The Summer of ‘68. The country, the whole bloody world, was in turmoil. Vietnam, San Francisco, the elevated? Pentagon . . . We, Molly     ( wife at the time and mother-to-be of my #1 son, Elan) were essentially immune to the domestic & international Mishegoss. We had been preparing to make Aliyah (Hebrew - ascension, a going up to a literal & metaphorical Jerusalem). In other words, we were leaving Amerika, intending to  permanently/forever live in Israel. Married in ‘66, we had worked, saved our $, taken courses, studied Hebrew,  handed in our job resignations, made arrangements with the Jewish Agency on Park Avenue in Manhattan (got our required shots, reserved an apartment in a newly built “Absorption Center” in Upper Nazareth. Upper was then a raw development town-in-progress. Lower was/is Palestinian, ancient & biblical.) In other countries our destination might be referred to as an Immigration Center, but in ‘68, in Israel, we were invoking Israel's  “Law of Return”. A Jew, born in the Polish forest, and a Jew, born in Brooklyn, were “coming home”.   (Oy . . . ) We were going to be absorbed.

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     Our possessions were expertly boxed by Itshe & Fage (of Blessed Memory),  Holocaust survivors who had had a lot of life-experience packing/unpacking, moving. The boxes were placed on a Zim-line ship. We could have traveled by sea, but we opted to fly El Al and stop over in rockin’ London of' 68.  I immediately regretted not taking my raincoat;  it was constantly raining British cats and British dogs. After an  unhappy Dickensian experience, we cut our intended stay short. 

On arrival at Lod Airport in the early A.M., we  got a service-taxi. Molly told the driver our initial destination, Kibbutz Lohamei Ha Geta’ot (The Ghetto Fighters). She had mishpucha (family) living there, Lilca & Felix (of Blessed Memory),  Holocaust survivors. They had been founding members of the kibbutz after leaving a toxic/lethal Europe (with a stopover, courtesy of the British, in a detention camp on Cyprus,  surrounded by British barbed wire).  I will never - never - forget Felix & Lilca. He was a master Storyteller, she a master puppeteer. When they arrived, the country was at war, fighting for its existential survival. Felix was immediately greeted with the gift of a rifle and sent off to one of the many fronts. He was immediately  severely wounded, treated and eventually settled on the kibbutz. Lilca became a famous puppeteer. Felix farmed and told stories in Yiddish & Hebrew aided & abetted by such a handsome/warm impish grin.

 

     Molly and I stayed for a few days on the kibbutz. The children, visited (they lived in the Children’s House). Dudu, the youngest, had “attitude.” Though only six, he knew a non-socialist (at the time) and was sarcastic. He also could identify, without looking up, airplanes when they passed overhead as he peeled and ate a grapefruit picked from a tree.  An Israeli child of the late 60’s.The Six-Day War had been waged only a year before.) I liked him and his two older siblings. The family would come together in the evenings on the communal ground, surrounded by other kibbutzniks. The first night there, feeling rested, relaxed and happy, hearing small talk in beautiful Hebrew, I laid down on a blanket, closed my eyes and dozed off. Awakening, I kept my eyes closed for a while, then suddenly opened them. I closed them immediately! I was very disconcerted because what I had glimpsed I did-not-understand. Slowly I took another look. Understanding took time. I was looking at the cloudless night sky over Israel. There were stars. Such stars! It wasn’t the countless numbers.

 

     That in itself would have been jarring. I discovered, for the first time in my twenty-four years on Earth, that stars are alive. Alive! Coming from Brooklyn, having gone to the country only a few times, I had seen night skies with few stars diminished by the lights of the city. Brooklyn-stars were - flat and dry. Israeli stars

Were full of palpitating juices.

 

       Fifty-four (54!) years later, I can see that sky, those stars.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

      We stayed on the kibbutz for a few days, then traveled to Upper Nazareth’s Mercaz Klita (Absorption Center) and its Ulpan (language school.) We did not make Aliyah although life was often surprising, wonderful, eventful. I think of those days with joy and sadness, laughter and regret. So many stories! But the story of that first morning in Israel is essential. The poem about that moment follows. Take it - or not - any way you want. Personally, I take it literally and metaphorically. Best with a cup of coffee.

 

August 11, 1968

 

On the Eleventh of August at Lod

My then wife and I arrived direct from Heathrow

To the New Jew’s Land.

Not having time to change,

A service-taxi deposited us in our Anglo garb

On a collective field of Warsaw Ghetto survivors.

A bouncing Israeli farmer exited a grapefruit grove

And closed in on his machine

And struggled with me as vision:

 

Under a bluing no-cloud sky

I leaned on an oversized black umbrella.

I sweated at dawn in my Marks and Spencer raincoat.

I connected with the socialist soil in rubbers.

 

And to Molly’s query about the Family Lumerman

He could barely point in a loose direction

For most of him was trying to come to grips

With me.

The tractor and man approached, passed, diminished.

And the man never looked away

From me.