About 25 years ago my sister - may her memory be blessed - wrote with a smile:
"We understand, that every 5 years you have to start something new."
Indeed, I tried to conquer a formidable fortification from ever new angles.

This fortification is the "Cain" in every human being, who says:
"I am not good enough,
hence I cannot love myself,
hence I suffer and make suffer."

"God" informs us, that the one and only task of this time is
Total Self-Acceptance.

But how can "Cain" learn to accept himself wholly,
so he wouldn't need to murder Hevel, his brother?
And how can Hevel learn to accept himself wholly,
so he won't attract perpetrators and victimizers?

At the age of 16 I saw the first facet of Cain as this:
'How frustrated are most people by the job they do!'
In time I succeeded in helping three or four people,
to leave their "jobs" and to find their "vocation".

One night, at the age of 27, I had an overwhelming vision:
It would be my life's vocation to bring together two needs:
the need of wo/man for satisfactory work
and the need of the world for efficient workers.
If the personal need will be met,
society's need will be met as well.
For only a satisfied worker will be an efficient worker.

The abysmal frustration I had experienced until I had actually discovered my own vocation,
was only matched by the abhorrent frustration of not "being able" to realize any of its facets.

For many more years~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First I had to wait until the completion of my PH.D. thesis.

When I had finally delivered it to the Hebrew University,
I allowed myself one day of rest among my family.
Then I started with researching "Man and Labor"
towards realizing my dream of a physical situation,
where people could learn, what I would now call:
self-determination concerning their vocation:

A wo/man will find satisfaction in his/her work,
1) if personal talents and skills are utilized
2) if the work is necessary/beneficial for the world.


I read what little research had been done on this subject,
I visited every relevant person, institute, authority,
I wrote a deep article for "Ha-aretz", which wasn't published,
I even registered as a student for "Counseling in Education",
which seemed to be remotely connected to my theme.

But then a human angel appeared on the abyss and said:
"Stop studying, get yourself a somehow related job!"

My husband was not pleased, but I did not waver.
For the first time I "went out to work",
which was not good for my children,
but it saved their mother from suicide.

The job was, indeed, related:
I was to find jobs for academic new immigrants from East Europe.
The immigrants were placed in "Absorption Centers" for 5 months.
I worked in Kfar Yona and then in Natanya, altogether for 10 months,
but if an immigrant found a job, it was not because of my endeavors!

This was in line with my belief in their self-determination,
but what about my own satisfaction and feeling worthy?

The reward: I developed important skills in "handling the world".

And I was pushed into what then appeared to me as a "side-track":

I began to teach - thanks to Yitzchak Peri (great thanks!!!).

Worse:
I was asked to teach something I hadn't even learnt at school:

"THE HISTORY OF ZIONISM"

Zionism, in its original sense, means "Jewish Self-Determination".

The physician Leon Pinsker, who all his life had advocated "assimilation",
was so shocked by a Russian pogrom in the eighties of the 19th century,
that he left Odessa, escaped to Berlin, hid in an attic, and wrote

"AUTO-EMANCIPATION":

" Until when shall we make ourselves dependent on the Messiah's redemption?
For how long shall we implore the nations to accept us as part of humankind?"

After 2 months of teaching Pinsker-Zionism I was finally ready for "action".

I could not teach and preach without applying and walking my talk.

But to do what?

"Creating the Conditions of Partnership between Arabs and Jews"?

What did this have to do with "Man and Labor"?


At that time I didn't know the answer and was frustrated again,
but I knew, I had to do this "first", as part of caring for my children,
I had to do what was in my power
to give them a chance in their later life to neither kill nor be killed.

Again - 6 years, 50 hours a week, physical, mental, emotional efforts beyond anything measurable - and no results.
[There's a cute line in the song [scroll to the bottom of the page] "She is Seventy", which Efrat created and all my Sixteen sang to my 70th birthday 2008
"She knows how to loose".....]

It was not until five years later, at the end of our Partnership Tour in the USA,
that I matured into the understanding:

No partnership between people without self-determination,
may the people be nations or governments or peace-workers!

["I want peace, but you don't, so what can I do but keep you in check, by killing or dominating."
"I want to be efficient , but you with your opposition or bla-bla-bla don't let me, so I go home."]

Self-determination means self-liberation from self-victimization.
It means the path from victimhood to sovereignty,
from playing the victim-role to becoming Master of my Destiny.

I retreated from the world for several years - to find this path.

I had always taught:

peace will only be,
when the negative dependency between Israel&Ismael
will be transformed into a positive dependency,
i.e. a partnership.

Any partnership is based on 3 conditions:
common interest, mutual trust and equality in self-respect.

The third condition proved to be the crux of the matter.

