jewish and Arab women in Israel to clean up stones that the Arabs were throwing and carry the sacs in a show of peaceful coexis-tence. It was a period during which she says she was “naïve and utopian,” think-ing her art could help change people, that Arab and Jewish women would just “love each other,” that you just had to talk to women and things would be okay and lead to global feminism. A sec-ond stone carrying, in 1992, she recalls, was “more tense” and less idealistic.

After hearing the anit-nuclear ac-tivist Dr. Helen Caldicott speak about

Did God really say that to Moses, or is it a patriarchal projection?

Helène Aylon stands behind a 1999 installation she created for her mother, reflecting their conflict over her work. She calls it “Epilogue: Alone with my Mother.”

Judith A. Sokoloff


the arms race, Aylon drove her earth ambulance to Strategic Air Command (S.A.C.) nuclear bases across the United States where she filled pillowcases with soil and transported them to the United Nations Second Special Session on Dis-armament on June 12, 1982. The film of the work, “The Earth Ambulance,” was shown as recently as 2004 to 2008 at the Hudson Valley Center for Contem-porary Art in Peekskill, New York.

In Japan, she asked survivors of the atomic bomb to write their dreams and nightmares on pillowcases and ex-change them with her. In a video, Aylon talks to a Japanese woman with deep facial scars who is still coming to terms with her beautiful childhood memories that clash with the memories of her post-bomb hell. Aylon tells her: “Maybe we will dream together — I’ll sleep on your dreams and you sleep on mine.”

Later that year, 1,000 pillowcases were hung around Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at the United Nations, where she

and other women camped out for 14 days.For the 50th anniversary of the

bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, her video of two sacs filled with seeds en route to Hiroshima and Naga-saki on a Japanese river was shown on the Sony Jumbotron in Times Square. Words appear on the screen: “What would you

carry in your sac?” Aylon notes that the sacs remind her of a peckel, the bag shlepped by peddlers and other wander-ing Jews.

In the 1990s, Aylon immersed her art in Judaism. “My aim was to shine a feminist lens with a scholarly inquiry into ancient texts and practices that omit or deny the presence/input of women.” God, she felt, “had to be lib-erated from ungodly patriarchal projec-tions in order to be God of the Bible.” Her work became more autobiographi-cal, concerning her background and her Orthodox identity issues.

For two decades, starting in the early 1990s, Aylon worked on “The G-D Project: Nine Houses Without Wom-en,” a series of installations confront-ing gender inequality in Judaism and acknowledging forgotten foremothers. The works are audacious, yet respectful of Judaism.

The first of the nine installations is “The Liberation of G-D,” a reex-amination of sacred texts from a femi-nist point of view that is very much in keeping with the Jewish tradition of midrash (biblical commentary). In this powerful work, she has gone through the entire Five Books of Moses (it took her six years), using a pink marker to cross out passages she finds inhumane, misogynist, cruel, militaristic, vengeful — eschewing the concept of the “most limited and unevolved hierarchal God.” She also highlighted between words where a female presence is omitted. The pink marks were done on transpar-ent parchment paper that covered the actual text. As the artist went through the text, she challenged: “Did God say

these things to Moses, or are they pa-triarchal attitudes projected onto God? — as though man has the right to have dominion even over God.” She sees herself as “sticking up” for God who is being victimized. The work reminds us that so many heinous biblical com-mands still have a hold on people to-day. “The Digital Liberation of God,” a video of her action of highlighting the problematic words, has been shown in many venues.

The process, Aylon says, was a “meditation and a release for me.” In the act of liberating God, of nurturing a healing in the relationship with God, she liberated herself as well. She discovered that she could embrace her upbringing and cast it away at the same time (I’m “Schizo-Orthodox,” she quips) — a con-cept that permeates much of her work. When the Jewish Museum in New York showed “The Liberation of G-D” in 1996, it represented her “going public as a Jewish feminist.”

Aylon is seeking the part of Judaism that was erased: the beauty of the

foremothers’ input and guidance that was not recorded or acknowledged. She writes in her memoir: “In order to save Judaism for myself, I had to turn to the sod (secret things), the nistar (the hid-den). The nistar that moved me the most often came from the foremothers.” She has found that, through insights, ex-trapolations, conjecture and inspiration, she can honor God and honor women in new ways with new stories.

She explains that there is no com-mandment to cover mirrors when sit-ting shiva, but Aylon imagines that there

was a foremother once so full of grief over the death of her hus-band that she covered the mir-rors because she

“All Rise” is Aylon’s imaginary female Beit Din (Jewish court of law), where women are allowed to bear witness and judge.

Aylon covered the façades of art museums with her anti-war “Bridge of Knots.” On the pillowcases, women have written their dreams and nightmares.

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I’m seeing myself as a future foremother. I follow my own footsteps.

Torah ParadoxOh, but that dear young rabbi from Chabad — he was

so very warm. He reminded me of my ten-year-old grandnephew, Tuvia, who has that same special vahrmkeit (warmth), even at such a young age. For years, Tuvia gave himself the job of calling me every Friday to inform me of the time to light candles. “We have Shabbos one minute later in Passaic than in New York, New York,” he would tell me excitedly. “You bench lecht [light candles] at 6:17 p.m. and 22 seconds. Have a great Shabbos!”

I know this boy will always have a great Shabbos. Once he and his ten siblings reach yeshiva age, they are invited by their Dad to take turns standing at an actual lectern set up at the head of their dining room table to give a dvar Torah (a “learning” from the Torah). There’s a small stool for the younger children who can’t reach over the top of the lectern, and even these little ones repeat what they learned in the yeshiva’s kindergarten. This is how I could spend twenty years denouncing what’s in the Torah, but still love the idea of Torah.

— From Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released by Helène Aylon

couldn’t stand to look at her-self. This ritual soothed Ay-lon when she mourned her husband. She talks about the sacred lighting of the can-dles, pointing out that no-where in the Five Books of Moses is there a command-ment for women to light candles. But it became a cus-tom that got passed down from mother to daughter, as she passed it down to her daughter who passed it to her daughter. She sees the prayer for a rainbow as the creation of a woman who was so delighted when she and her children first saw one. She is the woman who braided challah and the havdala candle the same way she braided her hair; who covered the twin challahs like a mother gently covers her babies. “I say she was the first to say Who bringest forth bread from the earth,” Aylon intuits.

“We must think of our-selves as foremothers — a comforting thought.” And she invites all women to be their own midrashists.

Aylon and I look at photos of her installation “My Bridal Chamber.” In one part, “My Marriage Contract,” there are four columns, each covered

by a large photo of her as a bride of 18, holding up a canopy. The ketubah re-fers to her as “Helène, Virgin daughter of Anshel.” No mention of her mother. On the floor is a photograph of her late husband’s headstone, highlighted

in pink where his mother’s name was left out. The artist dedicated the piece to the mothers whose names were omitted on the happiest and the saddest of occasions: the marriage of a child and the death of a child.

The final installation in “The G-d Project” is “All Rise,” Aylon’s imaginary female Beit Din (Jewish court of law). Here, women, who have been forbidden (along with minors, idiots and slaves) to bear witness and to judge by the Shul-can Aruch and the Mishna Torah can now do so. She thinks this is a solution for the agunah (chained wom-an), who can’t escape her marriage if her husband de-nies her a Jewish divorce. It could also be the redress for other acts of discrimination against Jewish women. Pink pillowcases — universal flags — in her beit din hang on flagpoles. The pink neon in the words In G-d We Trust represents a feminine

presence. The tzitzit under the judicial seats refer to the fringes worn around the groins of religious men to protect them from the lure of women. The work, like many of her others, appears

Behind Aylon are photos from her series “Turnings” in which she is seeking the footprints of the foremothers.

Judith A. Sokoloff



During the War of Independence the Arabs captured the Old City of Jerusalem. My father

dreams of praying there, at the Wailing Wall, and whenever he prays he imag-ines finding the perfect mossy crack in the wall, to stuff in his note to God. He claims his faith is not as deep as my mother’s, that he has doubts. The Old City of Jerusalem is the birthplace of his faith, his wavering faith, and a lure for it. It is not clear to me whether my father’s doubts are about the power of God or the efficacy of religious practice. More likely, his anxiety about some cat-astrophic future overrides his faith. He must fear that the future will be as bleak as it was in his childhood.

For nineteen years, from the Inde-pendence War in 1948 until the recap-turing of the Old City in 1967, my fa-ther waited at the threshold of the Old City. For nineteen years he waited like the grasses on the third day of creation that, according to the Midrash (a tool to interpret Biblical texts), stayed at the portal of the earth until the sixth day of creation, when the first man sought compassion for them, whereupon the rains fell, and they grew.

After this long separation my fa-ther is eager to visit places that are a part of his past. He takes me to visit the Temple Mount. With my father, the Old City feels open and welcoming. I think of the time in the past when they used to close the gates of the city ev-ery night, and those who arrived late

had to stay outside. Before we enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque, my father and I take off our shoes. My mother waits outside, adhering to the prohibition to enter non-Jewish places of worship. The inte-rior walls, adorned by mosaics, emanate such venerable stillness that I become attuned to a silence that belongs to all religions at their highest.

My father also takes me along to visit the archaeological digs near the Wailing Wall. I can see him standing there, exhilarated, intently watching the excavations, as if waiting for some-thing to unfold. He wants to locate his father’s gravesite, his father who col-lapsed and died on a street in Istanbul many years earlier. Until the end of his life my father tries to find out where the grave is, but his inquiries are in vain. He remembers his father’s kind face and his small beard, and is certain that he will see him again at the resurrection of the dead. I will be old and gray, he would say, while my father will be younger, only thirty-six years old.

As we stroll, my father shows me the neighborhood where he lived as a child. He tells me that during the time the new city was separated from the old, he longed to visit the neighbor-hood he grew up in, to touch the tombs, now mostly destroyed by the Arabs, in which his ancestors were buried. He wanted to be nearer to their spirits.

