Published: 10 February 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
MATI SHEMOELOF and his family grapple with some uncomfortable feelings about returning to the land of his birth.
“I don’t want to go to Israel,” I shouted.
“It is your culture, and your daughter needs to know it,” my wife responded.
She was right, of course, but it’s a long story. Two months ago, my wife was accepted for a postdoctoral scholarship at a research institute in Jerusalem. It would mean spending one year in Israel.
She was happy and, at first, I was also happy. We celebrated the news with champagne. Then, one day, I showed her the latest news from Israel on the internet. In Jerusalem, IDF troops clashed with Palestinians in Shuafat during the hunt for the East Jerusalem shooter. It was frightening.
I started looking for reasons not to go. "Where do you want to send our girl to school?" I asked my wife. I said the language barrier would be a problem for her. She answered that it would be only first grade and the Hebrew our daughter speaks would be good enough.
So, we visited Israel to see for ourselves the state of the country. We agreed our daughter would attend a bilingual school in Jerusalem, where she would study with Palestinians and Jews. She would learn Hebrew and Arabic. It would be so different to my school experience, when I spent 12 years in school in Haifa without a single encounter with the city’s Palestinian population.
My wife, the German, smiled at me. She knows all my anxieties and was not moved by them.
In the weeks we spent in Israel, my fears grew. I was afraid that a war would start, and my daughter would have to sit in a shelter for the first time, and I would have to explain to her that it was the Arabs (Hamas) who were sending Grad missiles from Gaza into Israel, or Hezbollah launching bombs from Lebanon into Israel, or a war with the Syrians in the north or who knows what.
For 70 years, the Germans have not sat in shelters and do not know where the bunker is if a bomb arrives. The whistling of the missiles was one of my formative experiences as a boy, an 18-year-old who enlisted in the army. Then again, I know there is no war in Israel right now.
My wife, the German, smiled at me. She knows all my anxieties and was not moved by them. "I want our daughter to take part in Israeli society, to know its smell, and its sound - you will see that a year in Israel will give her an experience she will never forget," she said.
I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt something was wrong. How is it that after 10 years outside Israel, I don't let myself remember the good things that I could pass on to my daughter - the Hebrew language, the joy of family, friends, the comfortable climate, the warm sea, even in autumn and winter. I only see blackness and negativity.
Is it because of the new, extreme right-wing government? It is not the Israel I left. The happy Ben-Gvir voters sang “death to the terrorists” and “death to the Arabs”. And we all know what it means: more assaults and an easy hand on weapon control.
When we were back in Germany after our scouting visit and my daughter asked me when we were returning to Israel, I realised I was wrong. My fears must not be transferred to her.
The new and old Prime Minister (Netanyahu), who is fighting four cases of corruption and breach of trust, will try to undermine the existing judicial system. The new Minister of the Interior (Itamar Ben-Gvir) is a convicted Jewish terrorist. And another minister has been twice convicted over bribes and tax evasion (Aryeh Deri). This is not a good place to raise a child. Obviously, it frightens me. But is this really the issue?
Maybe I'm afraid to admit that I have become a stranger to the place where I grew up. I don't know Israeli culture anymore. I don't feel like I belong to it anymore. Perhaps I have already become an alienated diasporic Jew. Not long ago, my niece in Haifa asked me if I would play songs by Israeli singer Noa Kirel to my daughter. I answered no. I don't know any of her songs. My niece almost fainted.
'We are going to Israel,' I informed my wife. At that moment I saw that now she was afraid.
I should be more honest with myself. Maybe I'm afraid to return to Israel without having achieved anything. I have no real business there; I’m returning because of my wife’s project. Of course, my ego is also involved.
When we were back in Germany after our scouting visit and my daughter asked me when we were returning to Israel, I realised I was wrong. My fears must not be transferred to her. I need to let go, travel with her to Israel and have her help me deal with myself. In return, I will explain to her the curses and blessings of the place I came from.
After all, sooner or later, even in Berlin, she will face the conflict, when they identify her as Jewish or Israeli, even though she was born in Berlin. I will not be able to hide the horrors of this world from her.
"We are going to Israel," I informed my wife. “Really?” she said. And at that moment I saw that now she was afraid. "What happened to you?” I asked. She said she couldn't sleep when she understood that the Arab-Jewish school we want our daughter to go to might be attacked. Back in 2015, hate graffiti was written on the school walls by right-wing extremists. And my wife has realised that those very people are now in power.
Photo: Family returning to Israel in 2016 (Flash90)
