Howard is a doctor, marathon runner and author. He has written two non-fiction books, My Father’s Compass (2007) and Raft (2009). Carrots and Jaffas (2014) is his first novel. His latest novel is A Threefold Cord (Hybrid, 2107)
The child peers at the headlines in the newspaper. She has become interested in letters that make up words. She points at a letter:
That’s an N.
And that one is A.
Her grandfather joins her and looks at the ‘paper.
The image of a man standing bare-chested in the open in midwinterseizes his attention.
And that is Z!
And that’s an I.
What is that word, Grampa?
***
Grandfather feels sick as he reads the headline.: “Nazis march in Melbourne”. The image shows a powerfully built man with his back to the camera. Grandfather notes heavily muscled arms clenched aloft. He sees in the posture defiance, menace. In the grey streetscape, the man’s exposed skin is very white.
What is that word?
It’s a name, darling.
What does it mean, Grampa?
How do you explain Nazism to a child of five?
How explain it at all?
Darling, that man doesn’t like Jewish people.
Puzzled, she speaks: I’m Jewish…
He doesn’t want people in Australia who have dark skin.
I’ve got dark skin, Grampa. And Mummy…
The five-year old brain whirrs.
Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?
Perhaps he wants to show people he’s tough. He wants people to be scared of him, I think.
Does he scare you, Grampa?
***
Grandfather would prefer not to answer. Is he scared? No, not for himself. But for the little ones, yes. What Australia will this Jewish-Sri Lankan-Australian child grow into?
Grandfather feels dissatisfied with his replies. The child looks up andsees his look, careworn and sad. She comes close and throws her arms around his legs.
That name haunts me. Images of that family haunt me. Weeks have passed since we learned the news that wasn’t news, that they were dead, em al habanim, mother upon children, as the psalmist phrases it. Weeks have passed since we learned not just dead, but in the case of the four-year old and the one-year old, murdered with bare hands by their captors. Weeks have passed since scenes were shown of triumphant crowds jeering at little coffins, parents bringing their own live children to mock the dead.
Although the mind was haunted, the pen was stilled, the tongue silenced. These were known facts but the mind needed to unknow them. The mind rebelled. As if to give them voice, to write the words would bring the inadmissible into admission, the unthinkable into thought.
The mind reverts to nightmare: to kill with bare hands? A babe requires no great force of hand, only the extinction of love (of self-love actually, for the human impulse to nurture the littlest is instinctiveand mighty); but the four-year old – what might, what main? – what grunt, what strain? To pen the imagined is to write filth. I might delete the words, but not the thoughts, the horrific wondering. The things that are known do not belong in the realm of the human. If these be facts, if these acts be the work of human hands and human minds, what might my hands, my mind devise?
No, no! The mind rebels.
But we do know it. What now to do with that knowing? Beyond wailing, beyond raging, what light can the human flame show? In two separate but concurrent polls conducted in Israel, Israelis gave answer. A majority was ready to countenance the Trump proposal to clear Gaza of Gazans. At the same time a majority still favoured a two-state solution. The flame of revenge burned bright, butstill the flame of hope flickered.
My friend from Rwanda has been a teacher to me. I listen to his beautiful voice: his words, exquisitely chosen, percolate unto my being. In those moments I am in harmony with my friend and with my essential self.
My friend from Rwanda lived through war in his homeland. He lost a brother in war. He watches TV images from Gaza. Children climb through the rubble.
I was one of those children, he says.
My friend from Rwanda watches TV and he sees children dying.
He cannot see Hamas putting the children in the way of harm.
My friend does not see self-defense. He does not see intent. He only sees genocide, where I am convinced of the opposite intent.
When my friend from Rwanda sends us footage that uses language of ethnic cleansing, of colonialism, he hurls me into a distance that neither of us wants. He cannot hear my words. Drenched in blood memories, clad hard in his own pain, he cannot know mine.
