Intensive Arabic Semester

Photos and text by Lydia Aisenberg


The 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out four years after I made aliya.  In those four years I met and married Yitzhak (Itzik) Aisenberg, a Russian born kibbutznik and our first child Boaz was two years old when his father was whisked off to war, returning for a short leave six weeks later.

With long hair, a bushy black beard, ill-fitting army uniform and a pair of boots that the soles were partially parted from the uppers - neither I nor our son recognized the rather trampish looking character leaning against a fence in the children’s playground.  As he moved forward to scoop up his son, Boaz began yelling and ran away.  It was only after Itzik had showered, trimmed his beard to a neat chin clinging version, did his son recognize him and tag after him everywhere he went for the all too short furlough.

Many years have passed and another 4 children and 5 grandchildren born unto the Aisenberg clan, none of the latter Itzik having gotten to know as he tragically died a few months before our first grandchild was born.

Unfortunately, since 1973 we have known far too many wars and only the most naïve could think we have seen the last.

When he was four years old Boaz received a set of Lego brought over from Britain by a visiting aunt.  Whilst Boaz sat on the stone floor and trying to figure out what went where with the Lego pieces, my aunt asked how I would deal with his having to go to the army at 18.

In those days I was naïve, very naïve indeed.

“Don’t be silly Aunty, by the time Boaz is 18 there will be peace and no need for an army,” I retorted.  Nowadays 40 years-old, the father of two small children, Boaz is an invalided veteran of the IDF who for the last 20 years has been under the excellent care and watchful eye of the Israeli Ministry of Defense who also provide him with on-going necessary medical care, a car and monthly stipend.

He says he holds no illusions as to where his daughter will be in 14 years time or his son in another fifteen. 

Over the years when my late Aunty Sheila and I would meet up at family simchot in the UK she would often start a sentence with “Lydia dear, do you remember when you said…” and I would cut her short and say, “Yes Aunty, I remember.”  How could I forget?

October, 1973 – Yom Kippur and a quiet, laidback day anticipated by the Aisenberg family.  In the morning a long walk in the beautiful, extensive forest behind Mishmar HaEmek.  Boaz was perched on Itzik’s shoulders for most of the walk.  When he was not thumbing a lift from Dad, he would busily kick the piles of leaves and twigs on the ground and collected a few of the latter to take home.  My job to carry them and an assortment of stones he was particularly attracted to. 

Returning to our room and a half at that time, we set about having a siesta.  Behind our abode, in more spacious accommodation, lived Yaakov Hazan, a founder member of the soon to be 90 year-old kibbutz, co-founder of the Mapam political party and member of Knesset from 1949 to 1973.

As a Knesset member, Hazan was allowed a telephone in his private kibbutz abode – one of the very few with such a privilege in the kibbutz at that time.

Around two o’clock  noon we could hear Hazan yelling and after a short time realized – as did our neighbours – that he was on the phone, it was Yom Kippur and putting two and two together, began to realise something serious was afoot.

My next door neighbour Tammy burst into our room telling me to tune into the BBC.  After all it is Yom Kippur, no Israeli radio broadcasts and out of respect for the day, I didn’t listen to the BBC either.  Sitting around the radio in the corner of our room we hear from a clipped accented British announcer that Israel is being attacked.  We are at war.

In those days, so few phones, no mobiles, Blackberries, laptops and all the modern fan-dangled in your pocket communications systems, the system of emergency call up was simply one collected another and within six hours Israel’s reserves mobilized.

Immediately upon hearing the news, Itzik climbed up into a crawl space in our roof where he stored an ever ready kitbag full of the necessities for such an occasion as well as the annual 5-week reserve duty.  A decorated veteran of the 1967 war, he was quickly organized, in army uniform and having laboriously lacing up the shin-high army boots.  A jeep screeched to a halt outside.  “That’s for me,” I heard him say.  He bent down, picked up Boaz, gave him a hug and handed him over to me, quick peck on the cheek, turned and left.

Three men sat in the jeep.  None of them I recognized and the jeep a private vehicle.  Yitzik slung his kitbag into the back, climbed in and the jeep sped off down the track … with our young son, screaming for his father running as fast as his little legs could carry him behind the disappearing vehicle.

We were not to see Itzik again for almost one and a half months, he was unable to call and we became dependent on postcards and letters – both ways – all of which censored by the army.

As soon as the news of the war broke the kibbutz also immediately became mobilized.  A siren system and loudspeakers placed in strategic points throughout the kibbutz kicked into action.  Members not called to duty outside are called to duty within the community.  First thing, clean out all the air-raid shelters all of whom in a sorry state.  Mattresses, blankets, water supplies and in the case of the shelters closest to the children’s houses, to put in books, toys and clean clothing.

Boaz and his peers thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in the shelter attached to his kindergarten.  The whole floor covered in mattresses and cushions, no boards in between, kids could roll over each other and over ma and possibly other siblings as well.

During the day when sirens rang out – in our case it was because of Frog rockets from Syria landing in various places in our valley or crippled planes attempting an emergency landing at the Ramat David airbase also in the valley – then one dropped everything and ran to a pre-designated place.  I was ‘attached’ to the kindergarten brigade.

When the siren’s piercing notes rang out, I would run, collect up any child in the play area and duck into the shelter.  One time I distinctly remember vaulting over the fence around one of the kindergarten courtyards, scooping up two youngsters in the sandpit as another lady took the other two and when reaching the shelter everybody burst out laughing as I had split my work pants and my underwear peeking through the gap in the back!

A list of names of members called up from Mishmar HaEmek was pinned to the notice board in the dining-room.  All windows in the kibbutz abodes, classrooms, offices and dining-room were blacked out with black plastic produced in the kibbutz factory.  The list on the dining room wall was very long, containing the names of those kibbutz youths serving their national service at the time and the reservists like Itzik who had just dropped everything and gone off.

