The 2 Spies - "What are you waiting for?" by Paula R. Stern

Posted: 25 Feb 2014

If you haven't noticed lately Jew-Israel hatred is on the upswing in the world. In line with what The 2 Spies are seeing happen world-wide and along the reasons for this blog in the first place~ we want to share with you an article by Paula R. Stern. She wrote what we wish we could have. Please take her words to heart. The 2 Spies

Paula R. Stern Paula R. Stern is CEO of WritePoint Ltd., a leading technical writing company in Israel. Her personal blog, A Soldier's Mother, has been running for more than 5 years. She lives in Maale Adumim with her husband and children, a dog, too many birds, and a desire to write her thoughts and dream of a trip to Italy, Scotland, and beyond.

Sometimes, simple truths really are… well, simple.

In a complex world, we worry about all the angles, all the issues. And, in hesitating until everything becomes clear, we miss the simple truth, the simple solution. We paralyze ourselves as time passes and, worst of all, we rationalize away the dangers of today, as we magnify the potential dangers of the unknown. 

It was safe before, we kid ourselves, it will be safe again. Tomorrow will be better. They can’t really hate us that much, or worse, they don’t really hate us — they hate Israel and as soon as they realize… it will be okay. Just one more day, one more week, one more month…

So what prompts all this philosophizing?

For the life of me, I don’t understand the Jews living in France. I don’t understand the Jews living in Poland. I don’t understand the one Jew living in Afghanistan (nor the one living in Eritrea) and I can’t believe there are still 100 Jews in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq or Botswana. I don’t understand the Jews living in the Ukraine and, to be honest, I don’t much understand the Jews living in America either.

The only place, at this point, where I can understand Jews living is Israel — and maybe Canada and Micronesia. I don’t necessarily agree with Jews staying in Canada, but at least for today, I can understand it. 

As for Micronesia, I don’t actually know where Micronesia is and as far as I can tell, Google and common sense say there aren’t any Jews living there but they support Israel time after time (maybe because they figure the Arabs can’t find them either?).

But seriously — if you are a Jew living in the Ukraine today, why aren’t you packing your bags? If you are a Jew living in France, do you really expect it to get better? And, if you are a Jew living in the US, do you expect your grandchildren to still be Jewish?

Don’t tell me how hard moving to Israel is — I did it. I came here with three small children and no savings in the bank. We were lucky and blessed and have worked very hard to get where we are. I was lucky — I was offered a job three days after I moved here; my husband came a few months before and a company promised to hire him. 

Why? Because he told them he was willing to start the next day and his wife would ship him clothes. They told him to go back to the States, pack his bags and come home to Israel in two months. He did.

We were lucky because we came when our children were young enough to learn the language quickly and we weren’t picky about where we would live. We were blessed because out of the job I was offered, I built a career and a company. We were blessed because when the first place we chose to live didn’t work out, we moved into the most amazing of cities and communities here in Maale Adumim.

It wasn’t easy and it won’t be easy for the Jews who move here from wherever they are now. But it isn’t nearly as complex or dangerous as remaining in places where you aren’t welcome; where you have to hide who and what you are.

Once the road to Israel was physically dangerous — now, you are a flight away. That’s all it takes. Pack your bags, go to the nearest Israeli embassy or consulate and say, “I want to go home.”

Can Israel handle a mass immigration? We did it before. No one asked Israel if it could accommodate a mass influx of Jews from the Arab countries or from the Soviet Union. They came, they were helped. They learned; they assimilated into the country. 

We have absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jews who came because they couldn’t stay. My next door neighbors are Moroccan, Yemenite, French, American, Russian, South African, British and even some who are several generations Jerusalemites.

Easy? No, not easy, but not nearly as complex as you would imagine and the journey that will change your life begins with a first step. Decide to leave now.

One of my uncles just visited Israel for the first time since 1971. Everywhere we went, he was amazed — by the roads, by the buildings, by the technology. There are few countries in the world as modern as Israel, and none, not a one, that is as safe. Yes, that’s right — safe.

