Home (less) ness: Geographies of Identity
Home(less)ness: Geographies of Identity a zine
Edited by: Luna Goldberg Anne van den Bergh Cover art: Hili Greenfeld
Table of Contents Eliyahu Kamisher 1 UNTITLED Ande Clemens 7 IS THIS BODY HOME? Ben Wadler 9 SPACEMAKERS Michele Oberholtzer 15 A PORTRAIT OF DIVORCE Yulia Tsukerman 20 UNTITLED Bernard Horn 23 LETTER FROM ISRAEL (MARCH 3, 2001) Gabriella Klein 25 TOILE DE TLV Luna Goldberg 27 WITHIN, WITHOUT… Anne van den Bergh 32 MY POWERHOUSE OF WOMEN Hili Greenfeld 35 SNOWBALLS ON THE TABLE Margo Dalal 39 STOOP SOCIETY Daiana Oneto 42 HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW (3) Bernard Horn 45 RACCOON Luna Goldberg 47 UNTITLED Grace A-D 49 HOMELESS AS HOME
53 CREDITS
Works by Luna Goldberg
Editors’ Note There’s something about home – its smell maybe, or the way it carries us from place to place. The objects we gather in boxes when moving houses, or the empty spaces we settle into with nothing but a backpack and our guitar. Home is the languages we master, the olive stews we eat, the birthdays we witness, the memories we make. Sometimes home is everywhere, and sometimes it’s nowhere at all. Home(less)ness: Geographies of Identity is a compilation of a range of voices, both near and far, speaking to notions of home, identity, and otherness, to mention just a few. They are topics we began to contemplate more actively after moving to a new country – in our case, Israel. Israel, in particular, is a place where the topic of land has been disputed since its inception in 1948. Its existence as a Jewish state has rendered it a homeland to many, while preventing others from settling or seeking refuge. Home, accordingly, is a concept that is elusive, multi-interpretable, and dependent on one’s own history and sense of place. Here, we alongside our contributors seek to raise questions around the physicality and transcendent quality of home. The included pieces present intimate portraits of life in Israel and beyond, which we hope you will find amusing, thought provoking, raw, and relatable. We further hope to make you think for a moment, when turning your house key in its lock tonight, about the value of belonging and the complex nature of home. Luna Goldberg & Anne van den Bergh Spring 2016
Eliyahu Kamisher
In Nablus’ Old City the coffee flows dark, thick, and aromatic, vendors yell through the crowded alleyways selling tahina so creamy it will melt your dreams. This Saturday the market is busy with crowds picking through the freshest produce and a line outside the most famous Kanafeh shop. While only thirty miles from Tel Aviv, it took four hours and four buses to make the journey to Nablus; from the heart of Israeli espresso-drinking dog walking society into a world of thriving Palestinian life, politics, and culture emerging from a beautiful valley. Unlike Bethlehem or Ramallah tourists are relatively uncommon in Nablus, and friendly stares are common, giving foreigners a real sense of being foreign. Yet, for some reason I feel at home in Nablus. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I think growing up as one of a handful of Jews in my small hometown instilled a sense of otherness in me. In Tel Aviv I am the majority, it is something I enjoy but something that feels inherently unnatural. In Nablus I can settle into the strange comfort of otherness. 3
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Ande Clemens
Is this Body Home?
This vessel that carries me is she my home? A body who betrays me foams at the mouth rages and shakes growls without control A body who teaches me to love in spite to forgive in love I have known no other body No other ontology No other home
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But this body is not mine It is the state’s The state that tells me That I am a woman That I am white That I fit in its tiny boxes I reclaim my body With ink and steel Cut off these breasts That never did belong to me Take the anvil off my chest Release my breath So I can speak In my own voice So I can walk the halls Of my own body My own vessel My own home
a wrenching of body
lost from the source
home is waking up home is decolonizing the mind it is a settling of bones it is acceptance it is here.
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Ben Wadler
When I was just a kid, my parents used to take business trips to Arizona. Maybe it was only once or twice, but I remember them always bringing back these incredible souvenirs, dream-catchers, turquoise stones and postcards of the psychedelic desert at sunset. I kept them by my bed and although I stared at them for years I’ve still never visited the American South West myself. This allowed the landscape, or my idea of it, to become a magic land in my mind, a productive fantasy that served as a projection screen for much of the art I would make later in life.
