My Yom Kippur 1973

Most Israelis around my age and older can tell you where they were and what they did at around 2pm of Yom Kippur 1973 as the sirens of war started wailing. The war of disillusion and price paying for the national high induced by the miracle of the Six Day War.

I was 13 and as in previous years, I spent Yom Kippur with my grandparents Meir and Chava Pechthalt in Haifa, the place I was born. They fled Romania with their five children, including my mother, through Ukraine and survived many unimaginable things that were barely talked about throughout my childhood and to date, were sent to the internment camps in Cyprus and eventually made their home in Wadi Salib, a very tough and rugged mixed neighborhood (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish newly arrived immigrants, most came from Morocco, and Palestinian Arabs) while maintaining their faith and orthodox religious practices throughout.   

Saba Meir eventually became a high level employee at a local bank in Haifa and prospered, yet they stayed in the same house in the poorest neighborhood in town till he had a stroke and was unable to stay. The only reason for that was the smallest synagogue I have ever been at. There were not many Ashkenazi Jews left in the neighborhood and when at a time he contemplated moving to a better area, the congregation told him that if he moves, he should take the keys to the temple with him. He stayed.

At two o’clock the sirens started wailing and the draft trucks started lining up in front of the Sephardic synagogues picking up all the reserve soldiers and those at leave plucking them from their prayers. No trucks came to ours. Our entire congregation was too old or too young to be drafted. No one knew what was happenning since in this holiest day of all no radio, television or newspapers were operating.  At that time my grandfather made a decision that made a great impact on how I view the world and society. He sent one of the children living closest to the synagogue to bring a radio set for the terrified congregation to listen to, an uncomprehensible act on any regular Yom Kippur. This was not a trivial decision, it was a moral one. 

I do not believe in higher powers and view organized religion as dogmatic and unforgiving, exactly the opposite from my grandfather. I have learned from this God’s servant that attending to human needs, understanding and accepting people regardless of how different they are from you, taking responsibility, loyalty, and respect being more important than your personal benefit, what humanism is.

  

…

If youre in the area, lets meet for coffee or talk to me here or on:

Twitter      Facebook     Linkedin

Stuff that stays with you forever

The year 1977 was a very turbalant year in the history of Israel. Little did I know at the age of 17 that the most memorable thing I will be writing 31 years later about that year will not have anything directly to do with an election that changed the face of Israel, what I did the night of that painful dissilusion, or the many things that happened to me since that can be attributed to the events of that year. The victory of Menachem Begin and the nationalist ideology over Shimon Peres and the social-democratic labor incumbency shook the pillars of the earth. Some saw this as the dimming of the lights over the State of Israel. I was a very political teenager who spent many hours living and breathing the international labor movement that will eradicate all oppression and lead the world to an “imagine” style existence – no possessions, no religion, no countries… you get the picture. 

Obviously all blame within the “movement” was pointed towards the lack of idealism, individual gain over the interest of the group and other archaic thoughts that from distance of time and geography seem so naive (yet I still hope that a day will come when their offspring will have a second coming). One program that resulted from this need to strengthen the moral conviction of the youth is the one that had the strongest impact on me. A small group (no more then ten if my memory serves me right) was offered to have a six meeting seminar with Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz. In these meetings he talked to us about personal moral standards, immorality of military occupation, religion and science, total separation of state and religion and probably a few other topics in his so provocative and blunt way (This was the guy who labeled the behavior of soldiers in the occupied territories as Judo-Nazi) .The mismatch between the philosophical genius / moral beacon 74 year old and a group of teenagers was so evident that by the third meeting there were only two of us left, the program was cancelled and we failed our mission to reverse history – but mine changed. 

The meetings were held on the lawn of the Givat Ram campus of at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the visual of the old man with his white shirt, black pants almost up to his chest, huge black skullcap siting on the summer grass with a bunch of kids is still vivid in my mind.

Memories of this encounter usually come to me in two contexts:

When I look at my kids or other young people and try and think if an experience they are having will stay with them forever and how do I not screw it up for them? 

When I evaluate my own morality and ask myself if I was  worthy of four hours of this man’s life? 

…

If youre in the area, lets meet for coffee or talk to me here or on:

Twitter      Facebook     Linkedin

First Post

This is my first post in “Against the Grain”. I hope you may find interest in topics that I find exciting and engage in an open discussion that examines conventions, convictions, and so called common knowledge in a critical manner and perhaps reassembles them back into a newly examined package of beliefs. Controversy, provocacy, radical and anarchist disection of all so called “facts” from all angles of a discussion are most welcome. I invite guests to contribute posts and I hope to introduce some interesting people I have met along the way.

The topics that interest me are in human behaviour, society’s evolution and change, utalization of technology to better society, organization’s behavior, education, politics and economic theory. I am not an expert in any of these but regardless my belief is that authority should always be questioned. On the other hand and in contradiction to the opinion of a mentor, Asher Levi, “just because” is an answer.

I hope to create friendships, mutual respect, possible call for action, share some personal stories and real discussion leaving political correctness and hipocracy out while engaging in a respectful and meaningful dialogue. 

Actually this is my third attempt at blogging. The first was a random list of thoughts which I called “Hagigim” (thoughts of philosophical nature in Hebrew) and the second tried to keep track of over 300 movies I watched in an 18 months period in 2004-2005. Both were mainly for personal use and experimental in nature. In this attempt I will try to reach out to an audience that may want to participate. 

My first topics will be (not necessarily in this order): fun vs. health, lost ideas will never return, shuffle vs. concept album, sociology and management, increase in the income gap is more dangerous then El Quayda, and my favorite topic de jour,  why choosing Palin is an act of sexism greater than anything that has been said about her by anyone.

I owe gratitude to Jeff Keni Pulver for inspiring this attempt. The name of this blog is my interpretation of the famous “haffooch”, the hot beverage so popular in Israel where you pour the coffee on top of the milk and the social, business and entrepreneurial culture associated with it he mentions so often.

Let the journey begin…

Twitter      Facebook     Linkedin