Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Journal-1

BringThemHome-the hostages in Gaza-NOW

Journals tend to begin with a journey, like a vacation, or maybe a change in life circumstance. A move, becoming a citizen of Israel would be one of those. 

Subtext: Now I have the right to wonder if voting matters in two countries, not just one! 


An old time blogging colleague writes Life in Israel, and that is totally worth checking out. But everyone's life is different. Here's one therapist's point of view. 


Journal 1, October 7


Actually, today is October 8, 2024 


Today marks a year plus one day since the most obscene, most unimaginable chapter in the history of the State of Israel. I can't even begin to put the details of the October 7, 2023 to the page, suffice it to say that what you have read, if the details are exceedingly grotesque and inhumane, well, it all of that is true.  


Why should we be surprised. Jewish history is punctuated with massacres. Crusaders out to slaughter. Murderous Cossacks roving into towns hunting Jews. My own grandmother, her soul should rest in Heaven, once told me that Polish marauders, Cossacks, barged into her village, her home, and seeing her in a rocker nursing my father, spared her life. She didn't say much other than that. The czar let the Jews of the village leave that day, assuming they had money for passage, the day a fast day. We celebrate that fast at the end of this week, Yom Kippur.


As a rule, the sparing of Jewish suffering has never been a thing. Witness events in France, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, you name it. The streets in North America aren't safe, there's mayhem on college campuses. Having suffered pogroms and a holocaust, a surge of antisemitism is foreboding. And then, October 7, 2023. And it happened on holy land.   


G-d's Country

Another version of God's country


That attack defiled a holy land. 


Israel is the real G-d's country, Jews and Christians believe, as opposed to Wisconsin, where Heileman's Old Style is brewed. Holiness is in Eretz Yisrael, Israel, if it is anywhere. 


G-d's presence is what makes the land holy, Her/His holiness, not ours. We may aspire but most of us don't come close.  


And Hamas had the chutzpah to defile it, suspending wartime norms: rampant rape, decapitation and the severing of other body parts, mutilation, wholesale slaughter of 1200 innocents at a music festival. And then joy, the celebration of perpetrators. Nasty, very not holy stuff.


Yes, I'm still working it out.  


Difficult to digest, this hatred towards Jewish people disguised as a hatred Zionism. News flash, they are one and the same. Difficult to note the many videos and programs that remind us of what happened. 


But that is what we all did yesterday from sun up to sun down. An entire nation grieved their dead their stolen — kidnapped hostages still in harm's way. We grieved between sirens, jarring warnings that missiles approach. Get to a safe place. You have a minute and a half.


For some, sirens are triggering, as they are meant to be, unresolved PTSD of October 7 and the weeks, now month, a year that followed. Not a good year. Traumatizing for some but for others a way of life, how one lives, lived prior to this war. Missiles from Lebanon in the north, missiles from Gaza in the south, going on thirty years. 


For Israelis at the borders sirens are not something new.  


But to the average new immigrant (me) and to perhaps millions of Israelis, the sounds of missiles are new, as is the fear. When our defenses are down, the sound of sirens screaming, the booms bursting, despite the psychological defense of denial, despite living life as if there is no war, we feel fear.


It is how the enemy lives, too.



Blessings and Peace, 

 

therapydoc

 

Saturday, August 31, 2024

The Novelty is Not Wearing Off



 



When we have strong feelings . . .  most of us want to  share them.

A therapist learns that when someone has pressured speech it isn't the words to listen to, rather the force of the words, the energy behind them--that's how we know what is driven by emotion. Words, our speech, tell a therapist less than the physical cues, context.  This is why we sometimes don't even hear what you are saying, we're so astounded by the feelings, either absorbing deflecting, repelling or protecting ourselves from all that delicious or too often toxic, emotion. All we need to hear are a few words and we get it. 

But let's talk about me and how I can't help but keep sharing this experience. 

We ate lunch at the home of my first new friend. How did I meet her? I attended a Friday night Shabbat service at a new synagogue, new for me, the first one at services. I'm walking to a balcony seat (yes, women are up in a balcony and no, I wouldn't have it any other way) when two other women, they are about my age, enter the space and smile and welcome me, ask am I new.

Well, yes. I'm new. I'm old, but new here. Not exactly old but you know what I mean. 