We also visit the site of the first Ashkenazi synagogue, the Hurva. The Hurva once belonged to the Ashkenazi

Jews; its unfinished structure was burned, together with forty Torahs, by Arab creditors. As a little girl, my father’s great-great-grandmother Zelda was among those who volunteered to clear the site and help carry stones to rebuild the synagogue. A legendary fig-ure in the Old City, Zelda was famous for her energy and piety, entertaining at weddings and praying the midnight lamentations over the destruction of the temple, prostrating on graves of tzaddikim (righteous men) in the cem-etery on the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives has an aura of holiness and also of impurity. Many tzad-dikim are buried there. Among them is my mother’s father, who moved to Jeru-salem in the late twenties to be buried there, a custom that still prevails among religious Jews in Diaspora. A bit further away is Mount Zion. King David, ac-cording to some, is buried there; others deny it. As a child I didn’t like visiting the tomb because of this uncertainty, and when I did, I kept thinking that maybe the place is a lie.

Zelda’s enthusiasm over rebuild-ing the Hurva reminds me of the exiles returning from Babylon to Eretz Yis-rael under the inspired leadership of Ezra the Scribe, to rebuild the Second Temple and to dedicate it to God. I ad-mired Ezra, but it was Cyrus, King of

A Man of the Old Cityby RACHEL BERGHASH

Rachel Berghash’s Half the House: My Life In and Out of Jerusalem began as a poem but turned into a memoir. In her eloquent book, she comes to terms with the city in which she feels most at home — Jerusalem — and the city she has made her home — New York.

In the chapter excerpted here, she relives a walk she took with her father, a fifth-generation Jerusalemite, soon after the city was reunited in 1967.


Persia, who captured my imagination and became my true hero. He sent the Jews back to their land to worship in their temple. He was the most magnani-mous of all rulers, under-standing that people have a need for religion, any religion.

Zelda’s father, the art-ist Mordecai Schnitzer, came to Eretz Yisrael from Poland in 1810. As a young man and student in the Beit Midrash, he had a dream about a holy ark with elaborate engravings. When he awoke he was inspired to buy artistic tools, and he started building the envisioned ark. He became a sculp-tor and a painter, a restorer and builder of holy arks, a man who lived inside his art. While living in Jerusalem he made objects of art for visiting British and Austro-Hungarian royalty. Among the stories about him was one about how he selected the stone for the corner-stone he was assigned to carve for the synagogue in Vienna: He hopped from rock to rock in the mountains surround-ing the Old City; completely absorbed in his search, he tapped each rock until he found one whose sound he liked, and then he had it mined.

On another visit to the Old City, my father shows me off to his former Arab customers, who sit on low stools by their shops. He says in Arabic, Here is my daughter who was that little girl you knew before 1948. We enter a sta-tionery shop. Pens lie on a counter beneath glass, and the smell of paper permeates the place. I recall my father’s shop. My father and the owner of the shop are chatting amiably. It is as if time has risen above the long, inimical journey they both had been forced to take, and has stood still.

After the walk, my father and I stop by a small Arab coffee house. We sit out-side. The sun is hot, but we sit at a table covered with a canopy. My father orders Turkish coffee. He lights a cigarette and sits back. His face is relaxed. Lines of sorrow and worry that usually inhabit his face are gone. He is back home.

In spite of having spirited ances-

tors such as Zelda and her father, I be-lieved there was no real pedigree in my genealogy. My father would tell me that we are descendants of a great Hasidic rabbi, Reb Shmelke from Nikolsburg. It left no impression on me until years later when I read Martin Buber’s book on Hasidism and was able to understand how greatness is akin to simplicity. I would have been excited if I’d had a tie to the great actors of our Hebrew the-ater, such as Hannah Rovina — her facial features were perfectly carved, her deep voice saturated with meaning, and when she played in “The Dybbuk,” she tran-scended all limitations. Or Yigal Alon, a commander in the Palmach, the elite Jewish underground fighting force during the British Mandate, who symbolized a strong generation that exuded freedom and confidence. Or the poet Natan Al-terman, who spoke of the national strug-gle for independence. Many of his poems were banned by the British authorities. Alterman was in a habit of sitting in Café Cassit in Tel Aviv and drinking coffee with his artist friends. What were they talking about? I was intrigued.

As a teenager I wanted my father to be different. I wanted him to dress better. His stained shirt and crumpled pants annoyed me. I complained about it to my mother, who said, This is the way Father is. Couldn’t she do anything about it? I fantasized that my father was driving a car on our small and dusty street. It was not the car that interested me but my father driving it, which, in

my eyes, transformed him from the small and anxious man he was into a brave and daring one. Where did the idea of my father driving a car come from? None of his friends drove. Not even Feldman, a childhood friend who moved from the Old City of Jerusalem to Petah Tikva. Feldman owned orchards, and my father had a picture of him on a horse by his orchard. Whenever he came to visit us he talked about his kidney stones

and said he needed to drink eight cups of tea a day to dissolve them. He sat on our terrace and gulped down one cup of tea after another. I thought of him as a hero, and the non-stop drinking of tea added to my idea of him as a hero. I could see that my father admired him, too. Maybe because he took unusual risks, like moving out of his childhood city and becoming a farmer. A farmer who became rich. At times my father talked about moving to a place in the country, having a small farm and a gar-den. My father wanted peace of mind. And he imagined that a farm would provide it.

My father does not follow this dream. But after he retires he studies Talmud every morning, something he aspired to do all his life. He adheres more rigorously to rituals. He rises with my mother at 5 a.m. and goes to the synagogue to pray. He devotes time to sending checks to the needy. He doesn’t refuse people who ask him for money. My father’s early responsibilities made him a very worried man, but it made him autonomous. He is decisive. His conflicts, if he has any, are not apparent. I can still see his quick, confident walk in the streets of the Old City, sharing with me his past, the neighborhood he grew up in, and his interest in all great places of worship.

My father is a man of habit. During his years working in the store he comes home every day at 1 p.m. for lunch. He looks weary. He declares impatiently that he is hungry. My mother serves him lunch quickly. Then he takes a nap.

Rachel Berghash’s parents in Jerusalem in the late 1940s.

Photos, courtesy of Rachel B

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When he wakes up, though the lines on his face are a bit smoother, he still looks burdened. He must return to the store to reopen at 4 p.m. My father says, I am not as ambitious as some of my compet-itors, Feinstein and Cohen. People trust me, he continues, I have my customers, and it is sufficient. I have had a couple of offers for partnerships, but I like to be my own boss, not get involved with other people’s ways of doing things. My mother nods. She agrees. Feinstein is very ill, my mother says, he has been too ambitious. My mother is protective of my father’s health; she doesn’t want him to work as hard as Feinstein and ruin his health.

The store in its heyday was a meet-ing place. My friends would stop there to buy supplies. My architect friend Reuven would linger in the store and chat with my parents after buying sup-plies. (At some point when I was grow-ing up my mother started helping my father in the store.) My girlfriend Dina would occasionally stop by to borrow money. Juan, the Spanish consul to Je-rusalem, whom I met on a boat com-ing back from New York, once stopped there and left me a note inviting me to a party. (He was unable to call me because we had no phone.) My father said, Such a nice guy, what a pity he is not Jewish.

My father says he hates the store. But he never says what he hates about it. And when I ask him what he would have liked to do instead, he says he would have liked to sing. I recall Ferrer, an old Cuban singer, who sings about love and longing. He sings about being hungry as a child. He sings about gar-denias. There were no gardenias in the Old City of Jerusalem. But my father would have liked to sing.

When my older son was a child, my father would “employ” him as a cashier in his store. My son would stand by the cashier, a big smile on his face, giving change to customers. In my early twen-ties I would go to the store to ask for money to supplement my salary, and my father would take paper bills out of his cash register and ask, How much do you need? Before I had a chance to answer, he, with a twinkle in his eye, happy to be unstinting, flipped several bills and gave them to me and asked if I would like more. My mother would tell me that my

father loved me more than anything else in the world. Whenever he saw me in a new dress, he would say it looked good on me. Sometimes when my mother and I tried on the same dress he would say it looked better on me. I felt guilty about this comment, but my mother did not seem to mind. It was clear to me that my father loved her too.

Throughout his life my father would talk about how emaciated I was after being sick with typhus for a month. I was very sick. He would talk about how small I became. I am three. I am sitting in the palm of his hand. He is standing on the terrace; he has taken me outside to be in the sun. Perhaps my father thought I would not survive. He thought he was losing me, the way he lost his father and his brothers, the way his family lost everything after his father died in Istanbul and was buried without a trace. He lost his childhood. I am skin and bones, but I’ve survived. He hasn’t lost me. He talks with sadness and pride about the moment he took me out-doors. He talks about how he held me, like that, in the palm of his hand.

What is it you are playing? my fa-ther inquires. I say, Mozart, or Cho-pin, and he writes it on the inside of the bathroom medicine cabinet. A few days later he says, Play the Mozart, it is very beautiful. As I play the piano my

father looks at me lovingly, grateful for the gift. I am grateful for his remarks, though they are scarce, and usually ut-tered in an off-handed way. My father plainly says what he feels. He is not in-clined to encourage me. He is mostly busy with his store and his customers. My father and I could have shared more. But his anger often gets in the way. And I am proud and unappeas-ing. Now, I conjure up his kind face, the concern it expressed as he leaned to look at my leg after I underwent mi-nor surgery, or the quiet, anxious way he recited the Psalms when I went to the emergency room because of stom-ach cramps.

My father says, You have a good head, you could be a lawyer. I wonder: Does he miss having a son? He says, I’ve donated money to the orphanage I was in, and they will see to it that someone says kaddish for me after I die. (It is not customary for a daugh-ter to say kaddish for her parents.) My father is meticulously organized. He buys graves for himself and my mother, and every time he makes the slightest change in his will he shows it to me.

In 1988, my father calls me in New York. Without a warning he starts to sing. And he sings Yah Ribbon Alam Vealmaya, a sacred song in Aramaic sung after the Sabbath’s midday meal. The song beckons God to return to his Temple and the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, where every soul will be de-lighted. So sings my father in his small, warm, melodic voice: My father, who likes to listen to sacred music, is a can-tor now; he sings to me, sings on the phone.