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Growing up in the diaspora, I think that the idea of Israel serves a similar role for many Jews. We grow up singing songs about it, knowing it is somehow there for us. However because we don’t live the local challenges – which any place would present on a daily basis – the place remains a textureless but powerfully intact fantasy. I’ve realized that the seeds for much of my sculpture actually come out a collection that started with these sentimental trinkets. They all tend to be novelty items, copies or massproduced, with no actual connection to the culture to which they superficially hearken. I bought this The Eye Of Horus incense-holder at the Paramus Park Mall in New Jersey when I was thirteen – but I’ve kept it with me for the past twenty years, which is kind of a miracle in itself.
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A college friend of mine, upon seeing my new apartment in New York, announced with approval that I had made another ‘Ben Den’. He recognized all the pieces, the usual suspects that I stubbornly kept with me through the years. As I would move from apartment to apartment, and from country to country, my cheesy totems remained few but kept accumulating value as the only constants. Always the first things to be unpacked upon arrival, the incense and candle holder in particular allowed me to mark my presence with a little ritual. I was there.
I think that on a very pragmatic level, a person without a permanent home needs rituals like these, and I’ve often wondered about how an entire people without a home - or idols – managed to retain their collective identity so well over the millennia.
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For me it has to do with the ability to pirate or assimilate foreign material into your own narrative. These are objects that aren’t culturally ‘mine' in any way. I am more like an oblivious tourist who picked them up during my travels. All of them are found objects that refer to some use or alleged culture in their previous life, and most of them are actually a quite kitschy, popular symbols empty of meaning– but somehow I feel I have managed to rescue them and make them meaningful again, by giving them a totally new job as sanctifiers, as ‘makers of my space.’ 12
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So what about Israel, a place to which I do have a real connection as a Jew? In Alteneuland, Herzl took a halfimagined past and a half-imagined future, and invented a new nationality in place with an real and ancient identity. As an Oleh Chadash, in what sense is this place something that I have a real cultural claim to? And to what extent has it mutated into something else in recent years, something totally mediated – but to which I can respond to artistically, like one of my repurposed found objects, and make my own again?
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Michele Oberholtzer
Michele Oberholtzer
A Portrait of Divorce
[1_day 1] I lived with my handsome husband on the 15th floor a gleaming skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Our only windows were shadowed by the Empire State Building looming nearby. There was height but not depth. It was pretty, but it wasn’t me. [2_30 days] I moved into a little brownstone apartment on a 30-day sublet, living alone for the first time in my life– a taste of freedom in hearty Brooklyn. When the sublet ended I wondered “should go back to my new life? Or keep moving?” [3_6 weeks] Moving was simple– load everything in a cab and bike alongside. Voila! New home. This exotic bohemian sublet was more fun than cozy and, days after moving in, a seatbelt snapped a few bones and sapped the sense of adventure right out of me. I just wanted to be comfortable. [4_5 months] Now to a sunlit basement bedroom one glorious bike ride away from Manhattan. My body healed but the divorce was underway and I realized something even more fundamental needed to change. I rented a storage unit, quit my job and left the city with a pack on my back and a new last name. [5_6 weeks] I hiked 700 miles of Northern Michigan, converting my pain into physical exertion. At night I slept
in a tent so shallow I couldn’t sit up inside. I fell asleep to the sounds of moose, coyotes, crickets, frogs. I was alone but rarely lonely. [6_1 month] No job, no home, no trail, no plan. I moved home with my mom and dad. [7_6 months] I moved to Detroit– close to home but a world away. Rent was “one zero less” than it had been at that high-rise in New York but then there was that pig skull in the oven, the desiccated rat, the loneliness of a new city, the seeping cold. [8_11 months] I schemed to move into her lovely upper unit the minute I found out my friend and her boyfriend were shopping for dogs. Once the boxes were unpacked, I became an official Detroiter, car insurance and all. [9_2 months] My new roommate had a boyfriend too and this time I was the one packing. I moved during a blizzard to an unfinished duplex with a feral landlord upstairs and an angry dog guarding the door. I was exhausted but relieved when we an eviction notice appeared in the mailbox. [10_2 days] After visiting 13 apartments, houses, flats, and rooms, I still couldn’t decide where I belonged in Detroit. I settled on the lower floor of a tiny Sears-catalog duplex in Hamtramck that was cheap enough for me to rent alone. After two nights, I panicked and bailed. [11_2 months] My boyfriend helped me move out and kept driving until we got to his house, 60 miles north of
Detroit. There were daily runs through the woods and long drives to the city that kept making me fight for a space in it. [12_11 months] I became the “super” of a beautiful apartment building back in Detroit. I mowed the lawn, picked up trash, navigated dozens of keys and acted as ambassador to the cantankerous parking attendant outside. I allowed myself to buy furniture. [13_…] Some words sound as bad as they are and “condoization” is one of them. I would have to move, again. After an internal crisis of impossible competing forces, I allowed myself to take the absurd chance of moving into the lifelong home of a 98-year old man, recently deceased. His belongings remained and under the piles of dust I inherited sweaters, furniture, and hopefully, some portion of the stability he enjoyed. The same girl who never signed a lease is applying for a mortgage and it’s terrifying but nice to know that, while I may not stay forever, I’ll leave on my terms. Home is happening here.
