Israel, Day 6

Shalom, Yerushalayim! The bus was full of people and bags and set to go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The bags were packed for two days in the Negev desert. Dan, Matan, Avichai, and I loaded the bus with everyone’s luggage. Somehow we filled it with a lot of extra space; previously it seemed stuffed to the brim. Our astonishment grew when we realized that the bags should be fuller this time around, having stopped at two markets in Jerusalem where people bought gifts and souvenirs. We looked at one another and shrugged, deciding to simply be grateful for this blessing rather than look a gift-bus in the mouth, and boarded.

The drive wasn’t too long. Before I knew it we were at Yad Vashem. “This is dhe Holocaust Memorial, everyone. Please follow me to dhe inside and we will begin our tour first with a short presentation.” Ran led the way. “Yalla, yalla.” Let’s go.

We were seated in a dark auditorium. The room was large enough to accommodate 150 to 200 people, and the chairs were arranged lecture-hall style into three columns with two aisles that drew toward the center where the stage was. As I was at the head of the line, I filed in to the first seat in the front row.

An elderly, frail woman appeared on the stage. Her hair was the color of snow on a cloudy day, and her eyes bespoke experience, weariness, and gratitude. This was a Holocaust survivor.

“I lived in Lithuania, which is in Eastern Europe. Back then there were two hundred thousand Jews living in Lithuania. We were autonomous, self-sufficient. We had our own schools, four in Hebrew, one in Yiddish. We spoke mostly Hebrew. My father owned a factory.

“In 1939, Hitler and Stalin divided up the countries between them, including Lithuania. Originally, when the Red Army took over, they wanted the Jews in Lithuania to love them. There were many of us. They played accordion in the streets, and did all sorts of little things to try to seem better.

“They took over the whole place, soon. The streets, the shops. They took over my father’s factory and gave him a job there. That was lucky; not everyone got so much as a job.”

Gradually, many of the things they loved were outlawed, even including the Hebrew language. They weren’t to practice their religion outright, they weren’t to assemble publicly. It was dangerous to do these things and be caught.

“The youth, we organized an underground with one of our teachers, Professor Dobleveen. Dobleveen opened his home to us, his old students, and we would meet there in secret to sing forbidden songs in Hebrew. Just to sing and to keep our culture. It was not safe.”

The room was in awe by now. A few minutes before, we were complacent, watching but somewhat uncomfortable in our chairs. Some people were even tired and drifting off in the beginning. But by the time she said, “The Lithuanians were even against us; they said they should kill the Jews and take our property before the Germans can,” the whole audience was rapt. When she got to her own personal story from the ghettos, of being separated from her family, of being terrified watching the Nazis do unspeakable things to helpless people, of seeing tanks roll in and being scared to death, of finally being rescued by the British, of being one of the very, very few lucky ones who survived, I had to stop writing. I could no longer focus on my notebook; I was locked into her story.

“So that was my story. Thank you for listening,” she said. We thanked her, as well, and walked out of the auditorium, back into the harsh light and heat.

Our guide led us to the entrance of the actual memorial museum, the exhibition building. It was, like most of the buildings in Israel, a large stone construct. This one seemed immense, though, set on a mountain, overlooking a vast green view.

On our approach to the building, I wrote these words, which really informed the way I felt about the visit as we walked through the memorial: To gather meaning from the chaos of the Holocaust, we must delve beyond statistics and documents, and address it from a human, subjective perspective.

I paid close attention to perspective and building design as we approached and walked through the museum. I’m intrigued by spaces and how we use them in structures; to create spatial illusions and mental divisions, to influence ideas, to direct people.

Yad Vashem was designed to do all of that to its visitors. There are no windows inside. The space is capacious, with big, stone, prison walls that seem forty feet high. When I walked in, I had the overwhelming feeling of being funneled into a place. As I entered a banister blocked my way, forcing me to my left. It cut the space perpendicularly, but there was also a feel of the room growing smaller that wouldn’t go away. I quickly discovered that the space was growing smaller; the extraordinarily high hallway walls were angled for that purpose, inward as they went up, like an “A”.

The first exhibit, a huge overhead projection on the wall near the ceiling, forced us to crowd around each other and crane our necks to see images of Jews across Europe as they had been before the war: happy, sad, busy, contented, living out their lives. Normal. To see the rest of the exhibits, to continue on our path, we had to physically turn around and walk away from those people. Down that hallway, with the exhibit rooms on either side, the walls started to close in.

The exhibits followed a chronological sequence, starting with the earlier events of World War II, through the work camps, the dehumanization, the concentration camps, the systematic composition of mass graves for firing squad victims, leading up to the very end: the gas chambers and the aftermath.

It was hard. I think it was hard on everyone there; nobody enjoyed being there, but everyone felt it was important. I saw a video of a survivor telling her story of being the only one left alive in a mass grave. She slipped and fell in. She might have been clipped by the shot but she wasn’t killed. She had to claw her way out from amongst the bodies of people she knew and plenty she didn’t know, having played dead for who knew how long. Imagining that kind of human cruelty – the things she went through and the things she saw others go through – I felt a surge of anger, fear, confusion, sadness, and indignation. I looked around and saw one of my friends silently crying nearby, the look on his face that I felt in my heart, and I put a hand on his shoulder. He gave me a grim smile of recognition, and I thought back to the previous day’s prep talk. “How could someone really believe that this didn’t happen? How could they pretend it was a hoax?” someone had asked. This is how, I thought now. They can’t accept that people could commit such atrocities, and if they can forget about it, they’d like to. It’s easier than the truth. It’s easier than taking responsibility for history.