 One name was left off from the very beginning.  Kibbutz born pilot and farmer Hanan Aitan– married with two children –had taken off from Ramat David at noon and shot out of the skies by the Syrians just minutes later.   In the morning he had gone to plough kibbutz fields running parallel to the Ramat David air base runway and was called to the base where he exchanged his blue kibbutz work clothes for his pilot’s gear.  When he was shot down his wife thought he was still ploughing the fields.

High school students became runners, bringing messages scrawled on scraps of paper by those manning the few phones in the kibbutz offices at the time.  The three public phones on the wall outside the dining-room saw long queues of members trying to phone their families outside the kibbutz or abroad.   When a message was received from one of the soldiers, a tick was put next to their name on the list in the dining-room.

After ten days there were only 3 names left tickless on the board, one of which Yitzhak Aisenberg. 

When the all awaited message finally arrived I ran to the dining-room with the largest felt pen I could find and put an enormous tick next to Itzik’s name, sat on the floor and burst out crying.  Another name on the list, a young lad doing national service with a tank unit, was ticked a short time later but Uri Alajem, the kibbutz general secretary before he was called, was missing in action in Sinai but later declared killed in action.  His body was not retrieved for a long time and his only child Itamar was one of Boaz’s toddlers group.

The first message I actually received came from a nurse in a hospital somewhere in the south of the country.  An injured soldier had given her a list of names of those he had seen alive before being evacuated from the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal.  The nurse – like so many other regular folks at the time – got down to contacting all the families.  The message I received was that Yitzhak Aisenberg had last been seen alive at such and such a time and date.  Apparently his tank force was in the town of Suez, cut off by Egyptian forces.  The seriously injured soldier had been brought back through enemy lines and before being taken into the operating theatre gave the names of soldiers he had seen before evacuation.

I never found out the name of either the soldier or the nurse.  

Carefully kept In a red folder with clear plastic pockets and Itzik’s distinctive handwriting stating YOM KIPPUR WAR and the dates 6.10.1973 – 3.5.1974 (the day he was eventually demobilized) on the cover, are army issue postcards and long letters home penned by IDF soldier Aisenberg, Yitzhak No. 255542 during that period.

The ‘postcards’ are flimsy and on one side humorous military cartoons that would be more suitable for an episode of Dad’s Army and not the real thing from whence these were being sent home from the fighting front.  One of the first written – but received quite some time later – was penned on 12.10.1973.  With little room to actually write anything, Itzik pens he is doing so by the light of a slivery moon and that he is longing to be home. 

One of the letters, written on 28.10.1973, is 6 pages long and headlined SUEZ.  He describes being in seventh heaven having received five letters and a parcel of goodies from home.  Three of the letters are from Boaz and I, two from his parents and sister in Hertzlia and the parcel of goodies from home - the kibbutz.

He describes the beauty of the area they are in – and of his tank unit and others closely guarding 30,000 trapped Egyptian soldiers of the Egyptian Third Army, and a great deal more.  The army censor didn’t black out anything this time.

A postcard sent a few days earlier to Boaz (with my name in brackets) and also marked Suez strikes a chord of the absurd in as much it is a colour picture postcard of Bialik Street in Ramat Gan!  One of his soldier buddies was from Ramat Gan and can only assume he received the card from him – in Egypt!

Using Boaz’s nickname Bo-Bo, Itzik tells him that these tough times will pass.

“The most important thing Bo-Bo is to carry on.  Take good care of mum and tell her not to worry too much, it’s enough that I do. Okay, my son?”

Almost four decades later, with more wars and intifadas than one can count on one’s hand since 1973 – I am still worrying.

The remnants of a Palestinian flag flap droopily at the end of metal pole above the girl’s high school in East Barta’a.  The school comes under the Palestinian Ministry of Education and when school is in the flag goes up.

Inside a large courtyard devoid of any greenery and the walls rough concrete, a number of teachers make their way from classrooms to the gate.  Two groups of teenage school girls, six or seven in each group, sit against the wall on either side of a corner.  In both groups they are gathered around a weeping mate, trying to calm them with hugs and whispering words of support.

Must be the day of exam results I think to myself.  The poor girls haven’t made good enough grades, bawling their eyes out in disappointment I shouldn’t wonder.

Some of the girls smile and say ‘Salaam’ as I pass by.  Most of them are dressed in traditional clothing, some dark colors others quite lively, and all have head coverings.  They are not at all fazed at the sight of someone who could almost be their grandmother in age but certainly not in appearance as very much doubt any of the young ladies grannies would be wearing jeans, a tee shirt and no head covering. 

The office of the local council is situated just off the school courtyard, as is the mosque, madras and a well-baby clinic.  A sign on the wall in English and Arabic states that work carried out in the area was done by a certain contractor on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

I’ve come to meet Marwan Kabha a local businessman and one of the founders the East Barta’a Council.  The council office is also off the school courtyard and somewhat dwarfed by the enormous yellow domed mosque built in recent years to replace a much smaller that collapsed on the same site some years ago.

Marwan explains that the girls weeping their hearts out are seniors who have finished their high-school education and overcome with emotion at graduating.

“This is the last day of the school year, for them the very last day of school altogether.  They are very sad to leave the premises for the final time as schoolgirls,” explains Marwan the owner of a number of shoe shops in the rapidly expanding village. 

Conducting a conversation with Marwan Kabha is not too easy as apart from his mobile phone constantly ringing almost everybody passing by seems to want to ask or tell him something – and he patiently finds time for all of them.

“There is so much going on now what with the end of the school year, building projects, permits to be renewed and the finalization of a sewage project we hope to see working very soon,” he explains.