Berghash is a poet and essayist who has been published in many literary magazines. She holds a master’s degree in social work and is a longtime teacher of Interior Life seminars, which use key philosophical, psychological and religious texts. She lives in New York City.

“A Man of the Old City” is an excerpt, copyright © 2011, by Rachel Berghash. Reprinted from Half the House, My Life In and Out of Jerusalem, Sunstone Press, 2011, by permission of Rachel Berghash and the publisher.

The author proudly wears her Israeli army uniform, 1953.

Na’amat WomaN 17Na’amat WomaN 17SUMMER 2012

Sophie Udin Club Makes a Difference!

Cooks and directors from Na’amat Jerusalem day care centers prepared the meal for the luncheon of the Sophie Udin club/Na’amat Jerusalem, giving

participants a taste of the preschool experience. Held at Moadon Hachavera, the festive event featured local Na’amat leaders and government officials as guest speakers. Proceeds from the event enable the club to provide day care scholarships for disadvantaged children.

Many of the club’s members belonged to Na’amat USA prior to making aliyah, but the enthusiastic group also includes women from Australia, Norway, Great Britain and Canada.

Here’s an excerpt from the last Sophie Udin club newsletter:Let’s begin our visit at the Patt Day Care Center, located in a very low-in-

come neighborhood with many social and economic problems. Children enrolled in the center come from large families, single-parent families, and many parents are unemployed. Can you imagine the difference it makes in the life of a child enrolled in a day care program that offers not only developmental

activities, learning opportunities and social skills advancement, but also provides hot, nutritious meals, healthy snacks and tender, loving care?

Ask Noya, Liel, Ma’ayan, Yarin and Yorin. They are fortunate to be part of this program, along with Roi, Ellia and Amiel who attend the Katamon Gimmel Center, located in a neighborhood that houses many families whose parents and grand-parents came to Israel in the early days of the state. Many are now third- and fourth-generation residents who have not succeeded in breaking the cycle of poverty; yet they maintain households, love their children, and try their best to expose them to all the positives this country has to offer.

What better way than through a “head start” experience in a Na’amat day care center? You help make it happen!

Rachel Aspir, regional chair of Na’amat Jerusalem, guest speaker (left), and Judy Telman, editor of the Sophie Udin club bulletin and a former national vice president of Na’amat USA.

Stories from the Glickman CenterEmma

Emma, a self-employed 40-year-old, was married for 18 years and had two teenagers, a daughter

and a son. Throughout her marriage her husband verbally abused and humiliated her. The first time she contacted the Na’amat Glickman Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Domestic Violence was following an incident in which her husband was physically violent with her. When Emma tried to call the police, he grabbed the phone and smashed it. Yet, the police did come to their house and ordered the husband not to return for a week. They also advised Emma to contact Na’amat.

When Emma came in for her first counsel-ing session, she was upset and confused. It was recommended that she begin therapy sessions with a social worker at the center. The husband came home after a week, and Emma continued her life as usual. She went to work and took care of the children. But every Tuesday she would come to the Glickman Center at 6 p.m. for a three-hour group meeting with women who were victims of domestic violence; the sessions were mediated by a social worker.

As the weeks passed, Emma grew emotionally stronger and gained courage. She was now able to offer her children a healthier role model, showing them that outside the home she was an indepen-dent woman; and inside, she was no longer a door mat for her violent husband, who had abused her in their presence.

After 10 months of therapy, there was another violent episode, but this time Emma had a different reaction: She was determined to put an end to the torment. She went to the police, filed a complaint and met with an attorney at the Glickman Center. Following the complaint to the

police, a restraining order was issued against the husband. This time Emma was not worried about payments and alimony because the center helped her contact a state-issued lawyer who filed a claim with the family court, suing for custody and alimony from her husband.

Today, about a year later, Emma is divorced; the husband is gone from the home and pays alimony. Most important, the two children are relaxed and no longer afraid to bring their friends home. When the school year ended, both brought home report cards that were significantly better than previous ones.

Natasha

Natasha, a Christian woman, married a Jewish man when they were living in Russia, and seven

years ago they made aliyah along with his elderly parents. All lived together in a tiny apartment, but after six months, Natasha’s husband returned to Russia for work — or so he told her and his parents. Natasha stayed in Israel and continued to live with her husband’s parents. For some reason, he didn’t want to be in touch with them, and they lost track of him.

After about a year, Natasha left his parents’ apartment, moved to a different city and got a job. She met a man who she later learned was a Muslim and became pregnant with his baby. Just before the baby was born, he moved in with her and became controlling and very possessive. Two years later, their second child was born, and because of eco-nomic difficulties, he pressured her to move in with his parents in their home in an Arab village. But the boyfriend’s parents said they would agree only

on one condition — that she convert to Islam and wear the traditional garb and veil. Natasha agreed to these conditions, thinking that if she wanted what’s best for the welfare of her children, she had no other choice.

Natasha converted to Islam in a short ceremony in the Shari’ah court, where she didn’t understand a word of what was said in Arabic. Soon after, her husband became violent and demanded that his mother accompany Natasha wherever she would go — whether to the grocery store or even to the baby clinic. His mother didn’t allow her to call her friends, cook or even speak with her children privately.

After a violent incident in which the husband hit Natasha in front of his mother, the neighbors called the police — and this is how she got to the shelter.

At Glickman, she felt she could freely tell her story. She also consulted with a lawyer there about her complex situation: The two children were regis-tered under her Jewish husband’s name; but for the father to have visitation rights and pay alimony, it was necessary to obtain a court order to register the children under his name.

In addition, Natasha wanted to explore the pos-sibility of returning to her original religion. The staff in the shelter helped her to rehabilitate her life with her children and to undo her legal bind.

NeWSNa’amat

Dealing With Learning DisabilitiesA message from the educational adviser at Na’amat’s KanotAgricultural High School

I want to tell you about the complex pro-cesses that take place at Kanot. Much effort

is invested to identify those students who suffer from learning disabilities and work with them on their specific difficulties. In order for the students to be granted the needed modifications for their matriculation exams by the local council committee [the government of a municipality], we attentively oversee the long process.

We are well aware that many of the students at Kanot have learning disabilities that have not been properly identified and/or treated previously. As a consequence, they have often experienced repeated failures during their lives — not only in the aca-demic area, but also in the social sphere. And it is precisely these failures that in many cases have caused them to drop out of other educational frameworks and lose their self-confidence in all matters relating to learning and to succeeding in their studies.

Our main goal consists of restoring self-confidence and working to obtain optimal educational conditions for them. All teachers receive instructions at the beginning of every year on how to identify students with learning disabilities, taking into account their perfor-mance in class and their achievements.

School counselors, trained in special education, provide general guidance; they are the ones in charge of diagnostic exams. After identifying the students and receiving parental consent, much effort is invested in having the tests taken at school, at special low prices, to make them accessible also for economically disadvantaged families.

After the diagnosis is obtained, the team of teachers is fully mobilized to start preparing a report for the local council committee. This report should eventually reflect, in the most truthful way, the capabilities and difficulties of every student.

Teachers will then talk to their students, conduct comparative tests, and put into practice the recommended adjustments. At the same time, they will try to find out whether these recommendations enable pupils to better express their knowledge. Simultane-ously, teachers will work with students at our learning center on developing appropriate learning strategies and habits, as well as on remedial learning, according to the examiner’s guidelines.


When the 9th-graders first come to Kanot, most arrive without proper

learning habits; some have almost never experienced success in their studies. I will even dare go further and say that the failure experiences they have accumu-lated have caused them to lose all trust in educational professionals as well as in themselves as students.

While working with this age group throughout the year, we deal with issues related to raising their self-esteem. We help them increase their academic self-confidence and gain learning strategies that will help them better their experi-ences in the coming years.

All our ninth-grade teachers know that besides the strictly educational mate-rial they are supposed to teach, they will be centering mainly on developing the teenagers’ learning habits. Therefore, teachers check notebooks consistently to get students used to managing an orderly notebook. They also teach their students to keep an organized diary. The teenagers learn how to manage their time, take down homework assignments and get ready for exams.

Teachers divide the work into small tasks, structured to enable students to experience success. The pupil who suc-ceeds gains recognition and, at times, even a small gift — a sticker or a candy. Everyone can succeed. At the same time, teachers identify those students who are in need of private lessons or have to make up material, as well as those who need to reinforce their reading or writing skills.

Each student is encouraged to take private lessons at our learning center or within a different framework. In addition, there is an extra teacher in the classroom who works together with the main teacher and who goes around the class helping those who feel stuck or lost.

During our general classes, we work on self-esteem and feelings that arise and lead to temptations and dangers, helping them to develop the attitude: The moment I realize how good I am, I have no need to act as if I were someone else so as to be loved.

Recently, we had a lesson that dealt with finding those positive parts we each have, as well as developing a positive point of view about the world. The stu-dents wrote down all the favorable things that were said about them along with the ones they thought of themselves. Then they made a bookmark for next year’s di-ary, which contained the commentaries.

Coping with these problems is not simple and sometimes becomes more chal-lenging from day to day. Many students have been beaten and wounded in previous encounters with the educational system, which eventually left them outside.

It takes us a few months to get pupils to understand that we are on their side. The experience accumulated during the past years shows that consistency is worthwhile. When getting close to 10th grade, we succeed in arriving with them at quite a different place — a place where they believe in themselves and they also believe in us.

Coping With the 9th-Gradersby Metial Hajaj, 9th-Grade Coordinator at Kanot

Students make cheese from

Kanot’s cows. The excellent

product is used for meals and

special events.

take action!

Na’amat USA’s column on advocacy highlights American public policy issues and items of interest that concern us as Jews, women and Zionists. This issue’s column focuses on elder care. Join us in speaking out for policies that defend the rights of women, children and families.


