Making Aliyah

It was sometimes back in the early eighties, GDR times. I was eight or maybe already nine. Other than most of my classmates I didn’t attend after-school daycare. Usually both parents worked in a full time job and schools were open after class until 6 p.m. – time the state knew to use. Yet, my parents excused me from after-school daycare as my mother was at this time studying from home engineering and business science.

This arrangement didn’t mean that my mother was always home when I got back from school. So, I had plenty opportunity to loose my keys and I did so quite frequently. Other than that this arrangement made me happy. I’ve always been one who sought the security of my home over a public stage if it came to my person.

Hence, it wasn’t surprising that I was home alone that particular afternoon I remember. Out of some reason, probably because we were ask to bring it to school the next day or something similar, I was searching the apartment for a certain green booklet. It was called Book of the Family and every couple that got married in East Germany got one. It contained from then on all the important, official things of family life in the shape of certificates: marriages, births, deaths.

I found it in one of the living room cupboards and sat down to flip through it. One of my peculiarities has it that I skim through newspapers, magazines and books from back to front. I’ve always done so, even before I ever heard about Hebrew or the fact that this is the right way to read a Hebrew book. It’s the way my mother skims through things as well.

So, I skimmed through the pages and stopped at the first page that had something written on it. It was a certificate of death. I didn’t even know that someone died in my family. Sure, we had a grave without a gravestone we went to a couple of times a year. I once heard my parents call it a family grave. But as I couldn’t come up with anyone lying there I decided that my parents just got the place so we had already a piece of land to go to in case someone might die. I mean in the GDR you had to wait to be allowed to buy a car for 20+ years. Maybe graves were a scare good as well and as you couldn’t wait for 20 years to burry a body it was better to take precautions.

Anyway, we had a gravesite we visited and here I was looking at a certificate of death in the book of my family. I was sure I was only a moment away from discovering a well-hidden (at least from me) family secret. I wasn’t interested in the small print but looked down at the name and stopped breathing. The death certificate was issue for Aviva Brueckner. I closed the booklet with a snap and put it with shaking hands back there I had found it.

That was it. I was officially dead. I didn’t really feel dead. My heart was racing. It beat up to my ears. Goose bumps had popped up all over my arms. And I breathed as hard as if I had just run a marathon. Yet, the state had officially issued a death certificate for me. So, maybe what I thought was life was just an illusion. Maybe after I died I had decided to linger on with my family and was living a ghost life. Or I was bitten by a vampire and had become one myself after my death.

I must have looked like one when my mom came home shortly after. I wasn’t too keen to tell her what I had found out. There was no way she didn’t know that I was dead as the certificate of my death was in the Book of the Family. But maybe once I admitted that I discovered the secret I couldn’t continue to live with them. What was life anyway?

Well, the way mothers are my mom found out pretty soon what had happened. You just can’t hide things like this for long from your parents. She assured me that according to the state of the art of science I was alive. The certificate I’d found had been issued for my sister who was born and died two years before I entered this world. My parents had called me Aviva just like her – a new beginning two years later.

From this day on my sister has been as alive in me as I was dead with her for this short moment that afternoon when I learnt of her existence. Knowing of her just increased my bond with my family, my desire to learn of the past, my quest to leave a footprint behind and my thirst for life – whatever being alive means.

Sometimes it makes me feel like I really have to fit two lives into one. I am restless, always seeking and sometimes antipodal. Always it makes me even more happy that I am blessed not only with loving parents and grandparents but also with a big brother who is in this world and in my life and there for me. Funnily enough, distance increases the value you put on your family, at least for me.

I am in Israel now for 8 months and for the first time since I left Germany my family is visiting. What do I tell them about my journey? What about successes?

When I was asked back in the last quarter of 2009, ever after I spoke about my decision to make aliyah to the most diverse people, what my motivation was to leave everything behind and start all over again, I replied that I had to discover the other half of me. And it was true – partly…

Deep inside me I questioned myself if I really had to choose walking left when everyone thought right the better choice for me. So yes, I came to learn about me. But even more so I came to learn what it means to fit in. I wanted to start over again to have a chance to find happiness in a ‘normal’ life: job, place to live, some money in the bank, a circle of friends, a hobby or two, maybe even a family.

I stopped me from writing more than this blog or drawing more than a doodle in order to have room in my head to occupy myself with career choices. I struggled hard against me and the odds/ system in order to arrange me a chance to experience everything being an Israeli – my focus group – seemed to mean.