The sewage system is actually situated in a meter-deep ditch that was mistakenly taken for the continuation of the deep valley behind the village by representatives of Israel, Egypt and the United Nations meeting in Rhodes and drawing up the 1949 Armistice Line.  That mistake was to become a more than costly one for the villagers of Barta’a as the ditch became a divide between two parts of the village, one part slated to end up in the State of Israel and the other to be annexed by Jordan.

Basically the hundreds of villagers – all from the same extended family - were divided into two different countries, were to receive different citizenships from each other and the two countries would continue to be in conflict for many years.  What were around 400 in 1949 has become around the 9,000 mark in 2011, one third on the Israeli side of the divide and two-thirds nowadays under the PA in the West Bank.

A few middle-aged women teachers approach Marwan with a number of questions.  One of them looks distinctly European, her attractive face sporting not a small amount of makeup through which freckles still quite prominent, whilst another teacher who is black, scrutinizes the Israeli visitor from head to toe.

“Who are you and where are you from?” she asks in English peering closely at the Magen David around my neck.

“I am Israeli and from the Givat Haviva Peace Education Center,” I reply.

“What are you doing here?” she asks but before I can reply states that she is from the Jenin refugee camp and then rushes off behind the other ladies who are leaving the courtyard.

Marwan begins to address the questions I had asked before the teachers approached but before he actually gets any words out of his mouth a rather attractive young girl wearing slacks, long sleeved cotton shirt and scarf pulled tightly over her head, rushes up to tell him something.  From the way she is looking at him and patting his arm as she speaks, it is obvious she is his daughter.

When she turns to carry on wherever she is going, a group of young men struggle to carry a photocopying machine down the steep flight of stairs leading to the second floor of the madras behind us.  A few of the young men say shalom and one stops for a short chat in English and tells of working in Israeli supermarkets during the summer holidays and reels off the names of kibbutzim and towns where he has spent time packing shelves and carrying customers heavy bags.

When there is a slight break in the people traffic going through the courtyard and the mobile taking some time out, a chance for Marwan to explain about the relationship between the local East Barta’a Council and the Palestinian Authority in Jenin – about 20 kilometers away but a security fence and checkpoint between them.

What does it mean for the Council to be answerable to the Palestinian Authority and do you receive a salary from them?

“Salary, are you kidding.  For those of us in the council it’s more a case of it costing us money rather than making money! The Palestinian Authority are responsible for the infrastructure and civil administration here in East Barta’a as we are an Area B in accordance with the Oslo agreement,” he explains.

“Every new building we want to construct means applying for building permission in Jenin, plans need to be submitted, passed and licenses issued.  All the official paperwork for births, marriages and deaths needs to be processed in Jenin as does the arranging of all the different kinds of permits for the residents of East Barta’a.”

Marwan is personally responsible for following through on all the permits – and they are many.  Palestinians living in the area need to carry papers allowing them to remain in their homes, a permit that needs renewing every year.  They also need permits to be able to pass through the checkpoint to go to the banks, hospitals, clinics, do shopping and visit relatives on the other side of the security fence.  There are those in the village who are allowed to work in Israel but need special permits to cross over the – or rather walk over – the ditch that is the Green Line running diagonally through the village.  All this paperwork Marwan does on behalf of the local residents – a job he took upon himself when the elderly village mayor who dealt with such things before the council was formed, died.

“A number of us realized that we needed to start to take care of things for ourselves, that our situation here in East Barta’a with the Green Line on one side and the security fence on the other meant that we were in a more than complicated situation and if we didn’t take the reins ourselves nothing would improve,” said Marwan before adding that whatever goes on in East Barta’a is known by the Palestinian Authority in Jenin.

The schools for the younger children and separate high-schools for boys and girls in the village all come under the Palestinian Ministry of Education and the locals cars are registered with the Palestinian Ministry of Transport although many of the plates in East Barta’a have the yellow Israeli issued ones.  Over the years there have been many marriages between East Barta’ans and West Barta’ans and other Arab folks from the immediate area on the Israeli side known as Wadi Ara.  About 50% of East Barta’a today has Israeli citizenship or Teodat Zehut (ID) through those marriages although for the last six or seven years no longer can Palestinians obtain Israeli citizenship through marriage as in the past.

What about collection of taxes and to whom do they go?

“Local businessmen pay some tax, well most of them do anyway,” he replies with a laugh.  Astonishingly there are no less than over a thousand ‘businesses’ working in East Barta’a today.  The ‘businesses’ are anything from a hole in the wall kiosk selling falafel to small shops selling herbs, fruit and vegetables, shoes, clothing, kitchen wear, furniture and a large selection of colorful decorative what-on-earth-would-I-need-that-for items imported from China, Korea and Taiwan.  Approaching the outskirts of the village in the direction of the checkpoint, huge areas filled with the twisted metal carcasses of every make of car one could possibly spot on the Israeli roads as well as other ‘businesses’ taking up large plots full of building materials, stone and marble pillars and balustrades popular with the Palestinian home builders as well as the Arab citizens in Israel.  The latter come in their droves to shop in East Barta’a where the prices are a lot lower than those in the nearby Arab towns and cities over the Green Line – just – in the State of Israel.  In the last year or so the number of Druze from Israel shopping in Barta’a has been very noticeable because of their traditional dress – women wearing long black dresses and white scarves loosely sitting on their heads, the men’s headdress being very similar to the Turkish tarbush – and the religious among them wearing baggy pants.

Things look pretty good in Barta’a but if one scratches a bit under the surface there’s a great deal more than meets the eye.  Many of the young Palestinians working there do not have permission to be on the Israeli side of the fence but they certainly are.  They cannot pass through a checkpoint and use a ‘smuggling service’ run by Israeli Arabs and some Jews – last year one religious Jewish woman living in a West Bank settlement was caught trying to smuggle Palestinian workers through a checkpoint.  They were squashed in to a false compartment built between the driver’s cab and the back portion of the vehicle.

