So I have a camera again, and am back from Jordan.
Today is Holocaust (שואה; كارثة) Remembrance Day, so we sat down for an hour with one of the older residents of the kibbutz to hear his story. Aged 83, Zechariah was 13 in 1939 when his life in Poland in a religious Jewish family was destroyed; he was the only one to survive, and that only due to Oskar Schindler, whose factories he reached after other concentration camps. A year after liberation, he came to Israel, to a kibbutz in the north; six months after the war of ’48, he came to Barkai, laying the foundations for the first of the kibbutz buildings.
Everyone has their own stories… I ended sitting next to a (jewish) Israeli lady at a talk the other day who spent years in Israeli jail for protesting the targeted assassination program / aiding the enemy, depending on which side you read. Certainly a world away from the government-sponsored program I’ll be continuing next weekend.
Amman was a break, a breath of fresh air, or at least fresh ideas… the Christian/Muslim choir Easter concert… stumbling upon the British Foreign Minister, David Miliband, talking to youth at Ruwwad (the NGO where I spent last summer)… the Sufi music festival, and especially the two blind Oud players… making and flying kites, with a youth group a friend is supporting in another poor community… attending an Arab Christian Palm Sunday service, and recognizing the hymn tunes from CH.
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