ELDER CARE: Responsibility and Choices by MARCIA J. WEISS

If you are caring for an ag-ing family member in your

home or in an assisted living facility, you understand how difficult it is to suddenly find yourself in the role of primary caregiver to that loved one. It can be a full-time job, often taking an emotional, financial or even physical toll on the caregiver.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Hu-man Services (HHS), the older population — those aged 65 and above — numbered 39.6 million in 2009, representing 12.9 percent of the entire U.S. population, or one in ev-ery eight Americans. By 2030, there will be about 72.1 million older adults, about 19 percent of the population. These staggering statistics mean that the demands for elder care facilities and services will increase dramati-cally. As medical technology becomes more sophisticated, the population is living longer; assisted living facili-ties, adult day care, long-term care facilities, nursing homes, hospice care and in-home care will be strained as the population needing such facilities continues to grow.

Given the choice, most elderly would prefer to age in place; that is, to continue living in their own homes. As they gradually lose their ability to function, however, and require either additional assistance in the home or in a facility, close family members often face difficult challenges in helping their loved ones make correct choices. Most family caregivers are daugh-ters or granddaughters, who play a major role in providing a home for their loved one, fulfilling their social needs, and often offering financial assistance.

As the strain of care giving

takes its toll on the caregiver, a relatively new service, re-spite care, has arisen in the United States. This type of care allows the caregiver the opportunity to take a vaca-tion or a trip away, as good temporary care for seniors is provided in the home. Some facilities have provisions for respite care, where the elderly are housed in the facility for a certain period of time until the regular family caregiver returns. ACE or acute care of elder units exist within certain hospitals as well, providing “a homelike set-ting” within a medical center specifically for the elderly.

In the United States, the majority of the approxi-mately one million residents in assisted living facilities pay for care out of their own funds. The remainder receives help from family and friends. Medicare does not pay for long-term (custodial) care unless skilled-nursing care is necessary and provided in certified skilled nursing facilities by skilled nursing personnel. Assisted living facilities usually do not meet Medicare’s requirements. If the elder meets the require-ments for the Medicare home health benefit, Medicare will cover some skilled care. When funds are completely depleted, Medicaid will cover costs.

Impaired mobility in the elderly is a major health concern, affecting 50 percent of those over 85 and at least one-quarter of those over 75.

As the elderly lose their ability to walk, climb stairs or rise from a chair, disabil-ity quickly follows. Therapy designed to improve mobility in the elderly is generally focused on treating specific impairments, such as reduced strength or poor balance. As

cognitive ability declines due to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, however, the focus shifts to helping with activities of daily living.

It is important for certain legal documents to be in place so that if physical or mental incapacity should arise, the person’s wishes have been already document-ed. The use of “advance direc-tives” — powers of attorney, trusts, living wills and health care directives — prepared by an attorney while the person has the capacity to express his or her wishes about end of life care — can simplify decision-making by caregivers at a later time.

More than 30 years ago, the federal govern-ment mandated creation of the ombudsman program. Each state’s long-term care ombudsmen are supposed to be staunch independent advocates for residents of nursing homes, assisted living facilities and similar adult care facilities. Federal law authorizes these trouble-shooters to take action on various issues from investi-gating residents’ complaints to identifying widespread problems affecting seniors’ welfare — from medical prob-lems to building hazards.

They work to bring about changes at the local, state and national levels that will improve residents’ care and quality of life.

If there is an issue that cannot be resolved internally, the ombudsman program rep-resents an alternative. Con-tact the National Long-Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center at www.ltcombuds-man.org. The Web site of the Administration on Aging (www.aoa.gov) also provides information on the ombuds-man program and other

resources for seniors and their families and caregivers.

Another issue of great concern to the elderly is abuse, which is reach-ing epidemic levels in the United States; some two million cases of elder abuse are reported each year. The ombudsman program can be helpful in this area, though the first agency to respond to a report of elderly abuse, in most states, is Adult Protec-tive Services. The role of APS is to investigate abuse cases, intervene and offer services and advice; its scope varies from state to state.

On the legislative front: Due to the sever-ity of violence against the elderly and in recognition of Older Americans Month in May 2012, Representa-tive Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) has introduced H.R. 4979 entitled “End Abuse in Later Life Act of 2012.” The bill sets up training programs to assist attorneys, health care providers, religious lead-ers and community-based organizations in recognizing and addressing instances of abuse of individuals age 50 and above, and conducts outreach activities and public awareness campaigns to ensure that abuse victims re-ceive assistance. A similar bill (S.464) has been introduced in the Senate by Sena-tor Herbert Kohl (D-WI) to establish a grant program to enhance training and services to prevent abuse in later life. Both bills are presently in committee.______________

Marcia J. Weiss, J.D., is the Na’amat USA National Advocacy Chair. Last issue she addressed domestic violence issues.

Na’amat WomaN20

Happy HairLove, Loss, and How I Wore My Hair

by MARILYN ROSE

Illustrations by Marilyn Rose

SUMMER 2012

smell of Lustre-Creme shampoo, so rich and creamy as it was scooped out of the shiny white glass jar. On cool summer nights, we were allowed to go to sleep with wet hair — a cotton square tied babushka-style under our chins and a warm white towel protect-ing our pillows.

My next hair memory is first grade. I am 5, and I have had my hair cut short — VERY short. Perhaps my mom thought it would make her life easier, or maybe she truly thought my pixie cut was becoming. All I remember is the feeling of humiliation as my first-grade teacher nicknamed me

“Johnie-Joe.” My only consolation was that my male cousin and tormentor could no lon-

ger grab me by my ponytail and drag me around the room.I never remember being given a choice as to how to wear

my hair, but I do remember the frequent haircuts — sitting on telephone books in the enormous chair at the beauty shop, scratchy hair escaping down the back of my shirt in spite of the towel wrapped around my neck. I felt sheer terror when I was admonished, “Sit still…or your ear will get cut off!”

My mother always told me I had beautiful “natural curls” like her own — that she cut my hair short to show them off. But even as she justified my close-cropped hair, she would reminisce about the long curly tresses of her girlhood that she wore well into young adulthood.

When I was 12, my eldest cousin brought his fiancée home to the Midwest to meet our family. She was a sleek, stylish New York woman who, in our minds, could have been a model. She wore her beautiful ashen, shoulder-length hair parted, with half tucked behind one ear and the other swept seductively over her eye. My three female cousins, all close to my own age, were blessed with straight hair, and they would run into their bedroom and comb each other’s hair to mimic her style while I watched enviously.

My next hair memory was in middle school. It was the ’60s. All the girls had long hair, hanging down to their waists like the actresses and folk-singers of the time. My hair

My earliest baby picture shows me as a 7-month-old propped up and gur-

gling for the camera. My sparse hair is gathered up in a single curl atop my head. Looking at that picture, I can practically feel my mother’s fin-gers, several years later, winding my fine little-girl hair around her fingers to form curls. Often, she’d leave one in front and sing to me, “There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her fore-head.” The memory of that rhyme evokes tenderness, yet the rest of the verse echoes in my head: “And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.” Like that nursery rhyme, many of my childhood memories revolve around my complicated relationship with my hair.

Before I started school, my older sister and I both wore our hair in thick ponytails, high up on our heads. I remember wiggling impatiently while my mom put my hair up in that ponytail with a rubber band (no nylon-covered elastics then). She would command me to sit still, which I seemed unable to do, and the rubber band would always pull the loose tuft of

hair that she tried to capture as she transferred the rubber band from her fingers to my hair.

Mom would wash my hair every week as I knelt on a

chair and tucked my chin to my chest and dunked my head into the bath-room sink, “Just like the duckies,” she would coo. I remember the distinct


struggled to reach my shoulders, and I watched with envy as my sister, like my friends, rolled their hair up on empty frozen juice cans with large bobby pins to keep it straight. I resigned myself to trying to sleep in torturous “brush rollers” jabbed with pink plastic stickpins and wrapped in a triangle of loosely woven fabric netting to hold everything in place. It was futile. Those rollers always managed to escape during the night and end up all over the bed. I tried countless home remedies for my unruly hair, including a vinegar rinse that left me smelling like the pickle barrel of a delica-tessen. My hair was always a mass of frizz and had a mind of its own — no matter how much cool green Dippity-do I used.

And in between all of these memories there is an echo of a constant refrain of my looking into the mirror at my own image and feeling that my hair was NEVER right.

In high school, I saved my money from waiting tables to have my hair chemically straightened. The smell of the pro-cedure, more than mildly reminis-cent of the scent of rotten eggs, lasted far longer than the effect of the treat-ment. The beautician assured me that it would last for months, but a week later my chemically limp hair was a frizzy mess once again.

There was one interlude, just before I graduated from high school, when my hair some-how matched the fashion of the day: Shag haircuts were in style. My mother, trying so hard to help soften my teen-age angst about my appearance, sent me downtown to a fancy department store for a stylish cut. And I do remember a time of brief satisfaction with the curly mane that I saw when I looked into the mirror after that cut. It didn’t last long. As that fashion came and went, my hair seemed unable to keep up with the new looks in Seventeen magazine. I would grow my hair to shoulder length time and time again, only to find that I couldn’t manage it and would cut it off.

A photo from college — during the days of hippies and The Whole Earth Catalog — shows me with a tight frizzy bubble of hair around my head. Out of desperation, after all those years of trying to straighten it, I had my hair permed and used a pick to pull it out into a neat fro. The one stub-born straight patch in the front, with a mind of its own, gave me away — and the chemical perm mixed with the sun gave it a brassy, dry appearance.

When my kids were born, I chopped my hair off again, enjoying the cool breeze on the nape of my neck. It brought back memories of how my mom — no longer alive — used to kiss that spot when I was little, before she wrapped the towel around my hair to dry it.

After I was married, I remember sitting around my mother-in-law’s table as she pontificated that it was good

my hair was short — that older women should not wear long hair. I bristled at such a statement, but it didn’t matter much since I had little time to worry about fashion.

With three little kids, expedience was the rule. And besides, I had finally found

a hairdresser who I loved and trusted, and didn’t feel the dread when I looked into the mirror after a haircut.