Crime is very low here; healthcare unbeatable, even with the recent Hadassah strike and even with limits to the national healthcare packages. The air is clean; the water of excellent quality. The vegetables are fresh; the bread baked daily and brought to the stores. Yes, life really can be that simple if you don’t insist on making it so complex.

Why, why are you staying in frozen lands where you have to hide your Jewishness when today, in the middle of our winter, it was sunny and in the 70s. Where today, the Jewish Sabbath, our synagogues were full and bursting with song and pride. And tomorrow, we’ll start our work week. Our children will go to school or to some of the best universities in the world.

What holds you to a place where honestly, you know you aren’t wanted? Why would a Jew remain in Poland in the shadow of the concentration camps? Why live in France and worry about the safety of your children?

“Jews, out of France,” they screamed out in a protest attended by 17,000 people. No, not in the 1940s but just last month. What I want to ask the Jews who live there is what in God’s name, are you waiting for?

The European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights did a survey of almost 6,000 Jews living in eight countries. More than 75% said they felt that anti-Semitism is on the rise. An amazing 38% of the Jews polled in Sweden, France, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Latvia said they frequently avoid wearing anything that would indicate they were Jewish (skullcaps, jewelry with Jewish symbols, etc.). Many said they have been harassed or encountered anti-Semitic acts.

While anti-Semitism appears to be down in the United States overall, there is a marked increase on US colleges. That means while you might be safe, your college-age children are not.

Is life easy in Israel? Compared to what Jews are going through now in the Ukraine, France and elsewhere, actually, it probably is… on one condition — that you come here ready to be Israeli, ready to live here as we do. 

You might not be able to afford such a big house, two large cars and Hershey’s chocolates. The house might be smaller, maybe even an apartment. You might have to take public buses and trains and eat Elite chocolate — but you’ll be safe, you’ll have a present and a future as human beings and as Jews. 

Your sons and daughters will grow tall and proud; your grandchildren will walk in a land they own.

No, life isn’t easy in Israel, but it isn’t nearly as hard as living where you are waiting, just waiting until an ancient and modern disease strikes too close.

What, what in God’s name are you waiting for?

The Times of Israel: For the original Article: Click here

Read more: What are you waiting for? | Paula R. Stern | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel 

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Celebrating Sukkot in Jerusalem 100 Years Ago

Israel's History - a Picture a Day (Beta)