I have been told by these young men that they pay anywhere between 250 – 400 shekels to get across from ‘over there to over here’ and of course the same amount exchanges hands once more when they want to pay a visit home.  For someone earning 10 shekels an hour that is a hell of a lot of money.

There are hundreds such Palestinians living and working on the Israeli side of the fence but mostly in the area that has sprung up and I have named Limboland – not here, not there … a large swath of land between security fence and Green Line.

Marwan can be found often at the checkpoint of Barta’a – either waiting for someone to come through from the Jenin area or when he is on his way to the Autonomous Palestinian city in order to get papers put in order and have the PA stamp of approval on decisions made by the East Barta’an Council.  I had met him at the checkpoint a few days earlier whilst accompanying a group of Norwegian students on a one-day study tour organized by Givat Haviva.

In the middle of the courtyard of the East Barta’a girl’s school there sits a very large and quite deep stagnant puddle – dark green algae covering most of it.  Apparently this has been caused by a rupture in the water pipes leading out of the mosque.  When I question Marwan about the stagnant water, a class A breeding ground for disease spreading mosquitoes, he proudly points out that in the near future that also will disappear once the new sewage system kicks into action.

Rightly proud of the progress made in East Barta’a the last year or so Marwan is painfully aware that there is still a considerable amount to be done with the infrastructure of the village, educational and health facilities of the residents but he says, he’s hopeful for the future of his portion of the divided village of Barta’a.

Having met teachers from that school some six months ago who said they had not been paid a salary from anywhere between one to two years, Marwan Kabha explained that because Israel had held up moving over the millions of shekels collected by the State from Palestinians working in Israel, importing goods through the ports of Israel, there had not been sufficient funds to pay the teachers.  “Most of the teachers have now been paid,” he says.  When I had spoken to the teachers not one of them made a connection between withheld taxes from Israel and their plight at the time.

About to leave, I point out to Marwan that his pride in the Palestinian part of Barta’a and the way things are panning out is very strongly felt and suggested that the tattered flag be replaced with a new one.

“Of course, before school starts again there will be a new flag for sure,” he replies, above the babble of chatter as another group of young men descend the steps of the madras, greeting Marwan as they pass.

It’s that time of year again – and the search for suitable Rosh Hashana greeting cards well under way. Long gone are the days of sitting down with my children in the kibbutz children’s houses and creatively making cards to distribute to other kibbutz members. It must be at least twenty years since the last time I found myself drawing piles of red apples and honey pots – usually with Winnie the Pooh lurking somewhere in the background.

Present day Israeli Rosh Hashana cards in general lack the warmth they radiated years ago when I first made aliya. But then again in recent years we have been treated to fresh‐off‐the‐press ‘antique’ cards the likes of those that were common in Israel in the 60s and 70s – very Zionistic, very nostalgic, extremely glitzy and unlike in golden olden times, rather expensive.

The cards of yesteryear often featured a smiling Jewish postman delivering good wishes for a happy, healthy and peaceful – little did we know – New Year to the lady of the household, often found popping her head out of the window to receive both her mail with a smile and a few encouraging words to the bearer of her cards. Chirping birds twittered away on the sidelines in most of the greeting cards that featured postmen, policemen and soldiers – many of the cards postcard style, no necessity for envelopes – those were the days when Israel was chugging along on the bare necessities.

Israeli Rosh Hashana cards told the story of Zionism, the building of the State of Israel and showed pioneers physically enduring the hardships draining the swamps in the center and north of the country, toiling the soil, planting trees, guarding their communities and in the south, the struggle to make the desert bloom.

Military and political personalities of the day were often featured and the flag of the State of Israel held a prominent place as did the Magen David and menorah. I remember well visiting Haifa in the mid‐1960s and passing through the stalls selling Rosh Hashana cards an Israeli friend had to explain who those featured on the cards were and as I recall, I’d not heard of any of them.

Nowadays a greeting can be sent off in a jiffy, just a quick click on the mouse and yet another automatic electronic greeting whizzes off into cyberspace ‐ and dozens more whiz back. Here all sorts of animated characters strut their stuff on the computer screen, glitter, twitter, dance and prance with background music ranging from rap to classical and bit of everything in between.

Nothing personal and certainly wouldn’t print off to put on the table with my apples and honey. Always a sucker for creative cards immaterial what they are celebrating I’ve a number of shoe boxes full of the special ones and my grandchildren love to plod through as I tell them stories about what is depicted thereon and who sent it to me.

If it weren’t for folks like me who find it difficult to throw away practically anything, then Yuval Danieli, an Israeli artist and curator of the Kibbutz Movement Art Archives at the Hashomer Hatzair center of Givat Haviva, would not be able to boast a collection of over 7,000 Rosh Hashana cards from Israel and the Diaspora many of those from kibbutzim and featured in a coffee table size book some years ago.

Stored in protective albums the thousands of Rosh Hashana cards make fascinating inspection. The collection also includes cards printed for those serving in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, many of whom members of kibbutzim. One of the cards shows a group of uniformed Jewish soldiers from Palestine standing under the Arch of Titus in Rome and dated 1945 – a scene that generates a great deal of discussion. Will I save any of the cards I get this year – I doubt it.

As quick as the click on the mouse sends, a click on the mouse deletes - but the cards in the Givat Haviva collection will be there to tell their stories year after year even though those who sent them, and those who received them, are long gone.

This article was originally publish in the Jewish Telegraph, published September 16, 2011. Text and photos provided by Lydia Aisenberg.

A walk in the dark with one of the gifted blind and partially sighted guides at the Holon Children’s Park Dialogue. in the Dark Center is a journey to places and situations either unknown or little thought about by sighted folks. After an hour of walking, talking through a very feely‐touchy experience one’s head is full of so many different thoughts, feelings, sensations all adding up to a powerfully deep appreciation for having the ability to see, hear, smell, touch and taste and together with that, a surge of admiration for the blind and how they tackle all the twists and turns of life, good and bad, in total darkness.