I am, in a word, still star struck being in Israel, living in Israel as opposed to visiting, and it shows. When FD and I vacationed, with the exception of 2 trips -Hawaii and Panama- we vacationed in Israel. Sure, it was ostensibly to visit nieces and nephews, friends. But mostly to be in Israel. To us this is where we should be, it is home. 

I used to say that leaving felt like going from living color to black and white, that's how dark it felt, leaving Eretz Yisrael. 

Anyway, all that to say that a month since the move here my new friend tells me that she will never forget that glow, how I couldn't get over it, living here, how wonderful it had been for her to see that appreciation for what Israelis once took for granted, no more. She said it in so many words. 

It isn't as if the news isn't disturbing and sad, and it isn't easy to see, at a dinner, a place at the table set for a hostage. We pray for their speedy return. But I am out of bed sometimes at 4:45 AM, early even for me, and it is dark outside and quiet, and by 5:40 the No. 2 bus passes my building as I watch the sun come up from our balcony, and the garbage guys are taking out the cans for pickup, and slowly traffic begins. There is a tiny sliver of moon. 

And that feeling isn't gone, but it is tainted with one that has been bothering me for some time, regret, regret for waiting so long. 

And I have to say that mantra:  

Don't look back, it will make you depressed.
Don't look forward, it will make you anxious.
Stay in the present. 

At the moment, that's pretty great. 

therapydoc



Thursday, August 22, 2024

Being an Immigrant, Solving Puzzles


Sunrise from my balcony in Israel

I'm just going to say it: one of my best friends in Israel, Google Translate, is a huge enabler.

To the right, the sunrise. Pretty great. I wake up, go outside, pray and sing. But today I felt like saying hi.

What is it like becoming a new citizen here? 

Despite English being a second language to many, many Israelis (they learn it in school) communicating always starts with Hebrew. Knowing Hebrew, understanding it and speaking it, is important. We work on ours daily despite having learned to read and write in early childhood. We have the tools, but neither FD or I ever really learned to speak the language. 

Israelis will say: It's easy! Much of our language is really English but Hebra-isized. The problem is that when we read something in Hebrew our brains automatically assume all words are new to us. So we waste a few minutes working them out only to come to realize that the word פצצההת, for example, is just Pizza Hut. Or that סופרמרקת means supermarket. Or the word סייסו, means 'say so' and sounds exactly the same way in Hebrew. 

Being a 'greener' means forever solving puzzles. Who doesn't like a good puzzle?

More on being an immigrant: 

When a Jew moves to Israel she has typically spent 6 months to a year proving her identity to the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency. The application complete, a Visa Olah B in hand, the new citizen has the right to travel to Israel and enjoy the benefits of merely being new citizens. FD and I did this, spent months and months banging our heads against the wall to pass bureaucratic muster, finally receiving the blessing to return. Then, upon landing at Ben Gurion, we were ushered to a room to meet with a government official who explained our rights and delivered our temporary identification cards. Quite a rush. The endorphins insane.

The laws applying to new citizens are beneficent, generous, and include monthly stipends, free Hebrew classes, breaks on mortgages, a break on the purchase of a new automobile, a free flight if it is absolutely unaffordable. There are more. It is impressive, but it is the Israeli people who astound me. 

When FD and I are lost or can't figure out what we have to do in any situation, all we have to say is: Anachnu olim chadashim, we are new immigrants. Smiles follow, looks of incredulity. WELCOME! WELCOME HOME! WHEN DID YOU GET HERE! WHERE ARE YOU FROM? The welcome is in heavily accented English, sometimes in Hebrew and following that, there is so much kindness. They bend over backwards to help. It is magical. 

Upon hearing the magic words, we are new citizens, following the big welcome, many will say: NOW? You want to come to Israel NOW? You do know there is a war here, right?

And we say yes, we are aware. We do not say that we would rather die here Heaven Forbid, than live anywhere else. But we are thinking that and it is understood. This is the attitude of most people who live here, not that there aren't those who could use a well deserved break from the chaos. But it would be a temporary trip. This is our country is the general feeling. God gave it to us and we will never abandon it, we will never abandon Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.  

The war? You want to know about that? 

It is a very ugly war. 

Today I read that the bodies of six more hostages have been found and that one soldier has died. I only read blips of news because it is as disturbing here as it is in the USA, which says a lot. But when a soldier or a hostage or an innocent civilian dies, we hear about it and we cry. It is automatic. 

Enough for today. 

Shabat Shalom, Peace,

therapydoc


Monday, August 05, 2024

Why Would Anyone Move to Israel, Especially Now?