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Celebrating Sukkot in Jerusalem 100 Years Ago  - Re-posting a previous feature Posted: 20 Sep 2013 Bukharan family in their sukka (circa 1900). Note the man on the right holding the citron and palm branch. (Library of Congress collection) Compare this sukka to one photographed in Samarkand 40 years earlier. As soon as the Yom Kippur fast day is over many Jews start preparations for the Sukkot (Tabernacles) holiday. It usually involves building a sukka, a temporary structure -- sometimes just a hut -- with a thatched roof, in which Jews eat and often sleep during the seven day holiday.  Ashkenazi family (circa 1900) in the sukka beneath the chandelier and picures The photographers of the American Colony Photographic Department took photos of sukkot structures over a 40 year period, preserving pictures of Bukharan, Yemenite and Ashkenazi sukkot.  Several photographs include the Jewish celebrants holding four species of plants traditionally held during prayers on the Sukkot holiday -- a citron fruit and willow, myrtle and palm branches. Even though the sukka is a temporary structure, some families moved their furniture and finery into the sukka, as is evident in some of the pictures. Portrait of the Bukhari family in the Sukka (1900) Bukhari Jews, shown in pictures from around 1900, were part of an ancient community from what is today the Central Asian country Uzbekistan. They started moving to the Holy Land in the mid-1800s.  A Yemenite Jew named Yehia holding the 4 species in the sukka (1939) Yehia, the Yemenite Jew pictured here, was almost certainly part of a large migration of Jews who arrived in Jerusalem in the 1880s, well before the famous "Magic Carpet" operation that brought tens of thousands to the new state of Israel during 1949 and 1950. A more elaborate sukka in the Goldsmidt house (1934) in Jerusalem. Note the tapestry on the walls with Arabic script The Bassam family sukka in Rehavia, Jerusalem neighborhood (1939) Exterior of the Goldsmidt sukka in Jerusalem (1934) A Sephardi Jew named Avram relaxing in his Sukka with a friend (1939) The picture of an elaborate dinner was taken in a very large Jerusalem sukka belonging to the Goldsmidt family. Tapestries and fabrics hang on the wall of the sukka. Close examination shows that the fabric contains Arabic words, even some hung upside down. Several experts were asked this week to comment on the Arabic. One senior Israeli Arab affairs correspondent wrote, "It is apparently some quotes that I can read but do not amount to anything coherent, written in Kufi style of Arabic... [I] would not be surprised if these are Kuranic verses." Presumably the Goldsmidts and their guests didn't know about the Arabic phrases either.  A reader helped identify the Goldsmidts' building. "The Goldsmidts were friends of ours who lived on Ben-Maimon Street [in Jerusalem]. They had a restaurant [and that explains the diners in the sukka]. Our wedding reception was there. There's a plaque on 54 King George Street that says "Goldsmidt Building."  We invite readers to unravel the mystery of the tapestries, translate the phrases, and provide a contemporary picture of theGoldsmidts' building. Click on the photos to enlarge. Click on the captions to see the originals.

How the American Colony Adopted Yemenite Jews in 1882

Israel's History - a Picture a Day (Beta)

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How the American Colony Adopted Yemenite Jews in 1882 -- As Told by Bertha Spafford Vester, a Leader of the Colony


Why so many pictures of Yemenite Jews? (American
Colony Collection, circa 1910)

In previous features we discussed why the American Colony photographers dedicated so much film to the Yemenite Jews of Jerusalem.

Today we present the words of one of the key figures of the American Colony, Bertha Spafford Vester, daughter of the founders of the Colony, Anne and Horatio Spafford. Bertha took over the management of the American Colony enterprises after her parents' death. She described her life in her fascinating book,An American Family in the Holy City, 1881-1949.

She provided one chapter to the Colony's special relationship with a group of "Gadites" who arrived in 1882. It was believed they were descendants of the tribe of Gad.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Gadites entered our lives a few months after our arrival in Jerusalem, and until [the 1948] civil war divided Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish zones, with no intercourse between except bullets and bombs, they continued to get help from the American Colony.



Yemenite school at Kfar Hashiloach. Yemenite village
in Silwan (Central Zionist Archives, Harvard, circa 1910)

One afternoon in May 1882 several of the Group, including my parents, went for a walk, and were attracted by a strange-looking company of people camping in the fields. The weather was hot, and they had made shelters from the sun out of odds and ends of cloth, sacking, and bits of matting. Father made inquiries through the help of an interpreter and found that they were Yemenite Jews recently arrived from Arabia.



View of Kfar Shiloah in Jerusalem, outside of Jerusalem's
Old City. Note the caves, first homes for Gadite newcomers
(Central Zionist Archives, Harvard, 1898)

They told Father about their immigration from Yemen and their arrival in Palestine. Suddenly, they said, without warning, a spirit seemed to fall on them and they began to speak about returning to the land of Israel. They were so convinced that this was the right and appointed time to return to Palestine that they sold their property and turned other convertible belongings into cash and started for the Promised Land. 

They said about five hundred had left Yena in Yemen. Most of them were uneducated in any way except the knowledge of their ancient Hebrew writings, and those, very likely, they recited by rote. As appears, they were simple folk, with little knowledge of the ways of the world outside of Yemen, and that is the same as saying "the days of Abraham."