But my life was against me. And I was against me. I felt like I spent my whole strength to run from something that could easily pull me back no matter how much force I would apply. The drain made me depressed and sick.

I pulled the emergency break before I severed all ties to the kibbutz because I made me believe that a ‘normal’ person would not choose freely to stay in a kibbutz in the middle of the desert. I realized that the kibbutz is like Mount Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy – for some it seems to be a infinite waiting period without being able to move on, for some it might be a hard trip up a hill while facing unbelievable hard struggles to get stronger, but for some it might also be paradise on earth. It took me a little longer to realize that I truly wasted my power in the unapt attempt to run away from myself.

As soon as I started to draw and write again my condition improved. I was afraid to give in to the craving as it was like declaring surrender. But it was also a relief. Well, to be true it was much more a relief than a defeat for me.

And so, what if this is what I am – words and colors? What does it mean that I can’t find satisfaction and fulfillment even in the idea of a life between an office or praxis and a settled home? What if I am in the end just your ordinary story teller?

Doesn’t it just mean that instead of fearful running away from the difference, I need to spend this same energy I used to run to find a way to make a living of it?

Well, so I write now the story of a girl who goes into the world to learn to be normal, just to find out that she is much more of a freak than even she ever thought – unable to be normal but also loved for being just that, because the ‘normal’ thing in any of us is the difference. I hope to sell the story once I am done, just as I hope to sell a story I’ve already written before I went out in a quest to become normal.

And guess what?! My mother loves it – the story and my truth I found out about me. Doesn’t that mean that I could tell my family about a success already?

This post is part of Jewels of Elul, which celebrates the Jewish tradition to dedicate the 29 days of the month of Elul to growth and discovery in preparation for the coming high holy days. This year the program is benefiting Beit T’shuvah, a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles. You can subscribe on Jewels of Elul
to receive inspirational reflections from public figures each day of the month. You don’t have to be on the blog tour to write a blog post on “The Art of Beginning… Again”. We invite everyone to post this month (August 11th – September 8th) with Jewels of Elul to grow and learn.

A world exists in which I am courageous and strong. I am the heroine of this world – Dante’s Beatrice, Edward’s Bella, Mr. Darcy’s Elizabeth, Harry’s best friend Hermione or Odina LeJohn, Lea Schreiber, Avril Pattinson – the heroines of my books. At the same time I move the pen, I am in charge over everything that happens. What I want to achieve, will exist.

In this world I know who I am, what I want and how I can achieve it; I approach people without fear; I am sure of my skills and excel myself; I use my newly gained influence for the good of others and for whatever is important to me; yes, I even answer the phone in this world when it rings. I am still far from perfect in this world, however I am far more the person, I want to be and could be.

This is the world I create in my head, my stories, my pictures, my dreams. I can dive into it. And I am one of the lucky, who got the talent to make this world visible for whoever wants to visit it. It is a gaudy and captivating world, not easy but filled with hope, and as normal as it is extraordinary. This world isn’t reality.

Not yet. So far, I am still looking for me and my place. So far, I don’t know, who I am. So far, I still ask myself what this lavish configuration with skills is meant for, if I am not given a chance to use them. So far, I am still ruled by fear and doubt.

Yet, every day I start anew despite the fear, despite the doubt. Again and again. Sometimes I take only small steps – a line on a white canvas, a word on an empty sheet of paper, a new file. Then again the first small step of a new beginning is rather a huge jump – like my recent aliyah.

I almost deliquesce because of fear, hide for days, hope for help and support from outside. But once the darkness is lessened by the first ray of light, I start again.

Why? Why expose oneself again and again to the pain of an end and the strain of a new beginning?

Because I know the world how it could be. Because I’ve seen what I could be and who I could be due to the things, I am able to do, and due to the person that exists already deep in me. And because I know that only if I start over and over again, learn from my mistakes, discover myself, my world becomes reality.

Only then will my life become fuller and wealthier and the advance payments nature has deposited with me in the shape of talents and skills makes sense. Only then I will find a publisher because I haven’t given up before I could ask, in fear of the rejection. Only then people, who see my art, not only say I should be successful with it, but I really am. And only then I will be some day able to lift my eyes high enough from the floor when I walk through the street so that I am able to see the man of my life. Advancing him however, might still take years. And so I can only continue to hope that the day I finally am ready the guy hasn’t yet turned deaf, and continue to see every day as a new beginning – again.