Coming out of the darkness, the youngest child in the 10‐person group (an 11‐year American girl) tripped over her own feet in the light, something she had managed not to do in the dark! Her mother put out a hand to steady her and said what so many of us parents/grandparents always blurt out in such situations, the ever‐on the‐
 tip of the tongue “watch where you’re going, silly.” Having just spent an hour successfully navigating passageways, steps and even getting on and off an imaginary boat and purchasing a bag of goodies at the bar in the dark, the mother’s comment cracked through the air like a circus trainers whip.

The child and her mother both gave a short nervous laugh and before moving on, ma gave her daughter a really tight hug. Given the situation and place we were in, the hug was translated by this writer as a silent statement of thank goodness you were born with all your faculties you clumsy twit!

Foreboding, frightening and also fascinating – knowing the inability to see anything is only a temporary thing of course – the voice and occasional helping hand of guide Meir Mattityau stops one getting into a panic but not, unfortunately, the use of some rather colourful language at times when a wall, tree trunk or whatever suddenly connects with the end of one’s nose or someone’s cane pokes you and not an empty space the person behind thought was in front of them. If they were embarrassed and red in the face I wouldn’t know just heard a muttered apology.

Meir does not physically show himself to those temporarily entering his world of blackness and as bleak as one might think that world would be, he quickly begins to draw a picture of the lighter side of the dark world within which he lives and we are trying to navigate – the blind leading the blind so to speak.

What one does effortlessly in the light becomes a more than difficult task, confidence suddenly replaced with apprehensions, hesitations and because we are only at the beginning of a journey hopefully never to be truly travelled, so dependent on another to move forward, avoid falling, crashing into something and above all, to start listening to all the sounds we don’t normally give much – if any – conscious attention to.

Meir’s voice is a shining light in the darkness. Soothing, encouraging, warning, guiding to the left, the right as one makes one’s way through the tunnel of darkness. Concrete flooring is suddenly replaced by wood, such a totally different sound made by the tapping of the canes we’ve all been given at the beginning. The wood is replaced by gravel, then grass as the sounds of birds, animals are heard. Quietly in the beginning but as one progresses, louder – and then – in this writer’s case anyway – a small collision with a tree and leafy branch.

Immediately drawing a deep breath and saying: “Darn it, I didn’t see that.” Of course you didn’t dummy, you are with eyes wide open in the pitch blackness of another world. “We are going for a boat ride,” announces Meir, the humour in his voice not lost to one’s now overly attentive ears. “Be careful of the steps going down, hold on to the banister, gently sit on the bench and scoot along to the end.” Easy – if you can find the banister to start with that is!

On the boat, Meir’s humour comes out full force. You can sing if you want he says as the ‘boat’ rocks gently and fine spray falls from above. Silence, nobody feels like singing it would seem, too busy hanging on hoping not to fall overboard. Trust the British to kick in when there’s a difficult situation to be handled. “Row, row, row the boat,” two Israeli‐Brits begin to sing although personally thought afterwards that ‘Michael, row the boat ashore’ would have been more appropriate for those who wanted to get back on to familiar land – the light at the end of the Holon tunnel of darkness.

At one point, having survived the boat outing, we enter a market place. Strong smells, lots of chatter and clatter. Feeling one’s way along the wall, all of a sudden one’s hand ends up wrapped around a rather large soft piece of fruit. Within a few minutes Meir the guide, who tells absolutely nothing about himself, calls every one of the ten by their names. He knows that an American student is very tall and picks up on so many facts about his invisible guests bringing one to think that he is partially sighted and wearing night vision goggles.


The last stage of the Dialogue in the Dark is ordering something at the bar in the dark and being talked toward a table and benches. The crackle of a bag of Bamba and hiss as a bottle of fizzy drink is opened – after the worried customer wondering whether they had been had with the change they cannot see – Meir begins to tell about himself.

Have you thought about how I look or how old I am he asks? Personally I thought he was of medium height, stocky with black curly hair and in his late 20s, all of which built up according to his voice of course. He explains he is 41 years‐old, had been born prematurely and totally blind from birth, the eldest of four and lives in Jerusalem. He had studied for two years in the United States, lives alone and travels to work in Holon by bus.

He loves his work and described the Dialogue in the Dark center as “my favourite playground.” The children asked what he sees when he dreams, if it bothers him if people offer assistance when crossing the road for instance. How did he figure out how to colour coordinate his clothing and how about reading, writing and … none of them asked about arithmetic!

We discover there’s a special piece of equipment that can ‘read’ colours, that there are ‘talking computers’ and that Braille is written phonetically and so he can read in English, French and Hebrew. The chat in the café is over as is the visit to the dark side of the seeing world. Little by little one comes out of the darkness into semi‐darkness and then into the light. Meir is still talking and says he will come and say goodbye.

Out steps a tall, slim gentleman with thinning black hair, eyes tightly shut and a big grin on his face. “Do I disappoint you?” he asks laughing. Dialogue in the Dark is not a show, not an exhibition but an amazing experience because one literally sees nothing whilst relying on the other four senses. Reintroduction to sight, light and ceasing to shuffle with hands outstretched to the unknown, is a huge relief and gratification swamps one from head to toe.

Leaving the pointed sphinx like building and out in the open air, immediately to a bridge over an artificial lake where excited children and adults paddle their boats on the placid waters, quick to pick up on someone under the bridge whose boat has been bumped by another:

“Hey, watch where you are going, stupid.”

Lydia's article about camels in the Wadi Ara, was re-printed in Esra Magazine. Check it out here!