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Yulia Tsukerman I wrote a line in Russian and a line in Hebrew. There are two words written many times: inhale exhale. In Russian “vdoh vidoh” are very familiar for me, my body reacts immediately and knows what to do, when to exhale and when to inhale. With Hebrew it’s different, although I know exactly what “sheifa neshifa” mean, I need to stop and to think for a moment when I should inhale and when exhale. I use the line sheets as if I’m learning to write. The action is repetitive, meditative and almost obsessive. I want those Hebrew words burnt into my brain and my body just like Russian “vdoh vidoh” words, I want to learn these very essential Hebrew words just as I used to learn Russian alphabet. The result is a sort of a pattern created by two languages. -------------------------------------------Concept of home as a physical place is no longer comprehensible for me, I have two homes and I have none at the same time. Home is no more obvious thing as it was once. It’s something very elusive and yet wishful. There is a notion of home that corresponds for me with the language I speak and feel comfortable in and live in and also with my own body (or being specific with the breath of my body). Returning to the breath in meditation practice is the way to tether to the present moment, it’s to be here and now. It’s like being in the right place or coming home if you wish. 20
Bernard Horn
Letter from Israel (March 3, 2001)
Adam was created alone to teach us that anyone who destroys one life is considered by the Torah as if he had destroyed the whole world and anyone who saves one life is considered by the Torah as if he had saved the whole world.
Babylonian Talmud: Sanhedrin 37a
The big news from Israel is that a week ago Thursday Lyla–not quite two, remember– let Linda and me, her “Dida” and “Papa,” pick her up from gan for the first time without Gabi or Dani; that every night on the counter by the tub she does her “bath dance” in front of a huge mirror, naked except for the “hat” made of a shirt pulled inside out at the top of her head, long-sleeved, because she must have her long ears to swing all around her as she dances; that Dani spent all day yesterday preparing a Shabbat birthday feast for Linda, of eggplant appetizers, a chicken and Calamata olive stew, and the densest of cheesecakes with lychees thrown in; that I walked past the corner of Montefiore and Allenby ten times last month, six times alone (four times in two hours Tuesday because I’d grabbed
a big tan envelope from the kitchen table on the way out and only discovered at the visa office that the envelope was full of poems, not passport and photos and documents) and twice more with Linda and twice more with Linda and Gabi and Lyla–our only desires were to wrestle with bureaucrats, buy housewares for our place, buy shoes for Lyla; that I wouldn’t be telling you all this except that the man from Hamas who blew up the taxi at the Mei Ami junction on Thursday, murdering Claude Knafu of Tiberias and injuring nine more, planted a bomb at a shwarma place, Brothers’, at the corner of Montefiore and Allenby some time Tuesday evening: a bomb spotted by the owner, set off by sappers, wrecking the shop, hurting no one at all; that I almost forgot to tell you that Lyla says “Mommy carry you!” when she wants Gabi to pick her up, that she says “ani rotzah la’aloat al ha yellow one” about her favorite swing in the little park around the corner; that, somehow, mysteriously, she says “hair” and “ear” with an Israeli resh; that on the way to Tsfat with Larry and Karen on Sunday, we stopped for fresh figs at the roadside stand at the Mei Ami junction; and that if there are any eyes in the world brighter than Lyla’s I haven’t seen them.