Whoever read yesterday’s post ‘6 Month Aliyah Anniversary‘ knows that I am only slowly regain my initial drive. This is how it is when your biggest obstacle you have to overcome is yourself sometimes. But I couldn’t leave this post up as the first one you see when you come to my blog. So, I took another deep breath and sticked my nose out of my snail shell, if only a little and so far virtually. I sent the following email to the Yad Vashem Research Institute in order to seek a research opportunity/ work at Yad Vashem. It was their publically available email address. So, if anyone has a more personal contact to further my request or other ideas for places I could approach, feel free to either forward the letter in my name or contact me. Thank you!

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

before even starting I know that this will be way to long an application letter. But to simply state I am interested in working for Yad Vashem and if possible even involve in some related research, is just not enough to explain my intentions. Hence, I apologize yet hope you bear with me for a while.

I am Aviva Brueckner – a olah chadasha who currently lives in Kibbutz Revivim. My grandparents, the parents of my mother, came to Israel with the Aliyat Hano’ar after they survived WWII in Germany. Though Jewish they were some of the few lucky ones who were spared the horrors of deportation and concentration camps. Still, once everything was over their mothers sent them, still minors at this time, to build up a better life in Israel. They returned to Germany out of personal reasons in August 1961 and with them their two children, my mother and my uncle.

This explains why I was born in 1975 in East Berlin to an Israeli mother and a German father. In fact, my father’s family would have proudly emphasized the ‘German’ as a description for their descent. I remember my paternal grandfather upon my visits during vacations telling me stories of his war time memories – a time he spent in a special branch of the German Army guarding the V1 rockets along the Channel and after D-Day meandering through Europe – describing this time under the Nazis as the best time in his life.

Back then, I was too young to understand what an affront this was against my mother and her family. Only later I understood how much involved my paternal grandparents, who came from typical German middle class families that lost their little wealth in shape of real estate during the bombing of Dresden and later on through the GDR system, always were in the ideas of German superiority, race laws and Jewish complot to betray them of their righteous place.

Consequently, I grew up between all chairs trying to find my own identity between the guilt of the perpetrator and the grief of the victims and that until I turned 14 in a state that denied the existence of a state of Israel and acknowledged the communistic victims of the Nazi regime over any other victims as the only ‘right’ victims. It is a way that I am still walking but that has led me in December of last year to Israel. And during my time in the Kibbitz Ulpan I started working with Yonat Sened of all people.

It took me some time and the built up of a lot of trust between us until I revealed her, the Warsaw Ghetto survivor, the whole story of my family. She on the other hand, though she always quotes James Joyce: ‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.’ urges me to carry the memory on and adds her stories to mine.

It was ultimately her request to carry on that made me turn to you today in seeking work at Yad Vashem. But it is by far not my only motivation. As a studied jurist with special focus on international law and law of the EU I know how much influence the Shoah had on the development of international law as we know it today and the establishment of the UN. As an interested observer of international and Middle East politics I can trace the influence of the memory in today’s problems. A very curious observation of late however is that today the mentioning of the Holocaust especially in discussions about Israel with Europeans seems to be either of no interest or even counterproductive, triggering aggressions on the former victims.

Personally, I would be very interested to help in the research of the area of conflict between how and why the memory of the Shoah develops and changes, how it is used and misused or devaluated and how it could and should be kept alive and used without triggering backlashes. Another area I would like to get involved in is the impact of the Holocaust on later generations.

But basically, I would be happy to play a part with my knowledge, skills and experiences in any project you could offer me. Therefore, I look forward to hear from you. For your interest I attach my CV to this message.

Regards,

Aviva Brueckner

**************************

Aviva Brueckner

Kibbutz Revivim

D.N. Haluza, 85515

054 6265211

avbrueckner@gmail.com

http://makingaliyah.com and http://avivavictoriabrueckner.wordpress.com

I am 6 month now, 6 month and three days to be precise. It is a lazy Shabbat in the kibbutz. The pool is not yet open and the first game of the World Cup today starts only in an hour. All in all, nothing distracts me form reflecting on my first half year in Israel – if you exclude the cat that thinks it is mine and fights with my laptop over my attention; and if you exclude these mosquito bites that line up on my forearms and ankles and itch terribly.

Six month back in the early hours of December 16 I landed on Ben Gurion Airport. It took me years to reach the decision to leave Berlin and to shift the center of my vital interests to Israel (sic!). It had been only something like eight weeks from the day I approached the Jewish Agency to my actual day of my aliyah.

These last weeks before my flight were marked by the organization and execution of my last exhibition in Berlin for the time being and the wrap up of my life there. No time to ponder and question my decision again and again. No time to build up fear or big expectations. The more doubt and outright incomprehension of my decision I faced, the more I had to argue with others about it and defend myself and Israel, the clearer my picture got, why it was important for me and for my other country – as I referred to Israel for the longest time, to do just this.

