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Jewish Press, Omaha, NE
April 18, 2008
Israel again and again
MID-CITY J E W E L RY & L OA N
Happy Passover
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THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF LINCOLN
Celebrating 100 Years of Giving Congratulates Israel on its 60th Anniversary May each cup of Passover wine be filled with sweetness during this holiday season; may you and your family be blessed with happiness and good health year after year.
HAPPY PASSOVER!
Jack and Helene Shrago Leon, Dani and Shoshy Shrago Michael, Ethan and Noah Shrago David Shrago
76th & Dodge • 114th & Dodge • 156th & Blondo 156th & Q • 144th & Center • 108th & Maple 90th & Maple • 108th & Q • 50th & Grover 51st & Harrison • 1826 Vinton
grime of thousands of years. We cried at by ELYZA RICHMON HALEV the Kotel and hiked through Wadi Kelt’s Where do I begin? While my Israel trip in 1977 was the first dry riverbed, Steve Parsow, Bobby Kahn time that I landed in Eretz HaKodesh, the and me in the front. I remember not being terribly impressed Holyland, it was not the first time that I by the food, and living that intended to go. I’ll never summer off of whole tomaforget my feelings and toes and cucumbers, hardsubsequent actions immeboiled eggs and halva. We diately after Israel was covered so much of the attacked on Yom Kippur country and the memories in 1973. are still so vivid. Our I was 13-years-old and I madrichim, counselors, was finding out about airwere also an amazing fare prices to Israel group. I can see their faces: because they needed my help, if only to collect the In 1985, Elyza Richmon Halev, Eric, Raheli, Yehoshua and eggs or milk the cows right, visited her friend Jacque, Amy (Eilberg) who went on while everyone else went near Tzfat, the closest friend from a few years later to become off to fight the war. For the 1979 kibbutz year still living the first female to be ordained as rabbi by the many obvious reasons, I in Israel. was unable to go to Israel that autumn but Conservative movement. But this would be only the beginning of it was a prescient moment of my connecmy eight trips to Israel, so far, two of tion to Israel. I was raised on a mix of chicken soup which were for a year. In early 1979, I returned to Israel, a and stories of my grandma Jennie Segal Richman’s baby brother Shlomo, who had high school graduate seeking to experigone to Palestine in 1924 as a young lad. ence the “real” Israel (I have a poster from Shlomo became a proud pioneer and then that says “Israel IsReal”) as in those builder of the state, eventually a days it was still a questionable fact. I went to Israel to live in a kibbutz, moshavnik chicken and fruit farmer. understand socialism from the children’s perspective (there were still children’s houses then), and study Hebrew in ulpan. I stayed on as a volunteer, in charge of their Olympic pool for the summer and in the children’s house the rest of the year. I returned a different person, having grown in ways that leave their mark still. I worked diligently on my Hebrew; I was intentionally singing Joni Mitchell In 2003, Avishai rides on Benyamin’s tractor at Moshav Kfar and James Taylor with an Vitkin, while Shoshana and Davida await their turns. Israeli accent just to get it (Omahans Sam and Jenny Richman bought the tractor for right. In those days, it still Uncle Shlomo in the early 60s; it’s still chugging along.) felt like we were building the There were always stories and discussions about Israel on our Sunday visits to grandma and grandpa’s house: stories of Golda Meir sitting in Sam and Jennie’s living room when she’d come to Omaha in the early years to raise money for the fledgling state. In 1967, I was seven-yearsold, and I vividly remember when my young, handsome Back row standing: Beni and Elyza Richmon Halev; seated: cousin, Benyamin, (Shlomo’s Davida, 7, Beni’s daughters: Carmit (Ph.D. from Stanford, son) came to visit after having teaches in Barcelona), Shahaf (student at Tel Aviv finished his army service and University), his wife, Rahel, and youngest, Noa, (just graduthe Six Day War. This was real- ated from Haifa University Medical School); Beni’s son Sagiv ly the beginning of my person- and his family missing from this photo from 2005. al connection to the state, a child with a country together. Kibbutz Hatzor Ashdod was founded by crush on her 21-year-old cousin, Beni, son of my Israeli pioneering uncle, someone a group of young, idealistic socialists from the HaShomer Hatzair Movement in the whom I still speak to every month or so. My first real opportunity to visit was the early 40s, primarily by American and teen trip in 1977, the summer following Bulgarian Jews. An amazing group they my junior year in high school. I remem- were, but the Americans had been there ber cheering as we landed. I think I more than 40 years and still spoke Hebrew remember singing “Hatikva” and I know I like Americans. I was determined to sound kissed the ground as I stepped off that like their children, my peers, and by the time I returned I had forgotten a lot of my longest of plane trips. This was the first time that I really fell in English, but had gained a good working love with the land, the brusque sabra peo- knowledge of Hebrew that I’ve mainple, the dream and the reality as I experi- tained to this day, and a decent accent. enced it. I’d found a land that embodied During 1979, the Shah of Iran fell; the holy, to me as a Jew, and obviously to Israel’s Menahem Begin signed the peace all the Abrahamic peoples. What did that accord with Anwar Sadat as president of mean though? The sense of history was Egypt; the former Soviet Union invaded visible and palpable everywhere we Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein became the stepped; someone’s ancestor lived there or president of Iraq, and Israel won the had traversed that very spot. Eurovision song contest with “Hallelujah” I recall marveling at the Old City -- its (sounds minor, but in Israel, this was huge!) smells and markets, brilliantly colored tex- -- it was an exciting time to be there. tiles against the Jerusalem stone and the Continued on page 17