Sixty-two year old Ali Buerat sits in the shade of his veranda, half a dozen of his twenty-something (he gives up on the exact figure after deep thought and active finger counting) grandchildren playing around his feet.

On the table a traditional style copper coffee pot of local stand-a-teaspoon-up-in strong brew and a plastic bottle of cold fizzy lemonade.  Alongside Ali, his jovial wife directs older grandchildren to tend to a smaller sibling who has banged her head on the stone steps leading to the second floor of the building.

Coupled with the laughing, crying and general blurb of chit-chat between grandchildren and a visiting relative from the village of Kfar Kara a few kilometers away, sheep bleat, chickens squawk and now and then camels tethered in a field on the other side of his spacious home throw in their deep grunts of ‘don’t forget the Dromedaries.’   The one-hump camel grunts somewhat clash when a loudspeaker kicks into action and the local muezzin calls out for faithful to come to pray in the small yellow domed village mosque just meters away. 

Throw in scores of cars, heavy duty trucks, buses and roaring motor bikes travelling the main road 50 paces away and you have the daily cacophony of the Buerat family.  However, on the shady veranda the sound of the traffic somehow seems muffled except for the frequently passing patience lacking horn blowers among the drivers.

Had I been sitting in the southern part of Israel where the majority of Israel’s Bedouin tribes live, many of the sounds – especially the camels and sheep – would be as natural as the scorching sun and parched desert surroundings. But - central Israel, more specifically in Wadi Ara with the busy Route 65 highway passing through a narrow pass between the Amir mountain range and Menashe Hills, the sight of tethered camels grazing at the roadside is a more than a rare sight and certainly more than enough to make this writer do a double take – and that was before spotting a battered piece of cardboard tied to a pole at the side of the road proclaiming that there was camel milk for sale.

To turn off the main road make the short descent to the valley basin where the camels idle away the day below is not for the faint hearted and after taking one look at the height of the animal and the smallness of the udder, milking one surely is also not for the faint hearted.  The animals not only grunt but also hiss and have a kick any professional footballer can only dream about. 

So, what’s with camels in Wadi Ara, Ali?

“Well, it all started with a horse basically,” explains Ali as he pours a glass of cold camel milk for yours truly to taste.

“My grandchildren love animals,” he says with a broad smile as a chorus of bleating, squawking and camel grunts sweeps over the veranda.

“The older ones were nagging me to get a horse for a long time but I resisted and anyway they had the sheep, chickens and what have you,” he says with a grin but then said he buckled to pressure when offered a camel by a man from Beersheba who had married a local lady living in the second half of the village built on a steep hill on the other side of the road.

“The man from Beersheba bought a piece of land up on top of the Menashe Hills from someone in Ara village.  He had dreams of living in a house on a hill and rearing camels and at one time he had fifty or sixty animals, none of which you could see from the main road,” he explains.  After some time though the man sold the camels but kept one, that which eventually ended up with Ali.  “That one turned into ten over the last few years,” he then says with a chuckle.

Also named Ali, a 14 year-old grandson takes care of the herd.  Not only does he share his grandfather’s name but also his smile.  Ali junior is a tall, slim and handsome young man who spends four hours every day walking his camel herd in the area between the Buerat extended family homes and Mei Ami, a Jewish community of sixty families living on the top of the mountain and literally hugging the pre-1967 border between the State of Israel and the Jordanian controlled West Bank.

Ali is also the milkman.  He extracts around two and a half liters a day and eager buyers pay 50 shekels (ten pound sterling) for a liter of what would seem is almost white gold.

“Camel milk is good for you, very healthy,” says Ali senior as he downs another glass although just a few minutes beforehand he had explained he had not worked for many years due to heart, kidney and other ailments including diabetes.  When this was pointed out he responded with yet another charming smile – “I’ve only had the camels for a year and half remember.”

The camel milk is high in both protein and vitamin C and low in cholesterol.  With loads of minerals such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and more, the milk is easily digestible for folks with lactose intolerance and purported to be a possible cure for many known diseases and illnesses.

So how did I take to my first glass of ultra-nutritious milk from a humped one – well, as healthy as it might be – cannot say I found it tasty but maybe it will become an acquired taste before I get any of the illnesses and diseases the locals believe it can kick out of one’s system.

There are very few Bedouin in the Wadi Ara area and intrigued I asked Ali senior how many generations the Buerat family – or hamula as it is known in Arabic – have lived there.

“I really don’t know but I can tell you that I was born here just after the foundation of the State of Israel, my father, grandfather and great grandfather all lived and raised their families here.  Before that – well … who knows,” he says shrugging his shoulders and lifting his hands upward toward the sky.

Photos and text by Lydia Aisenberg

The inscription on the side of the sofa reads: Give a smile, it’s all for the best!  Right: Children of the Revolution apparently sleep here

Early one morning, camped out in the center of Tel Aviv and after a hot hard day’s night, a few tent dwellers begin to stir.  Yawning and stretching they emerge from a line of flap-to-flap tents that have been part of the Rothschild Boulevard scene for the last month.

On either side of the canvas city in the middle of the road, a collection of impressive eclectic buildings, from historical stylish Levantine, European and Ottoman styles to stone and glass edifice modern era monstrosities housing banks and offices – the beginnings of a powerful Zionist tale turning sand dunes into a city a century ago in present times has become home to a city of canvas as Israeli people take to the streets – literally – in a student led citizen’s revolt demanding social justice.

Rothschild Boulevard is one of the areas boasting magnificent early Bauhaus style buildings, part of the White City declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site that attracts tourists from around the world and also a most favored place  for Israelis visiting the city that supposedly never sleeps - but from what I saw early that morning in Rothschild, also has great difficulty in waking up.

Standing taking photographs alongside me, French tourists squint behind their cameras, absorbing the scene through their lenses.  A black-bearded young man, fast asleep on his back, boot clad feet resting on the side where an inscription reads ‘Give a smile, it’s all for the best!’ becomes a tourist attraction of another kind. 