This almost grim determination helped to counter balance my very shy fawn personality that so often in my life already stood in my way, when it came to leaving my protective ivory tower and to carrying my skin to the market. It made it possible for me to encounter my new home with big eyes and the curiosity of a child discovering a new world.

The abstract beauty of the desert, green valleys and orchards on once bare land that are witness of hard work and successes, the glittering, buzzing business of Tel Aviv, the gleaming white stones of Jerusalem, ancient constructions and modern architecture and last but not least the people living here – I love it and never less than the day before. I traveled the country and its history, paused with it in shock and despair, stopped with it in grief and thankful memory, commemorated the independence, celebrated the Jewish festivals and every new day, we are allowed to see together, and screamed out in incomprehension and defense sometimes about the government, sometimes about the world.

It was half a year full of learning – the language, the people, the culture, new friends. It was half a year of daily work on me in order to go out, face bureaucracy, make connections, be social, jump into the void, smile. Few will have realized how much strength a simple call costs me, even if the receiver is a friend, not to mention a Shalom with an open face to a person I don’t know. Time and time again I took a deep breath and did it, as this is the only way to live my dream.

Lately, my optimism suffered some cracks. 6 month of running the circle of learning that entrance into the army for me is only possible if a unit asks for me, as I am too old for any other, normal way of recruiting, but not getting access to the people that could decide that they need me, have left me disgruntled and disenchanted. Whoever knows me from the beginning or before, knows that this was a big part of my dream – the cherry on top of the whipped cream so to say.

It was one of the things I went out of myself and my way for, further than for anything else before. Being denied the cherry makes me not love the whipped cream less, but I am still deeply disappointed and can not help but feel slightly personally rejected.

Much deeper however, I cut myself. I thought I had outgrown my fawn and protective shells in any aspect of life. And prompt I tapped into the trap of love, when I allowed a man to touch me. As this episode proved, I am even less prepared to not being loved back than to be denied my cherry. My confidence in me and my abilities is not at all yet in the place it should be. Rather my flight instinct was triggered.

In a first impulse I cancelled all my future plans. After six month has the place I started from become my retreat. I try to work through the rubbles of the walls that were around me in order to figure out which were the ones keeping me upright and which were the ones that hindered me to grow. I sense strength, that had left me for a moment completely, come back, and I feel old and new plans take shape again.

So, all I can say six month in my aliyah process – I have fallen down a bit the mountain slop and have still a long way to climb ahead of me. I still don’t know where this ascent is taking me. To put it in the words of a song:

Yesterday, I was born and it’s not yet long that I can walk.
I lost my balance and still, I am able to stand upright.
This is me, this is me – this alone is my guilt.
I am now, I am here, I am me – this alone is my guilt.

there you are sitting at the stage of the theater Volksbühne in my town of birth Berlin. This should have been the last big homage to the world-renown inspector Kurt Wallander, since the last volume of the Wallander series ‘Enemy in the Shade’ was just published. And I wished, you would have left it at that. In lieu thereof you stare with tired, raging eyes in dozens of cameras in front of you and you vow into the sea of microphones that you will tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

So, what is your truth? Instead of speaking about Kurt Wallander you speak about Little Red Riding Hood and the vicious wolf. You tell the fairy tale of the poor, suppressed Palestinian people that doesn’t want to do anything else than to live a peaceful life in their own state. The land that belonged to them was stolen from them in 1948 by these eerie, scary, intimidating Jews. Out of sheer bad will they suppress any ambition for freedom of the Palestinian people and erected a new apartheid regime. Their whole nastiness is represented by the implementation of a blockade of Gaza completely without any reason in order to starve the Palestinian people living in the coastal strip. Since this is an unbearable situation, a group of peace activists with a completely altruistic orientation set out, Mahatma Ghandi or the Dalai Lama alike, to bring humanitarian aid to these poor people. Still on sea this group of Ghandists welcomed a group of raiding soldiers, that committed an act of piracy, with white flags and raised hands – and I almost forgot to mention, the justified rage of a suppressed people. Yet, the soldiers perpetrated a massacre in between all these goods of humanitarian aid anyway.