We approached the exit. I could see the light outside the memorial as we walked into the last room of Yad Vashem.

I shed a tear or two, and I was deeply upset by the emotions brought up seeing so much human suffering so close, so easy to grasp, but I made it through much of the memorial, and I was proud of myself for mostly holding it together.

Then I realized what the last room was. The Hall of Names.

I had read about the Hall of Names. I had originally heard of it in college, when I was reading Maus, by Art Spiegelman, for the first time for a class. Writing about Spiegelman’s use of comics to portray his father’s troubled present, wrapped up in a horrible history, I said, “We cannot… do perfect justice to everything that has been lost. But we can… prove our humanity.” We can do so by remembering and honoring everything that has been found.

The Hall of Names contains all Holocaust victims’ names and biographical statements that have been recovered. There are some two million pages lining the round walls now, but there is room for four million more. This, alone, could be enough to cut at your heartstrings.

The Hall of Names is a round room with a conical ceiling that slopes inward as it rises. It is essentially a round hallway, rather than a full room, because of its center: marking a circle concentric with the larger room, a large space is blocked off by a chest-high glass wall topped with a banister.

Visible over the banister and beneath floor-level is a pool reflecting the cone-shaped ceiling. This much I knew, and I knew what was reflected in that pool, from my studies. What I didn’t know was how it would make me feel to be in that room, to look up at that ceiling.

On the ceiling – what I first noticed when I walked in the room, and what I could hardly tear my eyes from for the time that I was in there – are six hundred photographs of Holocaust victims. These people smiling or posing or simply looking out at you from their pictures were all systematically and brutally removed from this world because they existed. Their lives were cut short and for many of them, all that’s left to remember them by is the name and the picture in this Hall.

I had studied all of this, I knew what happened in the Holocaust, I knew how it affected people involved – hell, I even knew how it affected those not directly involved. I read about postmemory and the lasting generational effects of the Holocaust on victims’ and survivors’ relatives. But it was not the same as being in the memorial, in the Hall of Names, and feeling through the photographs and the videos and the architecture of this place a connection to them and emotions directly related to what they went through.

For a moment, I wanted to get out. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I tried to take my eyes from the photos, tried to remove my mind from the situation like a coward and stop crying before it could start, tried to move to the banister and lean over and not see. Instead, I saw the binders on the walls. The countless binders filled with names and biographies, and the innumerable spaces left in those walls for more pages, representing people who didn’t even have their pictures or names in this Hall for remembrance. I lost it. I sat down, leaned against the back wall of the hall, and I cried.

Someone touched me on the shoulder and I realized the group had mostly left. I caught up with the last few people as they left the Hall of Names and followed them out into the harsh, jarring sunlight.

I don’t know how many other members of our group felt what I felt, but as I walked out of that room I know at least a couple of them seemed even more shaken by that than by the rest of the museum. There were some pretty shocking exhibits in there – a piece of an actual train that carted victims to a concentration camp, a complete scale-model of a gas chamber undressing area, videos recorded of survivors’ horror stories – but the sheer size of this atrocity can have a profound effect on people, and I think it should.

We gathered around the exit area outside the museum itself for a quick lunch, during which we could make purchases in the nearby gift shop. The only thing I bought there was a pin that came with a donation to the memorial. There were some interesting books I saw, but I didn’t feel like lugging them back to America with me along with everything else I was carrying. I could probably find them online or in any other bookstore, anyway.

Our next stop was Har Herzl, the military cemetery. Har Herzl, or Mount Herzl, is also the site of the memorial cemetery on Holocaust Memorial Day. Herzl himself is buried at the top of the hill because of his place as the visionary of the State of Israel.

The cemetery manages to be both reverent and modest. It’s surrounded by trees and grass and the place has an air of serenity. We saw the gravesites of Theodor Herzl, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and countless Israeli soldiers. There is a special site dedicated to the paratroopers from what was then British-controlled Palestine who dropped behind enemy lines to help rescue Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. Of those who entered Hungary, many were captured; seven were killed. They are buried at this site on Har Herzl.

A national military cemetery is different from a civilian one because of the focus placed on purpose – people buried in one all died acting with protection in their hearts, in service of many people they would never meet. It’s also different because of its sheer size. There are rows upon rows of carefully maintained graves and headstones, with rocks placed above them in honor and memory of the deceased. It made me think of how many people could be killed in service and not found, not placed in the ground with carefully maintained graves and memorial rocks in a place of public recognition.

We read a short memorial service for these soldiers of Israel, these protectors of a place we could call home if we choose to, and we did so with care and with gratitude. This program, Taglit-Birthright Israel, is an extraordinary one. In a few short days we bonded with each other, with our culture, and connected with a country in a way that could easily take months or may not even be possible in other places. When we saw the gravesite of Michael Levin, a former Taglit-Birthright participant who was so moved by this place and these people that he came back and joined the Israeli Defense Forces; so moved that he left his home in the United States when he was there on leave to visit family because he needed to come back to Israel and help defend it in 2006; so moved that he insisted he be allowed into combat upon returning in spite of being originally given a nonviolent assignment, and was the only American Israeli soldier killed in the Second Lebanon War. This is the strongest example of the fullest potential extent of such a connection, but it’s a poignant one, and it made our little memorial service even more heartfelt.