When they landed in Hedida on the coast of the Red Sea, they were cautioned by Jews not to continue their trip to Jerusalem and that if they did so it would be at peril of their lives. Some of the party were discouraged and returned to Yena. Others were misdirected and were taken to India, The rest went to Aden, where they embarked on a steamer for Jaffa, and came to Jerusalem before the Feast of Passover.



"Arab (sic) Jew from Yemen" (circa 1900)


Library of Congress caption: "Photograph shows a
Yemenite Jewish man standing in front of Siloan village.
1901 (Source: L. Ben-David, Israel's History - A Picture
a Day website, Sept. 11, 2011)"

They told about the opposition and unfriendliness they had encountered from the Jerusalem Jews, who, they said, accused them of not being Jews but Arabs. One reason, they said, for their rejection by the Jerusalem Jews was because they feared that these poor immigrants would swell the number of recipients ofhalukkah, or prayer money. 

Early in the seventeenth century, as a result of earthquakes, famine, and persecution, the economic position of the Jews in Palestine became critical, and the Jews of Venice came to their aid. They established a fund "to support the inhabitants of the Holy Land." Later on the Jews of Poland, Bohemia, and Germany offered similar aid. This was the origin of the halukkah. 

The money was sent not so much for the purpose of charity as to enable Jewish scholars and students to study and interpret the Scriptures and Jewish holy books and to pray for the Jews in the Diaspora (Dispersion), at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and in other holy cities of Palestine. 

Thehalukkah, as one could imagine, was soon abused. It only stopped, however, when World War I began in 1914 and no more money came to Palestine for that purpose.

In 1882, when the Yemenites arrived, those who had benefited from the generosity of others were unwilling to pass it on.

Father was interested in the Gadites at once. Their story about their unprovoked conviction that this was the time to return to Palestine coincided with what he felt sure was coming to pass the fulfillment of the prophecy of the return of the Jews to Palestine.

Also, Father was attracted by the classical purity of Semitic features of these Yemenite immigrants, so unlike the Jews he was accustomed to see in Jerusalem or in the United States. These people were distinctive: they had dark skin with dark hair and dark eyes. They wore side curls, according to the


Yemenite Jewish family circa 1900

Mosaic law: "Ye shalt not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." Otherwise their dress was Arabic. They had poise, and their movements were graceful, like those of the Bedouins. They were slender and somewhat undersized. 

Many of the women were beautiful, and the men, even the young men, looked venerable with their long beards. They regarded as true the tradition that they belonged to the tribe of Gad. They believed that they had not gone into captivity in Babylon, and that they had not returned at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to rebuild the temple. For thousands of years they had remained in Yemen, hence their purity of race and feature.

The thirty-second chapter of Numbers tells how the children of Gad and the children of Reuben asked Moses to allow them to remain on the east side of Jordan, which country had "found favor in their sight." It goes on to tell how Moses rebuked them, saying, "Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?" Then Moses promised them that if they would go armed and help subdue the country, then "this land shall be your possession before the Lord."

In the thirteenth chapter of Joshua, "when Joshua was stricken in years," he gives instructions that the Gadites and the Reubenites and half the tribe of Menasseh should receive their inheritance "beyond the Jordan eastward even as Moses the servant of the Lord gave them."

In the Apology of al Kindy, written at the court of al Mamun, A.D. 830, the author speaks of Medina as being a poor town, mostly inhabitated by Jews. He also speaks of other tribes of Jews, one of which was deported to Syria. 

Would it be too remote to conjecture that the remnants of these tribes should have wandered to and remained in Yemen? I know there are other theories about how Jews got there, and about their origin, but Father believed that "Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad," and the Group did everything in their power to help these immigrants. We called them Gadites from that time.


Yemenite Jews circa 1900. Why are they near mailbox belonging to the German postal service? (Library of Congress)



Yemenite rabbis, "some of the first immigrants"
(Central Zionist Archives, Harvard)

They were in dreadful need when we found them.