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Gabriella Klein
Luna Goldberg
Within,Without...
There’s something quite particular about the way time functions in airports; the chaotic state of rush and constant flow of people on the one hand...with endless lines for checking in luggage, security procedures, boarding and overpriced instant coffee. On the other, there is a stillness which settles as people sit; waiting for their flights to take off, shutting their eyes for just a few moments before boarding. A quarter past 4, and I’ve already been here for an hour. It’s crazy to think that Ben Gurion is more crowded than I’ve ever seen at this early hour of the morning. I stand in line behind a group of modestly dressed teens, who have probably spent the last few months in a yeshiva or seminary program of sorts. I can tell by the number of suitcases that they’ve been here for a while, and every few minutes, another handful arrives, quickly coming together for a last goodbye before dispersing towards their respective check-in lines. I tune in and out of their conversations as they shout across lines, sending each other off with best wishes and see you laters. I can’t imagine that day yet, though the countdown has begun. Behind me, another group of teenagers—this time Israelis—start to sing as a girl with a flower crown and a dozen or so pink and white balloons, strolls in. 18, the largest metallic balloon says, and I wonder how—if, she’ll take them with her. I think about whether she’s really Israeli and whether that number 18 means she’ll be starting her army service when she gets back. 28
Now, onto the security desk, the one which comes before the check in line where Israeli employees screen passengers before checking in luggage. I hate this part—the interview screening. There, a friendly young employee, typically a woman, interrogates you about your time in Israel, your relationship to the State and to Judaism, probing into your identity and faith with questions regarding your Jewish upbringing, knowledge of the Hebrew language and religious traditions. There’s something about this process in general which makes me very uneasy. Perhaps, it is the need to justify my Jewishness, to prove that I am ‘faithful enough’ to pass the test, or maybe it is the notion that such briefings are considered ‘security’ procedures, though in many ways, they are rooted in discriminatory practices such as ethnic profiling and based on religious premises. I’m also aware that in reality, I get off easier than many who come in and out of the country with a complexion and last name like mine. When she opens my passport and sees the freshly marked Jordanian stamp and leftover ticket stub from my latest trip, she pauses, stares at me a minute longer, and asks for additional identification, as if to challenge me. Apparently, my picture doesn’t look enough like me, and after the inspection of an additional 3 documents, she lets me through to the next line. A few months ago, I interviewed a young artist who served her army service in a similar position, conducting interviews with young Israelis. The point of these interviews is to learn about their past traumas, evaluate their mental state and determine what sector they should work in during their army service. Interviews she noted, could be as brief as 30 minutes or last as long as 4 hours, and she told me about the strategies employed in successfully conducting such interrogations:
The trick to being a good profiler is to, within three minutes, make the interviewee forget he is being interviewed. After six minutes, they have to forget you are wearing a uniform. And, after ten minutes, they should feel like you are their best friend, or, even better, that they don’t have to ever see you again.1 Ever since, I can’t help but think of our conversation as I go through the screening process. I sit at the gate and people watch, for the remaining hour before boarding. A young woman and her daughter run across the rolling carpet to make it to their gate in time for their flight. Young hasidic men, each carrying a specialised box to house their hats during the long hours of the flight, stand around together and speak in muffled voices. An older couple is driven to their destination in the airport golf cart, whose Israeli flags sway in the wake of its 15 kilometre per hour speed. There are things about this country which I’ll never understand, stories that will never cease to shock me despite having spent a significant amount of time here, and moments that I’ll never be able to forget. At times, they will be at odds with one another, raising questions around how such a beautiful place, with such rich traditions and culture can simultaneously be engaged in such ugly politics among its very people and neighbors? How a sovereign state founded on the history of a people that has suffered so much can at once refuse citizenship to those very people who have left their countries to escape persecution? Last month, on my trip to Jordan, I met a young American engaged in the study of Syrian migrants who have settled 1 Tamir, Chen. “Dana Yahalomi/Public Movement.” BOMB Magazine, April 14, 2015.