My creating in so many deserts
-the Negev, Sinai, Red Sea, Dead Sea, -
had this overall goal:
to lure Israel&Ismael into discerning a WORLD CHALLENGE
and into responding to this challenge together,
a challenge so big, that it would dwarf the gap in self-respect:

The realization of a nature-compatible Economy in the Desert.

But what IS "Self-Respect"?
Isn't it another word for "Self-Acceptance"?
And if so, how could I fool myself,
that "responding to a big exterior challenge"
could bring about "Self-Acceptance"?

I see now, through this intense work before the closure of "My Life's Harvest",
that I lost track of my understanding in 1980 after our Partnership Tour in the USA:

It is not the lack of equality in self-respect, which prevents peace,
It is the self-victimization of everyone.

And , what I came to understand truly, profoundly, finally (?) only today:
Underneath the self-victimization of both Cain and Hevel
is the lack of self-acceptance, is the denial of so many parts in myself.

While endeavoring to complete the HeArt-work on my last Partnership-Work,
the RedSeaPartnerSHIP along Red Sea and Salt Sea between 1997 and 1999,
I was "side-tracked" again and again to my Partnership Work in the Seventies.

Until I was overwhelmed with this great understanding:

there is but one partnership to be brought about:
the partnership between all parts in my own self.
All exterior partnerships with people and nations,
all that "winning over as partners",
all that "converting enemies into partners",
all that "transforming a negative dependency into a partnership",
will follow suit.

I repeat [and repeat again on 2012-02-28 and 2013-07-10]:
There is but one partnership to be brought about:
the partnership between all parts in my own self.
All exterior partnerships with people and nations,
all that "winning over as partners",
all that "converting enemies into partners",
all that "transforming a negative dependency into a partnership",
will follow suit.

Four Glimpses        into the Process      of my HeArt-Work       on Healing-K.i.s.s.

September 2002; updated: 2003_07_03 When I felt the need to provide general "background" to sculptures in the Puzzle Pieces, I had no idea, that, in fact, I was readying myself to "Drive Backward" on a large scale. Most of what I until today called 'Appendices' is about Healing and Harvesting my life.   There is much to harvest from the past, and standing firmly in the present, you can reel it all in, make it your own. Each event in the past has been an essential step in bringing us to where we are now. And where we are now is always the present moment. "This moment now is the farthest into the future anyone has ever been, including me. Savor it now and use it to bring yourself to wholeness by reclaiming all of the essence you have lost to people and situations in the past."   Edgar Degas: "Pour produire de bons fruits, il faut se mettre en espalier et rester là toute sa vie, les bras tendus, la bouche ouverte, et s'assimiler tout ce qui passe, ce qui est autour de vous, et en vivre." Edgar Degas: "In order to produce good fruits, one must stand under an espalier and stay there all one's life, arms stretched out, mouth open, and incorporate all that happens, all that is around oneself and live in it."

2003_02_24; last update 2003_10_10 When I started this website, I called myself "Maryam", which is the Arabic form of "Maria", i.e. Mirjam, Mary, Marie. After 9 months I felt, that anonymity was no longer appropriate, but that I should keep Maryam in the "Puzzle Pieces". In my cherished Bible - names are cues to a person's vocation - which is what "A Time to Harvest" refers to. "Maria" was my mother's name and given to me as my middle name, when I was baptized in September 1938. For 25 years I was "Eva Maria Christa Guth" People called me Christa, but when I became Jewish and Rachêl, I dropped not only "Christa", but the entire name. Ya'aqov on his flight from himself meets Rakhêl at a water-well. Her name means "mother sheep", and her profession is "shepherdess". 7 times in this love story [Genesis 29] the noun "well" is mentioned, and 5 times the verb "to water". The sixth time the same consonants Va-YaShQ -"he watered" - turn into Va-YiSHaQ -"he kissed"! "Ya'aqov kissed Rakhêl and lifted up his  v o i c e  and   w e p t." He was not supposed to marry her, for she had an elder sister, Leah. Nor was Rafael supposed to marry me, for he was already married to a wife. But in the book Jeremiah 31,15 it is Rakhêl, who represents the Mother of Israel, and her " vo i c e " of " w e e p i n g " has been heard now for 2600 years: "Thus says YHWH : A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation , bitter weeping; Rakhêl is weeping over her children and she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are NOT." 2012-03-03- I discovered this image within the youtube of Hava' Alberstein's "shir ahavah atiq" The family name "Guth" (=good) was "naturally" exchanged for my husband's and his father's name: "Rosenzweig". For 17 years I was "Rachêl Rosenzweig" Since "Rosenzweig" does not belong to the Hebrew-Arabic world, I yearned to exchange it for Bat-Adâm already in 1976. I could do so only on the day of divorce on April 6, 1981. Finally the most Jewish name Rachêl had been integrated with the universal name "daughter of adam". Feminists keep asking, why I didn't choose Bat-khavah [Eva], without knowing, that in fact I was baptized also as Eva. I used to refer to the first of the two biblical accounts of Creation. There [Genesis 1:27] the 'adam' is created 'male and female', as one. Lately a man, Shmuel Shaul, pointed out to me, that both terms 'adam' and rachêl are male in form. I was stunned, that I had not been aware of this. It was in Sept. 2003 at the Dead Sea, the Mother's specific place. Since then people know me as "Rachêl Bat-Adâm" and call me Rachêl. Up to now they refuse to follow me further: There is also a dark aspect to the sheep rakhêl, which I now [2003_05_17] must bring forward : it is the image and symbol of victimhood. "He is oppressed, and he is tortured and he does not open his mouth he is brought like a lamb to the slaughter and like a rakhêl before her shearers is dumb and he does not open his mouth" This is said in the so-called "Song of the Lord's Servant", the 53th chapter of Isaiah, which is the basis for the monstrous basic Christian belief, that "God" demanded the sacrifice to death of his own "son", since otherwise "he" could not tolerate and forgive humans. I learnt this poem by heart early in my life - in German, and as soon as I knew enough Hebrew - in Hebrew. I seem to have conditioned myself for this lifetime, to believe in victimhood and to apply this ghastly belief, not in a one-time crucifixion, but day after day of my life, so as to FEEL, what it is that has to be LEARNT-HEALED, so that this planet and its humankind can survive and live. In time I could no longer deny the part in me , that was born and raised Christian and German. In 1997, while living at the Red Sea in my mobile home and having a fictive address in Eilat, I went to the authorities to add "Christa" to my name, at least in my identity card and passport. That's how I sign my name everywhere: "Christa-Rachel Bat-Adam" Adam includes Eva, but what about Maria? Obviously, the dropped Maria protested and finally re-emerged as Maryam in the "Puzzle-Pieces" of "Healing-K.I.S.S.".