One question: Did you by any chance support last summer the Green Revolution of the Iranian people against the Mullah regime and did you as well scream bloody murder when Neda Agha-Soltan died? How then can you support the Flotilla with your presence, though these ships set out not only to break law, but to support the Hamas system that is also supported by the same Mullah regime? You say this means to compare pears with apples and I shall not digress? Well, though one cannot look at events of world politics in an isolated way, especially not in this region, let’s ignore Iran for a while.

But you can’t keep me from bringing some colors and hues into your black and white world. How else are we suppose to see the Enemy in the Shade?

In June 2009 an article written by you was published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. It was headlined: Stopped by Apartheid. In this article you wrote:

In 1948, the year of my birth, the state of Israel proclaimed its independence on occupied land. There are no reasons whatsoever to call that a legitimate intervention according to international law. What happened was that Israel simply occupied Palestinian land.

Consequently you explain in the following that the desired Two State Solution wouldn’t bring an end to the occupation. No, for you, who is of course no anti-Semite, Israel and thereby the people of Israel has simply to be erased from this world. Therefore, it is no wonder that you have no problems with militant Islamic Hamas that governs in Gaza and that has written in its Charta that one of their major goals is the destruction of the State of Israel.

But let me enlighten you about a grave flaw of your basic argumentation already: Under international law as I have learnt it during my studies at the European University Viadrina/ Frankfurt (Oder), Germany Israel was entitled to declare its independence in 1948 right smack on the place the State of Israel was established. The crucial factor in this story is the only resolution of the UN General Assembly that ever displayed binding legal character and in that the states of the world agreed to a partition of the British Mandatory Territory.

Since the day this resolution was adopted the Israeli army and its predecessors were involved by the abutting nations in diverse wars and armed conflicts. Egregiously however, the Israeli people has finally learnt to defend themselves and is not ready anymore to be simply slaughtered or suppressed. Yet, despite of all the fighting and the disrespect shown to us, we were always and will always be ready to share.

Yes, Israel might not be perfect. In the same way you criticize in your books the Swedish society, we criticize our state in many ways. However, in the end we made peace with Egypt and Jordan, we were ready to solve our conflicts by entering negotiations and once these negotiations came to a stop, we withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. The result was that Hamas took over the power there. They do not only suppress their own people (the parallels to the Mullah regime, I was not to mention anymore, are striking), they also shoot rockets from their territory at Israel and kidnap our soldiers to blackmail our government.

Just to make this clear once again: The goal of Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel. With this in mind, is it really surprising to anyone that Israel wants to make sure that no more and especially no more deadly weapons fall into the hands of Hamas? That’s the reason why the blockade that is btw also uphold by Egypt – perhaps you should stop the translation of your book into High-Arabic as well – is even though politically problematic so still legal under international law.

Just one more point that you miss in your world view: Even though Israel and Egypt uphold the blockade, hundredth of tons of humanitarian aid are delivered into the Gaza Strip every day, since it is not Israel’s goal to punish the population or starve them. This blockade is all about weapons and weapons-made material. Independent investigations have shown that the situation for the population in Gaza is if not comfortable, so in no way life threatening in any way if you do not arise the suspicion of the Hamas system. And so, the State of Israel offered your group to transport all the humanitarian goods to Gaza via the land route – after their inspection for weapons.

Yet, your group never agreed to this offer. And this shows that the real problem the group you supported wanted to tackle was not, as you say, the improvement of the living situation of the population. Your action was solely aimed to damage the State of Israel. You looked for confrontation and found it unfortunately. And now you even have the chutzpa to complain about it. Your peace loving follow travelers slashed at the abseiling soldiers with iron bars, slingshots and ‘Death to Jews’ calls. All you can bring up in defense is that since not a single soldier died they must have been the ones who were wrong. What is your excuse for the calls of the demonstrators during the burial ceremony in Turkey yesterday: “We are all soldiers of Hamas?” Excuse me, but your blue-eyed attitude is either a dangerous combination of stupidity and ignorance or only acted.

Oh, please speak in the upcoming readings only about Kurt Wallander and Sweden or Mozambique for all that matters. And if you are interested in another cruise, book yourself a cabin on the Aida. There you can use your time well by reading up on the backgrounds and the origins of this conflict that is fought in Israel, but it is fought for Sweden and Europe as well. Hamas and the Mullahs of this world will not stop if they – what beshrat haShem will never happen – defeat the Western stronghold Israel. Our soldiers, my friends, fight for you too, Mr. Mankell.

Some said, I came to the kibbutz in a good hour. But maybe it was that I came like a thief in the darkest hours of the night. Did I come to steal days not meant for me? Did I come to make up for some days of my own life, I always thought uncompleted? Or is it just the way life works, when you walk on that circular path up the mountain that is life and you end up looking at the same landscape a couple of times. Only after a while you realize that your perspective has changed a little.