in Jordan. In one of our conversations, I ask him if he’s ever been to Israel, and he replies that he has, though only on a brief visit to Jerusalem and to the West Bank. I tell him about Tel Aviv and the annual Pride parade as he had previously mentioned an interest in LGBTQ+ issues and he tells me that he will never come back to Israel because of the way they treated him upon entering the State, detaining him for hours and strip searching him. I tell him that I’m organizing a trip for a nonprofit and that in order to ensure that participants do not have any trouble getting through security, we hire escorts from the U.S. embassy to walk them through and prevent such confrontations. When he asks me why it’s so important to have a good first impression of the country as opposed to experiencing it as it is, I find myself at a loss for words. He articulated a question which I’ve been struggling with, ever since I entangled myself in the discussion of political tensions regarding identity and spacial politics in the region. I settle on, this country is full of nuances and contradictions, which can only be seen and felt after spending time there.
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Anne van den Bergh
My Powerhouse of Women
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I had a little moment in the shower this morning. Lukewarm water running down from the showerhead onto my own, I felt a great sadness coming over me. For an instant I thought I might as well cry – the scene was suitably filmic, with muted light cascading through the bathroom shutters, the room a box of aged ceramic and a hundred histories. It is in these moments that I relive a sweetly sour childhood memory of mine: I am standing in front of my bedroom mirror, fat tears sliding down my cheeks, and all I do is observe my emotions sail down my face. The theatricality of it puts my sadness in perspective, and suddenly I don’t feel all that sad anymore. I still do it sometimes. This house is strong. This house is weak. My mother recounted this story to me once, and for some reason it has stuck with me ever since. It is of my grandmother, a beautiful woman with formidable taste in jewelry – the kind of person you think about when hearing the word lady. While attending a social gathering of sorts with her husband, my opapa, she was introduced to a fellow lady, a woman who, in my imagination, had drawnon eyebrows and an expensive purse. I further imagine they small-talked for a while, about the Amalfi coast maybe, or their daughters’ aspirations. Then my grandmother was asked about her profession. “I find my dignity in following my husband” she replied, proudly. There was a short pause. “So you are… nothing?” “I don’t think anything could have hurt her more deeply,” my mother would say. 33
I think about the generations of women that have been silently hurting in my family. This house is strong. This house is weak. For as long as I remember my mother has been on a diet. Her struggle with food has, by now, become somewhat of a dependable factor in her life, a ‘lifestyle’, if I may, and a grand secret all at once. I recall a time when I brought up the topic in the presence of a friend – it had been a bit of a mistake. On several occasions my mom has bought me beige-colored highwaisted underwear, to be worn underneath a pencil skirt or a tight dress. “To hide the handles” – she’d say, squeezing her leg in one of her own. At other times she tells me something different. “Love your body the way it is,” or “you are one hundred percent okay.” I think about that one week she lived off vanilla-flavored powders and afternoon greens. I think about her strong arms, her keen mind, her growing heart. My women are wonderful and wonderfully complicated, and if anything, that is one hundred percent okay to me.
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Hili Greenfeld
Snow Balls on the Table
I was 12 when I met a girl that had just arrived at the school in the village. Her name was Eliya. She was very confident for a 12 year old. She already flirted with the school’s security guard in order to get a cigarette out of him, and sometimes she stole from the kiosk. My other friends used to say she thought she deserved everything because her dad was a hero who died in the first Lebanon war while her mom was still pregnant with her. Her dad’s name was Eli. She was all that remained of him. She walked around as if with every step she took, things would fall into place, just the way she wanted them to.
And I admired her for that. In 7th grade, we were always together. Because of her, I started to smoke, to wear belly shirts and to hitchhike to Haifa. I stayed at her house a lot. We could do whatever we wanted there. We watched Woodstock films over and over, we planned trips to Tel Aviv and we smoked. Then one day, Eliya tried to stick a kitchen knife into her heart, I don’t know why, she seemed happy. Maybe she had been influenced by the films. Afterwards, she was left with a small scar on her chest and it actually looked good. In the meantime, her mom married again, smoked a lot and always gave orders at home. Speaking about me, she told Eliya that “quiet water penetrates deep,” even though I wasn’t that cool. Her new dad had a pickup truck and pretty blue eyes, and he was also a hero from some battle. Eliya said that he was like a real father to her. I remember that he was always solving crossword puzzles and never once said hi to me. At home they had a boxer who was a bit aggressive, that I was very afraid of. She would always sit underneath the brown table in the entrance way, guarding. There are three things I remember from that table: There was always a mess on it--I think crosswords and newspapers; It once belonged to Eliya’s dead father; And that besides her new father, nobody was allowed near it, because of the boxer. My contact with Eliya completely ended. Two years ago I sent her a friend request on Facebook and a few months back, a post she wrote appeared in my news feed. She wrote that she was giving away some belongings since she was moving abroad. Among the belongings that she was giving away, I saw the brown table.
