My Life's Testimony
to
my Life's Learning

1982

2003

2011

It came to pass that I learnt, that not only "making books" was not an effective way to cope with Israel's destiny, but also my practical work in "creating the conditions for partnership" between Israel and those on whom Israel is dependant, is senseless, as long as even the active people are dominated by the mentality of the victim; as long as almost everyone casts the responsibility for him/herself on someone else, making someone else his scapegoat as did Adam and Eve: "no not me - but my wife!" "no not me - but the snake!" ( Genesis 3, 12-13)

I had to retreat in order to rephrase my goal and in order to rethink about effective ways to achieve it. I had to acknowledge, that in all those years I had still been occupied with treating symptoms, and even if a miracle would happen and this problem of Israel would be solved - there would immediately emerge all the problems which lurked in the background - the conflicts between the different ethnic communities or between the religious and the non-religious, or the problem of labor etc. - and once again powerlessness would reign and once again they would lift up their arms: "what can be done! There's no choice!"

How can I treat the root of the problem, the powerlessness, the lack of choice, the lack of freedom?

this is a parable for what I see today as my task: to guide and to train those on whom my destiny is dependent, in digging a well to their power - their power to accept responsibility for themselves and to be truly "free".

This was in fact my highest goal all my life - as an educator, as mother for my children - Immanuel, Ronnit and Micha - and as a lecturer in the college. Yet it's only today that I'm conscious of this and since I'm educating teachers, this my highest goal also serves as a declared criterion for the planning of each lesson. And it doesn't matter if the courses are "Opinions and Ideas in Judaism" , which I've been teaching now for the fifth year in the "College for Training Academics" or in the course in Arabic Literature and in the education of Jewish and Arab pupils who will become teachers for Arabic, with which I started only this year.

But this frame is not enough to train a person in "self-determination".
For it is not enough to understand  m e n t a l l y, that "self determination" or "freedom" mean to accept responsibility for whatever I do and for whatever happens to me.

Therefore, when at the end of January 1982 I was told, that according to the proposal of the new program of "the Council for High Education in the Paedagogic Colleges, which is the model that determines the study program in the college in which I lecture, is satisfied with just one course defined by content and aim as "Custom and Halakha" - I saw in this a sign, that I must exit the fixed frameworks and become independent in "digging the wells".[But see the letter of Peri, which I discovered and inserted only recently in "Nourishment>New Pattern of Manifestation>July 13, 2011.]
It's clear to me already today, that the way is not in creating another framework. The experience with "Partnership" was instructive and frustrating: As long as I worked with others without a fixed framework, my work was effective much more than after the foundation of the organization. When a fixed framework exists, there is no escape from investing enormous energy in fostering it. Also the experiments and experiences of other people in the world who chose/choose a similar vocation to "dig wells" , prove, that it's vital and possible to learn from Abraham and from Isaac: not to settle but to wander;

Images from my course for Arab Literature from 1981-84
It was a sunny day and we studied outside.
The Jewish students were mostly my age.
They had immigrated from Arab countries
in their childhood or youth.

The three students to the right
are a true reflection of Israeli society:
There is Yosi, in soldier uniform,
who had immigrated from Syria recently,
there is Abdul Rahmaan
born in an Arab village in Israel,
and there is Esther, originally from Egypt.
It was with her
that I made my first of two study trips to Egypt, in
in 1982.

p. 354 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

Not to drag people into a new framework but to go to them to their places and to the frameworks in which they've begun to realize their responsibility and to change things.

responsibility, freedom, the power of choice - these are synonyms for the capacity which is hidden in each human being. But as the army makes it possible for a soldier to discover and to train his potential to stand difficult physical and emotional efforts, thus situations of learning have to be crated, in which a person can discover and train his power of choice.

While the detail below shows the second episode,

the scene on the left (on the right in the painting)
shows Moses' murder, with somebody observing.

Behind this scene Moses is seen fleeing.

He flees not only from what he has done,
he also flees from the imprisoning palace and city,
into the vastness and freedom of nature and desert.