I left Har Herzl feeling the weight of the entire day, but we were only halfway done. It was probably about 3:30, maybe 4:00PM and time for our bus ride to the desert, which for me was to be time for two things: quiet reflection and helping Jesse write her speech for her upcoming Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

I spent some time with my eyes closed appreciating the gravity of our last two visits, coming to terms with the fact that we were, on the same day as our visit to Yad Vashem and Har Herzl, going to hang out in the desert and enjoy a Bedouin feast, probably with some partying afterward. How could we do it? How could we possibly go from remembering the incalculable number of victims of the Holocaust, trying to understand them mentally and emotionally, honoring the dead of both that era of anti-Semitic destruction and survival and this era of homeland and hope, to chillin’ out in the Negev with our homies?

My eyes stayed closed as the first few lines spilled out, but with a little time, my pen began to answer me.

From desperate pain that reminds us of the desert; dry hurt that, in spurts, draws precious water from a tap that we can’t cap in our eyes; we rise.

From detection, deception, rejection, orchestrated interception, ejection, an interconnection of terrible lies sold to us like fresh pies through clenched teeth and disguises, we rise.

From a chaos haphazardly scattered that tatters us, shatters us, splatters us, stealing what matters down to drowning the sounds of our cries, we rise.

From a grief that continues its sinuous track into every crack; through fractured packs, over boats, into shacks, into ghettos so stacked with defeat that their children’s children are wracked with the memory like bricks on their backs; from every whack on our strength, each attack on our hope, it must be our knack, because we don’t lose our closeness despite all this flak; we rise.

Together, we rise.

As sure as the stars, sometimes masked by the clouds or the lights kept so loud, ever quietly proud, perhaps it’s a phoenix-down shroud draped around our collective shoulders, for as the world learns every year it gets older, we rise.

The ancestors, the forefathers, the men, the women, their children who passed before us and whom we remembered today would not be burdened by the quickness of our transition from remembrance to enjoyment, so long as we understood that it has a purpose. Our people would want us to live on and cherish our traditions and our connections that they would never see, as long as we did remember, first.

So then Jesse came over and sat next to me. The background on this goes thusly: Tair told the group we would have a small Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Anyone who wanted to could participate; how cool would that be, having a Bar Mitzvah ceremony in Israel? It wasn’t super-official, or anything. The participants would need to learn the blessing before and after the torah reading and write a small speech to give the group before the torah portion was read. They were practicing in groups of two and three but writing their speeches individually. I offered to help anyone who wanted help with the speech-writing part, since I have a bit of a background in public speaking and writing.

I never offered to write speeches for anyone, and I think I made it fairly clear that I’m a teacher, so those who wanted my help in the form of direct answers should prepare themselves for frustration; we lovers of education tend to answer many questions with more questions when exploring personal writing.

We worked on Jesse’s speech for about half the trip to the desert and at our half-way restroom stop she asked me to read it again. I promised her for the four-thousandth time that it really, truly was excellent. I wouldn’t lie to her. I told her when things didn’t sound right. So this time I told her to read it and listen to herself. I expected her to ask me again if I thought it was okay, but number four thousand and one didn’t happen because Erika called me up to the front of the bus to give her a hand with her speech.

I left Jesse to Robby’s assistance – he writes and loves to argue, and was therefore more than willing to help prove to her that her speech sounded excellent.

An argument was occurring at the front of the bus. Tair and Ran were trying to explain something that seemed, to me, fairly obvious to a scattered group of World Cup enthusiasts.

“Come on, there’s got to be some way we can at least keep up with the final match. A portable T.V., even?”

“No, I’m sorry. We will be in the desert. There’s not much in the way of television there, you know.”

“How about a radio? Anyone have a radio?”

“I don’t think so. Look, we’ll see if there’s anything we can do but I can’t promise you anything. This trip is about Israel, not the World Cup.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” came the murmured response of a few.

Hey, I love soccer too, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I could miss a once-in-four-years soccer match on television for a once-in-a-lifetime experience hanging out in the Israeli Negev desert with a bunch of really cool people.

I went back to helping Erika write her speech. When the bus finally arrived at the Bedouin tent, I felt my two friends were definitely prepared to give stellar Bat Mitzvah speeches when the time would come the following night.

We were seated in a not-circle inside the large tent. It was big enough to accommodate all of us; we would be sleeping in the tent together that night, so having nearly fifty people sitting around the perimeter wasn’t too big a deal. The desert was sandy, like a desert should be, so mats covered the floor of the tent. One of our hosts greeted us and sat at the front of the tent, his back to the sunlight pouring in from the open side.

He explained that Bedouins live on goats and camels. There isn’t a lot of water in the desert – shocker, right? Normally they travel so the goats and camels can have food and water. They set up tents for sleeping and long term stays. Tents are good, especially for winter, when more rainfall occurs. The holes in the tent close up and keep water out during rain.

“I have 40 camels, but they not for tourist. I no like tourist riding my camels. It not good for them,” he said.

Life in the desert is interesting to outsiders. It can take seven days to get from one tribe to another on foot in the desert, so travelers often have to make stops. “Desert law says you must invite guests. None of this, ‘Why you not call me first?’” So they invite guests in, feed them, and allow them to stay and rest. They even reserve their coffee for use with guests.

When a guest arrives, they will kill a goat and make dinner before asking the guest, loudly enough for the wife to hear, “Where will you go tomorrow?” That way she makes food enough to saddle the guest’s camel for however many days he will travel, depending on where he is going.

