Long ago, from my grandmother's porch in Israel

January 6, 12:29 PMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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I don’t remember much about war in Israel.  And in my dreams these nights, I am recalling the most peaceful, sweetest days of my life—my brief years of childhood there.

I remember the orange trees, the thick breezes, my friends who had come home to Israel from all over the world, and my grandmother.

I remember feeling warm and special, talking to her for hours on end, on her porch on the second floor of the apartment building she owned at the corner of Weizmann and Jerusalem Streets in a little town called Kfar-Saba, which means “Village of the Grandfathers.”

I remember that the town was founded in 1903 by some farmers who were looking for a new place to grow some grapefruit trees, a few miles west of another, larger town called Petach-Tikva.  They found good soil where Kfar-Saba grew up, just a mile or two from the Samarian Mountains and next to an Arab hamlet called Qalqilya.

One of the farmers who planted the grapefruit trees was my grandfather, who was married to my grandmother, but died even before I was born.

Her name was “Yona,” which means “the dove,” and she came to the land of Israel from Rumania, when she was three years old.  She had a thin nose, long gray and white braided hair, and wore heavy-laced shoes.  She was short but sturdy.  Her wrinkles ran together across her cheeks and forehead and around her clear blue eyes and looked like the Hebrew calligraphy on a sheaf of the Torah scroll.
 
Yona kept all of our family pictures under a glass that fit perfectly over the dining room table.  If there wasn’t a tablecloth, I would eat my lunch of vegetable meatballs, cucumber and tomato salad, chickpeas, olives, pita bread, and hot tea while staring down at grayish photographs of my departed grandfather, my parents, my cousins, my uncles, aunts, and other people—some of whom were riding on camels and others who wore army shorts, pullover sweaters, and helmets.

I remember the postman who came on a high horse, beaming and proud—especially when there was that rare and prized letter from America.  He had a tattoo of numbers on his forearm, from his years in Auschwitz. But now he was smiling, the sun beaming down from behind his leathery face and official cap.  I remember the bookseller in the village square where we acquired our school texts; he also with the numbers on his arm, reaching across to hand me an arithmetic book written in Hebrew: “Our language is not dead anymore,” he would say, a tear in his eyes. “And neither are we.”

And then I wake up and realize that Israel is not young anymore, that even the tattooed numbers have given way to time and bitterness and that I’m one of the lucky children from the Middle East who even has dreams.