During the next 20 years, photos show my hair remained close-cropped — when I am wearing it a bit longer it is often because

I have not had the time to deal with it — and my husband and my children were

certainly not proponents of change. As I peruse photos once again, I see one

in which I am sporting a more styl-ish do: very close to my neck again, with the curly tresses left longer on top. I remember the day I had that

cut done. My youngest son walked home from middle school. Entering my

home office, he saw me from behind and im-mediately pronounced that I must be having a mid-life crisis. “Next,” he pronounced, “you will probably get pregnant and buy a Ferrari.”

That comment took place about seven years ago, but when I contemplate it, I real-ize how many times I questioned my looks and specifically my hair — how many times I looked to the reaction of oth-ers. I would ask my husband how he liked my new haircut. Did it really look

My hair was always a mass of frizz and had a mind of its own —

no matter how much cool green Dippity-do I used.

21

♥

Na’amat WomaN22

Now my hair is long and free. It forms exuberant coils that surround my face, and I don’t try to match anyone else’s idea of style. The natural grey mixes with golden highlights given to me by the hairdresser and by the sun. I look in the mirror and I have a hard-won sense of satisfaction at the face that smiles back at me. I am trying harder to accept the gra-cious compliments I receive.

The other day, a young woman — one of my son’s friends — came up to me at shul and told me she loved my hair. While secretly pleased, I tried to silence the familiar, criti-cal voice in my head that questioned what she really meant. Was she trying to tell me that something about my hair was wrong? Was I calling too much attention to myself? I pushed those thoughts out of my head as I thanked her, but she was still searching for more words.

“Your hair looks so… so… happy,” she blurted out, and we both broke into grins. After all those years of trying to tame my hair, I have finally accepted it. Like me, it has a will of its own. I realize I have “happy hair” and I like it.

Marilyn Rose is an artist, writer, illustrator, graphic designer and itinerant painter. She is currently working on a book of essays called “Vegetable Soup for My Soul.” Her paintings can be seen on her Web site, MarilynRoseArt.com.

okay? The judgments that always seemed to live in my head often

centered on my hair.

My mother was proud that into her late 50s she never colored her hair and had only a sprinkling of grey

around her temples. I was in my 20s when I sprouted a few grey hairs. When

my mother would spy those errant hairs she would surmise that I, like her own kid sister, would

be prematurely grey in my mid-20s. “Or bald,” I remember muttering under my breath when she would pluck them from my head without warning. My mother was wrong, though she would not live long enough to know it.

Now I am in my late 50s — almost the age that my moth-er was when she died. I, too, have just a sprinkling of grey hair. “I’ve earned these highlights,” I would tease my own, grown children. “You gave them to me.”

Almost 30 years after I was married, I faced another change in my life as my marriage ended. Perhaps in the begin-ning, the shock of my marital upset caused me to take less of an interest in my appearance, but somewhere along the way, I consciously started to let my short hair grow out once again. It seemed fitting to mark the end of my marriage, like a Jew-ish mourner, by refraining from cutting my hair. As I noticed my hair getting longer, I realized an odd kind of symmetry. If traditional Jewish brides cut their hair at marriage, perhaps it made sense that a divorced woman should grow her hair. This time my hair got longer than it has ever been.

I colored it briefly. “Not to cover the grey, but just a rinse to restore your old color,” my hairdresser encouraged me, and I capitulated for my oldest son’s wedding. I think the only person that really noticed was my youngest son who spied the shampoo for color-treated hair in the shower and rolled his eyes loudly. The change was anything but radical, but I was self-conscious as it grew out. And something felt dishonest and un-natural about the even shade that stared back at me in the mirror.

When the grey surfaced again, I decided not to cover it. The next time I sat in the hairdresser’s chair for a trim, I said, “Highlight it! Don’t cover the grey, but add some highlights for inter-est!” When she was done, the result was subtle, but as the weeks went by and I spent time painting “en plein aire,” the sun seems to mix with my chemical highlights and add some of its own.

SUMMER 2012


explore the makhtesh by Jeep, razor (a small car), biking, hiking, rappelling and horseback (bar mitzvah and wedding packages are available). At the spa, I pamper myself with a salt and lavender body scrub. It’s a tough assignment, but someone has to do it.

Day 4: Ben-GurionI wake up before sunrise to take a pho-tography walk in the sculpture park on the hotel grounds. A Stonehenge-type sculpture lends a prehistoric aura, a mon-ument to the footsteps of primitive man. Another sculpture mimics the contours of the flat-topped cliff, now silhouetted against the lightening sky. A few hardy shrubs sprout from rocky crevices, and sometimes an ibex emerges. As the sun rises, an ethereal sight unfolds: a sole gray cloud spreads like a pair of angel wings, creating a canopy above the sun’s perfect orb. At the edge of the man-made reflec-tion pool, a single tire floats precipitously.

Breakfast surpasses expectations, even for Israeli buffets known for their sumptuousness. The pan-Mediterra-nean restaurant purchases ingredients from local kibbutzim and farms like Kornmehl. How do you choose from the assortment of local artisan cheeses and yogurts; from the palette of fresh salads and veggies in vibrant oranges, greens and reds; from warm breads, crisp crackers (my favorite are stud-ded with black nigella seeds), fresh and dried fruit? (Answer: You sample a little of everything!) The open kitchen turns out omelets, puddings, mini-quiches, shakshuka, sweet ricotta baked in birds’ nest pastry, croissants and cheesecakes. I have to laugh at a crock of porridge labeled “Semolina Mess!” Yes, good art does come from — and for — the belly.

Today is a day of tribute to Ben-Gu-rion. His signature bald pate and fluff of hair, intimidating brow and slight smile are molded into a huge stone bust at the entrance to the Ben-Gurion Archives in Sde Boker. The low-tech, modest ar-chive — a research laboratory — holds thousands of files from 1900 to 1973 organized according to document type. Letters, memos, telegrams, diaries, speeches, articles and correspondence

are stored in metal bookcases in hand-labeled cardboard boxes. Sometimes a box contains a day, and sometimes, 12 years. (Most of the files in the archive are scanned and available on the In-ternet.) The archives are helping re-searchers examine deep philosophical inquiries about Israeliness, Jewishness, Zionism and the multifaceted contexts in which Israel exists.

As for Ben-Gurion the man, he knew his place in history. He made handwritten copies of letters before they were mailed, so both the letter and reply are preserved. He indexed the small pocket diaries that he filled with facts and data and had them typed while he was alive. But readers who might ex-pect juicy entries will be disappointed. Dec. 5, 1917: “At 11:30 in the morning I married a wife.” Ben-Gurion did show some emotion in his entry for May 14, 1948, the date of the declaration of the state. “1 pm. We author the text of the declaration.” “4 pm. And again I am a mourner among the joyful, as I was on November 29 [the day the U.N. ac-cepted the partition plan].” Ben-Gurion knew the consequences of both historic decisions would entail bloodshed.

Ben-Gurion uttered his famous vi-sion for the Negev in 1935, when he vis-ited the area as president of the Jewish Agency: “What’s missing,” he said, “are Jews and water.” His dream of populat-ing the Negev with five million people is still far from reality (population in 2010: 627,000), but many of the scientific achievements he foresaw (like desalina-tion) have come to fruition. He, himself, settled in Sde Boker (literally, Fields of Cowboys) shortly after the kibbutz was founded in 1952. Of the 18 founders, the oldest was 25. Ben-Gurion was already a 67-year-old grandfather. The kibbutz did not want him for political, practical and security reasons. But he persisted until they accepted his membership. None of his three children and seven grandchildren ever lived in the Negev.

At his request, Ben-Gurion’s “hut” — the small house he lived in for 20 years until his death in 1973 — is open to the public. It showcases his personal background and his love of the Negev. The living room is decorated with a large map of Israel; a copy of the Declaration of Independence; a fruit plate with a pic-

ture of the Israeli flag; a hanukkiah that plays “Hatikvah,” and other souvenirs and gifts. Ben-Gurion had three heroes, all of whom fought for freedom: Lincoln holds court in the living room; Gandhi looks out at a spartan bedroom (almost empty except for a cot and 50 books on a nightstand); a miniature of Michelan-gelo’s Moses stands on one of the book-cases in the study, crammed with 5,000 books in 9 languages on every subject except sports and cooking. Ben-Gurion’s glasses rest on his desk as he left them.

Ben-Gurion and his wife, Paula, are buried side by side in a simple plot overlooking the breathtaking Zin Can-yon, south of Sde Boker. The graves are inscribed only with their names in He-brew and three dates: birth, death and aliyah (1906). Ben-Gurion did not want elaborate eulogies or inscriptions. But one of the quotes that lines the walk-way to his hut seems apt: “Wisdom goes with south. It is written, whoever seeks wisdom, south he shall go.”

Thousands of years ago, the 12 biblical spies set out to scout the land from this very spot: Midbar Zin, the wilderness of Zin. I imagine them hid-ing in the cliffs and canyons, wondering how to live in this craggy yet wondrous landscape, clambering up hills that re-semble tents pitched on sandy rocks. Though they returned with a cluster of grapes — tangible bounty of a land flowing with milk and honey — 10 of the spies also articulated a lack of faith that deterred their brethren from going forth. Ben-Gurion did not harbor that sense of powerlessness. The horizon, he believed, was the limit for human and national achievement.

Three young Israeli soldiers who head down the cement path toward the graves interrupt my reverie. Two carry guitars. They are on leave, these contemporary Israelites in the desert of their ancestors. I take picture after pic-ture, captivated by the ancient lens and the modern one.

Rachel Musleah is a New York-based writer, author, singer and educator who presents programs on the Jews of India and Iraq. She wrote “Do-It-Yourself Judaism” in our spring 2012 issue. Visit her Web site: www.raheljewishIndia.com.