Today, though, the Bedouins stay in one place and aren’t allowed to travel if they wish to be citizens of Israel. It’s hard to be a citizen without a place.

“We don’t use money, either. You use money, go crazy. No money, no lies.” This Bedouin man was a man of wisdom. He also informed us that they don’t have trash in the desert. They use everything. “Absolutely ecological life,” he said.

We thought we were absorbed when he explained desert life to us; not quite. His friend came out and brought with him an instrument that looked like a box-shaped harp. Cooool.

He started to play and we all clapped along. It was fun music, for a single instrument. Then he showed Ian how to hold it and Ian played it for a bit.

After the short musical show it was time for dinner, but first, our host said, your leader has an announcement.

“You will be feasting in dhe tent over there,” Ran said, pointing outside to a nearby tent, “and then you will be free to enjoy dhe desert a little bit. We will have a bonfire over there, and there are other groups around here for you to interact with them. Also,” he continued, “we have a… surprise.”

Tair stood up. “For anyone who wants to watch the World Cup finals, there will be a large screen projection over there later on.” She pointed in the direction opposite the tent in which dinner would be. “Don’t ask how we managed to get that set up.”

There were cheers. There was applause. There was talk of trying to get Ran drunk tonight – obviously, that would never happen, but it was a very funny thought. And then there was food.

They served us in groups of five. We sat around a frame close to the floor onto which a large tray of food was placed. There were humungous tortillas, tahini, rice, grilled meat, vegetables, olives, and hummus. It was all communal; we took what we wanted to eat as we ate it. It came to mind that if we did that more often in America we could save a substantial amount of cleanup work at mealtime.

It was also all extraordinarily tasty. Frankly, when you’re hungry and in the desert, most food will be extraordinarily tasty, but this truly was a good meal. We had a good time sitting around the table and chatting while we ate.

The party started after dinner was finished. The bonfire was lit and the game came on the screen across the sand. Watching World Cup soccer in the teachers’ lounge at work was cool. Watching soccer in a hotel room in Tel Aviv was cooler. But when somebody asks me if I saw Spain win the World Cup in 2010, I am one of several people who will thoroughly enjoy, probably more than we should, responding, “I watched the final match in the DESERT. In ISRAEL.”

We all hung out until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes dancing to music or chatting around the bonfire, sometimes playing card games in the tent. At one point I found myself talking about ethnicity with Joel and Jesse.

“I’m Russian and English,” I said, “which is probably why I’m still not tanning, even in this desert.”

We laughed. “I think I’m Polish and Russian,” Jesse said, “and… Jewish, obviously.”

“Well, yeah,” I agreed.

“I’m Pittsburghian,” added Joel.

Jesse and I looked at him in incredulous silence.

Suddenly, kindhearted, laid-back, completely chill Jesse burst out of character and started haranguing him, her outstretched finger thrusting at his chest. “What the hell is Pittsburghian?! Are you even Jewish? What are you doing here?!”

At first, both Joel and I were confounded. A second later, the three of us exploded into laughter.

A short while later we rejoined the bonfire group. We were relaxing, talking, and enjoying the naturally uniting warmth of a low fire when Alan and Jeff came spilling through the crowd and next to the fire with a wheelbarrow.

“Hang on! Look out! We have to… ungh…” they grunted, hefting two large flaming logs onto the dwindling flame in the pit. “Hey, hey! We are victorious!” The pair high-fived and cheered while the rest of the group sat gaping at them. A few scattered chuckles swam through the crowd.

“Did… those two just pull a Lord of the Flies and steal fire from another group?” I asked.

Jesse just nodded slowly, her eyes still fixed on the wheelbarrow. “Maybe we should move this seat back,” she suggested, motioning toward the bench on which we sat.

Standing up, I quickly agreed. “Good idea.”

The rest of the night passed similarly, with goofy hijinks and fun conversations with fantastic friends. I walked around exploring the desert a bit with Danielle, since it was even cooler at night – both visually and in temperature – and then came back to the tent. I lay down on the sleeping bag. The second my head came in contact with my outstretched arm, I was out for the remainder of the night.

Israel, Day 5

I got out of the shower and Guy was still groaning.

“It’s Shabbat… day of rest. We’re not supposed to have a wake-up call at all. Unghhhhh.”

“You can sleep another ten minutes while Joel showers, if you want,” I said.

He didn’t respond, but he sat up. It was 8:30 AM, the latest we had slept on the whole trip. We were supposed to be at breakfast by 9:00. We readied ourselves at an even pace and made it to the dining room on time.

I scanned the food for something to eat. Because it was Shabbat, they wouldn’t have cooked anything new. Leftovers were laid out in exquisite taste, made to look fresh and sparkly. The hard-boiled eggs would be okay; those can last a bunch of days in the refrigerator, but I didn’t want to eat any of the other egg dishes on the second day. Eggs, bread, and jam, it was.

Andrew waved me over to a table that was semi-populated. “Boker tov. How is everyone this morning?” I asked as I sat down.

Lindsay responded with a question, probably directed at Andrew. “Can we sleep in again tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ll see.” A day or two before, Ran had compared Andrew and Tair to our father and mother of the trip. This was proof that Andrew was sliding comfortably into that role. Nobody but a parent can say, “We’ll see,” fully knowing he’s dashing the hopes of the child who asked, and simultaneously expecting said child to believe there was still an element of possibility in those words.

“I think we’ll be okay,” I said, ever the optimist. “I was up with everyone last night until the end and I’m awake.”