There is the space for him to grow organically
during many years
towards the understanding,
that his "acting on feelings" did not only not help,
it endangered the very people for whom he cared.

[in small letters: Addition on July 17, 1982: While re-reading the proofs of the part which talks about my plans for the future, more exactly, about my day-dreaming with regard to these plans, I feel the need to update the reader. After all, five months have passed since I wrote those things; moreover - between those months I experienced six weeks of our new war [the first Lebanon-war] The day-dream is - exactly because of its fluidness- a perfect means to detect new choices of action and its no wonder that the dream above changed form. But this time - instead of detailing my ideas - I want to turn a question to you, the reader: What is, according to your opinion. the strongest framework of action in Israel, ' i.e. what is the institution which functions most effectively - today, at this time?

For you to understand the purpose of the question, I'll tell a story which may serve a parable for you:
"She escaped from Nazi Germany in the year 1933

    needs completion

" W E "!
Experience shows, that "it's not good for the human to be alone" (Genesis 2:18)
also and especially in this kind of instruction/guidance. Forever there is this danger lurking for the pupils, who will relate to the words of the teacher or to his behavior as to "Torah from Sinai", as we say in Hebrew, as to an absolute thing - and it doesn't matter, if this relating expresses itself in blind acceptance or in blind opposition. But it seems to me, that in life there is nothing absolute and that reality can be seen symbolized in "the rainbow " which integrates between heaven and earth and between sun and rain and in which all colors together are the light (Genesis 8:21 till 9:17) Therefore, when a pupil must train in the power-of-choice, in the fitness of responsibility - it's worthwhile to create a training situation which will be as similar as possible to reality. And one of the elements of such a training situation would be, that not one teacher teaches "Torah" but at least two will do this.

This approach is well exemplified in tradition:

It's not by chance, as I said, that the Bible begins with two stories of creation, which seemingly contradict each other in many details as well as in the general approach, but when looking into the depth of it show us only different colors of the same rainbow. Likewise it's not by chance, that at a certain stage of the history of the people of Israel there appear "Yekhidê-Segulâh", who are now called "Sages" as pairs, pairs of opponents as it were. The most famous pair were Hillel and Shammai, and the systems which they founded, disagreed with each other not only in many details but also in the general approach . About the relation between their truths it was said much later in Babel:
For three years the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel disagreed!
those said: The Halacha is like us, and those said: the halacha is like us!
A voice went out and said:
These and these are words of the living God (Erubin 13b),

These and these are expression of the same truth!

And if there are after all situations in which a decision in one direction has to be taken, then "Halacha is like Hillel", for one reason only, says the Midrash, that the House of Hillel taught not only their own words but also those of the House of Shammai. Thus it was guaranteed that their pupils could draw benefit from two different perspectives of the same truth, and thus, one can assume, the danger was diminished, that they would lean on others instead of accepting the responsibility for what they chose to learn and to apply.
[see a quote from Owen Waters, which I just (on Aug. 6, 2011) copied: One of the hallmarks of the New Reality is that people are becoming spiritually self-empowered. In the Old Reality, it was necessary for people to follow a rule book of moral behavior in order to stay upon a path which avoided temptation and its undesirable side-effects. ]

"Every person needs at least two teachers"' was also said by Franz Rosenzweig in one of his letters, and as a metaphor he mentioned, that there are almost no plants or animals which are born from a virgin. There is a need for fertilization between two parents.
I experience this exactly in the last months in my cooperation with Mirjam Goldberg. Mirjam guides people how to accept more responsibility for the functioning of their bodies, through movements, touching and different body activities. With the help of a guide or with mutual help between the pupils, the pupil learns to become more conscious of his/her body, more conscious of its possiblities. One of the results is, that the person is able to accept more responsibility for his/her pains, so that s/he never will become their passive victim.

When during one of the workshops of Mirjam I said to her: "Actualy you do with people through the body what I try to do through Judaism: you enable them to experience the endless possibilities of choice which they have!" she was surprised about the comparison and proposed that we make an experiment of cooperation.