Today my brother and I went south into the Negev to prune a farmer’s lemon trees. We arose early, leaving home at 6.00 and arriving at the farm by 8.00. We volunteers were a mixed group, some from Jerusalem, some from nearby towns. The Brothers Goldenberg appeared to be the sole foreigners. None of us looked agricultural. But I have learned not to underestimate Israelis, their stamina, their drive, their idealism.
The orchardist hadn’t expected us until 10.30; we hung about, some of us disgruntled, others philosophical. At 9.15 the farmer arrived in his lemon grove where he found uswaiting, sweating, gruntling. He addressed us at length. His heart, full of pain, had a message to discharge. He spoke first for himself: You might imagine it’s a small thing that twelve volunteers come here to work for a short time. It is not a small thing. Since October 7, I have no agricultural workers. The Thai people have been ordered home by their government. The other workers who worked outside in the field have not been replaced. Without volunteers like you, I would despair.
The farmer then took on the voice and the persona of Israeli Agriculture. He embodied its agony, its crisis. He had a smooth baby’s face, bronzed by the sun. He spoke for the State, he spoke for the soil, its crops and its custodians. His pain was palpable, and we, we few, we city slickers, wewere his hope. The baby face looked as if it might, at any moment, melt and weep.
We knew nothing about the task ahead of us. We received instructions in Hebrew, which we hoped we understood. We were to prune away the wild spring growth that looked so fresh and green. Apparently these so-promising andexuberant suckers would never bear fruit, but would drain the soil and the lemon tree of its life, meaning water.
At first we set about this task with bare hands. Lemon trees grow a myriad of thorns which pierce the skin of city folk. This is how the countryside punishes us for the soft lives we live in the metropolis. Many scratches and pinpricks later we received gloves; now our hands were somewhat protected. Later still, secateurs arrived. Suddenly the job seemed possible. The temperature rose and rose, we sweated and we drank, we pruned away delinquent growths, we cursed thorns whenever necessary, we turned a disorderly grove into rows of orderly lemon trees that would now turn precious water into precious fruit.
At intervals the sound of aircraft flying high above reminded me of our proximity to a war. I found myself singing those hopeful and elusive lines of the prophet Isaiah,
lo yissa goy el goy herev,
lo yilmedu ohd milhama…
Nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
Neither will they learn war anymore…
As thought leads on to thought I realised I was replacing manpower in a time of war.
Now the words I heard were:
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
when will they ever learn…
Was I enabling a conflict, or simply helping a farmer to grow lemons? I could not escape a sobering truth. I came here to help the State. The State was defending its people, it was defending my people, my relatives. It was fighting for me, and, lemon by lemon, I was enabling it.
I realised that among all the great losses in this region, losses that hurt all the children of Abraham, there exists a further tragedy, personal in scale, and timeless. It is the tragedy of the reluctant recruit, the one who finds herself a participant in a conflict. People on campuses who mean well, who think little for themselves, and who know less than little, might read this and decide I am a war criminal. So be it.
After a little longer than three hours of hacking away the green, we were commanded to stop. The reason? It’s 37 degrees. In truth we had not noticed.
On the way back to Jerusalem, our minibus made a bladderstop. During this interval, a twenty-seven-year old social work student and I fell into conversation. Her name, she tells me, is Gilly.
Where do you come from Gilly?
Metullah.
(Metullah, one of the very northernmost settlements in Israel! Metullah, sitting beneath Hizbullah’s rockets, Metullah, now flattened, emptied of its residents. What Gilly did not need to tell me is her state of internal exile, continuing beyond these past eight months.)
In the old song of the early state, we sang:
mi’ metullah ad ha’negev…
from Metullah in the far north,
to the far south of the Negev…
Gilly’s exile was sung before her birth.
What do you think will happen, Howard?
I fear we will fight this fight again. And again. And again. As we’ve been forced to for the last seventy-five years.
Gilly’s face fell.