Traffic moves slowly along either side of the wide swath of Rothschild Boulevard that has been taken over by the demonstrators.  They are moving slowly as drivers inch forward whilst at the same time are reading the signs, some of which extremely creative, hanging from the trees, utility poles and plastered on to the tents themselves – one of which from the National Union of Israeli Students – the name of the organization in Hebrew, Arabic and English - stating ‘I’M ATENTING’ and another handwritten sign: ‘aTENTion, BIBI.’

Ron Cohen, is from the north of the country and recently finished 3 years in the IDF.  Sitting on a wooden bench with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, the man from Galilee  explains what brought him to town.

“I have only been here for a week as I was abroad for a wedding in London.  I was in an area where young people were rioting and some buildings very close to where I was staying were burned to the ground.  I decided as soon as I return I would join the protesters here because otherwise maybe if things do not change in Israel, we will see scenes like those in London right here in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities and towns as well.  It’s a frightening thought and even more so because it really could happen.

“I am not going to study yet as my parents cannot afford to help and so I decided to take up a job offer in security abroad. Hopefully I will be able to save some money and return to study in Israel.  I would like to stay here truthfully but really do not have much choice – the better paid jobs are here in Tel Aviv but everything I earn will go on rent and other basics and nothing will be saved for studies.”

British born translator Diana Rubanenko lives on Shenkin just a block or two down the road from Rothschild Boulevard.  Diana and Tel Aviv born husband Ze’ev were founder members of Moshav Neviot (Nuweiba) in Sinai.  Following the Egypt-Israel peace agreement they moved to a Sharon Plains moshav but in recent years moved to Tel Aviv where their son Guy has been living for the last ten years and daughter Morag, thirteen.

 “Rothschild is on my morning daily walk from Sheinkin to Ibn Gvirol Street and so I have watched the developments right from the start.  The street noise level quickly became quite high and I felt for the residents of Rothschild themselves but once I stopped to listen to the debates – all of which very polite and considerate of others and rather un-Israeli one might say – it became fascinating.  The whole tent city, and the demonstrations that we took part in, filled me with elation because the young people seemed to have their priorities right,” said Diana who made aliya from Portsmouth after volunteering in a kibbutz during the 1967 war.

“For years I’ve been complaining about our kids’ generation, that they never read the papers and don’t know or care about what’s happening, but I was wrong.  They may not read the papers as much as the 60 year-olds, but they knew what is wrong with the country’s circumstances.  We never actually calculated what our kids have paid in rent in Tel Aviv but I know the sum is appalling.  I read somewhere that one of the crucial aspects of these youngsters is that many of them have participated in different leadership courses, which has helped enormously in getting the protest off the ground and onto Rothschild Boulevard.”

Across the road from where Ron has bagged a bench, a portly gentleman in a somewhat crumpled white suit and Panama hat sits surveying the beginnings of a new day on the Boulevard walk.

In actual fact Mr. Conti has been doing exactly that for the last 11 years, sitting outside the Conti menswear shop at No. 45.  The shop is about to close down and Mr. Conti will move on – or rather be removed by a fork-lift as he is a rather heavy very life-like plaster figure that always brings a smile to my face when walking his Boulevard.  He always seems so benevolent sitting there, cigar in hand and rather reminiscent of Winston Churchill in appearance.

“Mr. Conti has been sitting outside my shop in all weathers for over a decade and he has seen so much during that time, you really don’t want to know,” says shop owner Ayal Naftali

“There were the extensive renovations of the Bauhaus heritage buildings as part of the deal with the big companies who built the multi-storey office blocks and banks; all sorts of art exhibitions, White Nights and darker times.  Exhibitions of decorated bulls, dolphins and the like – so much, but he never expresses his opinion although I am sure of one thing, Mr. Conti is a deep thinker,” says Ayal with a broad grin!

Mr. Conti was originally outside a restaurant in one of the streets off the Boulevard and Ayal bought him to keep an eye on things outside hisup-market shop which is closing down, sign of the times as the huge banner behind Mr. Conti declares that everything is being sold at a 70% discount and that all items must go.

What about Mr. Conti?  Is he for sale and at what discount?

 “Mr. Conti is not for sale – he is coming home to Hod HaSharon with me.  He’ll find it tough but the cost of living is slightly lower than here in Rothschild Boulevard and a lot quieter for an old man,” says Ayal with a heavy note of sadness in his humor.


Photos and article by Lydia Aisenberg.

Eriana Rivera-Rozo, a former Intensive Arabic Semester student, shared her unique experience in Israel with her university magazine. Since the article came out, Eriana has moved to Greensboro, North Carolina where she is busy working for an Israeli company called Albaad, following her time spent at the Carter Center for Peace.

Text and Photos by Lydia Aisenberg

Traveling through the northern portion of the Jordan Valley (Syrian-African Rift) and visiting the heights of the Golan mountain range in springtime is a pretty awesome experience as the fourth group undertaking the 5-month duration MASA-Givat Haviva Intensive Arabic Semester recently discovered.

On a particularly hot spring day preceded by a few days of rain, the undulating hills on the Israeli side of River Jordan wending its way through the valley are nowadays covered in green undergrowth, carpets of colorful flowers and orchards of purple blossomed nectarine fruit orchards.  On the other side of the River Jordan and valley floor, the Gilead mountain range equally as green and peppered with Jordan villages large and small the success of their agricultural efforts as evident as those of the Israeli farmers on the east bank of the river.

Old Gesher was the first port of call for the day.  The site of the original Kibbutz Gesher, the first settlement to withstand an attack by the Arab Legion in April, 1948 is an important geopolitical and historical site attracting thousands of Israelis and overseas visitors annually.

