Day 98, December 20th, 2010

A piece I wrote a year ago about a story on our allyah to Israel

Raanana, October 2009


                                                                                      My Israel



                                                                                       Prologue



My name is Sanda, not a mistake; the R has been dropped from day one. By the way, when I used to live in South American countries it was, obviously, common knowledge that I HAD to be Sandra!!, after all where could they have heard the name Sanda from?? a Central European name !!, when I made allyah I was so excited I could finally, first time in my life, I am 60 years young, recover my identity. Wrong !!, I am called here in Israel, the land of the diversity-the universality-the allyah from all corners of the world, more frequently than not, Sandra, even when it is written in Hebrew and without the Reish. Guess my destiny is to keep fighting for my name among other identities. Coming back to square one and why did I decide I could write a sort of a funny personal story though I am not a professional writer is the fact that on that date I learnt that Obama had been awarded the Peace Nobel Prize !!, If he did so without having Yet and If achieved anything regarding peace or whatever I realized I too had the chance of winning some literary award, or just being published, thank God this panel of writers are not from Norway, especially after having regarded myself as an amateur story-teller. So here it goes………..



My Story, My Israel!!



I will not write a politically correct story and I hope I will not abuse the concept I, me, myself etc. I was born in Italy, raised in Argentina, married and lived a huge number of years in Peru and now, at long last, I am an Israeli/Jew, though the latter is not quite a politically correct term in Israel, the land of the so called Jews. Yes, I have one and a half double loyalties and I do not feel ashamed about it. I am a proud Israeli who also loves Argentina deeply, let’s be honest, Argentina like all of or most of, countries on earth and surroundings is an anti-Semitic one, but who says love is perfect ??, so in Argentina I used to be the Italian Jew, in Peru I had to carry two heavy burdens over my shoulders, I was the Argentinean Jew, the prejudice being more on the Argentinean side than on the Jewish side, not because Peru is not a racist country but because anti-Semitism sort of goes in proportion with the number of Jews living on any given soil, only 3.000 thousand Jews right now, so there wasn’t time or effort enough to hate us more or better but on the other hand they take football/soccer too seriously and we are their eternal rivals, I mean Argentineans are, so I was only called once or twice shitty Jew but on more occasions shitty Argentinean. Not that I am complaining, first of all and being true to myself I had never encountered real physical danger being a Jew on strange lands and haven been a red-haired all of my life, but now…………., I had the courage enough to stand up for myself and my people to either send them to hell or explaining some facts, depending on the mood, the offender, the offense, by the way, I am a proud woman, this is another thing I must cope with especially in Israel where you do not guess the gender of people by their name, after all, what’s on a name ??, guess being the descendant of Shoah survivors gave me the edge and the right to be a bit of a fighter/paranoid myself. I was born one year after the State (Jewish) of Israel, so not that I was old enough to have known a lot about the fact but my family’s personal story had a great weight for better or for worse on whom I am now and what I chose to believe in and feel so deeply about.



Having said that, when I was little I yearned to have gone to a Hebrew school and had more of a traditional Jewish house. My parents were not religious and fairly traditional yet my father has been, he’s dead now, the proudest Jew I have ever met in my life, other than myself. Guess the ghosts of the war and being at first, illegal immigrants in an Argentina where Nazis were welcomed IN and Jews welcomed OUT, there has been not that much strength left to keep more than a tradition or two, we never missed Yom Kipur at the Synagogue, where in one of them the kids outside were speaking about Pasta knowing that we were fasting…………I used to read a lot about Judaism till more or less I turned the age of Universal Love and Universal Brotherhood and yes, I am proud to have lived one of the most exciting and important ages on earth, women’s rights/liberation, black’s civil rights’ movements, lesbian/gay pride, free sex, free drugs, no wars, Yankees go home !! Guevara and Castro heroes!! and yes, I am proud to say that during those revolutionary days I lived in one of the best countries on earth, we used to talk over hundreds of cups of coffee and thousands of cigarettes in our Cafes, till next morning when we had already solved the problems on earth, yes, I used to believe in socialism, and all sorts of avant-garde ideas but I was always too clean and tidy to have become a real hippie and believe it or not I had never had the guts of even taste a drug other than cigarettes or diet pills…………..we used to think we were the PEACE and LOVE generation above religion and countries and I had to fight with the idea that I wanted to be one of the kind until very good and loved friends of mine reminded me otherwise, I was a Jew and I was not even Argentinean, only Roman Catholics could really fit in. Till one day in June, 1967 my life was turned upside down for ever, my lovely friends kept saying that the Arabs would throw us into the sea, that we were not strong enough blah, blah, blah, my grandmother started crying like hell, all the ghosts of the Shoah in Europe back again and frankly I was getting a bit frightened myself but it didn’t last long, right away the news were coming in about Israeli’s greatest victories and my friend could shove his words up his butt. I got up a different person. I don’t have the words to convey the deep feelings of pride, relief, gratitude and let’s be honest, revenge. But I had been too coward to make allyah myself, on my own. Many of us grew up with the idea that we’d better kept it hush, hush and stay alive……