Why do you say that, Howard?
I look at the history of the State.
Don’t you see hope?
I considered, then I answered. Yesh Tikvah. Tamid yeshtikvah. There is hope, there’s always hope. Sometimes we have to search for it. Give me your email and I’ll send you something hopeful.
Gilly paused, then she said: I have hope. What gives me hope is this…she waved towards her fellow volunteers… After eight months, people are still volunteering.
My own contribution to Gilly’s state of mind comes from my son. I sent her the link to his story.
Jerusalem in high summer. We awaken at 4.30, depart the apartment at 5.00 and already the sky is blue, cobalt blue.
Jerusalem is quiet. The roads are quiet. Quiet is rare in this city that teems with the pious, the fervent, the urgent.
Wondering whether we’ll find people enough at the Wall for a minyan (quorum), we walk with fast steps along twisting ways. We need a quorum in order to recite Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. Erupting from an alley into the broad square we sight the Wall. Before it, in their many hundreds, the devout, already at prayer.
We three are not in mourning, we are here to remember. We are our mother’s surviving children. An indispensable fourth is her son-in-law John, devoted to Mum now as in life. The remembering starts with the first sighting of the Old City’s perimeter wall. How ancient, these creamy stones, mutely dramatic, forever contended. So many conquerors, so many defeats, such passions, stones soaked in blood.
From the plaza, we sight many minyans of minyans, male bodies cloaked in tallithot (prayer shawls). Some wave and sway, others shake metronomically, all moving to intensify intention. One youth in front of me flings his arms to the heavens, his hands clench and unclench in his entreating to God. May his prayers be answered for the good.
Past the beggars, past worshippers of all stripes, past Haredim Caucasian, and Haredim North African, past modern orthodox, past the odd Ethiope, past a pair of the pious deeply asleep, my brother and I wind and wend to the far side where, separated by less than one metre, our sister will hear us recite kaddish.
A memory of my first visit. November 1967. It’s afternoon in early winter, the air crystalline, the skies blue. An impromptu service is in progress. I attach myself to a congregation that is the chance aggregation of the moment. Those elect who are of the line of Aharon the High Priest offer their hands for a Levite to wash, prior to giving the priestly blessing. I raise my washed hands and intone: May the Lord bless you and keep you…
An afterthought lands: here I am, delivering this blessing at the Temple. This my forebears did for centuries until the Temple was destroyed, almost precisely nineteen hundred years ago. My people went into exile. At some stage in the 1800’s my grandfather’s grandparents returned to the land, settling in Petakh Tikvah, the Gateway of Hope, far to the north of here.
Is it possible that I am now, in 1967, the first lineal priest in my family to officiate here since the year 70 C.E.?
Today, together with my brother I will offer that same blessing. The blessing concludes: May the Lord lift up His face unto you, and give you peace.
Peace!
Our mother was a serene soul. She lived a long life of love, somehow happy through all of life’s losses and afflictions. Today, I remember her and honour her, without sorrow or pain. Late in her life, Mum said to me, You know I never did anything remarkable or distinguished. I never was famous or exceptional. But I did give birth to four children and I raised them and they all love me. So I suppose I was successful.
Mum, you don’t know the half of it: so well did you love us four, that every single one of us felt sure that we were your favourite.
Mum lived her life of peace. I can imagine her in no other state than peace. She went with heart at ease. My tears today are not for Mum. I shed a few sweet tears for this son who misses her. But many are my tears for my people, detested today, deserted by fair weather friends, threatened today, abroad and at home. There is tension in the air, fear too, appalled pain and grief. And mighty resolve.
But here, at this hour of pure air and quiet, Jerusalem is at peace. Have I ever attended prayers so quiet, so ruly? We hundreds recite the words, a soft hum rises from many lips. Until the Amidah (the silent devotion). Quietnessnow, perfect and complete. Torsi swing, sway and shake, hands clench and unclench.