“Yeah, but you have two settings: on and off,” Andrew pointed out. I had explained this to a couple of people in a previous conversation about sleep. I don’t drift off or groggily awaken. I shut down and start up like a high-tech computer. “You’re not human.”

“The sad part is you’re nowhere near the first person to have told me that.”

“Well, you’re not.” He was adamant. I still ultimately disagreed with the phrasing.

“Let’s ask a third party,” I suggested, both eyebrows raised in hopeful resolution. I looked around the table for someone who was both uninvolved in our little debate and not in the middle of eating. “Carly,” I inquired, oh so neutrally, “am I human?”

She glanced up, brushed a few stray strands of chestnut brown hair from her face, and without half a beat, fired back, “I don’t know. I haven’t looked at your DNA structure lately.”

It may not have resolved the argument but it certainly killed it. Andrew and I nearly died choking on laughter.

We gathered in the bomb shelter when breakfast was over. Chairs were set up in a circle around the room. We were to be an audience that morning for a Mr. Neil Lazarus, British Israeli keynote speaker and political humorist extraordinaire.

His first act as leader of the room was to order us to massage each other. We stood up, the way I remember from College Choir at SUNY Oswego, facing the person to our right, and massaged that person for several seconds before turning around and doing the same for our other neighbor. That’s one way to wake your audience up. Relax them into attentiveness!

“Birthright,” he began, amidst our massaging, “is about Jewish babies. It’s not Birthright; it’s birth rate. It’s about getting you young people together to increase the Jewish population.” Wow. That wasn’t awkward at all, timing such a pronouncement while we the whole room was exchanging back-rubs.

He was kidding. Luckily, that was just his way of loosening the audience up, so to speak. He ended up being a very compelling character with very compelling questions, inspiring us to inquire and contest and think about issues we hadn’t before considered. What is Judaism in a Jewish State? What is the current condition of Israel’s international reputation and how does that relate to the distribution and use of the media? What difficulties does Israel face in the future? Is peace even possible in this part of the world (the Middle East)?

I won’t bore you with the details (mostly because I don’t want Mr. Lazarus suing me for using his shtick without permission), but if you follow the link above you will find some really intriguing information and resources about Israel. Know this, though: the group may have been asleep, but when the group wasn’t actually asleep (from exhaustion; not boredom), they were entirely amused.

Mr. Lazarus gave us his card and took his leave. We were about to begin our discussions geared to prepare us for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum. After a couple of minutes to stretch, we sat back down in the same circle and Ran began with the Rules.

“For tomorrow, you need to be very awake and aware. This means no drinks. We are going to Ben Yehuda Street later, but you can enjoy that without drinking.”

“No drinking. Is that, like, a rule? Or…” Apparently someone needed explicit clarification. Better safe than sorry, I suppose; given the Corona Catastrophe, I couldn’t blame the questioner for requesting the facts in black and white.

“Yes, that is a rule.”

“Okay, then.”

Inside, Calvin was squirming. Seriously? Why would anyone want to drink the night before we go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum? I suppose it’s better than wanting to drink the morning of our visit there…

“Where have you been before?” Ran asked. “What other Holocaust museums or Holocaust-related sites have you seen?” He looked around at us and saw sudden gravity on our faces. I’ve studied the Holocaust a good deal. Whenever I think about the Holocaust, my thoughts move beyond the actual period of war, destruction, and desecration of the then and into the lasting effects of that atrocity on the now. This room of young adults, who, a minute prior were laughing because someone was asking about drinking on a night when nobody really would, had been brought down to ground level, alert and severe and thoughtful, by a word representing an experience they had only gotten second- or third-hand. Their first-hand experiences dealt with the memory of the Holocaust, and even that was being hacked at with knives, pens, and words by people filled with hate and ignorance. Still, despite the distance of time between our predecessors and us, the whole group was riveted to silent consideration by three momentous syllables.

Dustin raised his hand. “There’s a Holocaust museum in D.C. I’ve been to. It’s filled with exhibits on the events of World War II and the Holocaust.”

I raised mine. “Safe Haven Museum in Oswego at Fort Ontario. It’s the only place the United States allowed Jewish refugees from World War II. They brought over just under a thousand people from Europe in 1944, many of them concentration camp escapees.”

“What about experiences with these places, or just with the Holocaust?” Ran asked. He wanted us to branch out and talk about our connection with this piece of history.

Michelle had gone to Yad Vashem just after seeing Dachau. She kept her head up as she spoke, but there was an intensity in her eyes that bespoke a strong connection to the memory she described for us. It was a lot to take in. “Yad Vashem is meant to put you in the places of the victims, to make you remember in a way that they would remember. To be there just after seeing in the very place where prisoners were overworked, beaten, humiliated, and murdered… it made me think about what it would be like to be there, naked in a hell that had frozen over.”

“It was spring when I visited Dachau,” Reagan began. “I remember thinking, ‘How beautiful and how contradictory. This place was hell no matter what season it was.’”

Robby was next. “My grandparents were in the Holocaust. There’s a really good story there, a love story, and I want to write it because that’s something I do. I also want to preserve the memories they have, because… they’re starting to lose the facts. My aunt interviewed them in the ‘80s, so there’s a lot there from that, but… talking about it is hard for them. Twenty or thirty years from now there might not be any survivors left. We’re going to be the ones who have to make sure we remember so it never happens again.”

“That’s why it’s important to talk about it, I think. My grandfather was there. He was scared to talk about it, and now it’s all gone,” Stern said.