It was December 16, 2009 around 3:30 a.m. – a clear, cold night in the desert. I remember looking at the moon and the stars since we left the airport and drove into the darkness that lay south of it. Once a gate opened, a person, who had sat next to the street, ejected from the dark. It was my first encounter with Ofra. And from the moment she had entered the taxi and had explained the driver, where he had to go, she poured her motherly affection over me, up to the point that she put me to bed that night – in a bed she had prepared for me. I had arrived.

Some hours later I didn’t know where my nocturnal journey had brought me. Unable to communicate with the world outside by technical means – imagine me cut off from the internet for 24+ hours –  I stumbled straight into Tamar’s room. Was it chance or fate? The first person I saw on this bright new morning became my best friend.

This was the very beginning. Our group in the dinning hall was still small – we did fill up perhaps half a table – and every trip to the meals was done in excitement as it was the time to discover, who else had arrived. Who was new? What was his or her story? What would s/he have to contribute? In between hours one climbed up from newcomer to oldtimer. The dynamic in the group was in constant flow.

For me these days were characterized by the feeling to be catapulted back in time. 14 years had lapsed since my own kibbutz volunteer experience. 10 to 14 years was the average age difference between me and most of you, who shared the table with. It was a miracle for me, why the group accepted me anyway as one of them. Yet, I was so dying for social acceptance that I was a better 20 years old than I ever was before. Well, I had 14 years time to practice.

Every start grows old fast. As one could have predicted, the onset of everyday life brought a change of atmosphere. Not participating in the volunteer work as well as my placement in the advance class put a distance between the ME and the YOU. Still in the group, I observed more from the sideline than from the pitch everyone’s struggle to mature and adjust to the sudden freedom from family expectations, rules and fixed schedules. Some did better, some did worse. Some were faster, some failed to grow.

Get lost, I follow! You gave me the lead. Or better, we influenced each other. I had to learn a lot and still have – about myself, community life and my place in the world. While I might have started age 20, at times I felt mighty old and lacking. It was you who showed me what I have missed in my development due to once having been afraid to be young. I am still scared by the idea of making a mistake or failing by just being me, but I am slowly processing that this is normal, as human.

Having observed you develop, undergoing some serious changes myself, it was only in the last weeks that I felt again closer to you, without feeling the need to be exactly like you to belong. The floor was prepared to allow other people to touch me deeper than just on the surface. And I realized that I was allowed to experience something special. I was allowed to be part of your lives. And for many I can say, I love the person you became.

It would be nice to know how the stories go on. Yet in this moment that we have parted I want to say to you: Stay different! Stay yourselves!

Half a year I avoided posting on this blog about this subject, though it is one of my favorites in any discussion – politics in general and Israeli politics in particular. Of course, making aliyah and encouraging others to do the same by writing about my own journey and giving tips, is a political statement by itself. But despite of that general statement of support of my state Israel I refrained from any other comment, mostly because I knew, once I open this arena, this blog would change its face.

I feel, the time has come today to change my policy. And first thing, I want to invite you out of due reason to play a game of Catch 22 with me.

There is this little strip of land at the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea – the Gaza Strip. It boarders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. We are talking about 360 square kilometers; 360 square kilometers that are the 6^th highly populated area on this planet as roughly 4,100 people live on a square kilometer, 1.5 million all together. Just to give you an idea of what this means here a comparison: even in the urban area of New York City live only around 2,100 people on a square kilometer, the Greater Metro area is even only half as populated and many people think New York already overcrowded.

The current borders of the Gaza Strip were confirmed in the Israeli – Egypt Armistice Agreement of 1949. It was occupied by Israel in 1967 following the Six Days War. When Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979, Egypt didn’t want the Strip back. It renounced officially all claims on land north of their international border and the peace treaty does not mention the Gaza Strip at all. Israel had to remain in control until in 1993 the Oslo accords there signed and the Palestinian Authority was set up as an administrative body to govern Palestinian population centers until a final agreement could be reached. This final agreement was never reached and in the end as a means to get ahead with the peace process, Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

In 2007 then, Hamas – a fundamental, Islamic terrorist organization that denies Israel the right to exist at all, that holds an Israeli soldier kidnapped now for almost four years to pressure Israel into releasing 1,000 convicted criminals, that fires rockets at Israeli territory, that tries to force Sharia law on its own population etc. – took over the control. As a response to that Israel closed down its borders with the Gaza Strip and Egypt did the same. They want to prevent weapons to enter the Strip that can be used to destroy Israel in the end, yet they allow on a daily base humanitarian aid cross the borders.

