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Back to Overview of all sculptures in the fourfold library of "InteGRATion into GRATeFULLness"
InteGRATion into GRATeFULLness
Fine-tuning to my Presence
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2007_12_04-11, Chanuka
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"God" in People
Shortly before sunset - a rare commotion outside!
I open the door and see Meital, my
land-lady, outside my gate.
Lior (5) and Amit (not yet 3) are with her, waiting for something.
Meital waves: "A surprise! just a moment! A surprise!"
Then a car comes around the corner, with an electric huge chanukiya on top,
and the sign of "Chabad".
The door opened and out came a couple from the "Young People of Chabad
Arad" !
I was surprised, amused and also embarrassed.
"They will make you light up the first candle of
Chanuka",
said Meital, embarrassed herself.
Later she said: "I didn't know how you would receive
this!"
knowing that I was zealously guarding "my holy solitude".
Avreimeh, 26, and Perla, 22, were shy too, and I liked them.
They grew up in Kfar-Chabad, Chabad-village,
and have made their "lekh-lekha"
(my words!) only half a year ago,
into the outside, non-Chabad, world, to Arad.
Why was I amused? I've a faible for missionaries,
since it was the first, painfully serious "vocation" I felt as a
child.
"I shall become a missionary, I must help save humankind!"
Now Jewish missionaries came into my own house,
to make me celebrate a Jewish festival...
They brought a simple, metal chanukiya and a package of 46 candles,
a gift for me for the whole week.
Why was I embarrassed?
First, because I have always been and still am embarrassed,
when somebody comes to visit me,
be it strangers or be it friends (see
Diana's&Israel's visit later this week).
Second, because how could I make them feel needed,
without denying my own knowing and understanding of Chanuka?
Confused as I was, I was unable to recite the traditional blessing,
when Avreimeh put a candle in my hand.
He held the cardboard of the candle package in front of my eyes,
so that I could read the blessing.
But the name of "elohim" was printed in such a strange way,
that I read the blessing like a pupil in first grade.
Still I sometimes lifted my eyes, looking into the eyes of Lior and Amit,
reading slowly, so they would know, that I wanted to put my heart into the
blessing,
nevermind, that my mind didn't agree to its content at all.
Then, as is the custom in Ashkenazi, and today even some Sephardic families,
the young couple sang the
horrid "Maoz Zur",
without being aware that they were praising God for
"preparing a slaughter".
To please them I sang with them,
but quickly added the song, I had rehearsed that day
and inserted
it in my 2007 Song-Game on this day.
Meital sang with me, but the couple didn't.
It turned out, that they didn't know the song.
How come? They were born in Israel, weren't they?
Not like me, who celebrated her first Chanuka at Perla's age!
It was only a day later, that I guessed the probable reason:
The song celebrates the heroism of human beings,
"a hero in each generation",
like the Maccabee,
but nowadays "all the people of Israel
will unite, stand up and be redeemed."
No word about the Holy-one-blessed-be-He!
Meital took her kids and rushed off,
to celebrate with her parents in Beersheva,
while I heard myself saying to Avreimeh and Perla:
"If you are not in a hurry, you're welcome to stay!"
Surprised about my uttering an invitation to strangers,
at a time of withdrawing even from my closest friends,
I immediately asked them, after I had seated them:
"I wonder, why you are here with me?"
Avreimeh told the technical sequence of events.
In short: another Chabadnik has brought 4 candle-holders to the company in
which Meital works.
Watching this , she had asked the man spontaneously:
"Could you come to an old woman and make Chanuka
for her?"
It was only half an hour earlier, that this quest had been conveyed to him.
"I'm asking about the deeper meaning of your being
here."
(In that moment I didn't connect, that I had once met their Rabbi Lipsker,
in a no less stunning situation during the Succot-Festival in October.
Immanuel,
Efrat and Mika had come to visit me for a night and a day.
Since Immanuel and I needed to have a talk in private,
we left the house, but instead of finding a nice place in the desert,
we ended up on a bench in the main street in my part of Arad.
Suddenly a rabbi with some family members approached us:
He first turned to my son: "May I help you bless
over the Lulav?"
Immanuel agreed and followed one blessing after the other, uttered by the
rabbi.
Then he turned to me and I did the same.
The context of our talk - about Tomer
- made the "coincidence" all the more mystical...)
I wanted to know, how Perla and Avreimeh understood their vocation,
(I used the word "ye'ud", and they corrected me with "shlikhut"),
but they were reluctant to tell me.
They preferred to hear from me.
So I let them get away with this and talked about my
desire for "Peers",
since it gave me a chance to praise the "khaevruta", well known
to them,
a structure for learning together, characterized by "equality" and
"continuity",
"though the content, of course, would not be learning
Gemarah,
but learning to heal into wholeness".
Knowing, that I started to overwhelm them, I was glad, that Avreime got a
phone-call:
"more chanukiyas to be distributed", "will it be right in 15
minutes?" "yes, but not more."
I said, that interruptions, by children, by phone-calls, by anything,
were - for me - always a hammer on my head from above: "Stop talking."
And so we parted, while we were happy, i.e. loved outselves...
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Young Avreimeh wants me to say the traditional blessing over the first candle of Chanuka
 Meital, who had this impressive "crazy" idea of a gift for me, and little, mystical Amit. See him again some days later, below |
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Luckily Meital had urged me to take photos (I
wouldn't have dared!),
and while Perla volunteered to deal with my camera, while I lit the candle,
I later caught the gorgeous image
of the black-white-grey clad couple
on the whitish background
with the beautiful accidental screensaver image on my computer.
I want to add some images about the wondrous family Cohen, my landlords:
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 Lior invents a kind of billiard-game with a little glass ball |
Then her father Ofir came, to fetch her, |
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On the Eve of the sixth day of Chanuka,
See also the composition about |
to
former sculpture of my Present 
to next
sculpture of my Present
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I follow my
understanding and new lekh-lekhâ on January 1, 2009,
Two weeks later, after I had come back from Shoham,
The last stage of re-creating my "house" was the installment
of the shelf around the bed.
My desire
of October 27-28 was fulfilled: the corner around my bed radiates
beauty and harmony
After such a creative day the adrenalin in my body prevents me from
falling asleep.
Now my castle is complete and I am joyous about every detail and
every composition,
But in the buds of the chrysanthemum flower,
grown from a tiny shoot, which I once stole from a public garden,
See a continuation of my happy experience with the Cohen Family |