Robby’s and Stern’s comments brought me back to the way the Holocaust is related to memory. The way that piece of history brings out the liquidity of memory, how malleable our experiences become once they’ve passed by. Grandparents might remember bits and pieces – a kiss at this place, what they wore at that time – but ultimately, the stream of events that builds the whole story will need to be pieced back together with best-guesses and feelings called up by reminiscence. We lose touch with experiences, and facts can be corrupted by the very emotions they once called forth.

Or worse: they can be corrupted by other people with that very intention.

“What about prejudice? Anti-…” Ran broke off, trying to find the word.

Tair helped him out, “Anti-Semitism.”

“Have you experienced this? When have you been judged differently because you’re Jewish?”

Not an unexpected segue, but I still wondered how much weighty discussion this group was ready for in one sitting. Some of us were shifting in our seats. I looked over at Guy, whose glasses had come off, and he was looking at his feet fixedly.

Allie’s hand went up. “Where I’m from, there aren’t, like, Jews everywhere. I mean, in Charlotte you’ve basically got a church on every street corner, in every kind of Christianity possible.” She smiled blandly at the irony, and it broke a bit of the static in the room. “So I’ve gotten the, ‘You’re a Jew, so obviously your dad’s a doctor,’ before, and okay so he’s a dentist, but these generalizations are ignorant because they just don’t know and they think they do. Like, they put us in a box, you know?”

“People just assume that you’re Christian, too, right?” Stern replied. “They do that all the time. It’s frustrating to always get asked, ‘What did you do for Christmas?’ after break, with that assumption that I celebrate Christmas just because everyone else seems to.”

A hand went up, and the voice of the person it belonged to was incredibly quiet. “I was told my grades were low because I didn’t have enough Jesus in my life,” Sarah explained. Her eyes were down, as if she was seeing the scene in her head as she retold it. “The teacher was dead serious.”

The group was taken aback. Side conversations, full of shock, started cropping up immediately. Ran silenced everyone and passed the floor on again.

“When I’m around new people and I introduce myself, I say, ‘I’m Emmanuel.’ But the minute they find out I’m Jewish, it’s like I stop being Emmanuel and I start being the Jewish guy.”

This came up in a conversation I had with Emmanuel later, and I tried to explain the way I saw it. “I have no problem being the Jewish guy, as long as my name and face are attached to it. I believe we identify others based on differences. If they didn’t have your Judaism to identify you by, they’d use your curly hair, your height, your skin tone – anything that makes you you as opposed to them. The problem is not in associating with me the things that make me different; it’s in criticizing or hating me for those things and treating me unfairly because of them.”

Blaire, often quiet in big group discussions, sought the floor. Her cool blue eyes were soft but serene, which struck me because it was becoming a very emotional discussion. Her positivity eased the tension, some. “Explaining helps, I think. I have a tzedaka (charity) box at work. People would come over and ask, ‘What’s with the box?’ and I’d tell them. It became a conversation piece. Now they all know I’m saving up to buy a tree in Israel. Talking about it makes a difference.”

“You’re right,” Jessie said. “One year, at my school, we got there to find a giant swastika painted in red on the door. That was the senior prank that year.” Eyebrows shot to the ceiling, fists clenched, and huge gulps of air were let out. “But the school let us bring in speakers and really address it, so it ended up being a positive experience. A couple of people did something stupid and the whole place got to learn from it.”

“Anyone else who wants to speak about experiencing anti-Jewish…?” Guy spoke up. He had been waiting patiently for some time.

“There are Palestinian websites, Muslim extremist websites… all kinds of websites against Jews that show these videos, videos that I have to watch because of my position in the army. The movie shows one thing and the subtitles say something completely different on anti-Semitic websites,” Guy said. His hands were balled into fists. “They say, ‘You are masters of brainwash; you are Jews. Nazis would have done well to learn from you.’”

That was a hard piece to chew on, so we were all grateful when Tair broke the silence that followed Guy’s comment with a description of Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel.

“The Holocaust – Ha-Shoah, as it’s called here – is commemorated officially on a specific day in Israel each year, called Yom Ha-Shoah.

“Every group, school, army, etc., wears white and has a candle-lighting ceremony. There’s no T.V. on; only Holocaust documentaries. A siren runs for two whole minutes, and cars and buses all stop. Everything shuts down. It is a true day of remembrance here.

“Can anyone guess which day was chosen to commemorate the Holocaust? Over six million Jews were killed over a period of several years. How could we choose just one day?” She looked the group over, and then began dropping large sheets of paper at random intervals on the floor. Each time she dropped one, she described what was written upon it.

“The Vanza Summit – where the German officers announced the Final Solution.

“The Nuremburg Laws – they defined Jews, put them into specific genetic boxes. If you were a second-generation Jew, you were considered Jewish. Even if you were not practicing. Even if you considered yourself Christian; they had churches in the ghetto because of this.

“Kristallnacht – a horrible night of book-burning and shop-destruction, considered to be the actual beginning of the Final Solution.

“The invasion of Poland – the military act that started World War II.

“Tish B’Av – a traditional day of fasting and mourning because many expulsions occurred and temples were destroyed on this day.

“The liberation of Auschwitz;

“Or the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. A few Jews on Passover Eve committed the only act of rebellion in the Holocaust.

“So. Which is it? Which do you think would be the right day on which to annually remember the most atrocious act in history? Sit by the sign that you think would be right.”