We began, and that "holistic" training - through the mind, the emotions, the body and the spirit together - was very pleasant.
Soon it was proven, that not only the pupils are in need of two teachers. Also every teacher is in need of "a help as if against him" [Genesis 2:18 and 20], i.e. a person who will serve him/her sometimes as a friend and sometimes as an opponent. This too is illustrated for me since a long time in one of the stories about the pairs of sages, this time in the two friends/opponents Rabbi Jochanan and Resh Lakisch, who headed the spiritual center of the land of Israel in the third century in Tiberias:

When they came
to Re'uel their father,
he said:

Why have you come
so quickly today?


They said:

An Egyptian man
rescued us
from the hand of the shepherds,
and also he drew,
yes, drew for us
and watered the sheep!


He said to his daughters:

So-where-is-he?
For-what-reason then have you left the man behind?
Call him,
that he may eat bread
(with us)!

This is "the help as if against him" [Fox translates: a helper corresponding to him] of which the human, who wants to teach a way to a human, is in need of even more than another human. For today it's clear to me - there is no human in the world who can alone keep up with that testament of Martn Buber. Even if the innovating human will succeed to make the synthesis in himself before he'll come in front of the world, this will not guarantee, that his followers will not turn it into an abolute thesis and that when the fitting circumstances are created - even into a deadly weapon against their opponents.

To make a "synthesis" or "integration" means to make wholeness or peace. But this peace, like every other peace, is not something static which one achieves once and for all. Shalom is nothing but the balance of the tension between the poles or "a dynamic, creative equilibrium" between opposing forces *. This equilibrium has to be created in each moment anew , it is impossible to hold on to it. It is like the "Manna" in the desert, which the Israelites had to collect every day anew and if they wanted to guard it and to hold on to it - "it became wormy with maggots and reeked"[Exodus 16:20]
In a training-situation where two women - so different in nature and skills -, like for instance Mirjam and I, will teach, the danger is small that the tension between the poles, which characterizes every creation, will be blurred. Such a training situation makes it possible for each of the teachers, and for the pupils as well, to choose a color in the rainbow which is necessary for him/her at the stage of life in which s/he finds him/herself and to thus make the personal synthesis, his/her personal Shalom, wholeness, every time anew. This seems to me, at this stage of my life's experience, the effctive way to beware of the danger of which already Abtalion warned, that teacher who together with his peer Shemaiah opened the chain of the Pairs of Sages, a generation before Hillel and Schammai and Jesus of Nazareth:
"Sages - be caustions in your words!
lest you become guilty of exile and become exiled to a place of bad water,
and the pupils who come after you wil drink and die
and the name of Heaven will be found desecrated." [Pirke Avot 1:11]

Just like today the co-teaching with Mirjam prevents me from holding onto one of my truths [continuation on page 360]
_________________
* Continuing with what I said about the strong influence of the psychologist Erich Neumann (see p. 225-I can't find Neumann on this page, but see other pages on Healingkiss) on me, I would like to recommend his article "Frieden als Symbol des Lebens" - "Peace as symbol of life", Eranos- Jahrbuch XXVII, Zuerich 1965), a most relevant article for this time, which to my regret exists only in German. Neumann interprets "Shalom" both with the help of the Hebrew root "shalem" = whole and with the help of the biological term "flowing or dynamic equilibrium" of the living organism. He says: "If we expand this term and talk about "flowing creative equilibrium", we intend a situation, in which the equilibrium will not only be corrected and preserved every time anew between the flow inward and the flow outward, but which also causes, that the essence which is in such equilibrium, be this some organism or some bio-psychic unit, can grow from this equilibrium and evolve outward and inward and collect new areas of existence in his life." (12)
I'm grateful to Mrs. Julia Neuman for having turned my attention to this article and letting me have it [since I don't have this article, I now - July 23, 2011 - had to translate my Hebrew translation into English]