Negev Diarycontinued from page 8


The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to BrooklynBy Lucette LagnadoNew York: HarperCollins416 pages, $25.99

L ucette Lagnado is the winner of the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for her book The Man in the White

Sharkskin Suit, which describes her fam-ily’s life and 1950’s exodus from Egypt, focusing on her father. She now has a follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, which appealingly entwines the story of three generations of women with the de-piction of Jewish life in Egypt. I found The Arrogant Years as arresting as Jung Chang’s memorable Wild Swans, which deals with three generations of Chinese women. However, Lagnado’s focus is less on politics and more on recapturing the thriving Jewish community in Cairo and the circle of worshippers at the Shield of Young David, the Orthodox synagogue Lagnado attended in New York.

Lagnado starts her story in New York during her arrogant years, which she defines as “that period in a young woman’s life when she feels — and is — on top of the world.” The 10-year-old Lagnado’s ambition was to grow up to be like the secret agent Emma Peel in “The Avengers.” She was spirited and rebellious and wanted to challenge the rule that placed the females in her syna-gogue behind the mehitza. She came up with a ploy and persuaded some of the other girls to cooperate with her. They placed chairs outside the entrance to the women’s section, and over a period of time kept advancing their position until they were within the sight of the men — until the teenage boys and the men yelled at them to return. The can-tor’s wife, a forbidding woman who considered Lagnado to be a bad influ-ence, remained angry and silent. Later,

the act of transcending the divider becomes a metaphor in the novel for escaping into the men’s world. We are intrigued by the girl who posed a threat to the chauvinistic traditions of the synagogue.

Lagnado shifts her story to Cairo in the 1920s and 1930s, when traditions and barriers were broken. In 1923, the lead-ing feminist of Cairo tore off her veil at a train station. “Hoda’s friends who came to greet her were stunned by her action, but then they, too, yanked the veils from their faces and cast them aside in soli-darity and, voila, a liberation movement was born among the least liberated women in the world.” The social changes that swept the country led to tolerance; Jews and Muslims and Christians mingled freely. The Jews rose to the top in every sector, and some were given the titles “pasha” (the greatest honor) and “bey” (the second greatest honor) by the king. When Europe was swept up by anti-Semitism, Egypt embraced Jews.

We learn about the Jewish pasha who wielded the most influence over King Fouad and, later, his son King Farouk. The wife of the pasha, officially the lady-in-waiting to the queen, was Madame Alice Cattaui Pasha. There is a portrait of her in the book, looking regally at the camera. Madame Cattaui, one of the most powerful women in the city, took an interest in the Jewish schools. It was in the L’École Cattaui, where she was a benefactress, that she met Lagnado’s mother, Edith, a teacher at age 20. Madame Cattaui bestowed on Edith the key to the library in her residence, an honor the girl (who had read all of Proust by age 15) would cher-ish then and much later in life when she remembered her own arrogant years.

Edith had much to be proud of — she was beautiful and stylishly dressed, in-

telligent, a teacher, and she had access to the Villa Cattaui’s library. The pasha en-trusted her with the important job of or-ganizing a library for the school by select-ing books that might be available only in Europe and America. Edith was the emo-tional support for her mother, Alexandra, who was an abandoned wife, reduced to begging money from her relatives. Edith also cared for her younger brother, since her mother had escaped from reality into a world of books and cinema. We don’t see Alexandra in her arrogant years. The sole snapshot of her in the memoir shows

a tired-looking melancholic woman, whereas we see the shift in Edith from re-splendence to a worn-out appearance through sev-eral pictures. Mother and daughter were close and spent much of their time together. Alexandra’s pride was her daughter.

Edith’s life seemed to take on a fairy tale qual-

ity when she wed a man who had it all outwardly — social status, money, a stylish mode of dressing. However, it soon became apparent that the mar-riage would be difficult for the bride, 22 years younger than her bridegroom. In addition to giving up her teaching job and the privilege of entry to the library, she had to live with her mother-in-law. It wasn’t merely the objections of her husband that stopped Edith from hav-ing a job, but also the law in Egypt that made it impossible for most married women to work. Through her mother’s life, Lagnado shows us how marriage can frustrate a woman by prematurely ending her arrogant years.

The charmed existence of Jewish life in Cairo began to be threatened. Mobs incinerated foreign quarters. Lagnado laments the destruction of the department store, Shepheard’s, which epitomized the empire and was

Book


the place where her father announced his engagement to her mother. Soon after the fires, the military, led by General Muhammed Na-guib, forced King Farouk to abdicate in 1952. The Jews lost their confidence since the king had been their pro-tector. The reassurances of Naguib didn’t assuage their fears. The hostile attitude of the regime included policy changes that led to the arrest of Jew-ish leaders and elimination of the titles pasha and bey. Most Jews resettled in other countries.

Alexandra immigrated to Israel, where her son had gone years earlier. Lagnado’s immediate family went to France, then to Brooklyn in 1964. She brings alive the people who worshipped at her synagogue and their culture. Her personality as a thinker and rebel is de-veloped in those pages. Though she also writes about her siblings and her father, the spotlight is mainly Lagnado and her mother, who was “so convinced I had it in me to realize her dreams.” Every now and then she reminds us of her passion to be an agent like Emma Peel. Nor does she let us forget the divider that kept the females in their place.

Edith never recaptured her lost glory. However, the changed family circumstances and life in America en-abled her to have a job in the Brooklyn Public Library, which let her indulge in her passion for books again.

Lagnado’s arrogant years ended tragically due to illness, leaving her un-able to have any children, but she ful-filled her dream of becoming an Emma Peel of sorts through her work as an investigative reporter.

Concluding The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits the characters who peopled her memoir and even returns to Cairo and gives us sad glimpses of Madame Cattaui. Our emotions are

stoked the most at the end when she tries to reconnect to her dead mother. The last paragraph transmits her yearning to the reader very touchingly. “As I fingered each volume, I felt a need to remove them from the shelf and hold them. I kept

asking myself: Was this a book Edith had purchased for the pasha’s library? Was this a novel she had selected? Had she leafed through this collection? Had she enjoyed that anthology? Brushing over the soft leather jackets, I felt as if I were touching my mother’s hand, exactly as I had as a little girl when she would not let me go, she would not let me go.”

The Arrogant Years is brilliantly conceived and executed. Its 400 pages chronicling Lagnado’s Jewish heritage and personal and familial history make for a spellbinding read. She has de-picted an era in Cairo that the world shouldn’t forget.

— Tara Menon

Ben-Gurion: A Political LifeBy Shimon Peres with David LandauNew York: Nextbook/Schocken224 pages, $25.95

Throughout his life, Ben-Gurion of-ten said, “We are a nation with a wealth of prophets but a dearth of

statesmen,” Shimon Peres tells journal-ist David Landau in this intimate po-litical biography of Israel’s first prime minister. As the youngest member of Ben-Gurion’s inner circle, Peres shares personal glimpses of the man who men-tored him for more than three decades. He also explains why Ben-Gurion is considered Israel’s first and greatest statesman.

This slim volume is surprisingly comprehensive in telling the story of

the Zionist movement in pre-state Isra-el and Ben-Gurion’s critical role in lead-ing its fractious parties to statehood. “I truly believe that without Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel would not have come into being,” Peres asserts. As a 24-year-old delegate to the Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1946, Peres witnessed Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jew-ish Agency (the pre-state governing body of Palestinian Jews), taking two of his most historically significant stands: first, to establish an independent state “at once” — putting him in direct con-flict with Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, who still argued at this late date for a “gradualist” approach with Britain; and second, to accept a partition plan (a proposal to divide Mandatory Palestine into two states, for Jews and Arabs, rec-ommended by the Peel Commission in 1937) — if it would result in immediate independence. His stand on partition evoked fierce opposition at both ends of the political spectrum, and even from some members of Mapai, his own Labor Zionist party.

It was clear to Ben-Gurion that the essential first step toward statehood was to force the British to leave Palestine. Britain had ignored the recommenda-tions of the Peel Commission when it adopted the 1939 “White Paper” as its official policy, severely restricting Jew-ish immigration to Palestine before and during World War II. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Britain continued to blockade its ports to prevent ships filled with survivors from entering. In response, Ben-Gurion ordered the Haganah (the military defense organi-zation of Jewish Palestine) to launch an armed uprising against the British. Their mission was sabotage — cutting railroad lines, damaging British ships, and blowing up bridges linking Pal-estine to neighboring countries. One month later, he created the Hebrew

Na’amat WomaN26

BOOK REVIEWS

SUMMER 2012 26

Resistance Movement (forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces), inviting Etzel and Lehi, the other two Zionist fighting forces, to join “on the condi-tion that they accept a unified com-mand and total discipline.” Ben-Gurion insisted on this condition because he firmly opposed Lehi’s terror tactics. He regarded Lehi’s murder of Lord Moyne in 1944 and Etzel’s bombing of British headquarters at the King David Hotel in 1946 as severely damaging to the Zionist cause.

Even during Israel’s 1948 war with five invading Arab armies, Ben-Gurion would not countenance independent militias. Just four weeks after Israel’s declaration of statehood, Etzel’s leader, Menachem Begin, attempted to land the Altalena, a ship purchased by Etzel and carrying weapons specifically intended for Etzel troops. Although Israel badly needed these arms, Ben-Gurion de-clared: “There are not going to be two states and there are not going to be two armies,” and ordered the IDF to resist the Altalena’s landing. A skirmish on the beach in Tel Aviv led to the bombard-ment of the ship, which resulted in 19 deaths. This incident of Jews fighting Jews remains a painful memory for Is-raelis, but Peres maintains, “If Ben-Gurion had not faced down Etzel and disbanded the Palmach [an elite unit of the Haganah with a separate command structure], we would have had a seriously compromised state right from the start.”

Ultimately, the Arab states did not accept the United Nations Partition Plan passed in 1947, and Israel’s boundar-ies were determined by the war that fol-lowed. Nevertheless, Peres praises Ben-Gurion’s decision to accept partition to create a Jewish state as “an historical act of political wisdom.” Ben-Gurion also had to defend territorial compromises made in the armistice agreements bro-kered by a U.N.-appointed commission, which ended the war of 1948. “We want a Jewish state, even if not in the whole country,” he argued at the first meeting of the new Knesset. “We believe that the creation of the state, albeit on less than Greater Israel, was the greatest act

in Jewish history since ancient times. The criterion by which to judge these armistice agreements is whether they are better than no agreements, not whether they are better than a miracle.” (In these agreements, Israel wound up with 50 percent more land than in the original Partition Plan, but Jerusalem became a divided city and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan.)