Humanitarian aid can never be enough to build or rebuild an economy. It would be desirable, if it did, as humanitarian aid is also very cost intensive. Just ask the Americans why they implemented the Marshall Plan in post WWII Germany and Europe. But apart from the fact, that a whole industry today lives from the dependency of some people on their help, humanitarian aid will never include goods that could be used to build weapons as long as there are people on the other side denying our sheer right to live. These are things like steel and fertilizers or other chemicals and high tech products – things you need to build up a competitive economy as well.

Hence, while you deal with a situation, where you are basically left to nurture enemy at your breast, you walk a very small grate. You have to take every means to protect your own people and it is the right of every sovereign state to do so with the means necessary. On the other hand, though you might try to do your best, you deal with a whole lot of people – some with good intentions, some ill meaning and up to their own ends and odds, all very vocal as they have only things to gain – who will never be satisfied with whatever you do unless you start to act one-sided, against your own interests.

So, here are your choices:

1)    You might protect your own people on the cost of keeping up an unpleasant situation for all. The people in Gaza are provided with whatever humanitarian aid is possible, what isn’t enough, yet regulations are necessary to keep the number of weapons, that could kill your population, low. As few people care to see the whole story and teary children’s eyes and crying mothers always trigger empathy, you are the scapegoat – but at least still alive.

2)    You might allow more and more humanitarian aid in. Not you but Hamas takes the praise for it. In result to that it gathers more followers for their radical Islamic movement, that has expansive tendencies, hates everything of the Western lifestyle and restricts all kind of freedoms of its subordinates. Hamas of course enlarges its ammunition supplies. Within a very short period of time Hamas will take over the rule in all of the territories and attack Israel on bitter costs for both of the populations. Of course, the world might honor Israel’s humanitarian behavior and they will take care to write nice words – on the enumerable graves.

It’s time for your vote. What do you say?

You might be surprised but I tend to vote 1). I am all for humanitarian aid. And some rules Israel has established about this food yes, this food no, clearly need to be checked and changed. But overall, as long as Hamas is ruling the Gaza Strip and poses a serious thread for Israel’s existence, I am for the blockade and for its enforcement.

As bad as the outcome is in the end, as much as I hate that people had to die and had to be injured – I don’t see a way the IDF could had handled the situation differently last night. Trying to break a blockade with whatever on board, not responding to offers to send the goods to their destination via the land route, not responding to orders to bring about the ships, use of violence to prevent inspection is a) not a non-violent way of protest and b) a breach of diverse laws. It is an un-vindicable situation that seems to be created only to make Israel look bad again.

In this light it is even more worth to emphasize that after checking the goods Israel will still transfer the aid, the ships were carrying, to Gaza. Unfortunately, the world’s cameras will stay focused on the violence and the scapegoat will be the usual subject. Catch 22.

I apologize already in the beginning. Once again I will just open my head and pour out, what ideas are swirling in it right now.

The situation

It’s another time of transition and change. Yesterday was my last ulpan class, tomorrow will be the final exam. It’s time to say Farewell and Good Buy again to people, just in the last few weeks I really got to know. I should get used to it by now, but I just ain’t.

I’m offered the great opportunity to live in a house for three and a half month for free. I just have to feed the dogs and cats of the family in return. The house is not far from Pardes Hannah and thereby provides access to jobs in the Merkaz Region of Israel.

Since I started my job search, I once again realized that I have great friends, who try to help me by introducing me to the right people. I had a fun experience, when I wrote the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv last week a very cheek email and did not only got a reply to it the very next day, but was told though they can’t offer me a job right now they really want to get to know me. And last but not least, I met a very nice man online, who learning that I search for a job, offered me one in his company. Though we didn’t get together yet, as I lack experience in the field of html/css/Java, we are still in contact.

So, though I haven’t yet found anything adequate for – as a friend of mine called me – the multi-tasking Renaissance woman I am and have to admit that for the moment I am frightened of the outlook on a very open future, I should be confident that in the end I am able to find me a job and in the following a place to stay.

Yes, but then there is this other revelation, I just became aware of during the last days, when thinking about packing up and leaving this kibbutz. I don’t really want to leave, as it feels good to be part of something and not just being the individual person living an independent life. Yes, it is a hustle to get from here to any place really. But that’s what cars are for.