Margo Dalal
Stoop Society
I had no business moving there. I drove up with Virginia plates and dreamed of a place in Detroit all to myself- away from the quickly developing downtown. I was successful in one of my prospects, but after a month of living on Porter Street in the Mexicantown neighborhood, I quickly realized I was not alone, rather become part of a micro community that depended on me. We never really knew each other and we probably never would have talked were it not for their kids who left their porches and brought our worlds a little closer together. At the first sign of spring, just as I stepped out of my kitchen
door to plant my garden, my neighbors rooted themselves on their porches, and basically stayed there all summer. While the mothers remained on their respective porches, their three children, Paul, Jesse, and Sarah, trekked across the yard or street to my concrete driveway, which had become a garden oasis. Jed, from across the street traded me dozens of discarded pots from the city landfill for beer money. He also brought flamingos and turtles to decorate the garden with. We filled the driveway of the apartment with pots and built raised beds for root veggies. I draped the neighbors front porch with cucumbers and planted squash in-between their rose bushes. Each morning we watered the plants together, I waved goodbye. In the afternoons I was greeted eagerly for basketball or chalk. At night they would come inside my home for baking cookies or playing instruments. I became their chaperone for exploring the blighted house next door, a consultant on why they left everything behind. Sometimes this home felt hard. Late at night gunshots would ripple in the distance, and much closer drunks argued into the early morning. Chained dogs barked for their lives in every direction, and that summer I feared asking my neighbor if their water had been shut off. My little home was not defined by the vintage fridge and built in shelves that initially drew me in. My home was this secret garden with eager faces that made the best out of what they had, and did not know much else. A piece of me was left behind at the home, a feeling I still struggle to hold on to. When fall came I chose to move away from this home to finish school. I cried desperately when one mother let out a small, saddened sigh when I told her I was leaving. I cried because of all we had created and all we had explored, and I cried because I was the one who was able to
leave, and return to a place far away from gunshots and guard dogs. I left behind potatoes still growing, cilantro gone to seed, and three small people who had become my best friends. I left them a ukulele, a skateboard, and a whole bunch of memories. I left my first own-home. I left a tiny group of people who grew to admire me and gave me cans of tomatoes they bought with food stamps. I left a giant garden I built with their kids as they sat from their stoops and watched.
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Daiana Oneto
Hidden in Plain View
Bernard Horn
Raccoon
Thud pad pad pad, dull crash. The plastic garbage can gone over, it’s too dark just outside the bedroom window to see– but I know who it is– I remember last spring–we had been leaving bowls of catfood outside the glass door to the patio, and suddenly the cats were acting ravenous every morning, David doing the rolling-over-on-my-ankle trick I’d taught him over and over, the bowls completely empty save the black blotches that turned out to be telltale. The next evening you fill the bowls again in the dusk and I look out from the dining room table at eleven. Five. Chattering there. I open the door and roar. Four are up the oak in a hurry. The fifth, huge, fat, hunkering, backing up slowly, bares her teeth, protective. I step toward her. She inches backward toward the tree, an arrow pulled taut against a bowstring, and our eyes meet and lock in the indirect light of the dining room fixture. 45
When the gorilla in the Franklin Park Zoo last summer was sitting at ease, his back resting against the glass wall of the cave, some kids kept banging the glass until he rolled his hominid yellow eyes and I thought, for all the world, it could have been human, that gesture, and I felt an infinite sadness in him, in me, too, aching, in my desperate search for sense, a sadness of slavery or imprisonment of biology is destiny, of genes, of instinct looking across the infinite abyss, at my freedom, at his. But as I look across at this other creature with human hands, five feet away, eye to eye, my dread is as absolute as if this staring raccoon who’s shared my world for two years at least is simply Other and as I gaze back at her I know I was not there when the foundations of the world were set.