In praising Ben-Gurion’s prag-matism as a state-builder, particularly his decision to accept partition, Peres brings Ben-Gurion’s legacy to bear on the current political conflict in Israel — namely, between those who insist that the West Bank is part of the Jewish people’s biblical inheritance and would not give it up for a Palestinian state, and those who would support a two-state solution in order to keep Israel a Jewish and democratic state and avoid ruling over a Palestinian majority.

While the relevance of Ben-Guri-on’s decisions is clear for the contempo-rary Israeli debate on these issues — as Peres repeatedly points out — unmen-tioned and hovering in the background is the current Palestinian campaign in the U.N. for statehood. At this critical juncture, are the Palestinians ready for a two-state solution? Will Palestinian lead-ers emerge who put the needs of their people first and accept compromises to solve them? Will they crack down on ter-rorists and extremist factions that reject coexistence with Israel? Will there be statesmen among them with the courage and conscience of a Ben-Gurion to lead them to statehood?

— BonnyV. Fetterman

Love and Shame and Loveby Peter OrnerBoston: Little Brown and Company440 pages, $24.99

Now I want to read Peter Or-ner’s other books, especially his Esther Stories.

What this book is about isn’t easy to say. It’s the story of three genera-

tions of Jews in Chicago — the Popper family. It’s a family album, collaged together in what feels like a random way. It’s a novel about what we do and don’t remember, about history, about how we live

deeply in the past — and about how the lives of each one of us is intercon-nected, episodic, irrational and, in the end, supremely mysterious.

Orner’s writing is episodic, which for some reason that I don’t understand is entirely out of favor in the world of literature. I love it. The author doesn’t care how long his chapters are. Some are very short, less than a page. Their titles are unexpected, and so is the rhythm of the prose.

Alexander Popper is our hero and anti-hero. Some reviewers have com-pared this novel to Saul Bellow, but Orner and his Popper don’t have the I-Know-Everything quality of Bellow’s men. Popper is humble. Popper is im-perfect. He’s befuddled, a schlemiel. Popper falls in love with Kat, one of the best characters I’ve ever read. She is disarmingly honest. She tells Popper what she thinks and is free from the usual emotional constraints. Kat is so good that the reader knows right away that the relationship can’t work. Still, we’re happy to meet her. As is Popper. They even have a baby, Ella.

Here’s a whole chapter, titled “ELLA”: “Kat telling him on the phone about waking up with Ella, and he heard nothing after that, only waking up with Ella, and still holding the phone he went to the kitchen and pressed a fork into the veins of his wrist. She sleeps like a holdup victim with her hands over her head. It’s like she’s practicing to get mugged…Popper?”

There’s Alexander Popper’s pater-nal grandfather, Seymour. We meet him in the chapter called “In the Driveway”: “Seymour was finally forced to sell. His company had been losing money for years. It wasn’t a big company, but it wasn’t a small one either, and it had made him rich, for a time. The story


of how it unraveled is convoluted, and every time Popper used to ask about it, he’d get a different version.”

The story goes back and forth and back again in time. Not in the usual the-years-mount-up way. Not sequen-tial either. The years just fall together in no discernable order. Past, present and future are given equal due.

There are the love letters from 1945, short self-contained chapters — a whole story in a few sentences — writ-ten by Seymour, who joined the Navy against his wife’s wishes. He was 39 and it was the end of the war. He seems to love Bernice but not understand her. Anyway, he’s a soldier and she’s his safe haven. She’s the one he tells things to.

After a love letter, the next chap-ter might be now or 1975. The narrator doesn’t worry about the reader holding onto many stories, which belong to-gether yet stand apart. Orner is such a good writer, graceful and easy, moving easily between decades, between char-acters and ideas — comic and sorrow-ful. The reader feels full confidence in the unusual narrative license as years quickly move back and forth — and people, too. In their fragments of con-versation, they reveal themselves, their secret shames, their lies, their disap-pointments, their hungers.

Near the end of the book, Pop-per, now in his early 30s, is standing on a street corner. He hasn’t evolved. He’s had no big Aha moment. He lives and he knows. He stands next to a woman he hasn’t seen in years. She’d been extreme-ly imposing once. He observes, “The years have ground the Rosencrantzes down to a more Popperish size.”

Here’s a section from the middle of the book that could also be the ending. It’s a one-page chapter called “The Guest Room”: “They’d never had many guests. A closed-door room in a house of closed doors. Two closets, one locked. This is where the silver is kept. Always the threat that no matter how much a part of the family the help, they still one day might be tempted to run off with the silver.”

— Esther Cohen

with a proclamation — Aylon’s frequent way of getting messages across verbally along with the visual. Here, she respect-fully asks that women be permitted to judge and give testimony, and she peti-tions for an apology to all females who weren’t allowed to judge — and whose judgments will never be known — be-cause they weren’t men. “In this way, all women will be honored and God will be honored,” she notes. (See Aylon’s Web site, www.heleneaylon.com for a look at the other installations and more of her work.)

Aylon tells me that her most recent official work of art is the minimalist “Eternal Light,” a metal rectangle with a pink neon dash in the center. It “sums up my whole career,” she observes. She has taken away everything else. This is the essence.

Does this mean she has come to some conclusions? No. As she writes in her memoir, “I cannot come to any conclusion.” She tries to “keep my bal-ance, holding paradoxes, waiting to see what will happen,” as in her “Paintings That Change.” But, she adds, “Judaism remains a constant.”

What’s next? I ask Aylon, as I know she will not just wait for things to hap-pen. The artist says she’s thinking about a return to process painting and wants to “deal with civilization, with where did we go wrong with nature and civi-lization, about the intersection and ex-plosion of the two.” She blames patriar-chy — no surprise.

It’s Passover. Aylon and I are sitting in her loft eating matzo and can-

taloupe. She has just returned from Princeton where her “Conservadox” son held a seder (her son is Nathaniel Fisch, director of the Program in Plasma Phys-ics and professor of astrophysical sci-ences at Princeton University, and her daughter is the drama therapy pioneer Renée Emunah). She remarks that many physicists are Orthodox Jews. I tell her about the two seders I attended — both argumentative, provocative, questioning and yet also traditional. Which brings us to the endless conversation about God. I, too, have my God issues, but growing

up in a progressive Jewish atmosphere, I have not had to wrestle with it the way an Orthodox Jewish woman might. Ay-lon’s “Beit Din” was supposed to be the finale, she notes with humor, but she is “still not finished with God.” I under-stand, though I carry fewer peckels.

Aylon directs me to a series of photographs she did in 2010, titled “Self-Portrait: The Unmentionable.” Text from the Bible and other Jewish sources are projected on Aylon’s face. In one, the holiest name for God, the unpronounceable Hashem, appears on her forehead. The four Hebrew letters of the Name — YHVH — translate to past, was; present, is; future, will be. She says: “I realized this is eternity. God is eternity, whatever that is.”

Truth is what Aylon seeks. “And Godliness — not the limited and un-evolved hierarchal God of the Bible.” She has studied Kabbala, she explains, “where God is everywhere and every-thing, and there is no end — Ein Sof.” Reviewing her years of wrestling with Judaism and her changing sense of the human concept of God, she has writ-ten: “The truth shall make you free, and I must not shrug off the discomforts. That is the gain. Of course, ignorance is bliss, and I can never attain that sense of joyous confidence that faith inspires. I can say thank you [to God], but I find it difficult to say please, thinking that my plea will be answered. How can any-one think that after the Holocaust?”

She tells me: “There’s a thirst for spiritual elevation and the Torah does not quench this thirst. Some passages make us flinch and squirm and we had better seek a rationale. The music can stir the spirit to rise. The wisdom and elastic-ity of the Kabbala can touch that same chord. The word Matronita takes away the stigma of an ‘old lady’ and now that same person can be considered an elder woman from whom others seek guidance. A Matronita can write proclamations. We can all aspire to grow into Matronitas.”

So when will I be a Matronita? I ask Aylon. Maybe at 65, she tells me. We laugh. My future foremother is a hard act to follow.

Judith A. Sokoloff is the editor of Na’amat Woman. She is also a ceramic artist.

ayloncontinued from page 13

Na’amat WomaN28 SUMMER 2012 28

ALICE ELEANOR HOWARD

Na’amat USA mourns the passing of former national president Alice Eleanor Howard.

She brought great verve, dedication and enthu-siasm to her role as president from 2004 to 2007.

Her commitment to Israel was unwavering through her support of many organizations, but Na’amat was her love, and she took much plea-sure in working toward its goals of providing so-cial services for women, children and families in Israel.

Alice was president of Natanya club and San Fernando Valley Council, and served as Na’amat USA’s Western Area coordinator before becom-ing national president.

We express our heartfelt condolences to her husband, Leo Howard; her daughter, Jane How-ard Blitz; her sons, Alan and Scott; her daughter-in-law, Marcy; and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She will be greatly missed.

tance of a pro-active approach to wom-en’s health issues.

The Women’s Health Care Cen-ter in Karmiel offers vital post-surgery counseling and therapy regarding reen-tering the workforce, the impact of a major illness on the entire family, and combating recovery depression and anxieties concerning the ability to lead a normal life again.

From our e-mail blasts and articles in Na’amat Woman, which you can read online, you have received information about our advocacy in the United States on behalf of women and children.

The national board of Na’amat USA is committed to active participa-tion in addressing pending legislation that would curtail rights that we, as women, thought were our personal de-cisions concerning health and well be-ing. Unfortunately, the “War on Wom-en” is being fought on many fronts, both personal and public.