FD and I are at Gate B14 to board a flight to Fort Lauderdale. 

No, it is not a vacation. This is the first stop. We are moving—intending to spend the rest of our lives in Israel. 


(I’m sorry, you know who you are, that I never had the chance to visit your farm). 

 

See, we're finally going. Not a vacation, not a Sabbatical. Not to visit the kids. 


We love America, the old America, the tolerant America. Not that we are leaving because the old America has changed, that melting pot, although it really has changed. And we're not leaving because of antisemitism, although that is not a bad reason to leave if one is a Jew. We get it. The Age of Jewish Enlightenment/tolerance is over. Hate has been in the air for decades and it reigns.


We'll be flying El Al, perhaps the only airline flying to Israel, the only armed airline. We leave tonight. 

 

Yes, we know that Iran vows retaliation for the assassination of a beloved leader, read murderer, a plotter and a planner of the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of all Jews. That's the plan for all of us, everywhere, in the Palestinian-Hamas-Arab playbook.  

 

FD reminded me recently that there exists an entire generation of young people who know nothing about September 11, 2001. They weren't born or weren't cognizant of what happened here in New York. The deaths, the collapse of the Towers. This explains at least partly, why they might support the Palestinian people over the Jews. They don't get it that that other team, the one that isn't into Democracy, intends to come for them, too.

 

The culmination of this war is obviously in G-d’s hands, not President Biden's, although we appreciate his support, and it is not in Bini Netanyahu's. G-d seems to have empowered the Jewish people with intellect and talent and most important, a Torah that is true, and a Talmud, a compilation of books that include prophecies indicating that we will be, in the end, victorious. There will be blood, unfortunately, there will be pain and suffering and violations (read the book of Zachariah) but in the end the Jews will prevail. 

 

We believe this. That we belong there not here. This has been a lifelong dream beginning well before a massacre on October 7 that took thousands of Jewish lives and hundreds of hostages, many of whom are unfortunately gone, martyrs. The dream is inextinguishable in the Jewish soul, it is thousands of years old, precedes all pogroms and massacres. It precedes children and women and men young and old, brave soldiers and soon-to-be soldiers. Such cowards, these Palestinian/Hamas (they are one in the same, people, don't believe what you read) hoodlums honestly. Gangsters. Stealing babies. Mutilating babies, women, men. 

 

There are a few psalms, Tehillim, we say daily, psalms that literally mention Hamas by name. Take a look at Psalm 140. I’m not telling Jews anything they don’t know. 

Hamas is a word that means violence. They named themselves VIOLENCE. Wow.


Enough politics, let's talk about me. 


The response from the community to our move? Only heartfelt well wishes, so many of them, so much love, such an incredible atmosphere of hope and even, shall I say, jealousy because in the Jewish community Aliyah, becoming an Israeli citizen, is the goal. It is NOT a better you than me These are sincere people, people who truly wish that they could do this, too, that they could muster the finances (no small task, there's never enough). The decision not to move is also about family obligation. My demographic is a sandwich generation. How does one leave elderly parents, many with serious health problems, or children? HOW DO YOU LEAVE PRECIOUS GRANDCHILDREN? Most do not. 

 

But living in Israel is the ultimate commandment, the most important mitzvah. 

Many, maybe a third of the commandments of the Torah are about what one must do when living in the Holy Land. The land of Israel, let's just say it, not Palestine. Palestine is for Palestinians. Israel is for Yisraelim. Jews. 

 

Rabbi Cohen said it in one of many beautiful vorts (a vort is a short speech to the congregation, good luck with that). He said that many years ago, in line at Ikea, everyone looked up at a TV at the aftermath of an explosion, a bomb set off in Jerusalem, a pe-gu-ah, a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, perhaps on a bus or a packed downtown restaurant —Orthodox Jewish people searching for remains, bones and skin, heads, legs and arms, pieces of human beings, innocent civilians, blown to bits by a bomb.

 

What did Rabbi Cohen hear from the shoppers nearby? WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER WANT TO LIVE THERE?    

 

Well, because this is the land of milk and honey. This is the land that Heaven sent and this lovely land is mine. You land, you look around, and you marvel and don't stop.


It is in our blood, it is in our spirit, and many of us long, literally long for Jerusalem. You can’t buy this feeling, it is in our collective DNA or memory, ask a Jungian.

 

We become citizens of Israel soon after we land on Israeli soil, when an agency, perhaps the Israeli consulate, presents us with ID cards, assuming the office is still staffed. There’s this war going on, you know. 