Hence, the sentence that took hold in my brain during the last days was, if only I could make a living out of something here that I am interested in. A talk with my friend Tamar earlier on and a talk today with Goldie, who works for the Ulpan, gave me an idea. And I would really like to hear your opinion and advice on it. So, please comment below.

The idea

One of the areas I mentioned as possible working fields for me was teaching in a non-classroom environment. This means, though I see myself capable of teaching, I don’t see myself as a regular school teacher. Transferring knowledge and skills onto other people in seminars however, is definitely a thing I can see me doing.

Due to my widespread education I could name a whole list of things I would be interested in teaching. However, my guess is that a real interest in courses could be created in either things that I learnt in my time as Physical Therapist and coach, like Pilates, Yoga, relaxation methods, Nordic Walking, personal fitness, wellness and fitness in the pregnancy, massages, baby gymnastics, healthy nutrition, or things I learnt in my time working as a traditional artist/ painter like triggering creativity, sketching, doing the perspective right, coming up with sujets, working with colors etc.

In my talk with Goldie today I learnt, that there is a whole house on the kibbutz with kitchen and sanitary facilities that was once used as a guest house, but stands empty now. It could be used to house participants of seminars for a weekend or a whole week. The kibbutz itself offers a nice 3.5k jogging trail, a soccer field, a swimming pool, history and loads and loads of desert scenery and tranquility around.

So, the facilities don’t need to be found. They are here. But the question is: Would there be a market? Would people spend money to come down here to learn and train or relax? Would I be able to find someone to help me finance my idea? Or is it just a pipe dream?  Whom should I talk to? Any ideas? What do you think?

Beware, this is an intentional use of Denglish – also known as German-English. But I am yet to discover a term in proper English that carries the same conation as the German word ‘Beziehungskiste’ (Engl. item, amorous entanglement, romantic relationship or as a straight translation: the box that contains all aspects of inter or cross gender couple life in a usually very chaotic way = the relationship box). And though I refrained so far from going there, today I want to open and dive deep into these boxes.

If I mention volunteer life in a kibbutz, you might think of Zionism at the kitchen sink, Hebrew in the banana fields and identity search while folding your way through a never ending pile of freshly washed laundry. Go Maccabi! Go Massa Israel!

But this aside, many will also think of sex and drugs and Rock’ n’ Roll. And yes, as many of the participants are in an age there the frontal lobi of their brain still search for the right connections, while the testicles or ovaries have long established the same, and there the dopamine system isn’t yet fully developed – saying, they are looking for the next big kick without being able to truthfully estimate the consequences of their actions – if you are looking for a brainless fun time, you can have it.

You can have it, you don’t have to. And though I am in no way an angle, my frontal lobi have long found their way back into the collectivity of my brain, enabling me to a fairly tactical and focused way of thinking. It could be that this is only a very lame excuse for me being too shy and too uptight to live differently. However, as I had to focus on my Hebrew studies and on how to build up my life from scratch in Israel, my love life would have been an adornment for a nun.

Yes, deep inside I was jealous of the few other female participants of the Ulpan, who soon ended up in more or less serious relationships with Israelis mostly. But then, it was not that there were advances from every side – most fellow ulpan members are much younger than me and most kibbutzniks of my age are already married with children. And having been alone for so long already in Berlin, I thought I didn’t miss anything. I was meant to be the one to help others tidy up their relationship box a little, so that they could better see, what is of importance in it. My own box was closed and carefully locked as if to open it would mean to open the Box of Pandora.

And then came Godot. Estragon and Wladimir waited unsuccessful. Yet, he showed up at my door.

How can I describe him? Though he is in meters and centimeters probably a little shorter than I am, he can easily make me feel protected through his sheer presence. He can laugh with me at the slides and challenge me on a contest of who can swing higher. He can win a game of pool teamed up with me without complaining about my shortcomings at the table. And then again, he easily matches me one to one in his intellect and his drive to succeed. He is in so many ways almost too perfect, as if made for me, though I am not sure his girlfriend would agree with this statement…

Yes, this is as untidy a relationship box as you can get. But as much of a balagan as this might be, the intensity with which he broke into my life and tore down all my carefully erected walls in just one week, showed me at least one thing very strikingly and strongly – I am sick of being alone. I don’t want to go on and have to be strong all the time; have to decide everything by myself; have to rely on myself incessantly without being able to share fears and fun. I want again to wake up and before even opening my eyes, feel someone else’s warm skin and smell his scent.

I guess that means, that I am now not only up to finding me a place to work, a place to life and a new life, I am now also searching for a significant other for real. Oh well.