We slowly rose and found a place to sit.

If you don’t know which date was ultimately chosen by the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – look it up and see if you’ve guessed right.

The activity wrapped up and we walked outside. It was silent. Nary a car in sight. In the middle of the modern city of Jerusalem. In the middle of the day. I was more blown away by this than I was by the panoramic vista of the Old City from the Haas Promenade. I’m from America: even on Sunday, there are cars moving, if none of the banks are open. There are grocery stores open 24 hours, even if none of the bars are open. It was as though everyone was observing a day of rest or something.

Our next destination was Givat Ram and the Knesset – the Israeli parliament’s meeting place. We walked up to the top of the hill through a beautiful park and sat down for a photograph in front of the large bronze menorah given to Israel by Great Britain. This was a considerable gift, considering that menorahs, an ancient symbol of Judaism, were holy treasures in the Temple. The Star of David was first used by Jews in the 1700s; previously it was a pagan symbol.

“So this is the Knesset,” Ran began, donning his tour guide demeanor and vocal projection like a well-worn coat. “Dhe Israeli parliament and prime minister are elected by party. In Israel, we don’t always like our politicians – they say one thing and do another, just like all politicians all over dhe wurld. They are politicians, after all.”

“Hey, did everyone hear that?!” Dan called. “I think Ran just made a joke!”

We laughed.

“Now,” Ran continued, “we will have a discussion, as is part of dhe Shabbat tradition, atop this hill in this beautiful park. Please, everyone, line up so we can count off and make teams.”

As we split up and formed ‘teams’, another group of tourists, this one Chinese, was held back by its leader. “Come away and let the foreigners through,” the guide said to them. In English. If you’re reading this with a look of complete bewilderment, both eyebrows meeting your hairline, eyes like planets, jaw having a tea party on the floor with your feet, then you can empathize with my reaction.

When the moment of bemusement passed, I discovered that I had been given the number five, so I joined the other fives and we sat in a circle on the grass. This was another beautiful view. There was no shortage of beautiful views in Israel. If it wasn’t for the constant conflict between religions, religious-political factions, and bordering states, they’d surely beat out Disney for tourism there.

With the Knesset across the street in all its glory, cobalt and white Israeli flags proudly waving in the light breeze, set against the lush green grass and the deep azure sky, we had the perfect setting for deep discussion. Truthfully, Calvin was shouting Picnic! but that wasn’t on the agenda today; discussion would have to suffice.

I want to highlight a couple of the better quotes from the discussion.

We discussed what Shabbat meant to us and someone said, “Shabbat can be different for different people. Shabbat’s a day of rest, and a time to reflect. It’s good personal time, and it’s good to connect with yourself, with G-d, with your heritage. It’s time to step back from the chaos.”

When asked what Judaism means to us, David answered, “We take our culture, our spirit, seriously. We are unified in that. It’s actually hard to convert to Judaism, and Judaism goes deeper than religion – it’s identity in so many different ways.”

Ran asked us what the best and worst parts of our trip were so far. The Western Wall was a popular answer for the best part. We had a hard time choosing a worst part; for some it was the bus ride, for some it was the lack of sleep.

We also discussed the group: how we all connected so easily and how great it was to have such a broad mix of people. “I feel like you’re all my sisters,” Carly announced, grinning. We knew what she meant.

The park was gorgeous, and we saw more of it on the way back to the hotel for dinner. Rock walls came to the knee. A pond entertained a couple of birds who sat tranquilly on the banks. It was a good pondering place through which to trek after such a peaceful talk.

Once dinner had concluded, we met just outside the hotel, past the stairs, for Havdalah.

Ran had brought a candle, spices, and a goblet with him. He explained that we would be saying the blessings over the wine, the spices, the candle, and concluding with the Havdalah prayer. We circled around and prepared for the candle to be lit.

Sarah came running over. “I have a lighter!” Excellent! She hovered over the candle and tried to light it. The wind promptly blew it out.

She tried again, this time with help from a few of us, shielding it with our hands. The wind blew it out again.

Excitedly, she made an urgent grab for the candle and ran it back up the ramp and into the vestibule. “Hang on, I have an idea!” she shouted as she went.

We all craned our necks to see her frantically trying to light the candle in the vestibule. Twice she lit it, and twice it blew out as soon as she opened the door to come back outside. Andrew went up to try to help her. They simply brought the candle back to the circle, and this time several of us stood around it to block the wind, leaving the top of our smaller circle open for oxygen. Finally, the candle was lit.

We began to sing, and the spices were passed around the circle as we did. When the ritual concluded, we all exchanged, “Shavua tov” (lit.: good week), and began our walk through the Jerusalem roads to Ben Yehuda Street.

While we walked I waved Andrew over. “Hey, wouldn’t that last song sound so much cooler with vocal percussion behind it?” I started laying down a beat. He joined in with some sweet turntables and bass.

We had a good soundtrack going for the trek to the market. Eli heard us and started nodding to the beat. Robby dropped a couple of lines and became part of the band. “But he’s gotta be the front man,” Andrew insisted.

“Definitely,” I agreed. “He’s got the flow that makes the party go.”

After that comment, Robby mysteriously disappeared into the rest of the mob.

When we reached the marketplace, there were lights everywhere. They were strung up against shops, lampposts lit in the streets, shop lights glowing brightly against the night sky. It was brilliant.