The new Kibbutz Gesher stands a short distance away on a hilltop overlooking the original settlement, the River Jordan and the remains of three bridges, Roman, Turkish and British built, straddling the waters.  Kibbutz born Nirit Bagron, whose grandparents Ruth and Ayli Kapp were founder members of Gesher (bridge in Hebrew) welcomed the students to the place her grandparents built, defended and eventually abandoned in order to rebuild at a nearby location easier to defend.

Nirit explains that when the Arab army attacked the 120 member kibbutz in 1948, the communities 50 children were kept in an underground bunker but later smuggled in the middle of the night to the neighboring kibbutz of Ashdod Yaacov and from there to an abandoned monastery in Haifa – nowadays renovated and to be found in the courtyard of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

Following a 15-minute audio-visual film (screened in the reconstructed dining hall) describing the founding of Old Gesher, the fighting in the 1948 War of Independence and background of the historical three bridges and railway line that crossed the River Jordan and continued on to Damascus in pre-1948 days, Nirit accompanied the students to the underground bunker where the children had been sheltering and that also served as a center to treat the wounded and safe place for the radio operator to transmit from.

In the section of the bunker – only in recent years rediscovered under mounds of earth and renovated – used to treat the wounded, Nirit shows where kibbutz member and then nurse Leah Kremer (nowadays 92 years of age) worked under the most difficult of circumstances.

Standing next to a plaster model of Leah Kremer at work, Nirit shows the actual book that Nurse Leah recorded the dates, names, injuries and treatment given in her portion of the bunker, shared with the communications officer, the original radio equipment sitting on a table opposite the treatment bed. 

Back above ground and a short walk to the present day security fence and on a hilltop a short distance away, over the river and the three bridges, a Jordanian Army sentry box.

A one-hundred year old engine which was rescued from the demilitarized zone has been restored and stands by the fence under the old dining hall.  

Nirit unlocks the gate in the fence after checking with the Jordanian soldiers it is okay to enter the demilitarized zone - adhering to the agreement brokered with regard the site.  Right: a basalt built khan in a photo as it was many decades ago and prior to recent renovation in the zone.

Once permission was given for the Israelis to work uncovering remains in the area over the fence but hugging the east bank of the River Jordan, many artifacts of various periods of rule, whether the Roman or Ottoman Empires or the British Mandate. 

The Roman bridge became to be called the “Bridge of the Meeting Place” due to the convergence of the rivers Jordan and Yarmuk a short distance upstream.

The 1904 Turkish bridge was built as part of the famous Hedjaz Railway Valley Line from Haifa to Damascus and the British constructed the third bridge in 1925.

All three bridges were blown up by members of the Hagana during the 1948 Independence War in order to put pay to the invasion plans of the Arab armies at that time. 

NAHARAYIM – The ISLAND of PEACE – The PICKED FLOWERS HILL

A unique agreement was reached with the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan in 1927.  That agreement enabled engineer Pinchas Rutenberg, founder of the Palestine Electric Company, to build the company’s main power station at nearby Naharayim, Hebrew play on words meaning where two rivers meet – the Jordan and the Yarmuk.

Later to become the Israel Electric Corporation, the Emir agreed to give the rights to use 6,000 dunams of land that at the time was under the control of Transjordan and the building of 3 dams got under way in the early 1930s.  The Naharayim plant began to supply electricity to communities both sides of the border until it was blown up by the Arab Legion during the War of Independence.

The story of Naharayim and the opening of the ‘Peace Island’ following a peace accord with the Jordanians in 1994 and the founding of the ‘Picked Flowers Hill’ in memory of seven Israeli high school girls murdered by a Jordanian soldier visiting the ‘Peace Island’ were dealt with by local guide and member of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov, Ran Amitai.

Passing through the security fence to the Peace Island, stopping at the point where the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers join and for papers to be inspected by Jordanian soldiers stationed in a sentry box in the form of a large arch with portraits of the late King Hussein and his son, the present day king Abdullah, the IAS students arrive at the Peace Island where another large portrait of King Abdullah graces an observation platform.

After a detailed description of the terrain and background to agreements made between Israel and Jordan, Ran accompanies the group deeper along the banks of the Jordan to the remains of the main portion of the Naharayim Power Station and an old Hedjaz Railway Station, the latter covered in fascinating graffiti from the 1930s to later periods.  A number of signatures were from Jewish workers employed by Rutenberg and also one left by a British serviceman in 1943.

Next port of call:
THE GAVRIEL SHEROVER CENTER at TZEMACH on the shores of Lake Kinneret

A visit to Beit Gavriel on the shores of the Kinneret en route to the Golan Heights was a welcome break and opportunity to not only admire the innovative architecture and Jerusalem stone used to construct the cultural center in memory of Gavriel Sherover but accommodating staff agreed to open up the ‘Peace Room’ incorporated in the design of the center by Gavriel’s mother, Gita Sherover.

Even after a few hours of walking around the Givat Haviva campus, Intensive Arabic Semester students still did not get to see a great deal of what can be found in the various departments, exhibition halls and archives of the 1949 founded institute in Wadi Ara.

Although the IAS program is under the joint auspices of MASA and Givat Haviva, students are based in the nearby Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz of Barkai where they reside and attend classes in spoken Arabic, Arab history, Middle Eastern studies, Israel studies in the context of Arab relations, Hebrew and much more.

During the recent visit to the campus students learned about the story of Haviva Reik – after whom the campus is named – whilst sitting around the memorial unveiled in her honor in November, 2009 – the 65th anniversary since her death.  They also visited the Art Center and Peace Gallery, viewed the Peace Tree project of 2003 on the main lawn as well as the Peace Pole situated between the old and new buildings of the Peace Library, and were taken around one of the main exhibitions of Moreshet, The Mordechai Anielewicz Holocaust Study and Research Center situated on campus.