This is something every Diaspora Jew has felt and lived more or less on the same line so it is very boring to insist on conjuring up the ghosts of the past. I was just trying to set up the idea of the building on which I sort of phantom my life, ideas, feelings and dreams. Facts of life, Israel again came second best to marriage and children but my time had come and I wanted to send them to a proper Jewish school, going Fridays to Synagogue, this of course till I could drive them to the shull and make them do it, soon came the day when they made their revolution themselves and refused to keep on attending. Home reunions we kept. But something quite good they must have learnt from home when one by one the three of them landed in Israel for good. And my encounter with the new ways and customs started off so unexpectedly !!, As part of a blessed school program they visited Israel, and when over the phone I waited anxiously for their first vivid impressions of having set foot on the land of my beloved Israel, it was as if they had arrived in Miami, OK, by now you had realized I am quite passionate and unrealistic at times and a bit exaggerated, their reality had been very different to mine and they were very, very young some 14-15 years of age to express in a literally style their feelings.



OK, I am quite a reasonable person who slowly but consistently decided and was forced to adopt the new ways, after all, they are our children, we love them to death, sometimes literally speaking and you need to adjust or risk losing them. Either way I consider myself very modern and never thinks that the past has been better, maybe different but not necessarily better, but I have never been prepared for the next stage, my allyah, needless to say that their own weddings, the 3 of them here were wonderful, a dream come true but not much to do with what we as parents had waited all our lives to witness and live, at this point I realized that a whole era had died under my eyes here in Israel, where were the Joras we so eagerly wanted to dance on their weddings ?? Yes, I realized that my world had become old, that they had made some adjustments out of respect and love for us but in Israel the Yiddsche mamme is buried for ever, along with the father…………but I still do not complain, this is a new world and much, much better, it is the Israeli-way world but there’s still a subject that amazes me deeply. I had had the idea that, here in Israel, the land of my dreams, I could shout to the winds I was Jewish, Wrong again!!



Where is the Jewish tradition here, in Israel??, some friends told me I am living with my Jewish Diaspora mentality. The mentality of the ones who love being Jewish and Israelis alike without being afraid of being politically incorrect!!. In the Diaspora I knew who was Jewish and I was so glad I met them, I felt home and safe, here it is like it were sort of a sin to tell, to ask, to be. So, me the rebel, the Diaspora Maccabean the wholly and holy politically incorrect human being had to come to Israel, the land of the Jews, to become only Israeli, no problem with that, but I feel I am not a politically correct human being if I decide to be Jewish too. Of course many nuts live in Israel, far too many nuts who don’t like to be either and they have the license to hate and talk. But what can I say, after all we are Jews, the nation of 7.000.000 Prime Ministers. Or maybe the Jew Israeli, Israeli Jewish way is so mingled and entangled that you can’t ever more part them, where the sacred is a way of life and the Menorah is a simple lamp. No, I do not yearn for the idea of the shteitel Jew, I yearn for the idea of the united and proud Israeli Jews who wouldn’t hide it. The new generations will become the Israelis of tomorrow meanwhile we are part of the 120 tribes coming from all over, bringing over our different identities with only one thing in common, our Jewishness. Ironically, I had to come to Israel to search for and find my true identity, cause in Israel I ended up being Argentinean.



Sanda Abramovici-Lam