Prayers completed, kaddish recited, Mum honoured, I make my way to my sister Margot. We fall into a fierce hug that does not quickly end. My body heaves with sobs. I’m a good sobber. There’s much to shed tears about. Tears for the present pain, tears of hope for the future good.
I’m gaining on my parents. Dad died at ninety-two years and nine months, Mum died one week short of her ninety-second birthday. It occurred to me when I turned seventy-eight recently that I’m catching up with them.
It would be nice to catch up with them in the contemporary sense of a catch-up. But in reality, such a catch-up wouldn’t be face to face, but bone to bone. I’m not ready for that, not structurally nor emotionally.
I do catch up with my parents from time to time. One of the two will appear in my visual field when my eyes are closed in sleep. They don’t speak, but we know each other and we understand each other. They smile. I expect I smile in turn. I know I feel smilish, a feeling of being loved and deeply known, a feeling of loving back.
The feelings are sweet, sweet.
It’s when I’m awake that I muse on the narrowing gap between us. Somehow the musing carries no pain, no fear, no sorrow. This contrasts with the fear I had as a child, of the annihilation of death. Death has no sting now: Dad did it, Mum did it. Their time had come and they went. We wept, we remember and the loving feeling is unquenched. They died, the love loves on.
It was the love of my parents that formed me and sustained me. They taught me how to live. Now they are helping me as I approach the exit. If, as is written, the task of a lifetime is to come to terms with life’s finity, then my parents have taught me one final time.
You’d see her on the high street every morning, pushing the walker that she really doesn’t need.
She’d walk the 1.2 kilometres to her coffee shop where the staff would welcome her as a sort of celebrity.
At the age of ninety-seven she looks good wearing fashions of women two generations younger. Her white curls are cropped short, her still pretty face opens into a smile that brightens the day. A waiter pulls out a chair for her: What will you have, Helen? The usual?
The usual is coffee and a pastry. If you asked Helen what sort of coffee – a caffe latte or a flat white – she’d look puzzled. I like it how they make it, she’d say, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the barrista.
Her morning yoga session, a practice of seventy years, keeps her joints moving smoothly. After coffee she’d head back up the high street and make her way to the supermarket. The old lady was heading cheerfully towards her centenary.
A long life has delivered its burdens. She’s buried partners, she’s watched her daughters grapple with their cancers, there have been the hip fractures, the blocked arteries, the eye that will not work. These burdens she has set aside. Other burdens, burdens acquired in childhood remained buried deeply.
The old lady kept herself active and cheerful. There were her children and her grandchildren and their little ones. A total of twenty-three descendants lightened life’s burdens. Sons in law and grandsons in law joined her tribe and she embraced them all. The old lady saw her generations, saw her futurity, and life shone. She drank her coffee, she practised her yoga and she walked and walked.
Until the day following October 7 this year. That day she read how the mob in Sydney cried Death to the Jews! Gas the Jews! Her eldest great-grandchild had told his hijab-clad workmate he was a Zionist. She had replied, You deserve death. On the TV news the old lady watched the mob in Dagestan hunting for Jews.
Now the wounds of childhood in Danzig burst open, an abscess of humiliation and terror. The old lady said, I can’t remember a single happy day in those eleven years… We were the lucky ones, we caught a boat to Australia. All my cousins who remained, perished. Cousin Josephina was burned to death in the Synagogue. And now they’re burning Jews in Israel!
If you walk the high street today you won’t sight the little old lady with her walker. She’s not to be found in her coffee shop. She awakens to a day of heaviness. The news appals. Her mind swims and fails. The new griefs and the old griefs literally drive the old lady out of her mind. She says, I have nothing to live for. There’s nothing for me to look forward to.
You’d see her on the high street every morning, pushing the walker that she really doesn’t need.
She’d walk the 1.2 kilometres to her coffee shop where the staff would welcome her as a sort of celebrity.