FD's mother, 99, is coming with us. She is already an Israeli citizen but had to come back to the States for a few years, a terrible loss, my sister-in-law. How does one lose a child?  But now my mother-in-law is ready to come home, and so are we.

 

There isn't a person in the community I haven't hugged goodbye. If I missed you I’m sorry. I've been crying for three weeks, sadness, joy, a compote of emotions. This is crazy-making, and as you all know that's a DSM diagnosis.

 

I’ll post pictures next time.

 

As we say (as you chutzniks, ha ha) say, having not yet subscribed to this modifier of craziness quite yet. Next Year in Jerusalem. 


Come see me.

 

Blessings, 


therapydoc

 

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

 

Bring them home, the Homeland Concert


There's not much to say. Wait, I take it back. There's SO much to say it is too much. There has to be an Israel, as it is, not different, there's no place else to go. For people who are not Jewish? There are all kinds of countries available. Are these countries, Muslim countries, opening their doors to the people who aided Hamas?  (Yes, Palestinians aided Hamas) Who would want the perpetrators of a pogrom within their midst. No. There have been no invitations. 

Every day a Jewish person who feels powerless over the war, the slaughter of Jew-hating sociopaths, does what they can. We give money. We send supplies. We send our children to become holy soldiers. The uniforms, our rabbis tell us, are holy. But mostly we send prayers. 

And songs. Jews like songs. We have expressed ourselves with music from times past. 

Check out this one.  It is referred to as The Homeland Concert in Caesaria. I'm pretty sure just released. 

Hopefully this link will work for you. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/18s3p7r/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%98_%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%AA_homeland_concert/

Not sure about these others. 

https://x.com/IldemocracyHQ/status/1740057432720908535?s=20

https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/18s3p7r/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%98_%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%AA_homeland_concert/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=post_embed&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

קונצרט מולדת homeland concert
byu/Imas0ng inIsrael


https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/18s3p7r/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%98_%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%AA_homeland_concert/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=post_embed&utm_term=1&utm_content=1 

 




Tuesday, November 21, 2023

An Israeli Funeral





Every day we observant-type Jews pray for a messiah, a person, probably, who will bring the world out of darkness. I always ask for a few serious miracles to accompany that. 

That we believe this, well, it is a personal thing, but it is what they are singing in the video above, a funeral. In America you don't see this. But here we see the mother of a fallen soldier, Binyamin Meir Airley, leaving her son's gravesite, praying as she walks between two lines of friends and family (this is customary everywhere), Binyamin a cousin of a cousin of mine. 

Following the funeral is the shiva, the 7 days of mourning for first degree relatives. We say, when we leave them after a visit:

 המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים  .

Hamakom (G-d) should comfort you among the gates of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Until I saw this video, honest, I'm not sure I ever really understood what that meant. 

To happier times!

therapydoc 


Monday, November 20, 2023

All the World Wants the Jews Dead

An article in Esquire, 1974 


Just the title of that article:  All the World Wants the Jews Dead,  is enough to make a Jew worried, depressed.  We should all be emotional wrecks. 

Cynthia Ozick wrote it in 1974 following the Yom Kippur War, a war intent upon Jewish annihilation. 

Jews should have been depressed then, for sure, but after a solid victory they waved such realities away. They are born to a greater purpose, this is the narrative they live by. We are different. Our fate is different. 

Cynthia Ozick is brilliant. 

Me? I'm energized, writing letter after letter to dean after dean to combat antisemitism on college campuses. It can feel a hopeless cause, at this point, but it is a cause and it gives me something to do when I wake up at four a.m.

More on that another day, fighting antisemitism, I mean, not my wake time. 

I'm overwhelmed, honestly, with the need for my services here in the United States, am so busy. Then I imagine the workload for therapists in Israel, how the need must be extraordinary. Trauma following a massacre, the sounds of missiles and the Iron Dome, all that rushing to the bomb shelter, it is bad for kids, bad for parents. Bad for everyone. 

Things apparently haven't improved for the Jews, they were never really good except for a few years. We call these respites our Golden Age, Golden Ages, never long enough. 

Not that we're sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. No time for that. (Smiley emoticon) here. 

therapydoc


Journal-1

BringThemHome-the hostages in Gaza-NOW Journals tend to begin with a journey, like a vacation, or maybe a change in life circumstance. A mov...