And the market itself was awesome. They had tons of items for sale, much like the daytime market we had seen the day before, but there were key differences. One: there was an element of night life here. Bars were open (not that anyone was drinking that night – there was a rule in effect, remember?) and traffic was still inexistent, so pedestrians walked freely through the street.

As we approached, I saw a choir performing loudly in the center of the road. I guessed that they might be Korean, and Danielle said she agreed they probably were. Regardless of from whence the group had come, they were fun.

I explored some more. We bumped into some random groups of people. Danielle taught me some Hebrew while I wandered aimlessly looking for cool shiny things. There were lots of cool shiny things on this street, so I was everywhere. “You kind of have ADD,” she commented.

“How do I say, ‘Be quiet,’ more forcefully than just, ‘Be quiet,’? Beyond a simple, ‘Sheket’?”

“‘Stom et ha-pe’ would work. It basically means close your mouth.” I deciphered the literal, non-grammatical translation as Close you the mouth, but I understood that this was the phrase I wanted.

“Yes, I might have ADD. Stom et ha-pe,” I said, grinning.

“Why am I following you, again?” she asked.

“Because I am an awesome language student. Hey, it’s Emmanuel! And Tair!”

Danielle resignedly shook her head.

Tair waved. “What are you guys up to?”

“Wandering, mostly,” I answered candidly. “You?”

“We’re hunting for a coffee shop. Wanna join us?”

“Sure!” I said. Danielle nodded.

The four of us found this coffee shop that Tair seemed to know. The entrance was through an alley, behind some buildings, and up some stairs. It was a cozy little place with wonderful, aromatic smells of hot and cold, sweet beverages.

The others got tea or shakes.

As was my tendency on this trip, I went for the adventure. Sachlab, some kind of thick milk with dulce de leche caramel and banana, topped with whipped cream, became my dessert. It was served hot and tasted like the land of milk and honey is supposed to taste: heavenly.

“Oh, man, we’re cutting it close on time,” I realized. We paid and departed, catching up with the group just as they were gathering at the meeting place at the front steps of a big bank. In a couple of minutes we would run a ‘quick’ head-count.

“Andrew, I need to make a quick withdrawal at the ATM. How much cash do you think I’ll need for the rest of the trip? Should 250 shekels be enough?” I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t need any more withdrawals after this.

“Yeah, that should be fine,” he answered without turning. He was looking through the group to make sure nobody was missing.

“Okay. I’m going to get in line here so I can be done when we leave. If they’re looking for me, my number is five.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

I got in line. Every time somebody finished up at the front and the line moved up, I looked back over my shoulder to make sure the group wasn’t counting off again. I didn’t want to miss it, if it could be avoided.

My turn finally arrived and I made my withdrawal. I was getting halfway decent at reading Hebrew on sight, but my vocabulary wasn’t strong enough to allow me to use the Hebrew settings on the ATM. I selected ENGLISH and took out the money I thought I would need.

When I turned around, the group was gone. I didn’t panic. I didn’t freak out. I have a half-decent sense of direction, but more importantly I was carrying a notebook in which I had already recorded the phone numbers of most of the people in our group, and I had already programmed Tair’s number into the phone I was issued at the airport. I started walking in a direction I thought made sense and began dialing Tair.

As it rang, I looked around and realized this was not the way we had come. I had taken over six hundred pictures on my camera by that point, so I turned it on and confirmed, by scrolling back through the most recent ones, that this was, indeed, not the way we had come. I turned around.

Tair picked up. “Garrett? Where are you?”

“I’m heading back towards the bank we met at. I started walking and realized I was heading in the wrong direction, so I was going to re-orient myse--”

“What do you see around you?” she demanded.

I described a couple of the buildings.

“Okay, head back towards the bank. Shai and I will meet you there in two minutes.”

That’s what I was doing. As soon as I got there I realized my error and knew the direction I ought to have been heading. I stood there looking for Shai and Tair. They arrived a few seconds later, waving me over.

“Sorry, guys. I was withdrawing money, and I thought you knew I was up there; that’s why I gave Andrew my head-count number.”

“No, it’s okay. And you don’t have to hurry; the group is waiting up for us,” she reassured me as we made it to the corner where everyone else was waiting. They began walking the second Tair nodded to Ran. Andrew dropped back to where Shai and I were.

“Yeah, man, you good,” Shai said in his Israeli-weighted English.

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to hold the group up like this. I feel terrible.”

“Dude, what happened back there?” Andrew asked.

I recapped for him what had just happened. “Did you forget that I was withdrawing money?”

“Man, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t realize you were still up there. I am so, so, so sorry, bro.”

“It’s okay. Really. I should have been clearer. I wasn’t too worried, anyway; I would have found everyone sooner or later, and I wasn’t going to be lost for long with everyone’s contact info in here.” I waved my notebook at him. “So don’t beat yourself up, either.”

He didn’t listen to me. “I’m sorry, seriously.”

“Seriously, forget it, bro. It’s all good.”

“No, really, like, if it had been someone else I wouldn’t feel as bad. Like Joel, we can leave him at a bank--”

“Hey!” Joel spun around. He had been walking right in front of us.

“Just kidding,” Andrew smirked.

“Mostly,” I added.

We arrived at the hotel and I slapped Andrew’s back. “I’ll tell you what. You can stop being so hard on yourself about this if I get to leave you at the ATM next time.”

He laughed. “All right, all right.” He was a good leader and a good friend. As much as I hoped he would just let go of it, I knew if I were in his position, I’d have a hard time doing so, too. So I just thanked him again for his unnecessary concern and went to bed.