Some of them had died of exposure and starvation during their long and uncomfortable trip; now malaria, typhoid, and dysentery were doing their work. They had to be helped, and quickly. No time
was lost in getting relief started. 

The Group rented rooms, and the Gadites were installed in cooler and more sanitary quarters. Medical help was immediately brought. Mr. Steinharf's sister, an Orthodox Jewish woman, was engaged to purchase kosher meat, which, with vegetables and rice or cracked burghal (wheat) she made into a nutritious soup. 

Bread and soup were distributed once a day to all, with the addition of milk for the children and invalids. One of the American Colony members was always present at distribution time, to see that it was done equitably and well.

Translation of the Gadite prayer kept in the Spafford Bible:

Prayer of Jewish Rabbi offered every Sabbath in Gadite synagogue,
June 27?: He who blessed our fathers Abraham, Isaac & Jacob,
bless & guard & keep Horatio Spafford & his household & all that
are joined with him, because he has shown us mercy to us & our
children & little ones. Therefore may the Lord make his days long...(?)
and may the Lord's mercy shelter them. In his and in our days may
Judah be helped (?) and Israel rest peacefully and may the
Redeemer come to Zion, Amen.

The Gadites had a scribe among them who was a cripple. He could not use his arms and wrote the most beautiful Hebrew, holding a reed pen between his toes. He wrote a prayer for Father and his associates, which was brought one day and presented to Father as a thanksgiving offering. 

They said that they repeated the prayer daily. I have it in my possession; it is written on a piece of parchment. The translation was made by Mr. Steinhart.

This amicable state of affairs continued for some time. Then the elders, who were the heads of the families, came as a delegation to Father. They filed upstairs to the large upper living room, looking solemn and sad, and smelling strongly of garlic. 

They told Father that certain Orthodox Jews, the very ones who had turned blind eyes and deaf ears to their entreaties for help when they arrived in such a pitiable state, were now persecuting them under the claim that they were violating the law by eating Christian food. Some of the older men and women had stopped eating, and in consequence were weak and ill. They made Father understand how vital this accusation, even if false, was to them, and they begged him to divide the money spent among them, instead of giving them the food.



Yemenite Rabbi Shlomo (1935)

Everyone knows how much more economical it is to make a large quantity of soup in one cauldron than in many individual pots; how ever, their request was granted. A bit more money was added to the original sum, and every Friday morning the heads of the Gadite families would appear at the American Colony and be given coins in proportion to the number of individuals to be fed.

They explained to Father that they were trying to learn the trades of the new country and hoped very soon not to need assistance. They had been goldsmiths and silversmiths of a crude sort in Yemen, but Jerusalem at that time had no appreciation or demand for that sort of handicraft. One by one the elders came to tell us they had found work, to thank, us for what we had done, and to say they needed no further help. Father was impressed with the unspoiled integrity of these people.

The Colony continued giving help to the original group of Gadites in decreasing amounts until only a few old people and


Yemenite Rabbi Avram (circa 1935)

widows remained. But these came regularly once a week. Their number was swelled by newcomers and we still shared what we could with them: portions of dry rice, lentils, tea, coffee, and sugar, or other dry articles. 

After the British occupation of Palestine and the advent of the Zionist organization, with its resources and vast machinery to meet pressing necessities, after forty years our list of dependent Gadites was taken over by them. Even then, individuals continued to come to the doors of the American Colony to ask our help.

One night in June 1948 the American Colony had been under fire all night between the Jews west of us and the Arab legionaries east of us. In the morning a Yemenite Jew lay dead in the road be fore our gates. I recognized Hyam, a Yemenite from the "box colony" near the American Colony. He was one of those who had been receiving help from us for years.

For all this relief work the American Colony was using the money of its members.

The chapter continues with the story of a con-man, Mr. Moses, who stole an ancient scroll from the Yemenites while they were still in Yemen. The Yemenite community in Jerusalem discovered him in Jerusalem and requested that the American Colony help secure the scroll for them.