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Luna Goldberg
Grace A-D
Homeless as Home
• Abstract Home can be a verb, even if in every dictionary it is stated as a noun. Home is the opportunity and sacrifices we make for ourselves. It can be the questions and conglomerations of our experiences. Home can be dictated, mentally or physically, by others; something to overcome. • People Two memories come to mind: In the early morning the sun came up above a horizon that disappeared in the growing light. In both memories it is spring. One. I am surrounded by gorse bushes, their yellow flowers warming in the sun and releasing the scent of coconuts. Though the sun shines, it is still crisply cold. A small wind rustles the densely wound branches of the gorse but all else is still. A friend comes from our hiking tent with a mug and some muesli; we eat and watch the sun. We are home. 49
Home is the days you wake you up with a fresh pot of coffee. Home is the people you live with each season, even temporarily. Two. This morning we are on the sand dunes moments before the sun has risen. The people around me are slow moving shadows, rubbing their arms for warmth. The first streaks of gold cut into the blue sky, injecting warmth into the cold morning. On the side of a dune someone has started a pot of coffee over a small burner. The sun and coffee brings warmth to the new day as we pass around small cups of the hot strong brew. Coffee is home. • Location Home is the concrete paths and patterns of familiar potholes. Home is where the pavements turns from pale, cracked and crumbled to new asphalt. Home is wherever a blanket of stars rolls out for you each evening.
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Heritage
I like to make jokes about my family. Not jokes, perhaps, but create little stories. While I know these stories are, most likely, not completely accurate, they prove a point. On the Catholic side of my family my great grandpa came from Northern Italy (we are pretty sure). On my mother’s 50
side my great grandma came from Romania. I often say they left their countries because of war. Perhaps my great grandma left to avoid persecution for being Jewish. Maybe my great grandpa fled the aftermath of a chaos that left his birthplace unrecognizable; it no longer resembled the home where he was born. Is home Romania? Is home Italy? One day I found myself in the airport in Rome. As I waited to find which gate my flight was to depart from a young gentleman approached me. For a moment we assessed each other and made assumptions. I knew from the way he held his head and his cocky manner that he was Israeli, born and raised. He assumed I was Jewish by my look, wondered if I was Israeli until I spoke. Custom dictated that he check I was Jewish. At my response, “I am technically Jewish” he looked at me confused. My mother was Jewish? I was Jewish in his eyes. Why not make Aliyah? Is home Israel? Is home inherited or created? • Conclusion Home is like that gentleman in his lawn chair who thought it would be fun to attach himself to many helium filled balloons; exhilarating at the peak, terrifying on the way down. Unlike his predicament we take this trip many times in our lifetime. Home is like we are sitting in that chair, attached to those balloons, and yet still trying to keep our feet on the ground. Home is transient. 51
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Credits Grace A-D Homeless as Home, 2016 Ande Clemens Is This Body Home?, 2016 Margo Dalal Stoop Society, 2016 Luna Goldberg Untitled (3), 2014 Mixed media on paper Within,Without..., 2016 Hili Greenfeld Sarcophagi House, 2013 (on cover) 110x110x30 cm, Wood, plaster, wire, pigments, plastic plants,stones, sculptures of sarcophagi made of wax. Photo credit: Mark Yashaev Snow Balls On The Table, 2015 Installation room size, table 100x80 cm, snowballs 10x10 cm Photo credit: Daniel Elster, Michael Lew Snowballs on the Table was exhibited under ‘It is more interesting to look backwards’ at Hansen Gallery Bezalel, Jerusalem, and was produced with kind support from the Resisim association and curator Hadas Glazer. http://www.hiligreenfeld.com/
Bernard Horn Raccoon Letter from Israel, (March 3, 2001) Eliyahu Kamisher Untitled, 2016 Gabriella Klein Toile de TLV, 2016 Drawings on paper and acrylic paint on wall Ashdod Museum of Art Photo credit: Elad Sarig http://gabriella-klein.com/ Michele Oberholtzer A Portrait of Divorce https://oberdoit.com/ Daiana Oneto Hidden in Plain View (3), 2015 Collage on Stonehenge, 44� x 30�, http://www.daianaoneto.com/ Yulia Tsukerman Untitled, 2016 Anne van den Bergh My Powerhouse of Women, 2016 Ben Wadler Spacemakers