Last weekend I asked Hillel Schenker to tell us at Alte what he thought about Israel
and the elections because I wanted to hear even one hopeful sentence, and I didn’t
know where to find that sentence, where to hear it. Where to find that hope.
Whatever happens in life, some of us persist in wanting hope to be ever present.
Hillel Schenker, friend to many, is a New Yorker who grew up loving every single form
of music.He never lost that love. He went to kibbutz when he was young, son of a
father who was a serious Zionist bureaucrat, an old fashioned Israeli idealist.
Hillel himself has worked in dialogue all his life. He’s been an editor for many
years of the Palestine Israel Journal.
Netanyahu’s election is a disaster. There’s no other way to interpret what
happened in Israel, except unhappily. There’s nothing good about this government,
or what they intend to do. Racism, sexism, unbearable laws, intrinsic discrimination,
the potential for even worse.
What can be redeemed and what cannot and is there such a thing as redemption?
At this point in life I wonder about so much I thought I understood.
What do we who are activists do, when we’re faced with an impossible problem, a
story that’s hard to change.
My rational friend Michael, an economist who believes in logic, told me many years
ago – about Israel and Palestine, actually, that there are some struggles that you have
to give up, for others that are more possible. You don’t want to waste your effort he
said. It’s good to acknowledge reality, and then move on.
Sometimes, though not often, I wish I had more of Michael’s logic gene.
I look for hope continuously. In the Middle East especially.
Over the years I have tried to understand why I’ve been so drawn to Israel and the
Arab world. North Africa too.
Was it because I was so young when I first went to Israel and Syria and Egypt and
Jordan and Morocco? Was it because of their poems? Or sitting with
Naguib Mahfouz in his daily café in Cairo and thinking I want to be just like him?
Was it because I could imagine having lived in any of those countries, in another life?
Was it something about how the people were able to be with one another?
To talk forever to eat forever, to love.
When I was young I didn’t see the other side of the picture: the tribalism, deep
poverty, the constraints of religion. I heard music I’d never heard before, and walked
through the doors of so many people who invited me inside – to eat, to talk, to listen,
to stay –and I didn’t want to leave them, or the world they lived in either. I wanted to
figure out a way to be part of it all. And to keep them with me.
Now I’m not sure how. I read what I can, and listen.
PS: If you’re in New York next week and want to see an unusual movie, come to
MY 2020 on Tuesday Dec 13 at 7. Pandemic, aging, race, family.
https://mmjccm.org/programs/person-my-2020
Here’s one of the best performers in the world. The Middle East’s Elvis.
Beautiful Esther
And the music~ haunting
What to do ???
I cannot abandon my attachment to the Israel of my dreams.
So much more to say, but where will this end?
I love this. It's so painful, because not only did I adore everything about the whole Middle East, I dreamed of Jews bringing a socialist utopia to the region and making it better for everyone. "A light unto the nations" So many of us drank that cool aid. Was it a true belief....dream.....or were we sucked into a scam? I am not the first in my family to suffer this despair. The two generations before me had their hearts broken by socialism.