Leaning into history

I've previously mentioned my March of the Living trip in high school. This trip to Jewish sites and concentration camps in Poland coincided with and enhanced a developmentally normal but very intense period of my life of Holocaust obsession. I simply couldn't learn enough. 

And then some time after that, I turned away from the obsession. One of my memories of the trip was when Deborah Lipstadt  (one of my now heroes) spoke to our group and said, "Many of you here today will now embrace your Jewish identity because of the anti-Semitism that you've learned about here. I want to encourage you to embrace it despite that."

Connectedness

This post was drafted on July 29 but revised on August 10.

I'm sitting in Ben Gurion airport, wired with caffeine to help me through the time zone shift and distracting myself from the complicated feelings about leaving by writing this blog post.

LN read my previous post, appreciated it, and then we started up a back and forth about some of what she appreciated about her trip here. The word she used again and again was "connectedness." She used this word to describe both the way people communicated with each other on Shabbat as well as our everyday interactions with strangers. She also said she felt a sense of joy permeating wherever we went. It might be surprising to see that in a country at war, but I think she's onto something. 

Unexpected Gifts

(Photos added on July 29)

I met LN when we were in seventh grade. I had just moved into Corvallis, Oregon and our English teacher, Mrs. Anderson, paired us together for a class project. 

Neither of us is exactly sure how this happened, but we somehow have stayed in touch through all these years. At some point we found ourselves both living on the east coast. I became a teacher. She became a pilot. We lived a distance from each other but still set aside one or two times each year to hike and catch up.

After October 7th I was dreading our first hike. 

Origin Story: high school and Oberlin College

Reminder: If you're new to this blog, please start at the beginning to know why I'm calling myself a Turkey Princess and to understand the purpose of this blog. 

It's time to talk more directly about my developing relationship with Israel. I've already told you about the man who asked me about my first trip. I also told you about my March of the Living trip and watching my Rabbi then make a point about remembering the Palestinian "refugees" whom he had worked with and who were not talked about very much on the trip.

Aesthetically Displeasing

My first trip to Israel was, I think, when I was about 12 years old. It was a simple family trip -- just me and my parents. We visited some old friends, went to some interesting sites. I honestly don't even have that clear of a memory of the trip.

When I came home, one of the elders in my community asked me what I thought. How was it? I knew instinctively that beneath his question was some kind of expectation. As a Jewish youth I was supposed to feel something particular, was supposed have found connection. I suppose he wanted me to say I couldn't wait to go back or that it felt like home. 

I have a stubborn streak.

Israel Museum

I went to the Israel Museum today. There was so much to see that I'm hoping to go back again next week to finish what I started. 

One of the first exhibits I went to was about pottery and archaeology. There was a long exhibition case showing different kinds of pottery shards from different periods. The idea was to walk along the case and notice differences from one period to the next.

Janusz Korzcak

 

Janusz Korzcak monument at Yad Vashem

I saw this monument at Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocast Museum and Research Center) this week. I'd seen  it before, but this was my first time actually knowing the story behind it. You can read about Janusz Korscak on Wikipedia, but I was introduced to him through a phenomenal podcast episode on Jewish History Nerds. 

Janusz spent a live utterly devoted to children. He studied (and created) pedagogy around them. He wrote books for them and about how to raise them. He ran an orphanage and he refused to abandon his orphans, even when he was given several chances of escaping death. He is literally the only Jew I've ever heard of from the Nazi period whom was given repeated chances of opting out, simply because he was so beloved even by the Polish public, but he refused to take it. As far as we know, he went to death side by side with his orphans. He taught them to dress well and hold their heads up with pride even to their deaths in Treblinka.