At the age of ninety-seven she looks good wearing fashions of women two generations younger. Her white curls are cropped short, her still pretty face opens into a smile that brightens the day. A waiter pulls out a chair for her: What will you have, Helen? The usual?
The usual is coffee and a pastry. If you asked Helen what sort of coffee – a caffe latte or a flat white – she’d look puzzled. I like it how they make it, she’d say, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the barrista.
Her morning yoga session, a practice of seventy years, keeps her joints moving smoothly. After coffee she’d head back up the high street and make her way to the supermarket. The old lady was heading cheerfully towards her centenary.
A long life has delivered its burdens. She’s buried partners, she’s watched her daughters grapple with their cancers, there have been the hip fractures, the blocked arteries, the eye that will not work. These burdens she has set aside. Other burdens, burdens acquired in childhood remained buried deeply.
The old lady kept herself active and cheerful. There were her children and her grandchildren and their little ones. A total of twenty-three descendants lightened life’s burdens. Sons in law and grandsons in law joined her tribe and she embraced them all. The old lady saw her generations, saw her futurity, and life shone. She drank her coffee, she practised her yoga and she walked and walked.
Until the day following October 7 this year. That day she read how the mob in Sydney cried Death to the Jews! Gas the Jews! Her eldest great-grandchild had told his hijab-clad workmate he was a Zionist. She had replied, You deserve death. On the TV news the old lady watched the mob in Dagestan hunting for Jews.
Now the wounds of childhood in Danzig burst open, an abscess of humiliation and terror. The old lady said, I can’t remember a single happy day in those eleven years… We were the lucky ones, we caught a boat to Australia. All my cousins who remained, perished. Cousin Josephina was burned to death in the Synagogue. And now they’re burning Jews in Israel!
If you walk the high street today you won’t sight the little old lady with her walker. She’s not to be found in her coffee shop. She awakens to a day of heaviness. The news appals. Her mind swims and fails. The new griefs and the old griefs literally drive the old lady out of her mind. She says, I have nothing to live for. There’s nothing for me to look forward to.
A gentle lady visited me in a bush hamlet. She was fifty and fair, softly spoken, with an air of sweet naivete.
Sighting my kippah she became excited. She asked, Do you have dreams, visions and prophecy? Almost apologetically, I said no, I didn’t.
In the days and weeks that followed I did have a dream. My Dad was suddenly, quietly present. In the dream I was aware Dad was dead. But here he was, standing at my shoulder, smiling. No words were spoken, none expected. This was a dream; in my dreams nothing is expected. Dad was just there. His gentle smile was a smile of sadness. I knew, as I always have known, that Dad loved me. His smile said that and more. The more was Dad’s sorrow for the world. He smiled in the understanding we shared, that I would have to live in this world of pain, that he had left, and had left to me.
Last night a vision came to me. Or perhaps the vision came as I sat in the early morning sunshine, looking out over the sea. It was a vision composed of words and phrases.
Joy to the world
The Lord is come.
Woe to the world
The Lord is hid.Joy to the world
A child is born.
Woe to the world
A child has died.
****
Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings…
In that vision I was aware that words of hope should follow: and learn to fly…but hope eluded me.
*** I spoke to the rabbi and he said.
There is always hope.
The rabbi is not filled with a sweet naivete. He carries the burden of family, every one of his father’s kin, slaughtered in the Shoah. Yet the rabbi counselled hope. He argued for it. He commanded it.
The hand of the Lord was upon me…
And He set me in the midst of a valley;
It was full of bones:
Son of man, can these bones live? O Lord, Thou alone knowest.
***
The soft lady in the bush said: We believe in dreams and visions and prophecy. She spoke the words with the fluency of mantra, with the ordinarinessof a shopping list.
I wish I had the gift of prophecy. The Prophets always spoke of the worst:
I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley.
And they spoke always of hope:
Prophesy, son of man, and say, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.
howardgoldenberg 