hodayot [thanksgivings] for today

8:40
My Body, my Partner, my God
I give thanks - again and again - to your brain,
it comprises only 2% of our body-mass,
but uses 20% of your body energy and 25% of its oxygen,
and - unlike other organs and unlike all muscles -
it never ever rests!

I am grate-full for the wonderful changes
as reported continuously on TV 3 SAT,
and as demonstrated in the Self-acceptance "Reality Shows" on Channel 2.

Following a torturous chain of dreams this morning
- an old theme, but which hasn't come up for a long time -
getting lost in a big city like NY, streets, elevators, hotel corridors,
I want to again express my immense gratitude for the simplicity of my life
in all exterior circumstances, - without car, without traveling abroad,
the simplicity of my town, my neighborhood, my home and garden,
my food, my clothes, my system of electrical devices,
my clear task at Bet Nehemya, [also in a simple exterior environment],
and mainly - the clear boundaries of my interactions
- limited to the 26 actors - to whom I'm tied by mutual dependency-
and the clear boundaries of my activities in my chosen daily routine!

Driving Backward

In 1984 I did what I do today - only on paper, with paper images and typed by an electric type-writer-
I created what I called "Rachel's HOLOGRAM" of my present and past.
From among the few pages, which I managed to scan so far (time, time, time!),
I want to exhibit two:
the 7 generation pedigree of my mother, beginning with the name Wehner (on the left side),
and a story about the second Wehner, a man of the law, a contemporary of Goethe and Schiller,
which I translated from an old letter, received from my mother's uncle Paul Ende, a Protestant minister,
whom I appreciated, since he cared for me - through correspondance only , since he lived in East-Germany -
until I learnt, that he was "a Nazi", like most of my family...But by then he had been dead for a long time.
The photos show my mother as a young girl, and my mother and father, after they met in 1933, 4 years before they married.
In the meanwhile 3 more generations have followed, the generation of me (1938), my sister (died in 2004), my brother (died in 1970),
the generation of my children (born between 1963 and 1966)
and the generation of my grandchildren (born between 1987 and 2005), which means, that the eldest, Elah, is already 21 years old.

The page 129 begins with the continuation of a report on a discussion with my son Micha.
It has nothing to do with my mother, and in fact took place almost 4 months after her death.
But the fabric, into which I wove present and past, just like today, is interesting, to say the least:
Micha - then 18 - explained, that Joel, his step-brother deserved to have so much money,
since the "Israel Aerospace Industrie" , for which he worked, was so profitable and successful in the world.
My son was quite proficient in telling me all the details of Israel's export of rockets and arms,
and I didn't want to anger him by showing my sadness.
Isaiah (2:4) prophesied something totally different:

they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more

I didn't tell him, but I wrote in my "Hologram":
"And though I understand the re-action of the Jews to the holocaust,
how long will it take until we stop to re-act and instead act?"




I then tell about the document, which my mother's uncle Paul Ende had discovered.
He believed that it was a speech read at the grave of Johann Friedrich Wehner (junior)

What in 1984 I translated from German to Hebrew, I'm now translating from Hebrew to English ...
Since there was no Internet in 1984, I laboriously searched in my huge encyclopaedia, from where I also cut images and glued them into the 'hologram'...


"Justizamtmann (I don't know what degree of a law official this was, and shall use the general term "jurisprudent") Johann Friedrich W e h n e r [junior]
died on May 19, 1810
(according to the pedigree, which was probably composed by my father , when he wanted to marry and had to prove that all grandparents were "Arian" , this Wehner died in 1796)
at Plauen i.V. (im Vogtland),

The deceased was born on August 5, 1720 in a village in the region of Oberlausitz
[In 1984, I explained that "Oberlausitz is today (1984!) on the sourthern border between East Germany and Poland"].
His father was the manager of an estate of noble knights.
As a young boy he went to school in the town Bautzen and very much enjoyed the instruction of his teachers
until he left for studies at the University fo Leipzig [in the 18th century!!].
He studied law and began with his practical career in the same town.
Later he became the director of a law office [or something like that] of Saxony in Annaburg near Wittenberg
{I explained:
'this town became famous because it was there where Martin Luther publicized his 95 theses against the corrupt Church in 1517
=the beginning of the Reformation']
In this function he continued 8 years.
During this time he married the eldest daughter of the jurisprudent Wirsich in the town Schweinitz...
After the wedding in 1758 , Wehner became the judge of Plauen and got "permanence"
[I added: "already then they furthered 'lack of mobility'~~~]'
which means that he stayed outside the complications of the war of that time
[I explained: the Seven Year War between Prussia and Austria which began with the attack of the King of Prussia on Saxony in 1757.
The Russians and the English and the French were involved, too, it was a kind of European War ~~~]
a fact which most probably was decisive for the wedding.
He begot two daughters and a son.
In 1758 he was was transferred to the office of law here at Jena.
[I explained: Jena, the town in which Uncle Paul detected this document;
the town is famous because one of the two greatest German poets, Friedrich Schiller, taught there at that university between 1789 and 1799
i.e. at a time, when my ancestor, the jurisprudent, became old there
This town is very close to Weimar, the town in which both Schiller and Goethe died,
and which gave its name to the "Weimar Republic" in the twentieth of our century))
A short time after he arrived here, his wife died (1763)
and he married the third daughter of the judge Wirsich mentioned above,
who bore him 3 sons and 2 daughters.
In 1801 he celebrated his 50th anniversary in his work.
Shortly after that his wife died.
From among his 8 children he counted 36 grandchildren
and when he died, there were still alive - 7 of his children and 21 of his grandchildren."

Well, and one of his sons was the greatgrandfather of my grandmother Margarete Ende-Berge

The grandmother of my grandmother was French!

Images which I cut from my encyclopaedia: the places of my mother's and my father's family in East Germany