Israeli women are also facing similar concerns. Several months ago, Na’amat Israel responded to a plea from women living in areas where ultra-Orthodox communities try to enforce women and girls to retreat from the public sphere. They have demanded that women and girls — who were “only” Modern Or-thodox — accept extremist dress codes, and refuse to allow all women, non-re-ligious and haredi, to sit (or stand) any-where except in the back of the bus.

Large numbers of Na’amat Israel members responded to the plea and took to the streets — and buses — to

support the general female population’s right to ride on public buses without restrictions.

As members of Na’amat USA we help to provide many services for Is-raeli society in an ever-expanding range of programs and services based on the current needs in Israel.

And now we have moved into some new and challenging areas in the United States:

Our national Membership Depart-ment is installing a new computer pro-gram that will allow us to modernize our dues billing, personalize member-ship communications, and allow us to take innovative approaches for mem-bership recruitment and donations.

Our national spokesperson Mayim Bialik has encouraged the general pub-lic to support Na’amat USA through her video and blog. Her interest in the programs that Na’amat supports has helped to increase traffic to our Web site.

Na’amat USA is currently on Face-book, Linkedin and Twitter, all sites that have led to more connections. With the improved Web site, our award-winning magazine is getting more attention and readers. An example: The striking cover of the winter 2011/2012 issue featuring women comic artists has appeared on other Web sites, bringing us more links and accolades.

Our Small Projects Program has been very successful, providing a way for clubs and councils to make a “personal connection” with Na’amat Israel pro-grams and facilities, and to help meet fund-raising quotas on the local level.

The Circle of Love campaign was

reinvigorated just before Passover. It’s a wonderful way for members and friends to make new or additional con-tributions for the children in Na’amat’s multipurpose centers.

Our efforts to solicit donations on-line — through our redesigned Web site — has also seen a good response, not just from our members, but also from the community at large; the site has also generated new memberships.

Please remember to make sure that your club and/or council send e-mail ad-dresses of members, family and friends to the national office so that they can be included in our e-mail blasts.

The public relations that we are doing now through all types of social media and methods of communication are wonderful and rewarding, but we must not forget the personal connec-tions. It was a personal connection that spurred the formation of our organiza-tion through the lifeline of water — and the flow of caring and concern for Isra-el continues to enrich and sustain that lifeline today.

Each new method, each experi-ence, each life we touch adds to the success of Na’amat USA and Na’amat Israel. What would our founders recog-nize in the scope and work of Na’amat today? They would, I’m sure, indeed see a miracle.

Thank you for all you do to make this miracle continue to blossom through-out Israel. May you go from strength to strength in this new fiscal year!

Presidentcontinued from page 3


√ National board member Marcia J. Weiss, left, is installed as president of Pittsburgh Council by Judy Kornblith Kobell, outgoing president.

π Mazal and Or clubs of South Florida Council hosted a 28th Anniversary Luncheon, which honored the lives of Edith Castoriano, Ruth Gold, Anita Karl, Sala Lewis, Basia Lederman, Annie Rotter and Ann Rosenheck — all Holocaust survivors. Guest speaker Stanley Aaron Lebovic, author of Black Is a Color, spoke about his father, also a survivor. From left: Anabel Peicher, council president Raquel Rub, Sala Lewis, Edith Castoriano, Ruth Gold, Anita Karl, Basia Lederman, Annie Rotter and event chair Fanny Yohai.

π Long Island/Queens Council held its annual feminist Passover seder. From left, seated: Trudy Sinn, Marsha Jafee, Carol Knecht and Linda Biderman; standing: Leslie Berlin, Nadine Simon, Barbara Adler, Florence Lefkowitz, Eleanor Blackman, Rhonda Eisenstadt, Judy Schanker, Laura Smith, Tal Ourian, Maddy Berger and Shelly Tivin.

Washington Council holds ®

its Annual Spiritual Adoption Luncheon, featuring guest speaker Debbie Troy Stewart, Eastern Area coordinator. Cantor Lisa Levine provided the entertainment, singing Ladino and Yiddish songs. From left: Debbie Troy Stewart, council president Ruth Reid, Trudy Stone, Beth Troy, Eastern Area administrator Ange Nadel.

πPalm Beach Council celebrates Na’amat USA’s 86th anniversary with a festive luncheon. A large crowd came to hear national president Elizabeth Raider give an update on Na’amat Israel activities. Entertainment by Cantor Manny Silver rounded out the exciting program. From left: Joyce Schildkraut, event co-chair; Rhoda Birnbaum, council president; Elizabeth Raider; Shirley Marshak, event co-chair; and Raena Zucker, council fund-raising vice president.

π At the recent Esther Goldsmith club (Lakewood, New Jersey) Child Care Scholarship Luncheon, life member Irma Komar (right) won the raffle prize: a beautiful Bedouin needlepoint. Next to her is club president and national board member Debbie Troy Stewart.

π At the national board meeting in May, vice president Gail Simpson encouraged members to put their club and council photos on the Na’amat USA’s Facebook page. On the right is president Elizabeth Raider.

aroUND tHe coUNtrY

NA’AMAT USA is counting on YOU.

Please pay your annual dues TODAY -- only $36.

Or become a Life Member and never pay dues again -- $250.

Na’amat USa would love to be in touch with you!Go to www.naamat.org/email and sign up to receive

special newsletters and the latest information via e-mailor send your e-mail address to

[email protected]’amat USA values your privacy. Your e-mail address

will never be sold or provided to an outside party.

EASTERN AREAElaine Kitchner Brooklyn, N.Y.Karen Roberts DeWitt, N.Y.

MIDWEST AREASharon Kolesky Northbrook, Ill.Marilyn Myers Orange Village, Ohio

WESTERN AREALois Joseph Las Vegas, Nev.Nadolyn Karchmer Las Vegas, Nev.Merle Mitzmacher Las Vegas, Nev.Pauline Newland Valencia, Calif.

Welcome to the New Life members of Na’amat USa

circle of Love DonorsNA’AMAT USA wholeheartedly thanks the following

who have joined our Circle of Love, providing scholarships for needy Israeli

children to attend a NA’AMAT multipurpose day care center.

One ($2,000) or MoreIn Memory of Shoshi Grad and Blessing Sivitz

Jeannette RothSamuel Sayward

June and Bernard SperlingChellie and Yankee Wilensky

OthersRita Berman

Miriam BrillmanDallas Jewish Community Foundation

Pamela B. DelgadoOscar EpsteinSophie FischHarriet Green

Judy & Andrew GreenJan Gurvitch

Sybil LiebermanMarcia M. Markowitz

Marcia PevsnerJean PuttlerKaren Rosen

Esther P. SardasBlanche Sohn

Bernice WeinsteinRuth Weiss

Evelyn Zebker

Wish Your Friends and Family

“Shana Tova”With Na’amat USANew Year CardsIt’s not too early to order our lovely,

made-in-Israel New Year

cards for 5773.

The inside message reads: May the year bring

you the blessing of health, happiness and prosperity

in a world of peace.

Please place your order through your council office. Non-council

clubs may order through tribute card chairwomen or presidents.

Order now, before our limited quantity runs out.

FRIENDSYosef Haim, Beverly Hills, Calif.

Rubin Hekmat, Los Angeles, Calif.Leonard Skolnik, Beachwood, Ohio

SUMMER 2012 30 Na’amat WomaN


You are Invited to Join theNA’AMAT USA

Circle of LoveA child’s future is in your hands! That child needs our Circle of Love

to be nurtured and set on the road to a happy and productive life.

Each Circle of Love provides a scholarship for an at-risk child to attend one of Na’amat’s multipurpose centers.

These centers provide not only quality education, but also psychological and special needs services — all in a loving environment, 12 hours a day.

A single donation of $2,000 completes a circle.Ten people, each donating $200, will also create a circle.

Donors’ names will be inscribed on the Circle of Love wall in Israel and appear in Na’amat Woman magazine.

With your help, the Circle of Love will be never-ending.

Please contact the national office for additional information.

Phone: 212-563-5222; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: www.naamat.org.

Name

Address City/State/Zip

Council/Club

E-mail Phone

Charge to my credit card. American Express Visa MasterCard

Card # Exp. Date

Signature Or make check payable to Na’amat USA, 505 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2302, New York, NY 10018.

Pay your 2012-2013 dues of $36 by October 1, 2012, and your name will be entered in a drawing for a life membership.

The winner’s name will be announced in the fall issue of Na’amat Woman.

to all annual members: YoU caN WiN a Life memBerSHiP!

Photos by Judith A. Sokoloff

Connect With the Women and Youth of Israel. Join Na’amat USA!

CommUnItY CenterS and Women’S ClUbS throughout the entire country

FIghtIng For the AdvAnCement oF Women so they can be full and equal participants in the social, economic and political spheres of Israeli society

SCholArShIPS for women to pursue higher education

Assisting in the SoCIAl IntegrAtIon And edUCAtIon oF neW ImmIgrAntS

Five Women’S rIghtS CenterS provide legal, financial and family counseling; mediation, workshops and support groupsFor more information, please contactnA’AmAt USA, 505 eighth Avenue, Suite 2302

new York, n.Y. 10018

Phone: 212-563-5222 Web site: www.naamat.org

The largest women’s organization in Israel, Na’amat works to improve the status of women and provides educational and social services for women, children, teenagers and families.

With 300,000 members — Jewish, Arab and Druze women — and 30 branches, Na’amat provides a huge social service network throughout all of Israel.

A voice for Women and Children —

A voice for Israel.

dAY CAre for 18,000 children, infants through preschoolers, including 25 mUltIPUrPoSe centers for at-risk children

Eighteen teChnologICAl hIgh SChoolS, two agricultural boarding schools, vocational training classes for adult Jewish women and women in the Arab and Druze communities

Thirty legAl AId bUreAUS provide women with legal advice and representation for issues relating to employment, divorce, marriage, single parenting and aging

glICkmAn Center For the Preven tIon And treAtment oF domeStIC vIolenCe and a shelter for battered women

NA'AMAT USA Magazine Summer 2012 Edition

Documents

Transcript of NA'AMAT USA Magazine Summer 2012 Edition