Despite the closure of Healing-K.i.s.s. I want to add today - 2003_10_10 , the Eve of the Succot Festival:
"Mar-Yam", as the Hebrew biblical "Miryam" is spelled
both in the original Greek New Testament and in the Arabic Qur'an,
means in Hebrew: Bitter Sea.
As I said: when I "chose" this name for my initially anonymous website,
it was simply, because "Maria" was my middle name and also the name of my mother.
Now - with my ever deeper connection to the Dead Sea - the name becomes ever more meaningful.

A Hebrew song, popular since Israel's Primeminister was murdered during a peace rally in 1995, has the line:
"when one is sad, one goes to the Sea, that's why the Sea is salty",

and it makes me cry just to write this here.
It's the metaphor of humankind's sadness, and more specifically:
of Cain's pain of humiliation and Abel's panic of annihilation
But the SaltSea, as it's called in the Bible and modern Israel, is not really dead,
some microscopic creatures survive in its water which contains 33% of salty minerals (the ocean: 3%!) nonetheless.

Unfolding Oneness and an Open Threesome and 2 perspectives on my country, 2003_03_21: the 25km road to Jerusalem towards the east; viewed from the hill of the Maccabean Modi'in, inhabited since thousands of years until 1948, by Jews who over the centuries became Arabs, their huts and terraced fields still indicated by debris, trees with figs & (now bitter!) almonds, and the spiky shrubs of the Sabra-cactus.

2003_03_04; updated during the War: 2003_03_21; and for the last time:2003_06_27 This website is all about healing, accepting and evolving feelings, which is the part of Deity called "God's Will", or "The Mother". This morning I woke up with unpleasant feelings, as so often. I focused on my two slogans: Just feel, what you feel, breathe, what you feel, perceive that you live as you breathe, what you feel. I don't exist to fulfill my Will, rather my Will gives me the chance to feel and again to will and thus to full-fill. I kind of hugged my body and my feelings and they hugged ME, saying: "You see? The three of us - your Body, your Feeling, and your Mind which is aware of both - are always with you, what else do you need to live your life fully and wholly?" A trickle of happiness started to spread in Body, Will and Mind. I got up, and as usual ran up my path on my hill - wet from water - to my figtree, did a few minutes of strenuous work - sawing away bad nettles and dry branches, and ran back, exposing my face to the morning, and to the brilliant anemones in the fresh green grass A phone talk with Tomer's mother about today's program with my foster grandson, and then, while opening the planned page of my local website, an insight struck me: What I called "Appendices", presents my attempt to compose the puzzle of my life.

I am deeply grateful to Immanuel Rosenzweig, my eldest son,
for having taught me the many skills needed for this website,
and for his animation of Efrat's idea concerning its entry.

From my present perspective of my past and my future,
the movement of water from above towards water below
the merging of both and their transforming into light
indicates incredible intuition
on the part of both, my son and my daughter-in-love.