FOR ALL THE ONES TAKEN

Last summer I had a conversation with a wine grower in my native Germany.
“Our family has been living and working on this vineyard for four hundred years,” he told me.
I am in awe. I think of my own family: five generations, four different countries, four different languages, cultures. My Catholic, Polish paternal grandparents moved to Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. I myself, born shortly after WW2, immigrated to Canada as a student. Of my Canadian born children, my oldest son made Aliyah to Israel after he had officially converted to his father’s Jewish faith. He is a rabbi in Jerusalem now.
I played with hordes of kids in the rubble in Duesseldorf, We shared our apartment with a refugee family; I shared a room with my two brothers. My three children each had a room of their own in our spacious house in Kingston. They played on the shore of Lake Ontario, a lake so big that all of Israel would fit into it. When I told this to my Israeli grandchildren, they exclaimed: “Wow, Israel must be big!” My four granddaughters, again, share a room in their Jerusalem apartment, the boy sleeps with his parents. The children play with hordes of kids in the alleyways of this ancient city.
As a child, I wore skirts and dresses. My daughter wore mostly pants; my granddaughters now don skirts, shirts and dresses that cover knees and elbows.
When “my Israelis” come to visit us here in Canada in the summer at our cottage by a pristine lake, all generations jump into the water, enjoying nature and the coming together of our diverse family. Three languages echo across the lake. Hebrew, when the children shout to each other, English in a joint conversation or joyful shouting match. My little Israelis doze off at night to the gentle sound of German lullabies.
Seven year old Hallel asks: “Do you have border patrol for your big property?” It hurts to have a seven-year-old child think in these terms, though I understand where she is coming from. “The people in the country next to you? Are they your enemies?”
“No, we don’t always agree, but we are not enemies.”
“In Israel we have enemies; sometimes I am scared at night, and want to sleep with the window closed.” I feel heavy around the heart.

When I was a child, there were many reminders of the past war: ruins, rubble, duds, damaged infrastructure, maimed people hobbling on their crutches, room on the mantle piece for pictures of the war-dead of the family only. Yet somehow I believed that all bad things had happened before my time. The ruins were our playground; when I heard no bombs had fallen in America, I was sad. Where would the American children play, then? Anecdotes of miraculous survival were more frequent than tales of terror and destruction. Though I was shocked and haunted by images of concentration camps, I heard all too often: That was then, this is now. Our parents’ generation fervently wanted a sane, safe and secure world for us removed from the horrors of the recent past.They wanted their children to be innocent-- for better or for worse.
My grandchildren have no reason to assume that everything bad happened before their time. But still, they live their happy lives, structured by every day routine, the week culminating in Shabbat and frequent religious holidays each with its own colorful story and almost magical rituals.
The street games of Israeli kids resemble those of my childhood, unlike the past times of most children in Western developed countries nowadays which are structured to the extreme.
On Friday night at dusk in Jerusalem, I am fascinated by hordes of children appearing outside clad in Shabbat clothing; little fairy tale figures: the girls in their festive, often frilly dresses, the boys in their white shirts, which soon hang halfway out of their black pants when they run and play. Yarmulkes sail from boys’ heads and are expertly caught and put back on.
I watch young children looking after younger ones. Seven year old Hallel takes two year old Moriah piggy back and makes very clear to her she has to keep quiet during hide and seek.
One Friday night I sat next to an old lady on a bench.
“How does Hallel manage to keep Moriah still?” I wonder. The old lady takes a deep breath: “If the little one makes a noise, the two of them will just be found by their playmates. We…we had to keep my little brother quiet so that the Gestapo wouldn’t find us—for three years we had to keep quiet—. My little cousin… his mother suffocated him when she could couldn’t keep him still… in order to save her other children. And now I love watching these kids play their harmless hiding game.” I, moved to the core, gently, touch her hand.
A boy is racing by on his bike.
“Riding a bike on Shabbat is mukse,(not permitted)” five year old Maayan explains.
“Why?”
“He might have to fix the chain. Fixing is work. No work on Shabbat. I’ll ride on Sunday again.”
From all the rules, all the mitzvahs they have to follow, the children learn appreciation, restraint and self-discipline. Our children love to draw. It’s forbidden to hold a pen on Shabbat. So they create interesting lego structures and play with their bubbas, their stuffed animals. Any kind of making a fire or spark: turning electricity on and off as well as driving or telephoning is off limits for Orthodox Jews on Shabbat, I learned early on. Yet any law may be broken if it means respecting a more important one: such as protecting a life, for example, calling for a taxi when the mother is in labour.
Some laws make less sense to me than others. No toilet paper torn off the roll?! Odd. Nothing should be ripped apart on Shabbat, the children explain to me.
On the Seventh Day thou shall rest: I have come to appreciate this. Heavenly peace on Shabbat. No talk about problems or money, no rushing around. Family time. Tasty meals embroidered by rituals which the children know so well and are happy to guide their Safta through.
Children take the world and culture they live in for granted.
“When are we going to be blessed with a large family?” nine year old Hadas wants to know after the birth of her 4th sibling. I gasp.
Yet, my grandchildren, like all other kids, love individual attention. I do a special outing with each child each visit. These times are precious.
During a recent visit I took six year old Maayan to the playground in Gan Sacher. Suddenly a class of Arab Israeli girls, first Grade, I would guess. Down the slides, hanging from the monkey bars, climbing onto the swinging basket. Maayan seemed overwhelmed.
“There is a free swing , hurry,” I encouraged her. She raced a little Arab girl to the swing. They shove each other. The other girl trips, cries, clutches her knee. Maayan mounts the swing, jumps off and squats next to the crying girl. She then runs to me. “We’ve got pretty band aids, right?”

On the last day of my recent visit ten year old Hadas asked me about Nazis who killed so many Jews in the Shoah.
“You are from Germany, Omannette?!” I attempted to explain the unexplainable to her. Her reaction similar to that of my children when I tried to talk about Germany’s dark past to them. Hadas wanted to know if our family, my parents, had been Nazis and done bad things to Jews. I assured her that Opa had crossed his name from the Nazi party list on which he was automatically put by his employer, and he consequently lost his job. Then I showed her a brass plate hanging on the wall with Hebrew writing on it. It had been a present to my mother from a Jewish couple who tried in vain to immigrate to Israel.
“They brought her this plate as a thank-you for letting them live at her place even though the Nazis told her not to.”
“Did they live? Did Oma save them?”
“No, the Nazis caught them in Holland.”
“Why do so many people in the world not like the Jews and hate them?” Her big brown eyes shine with sadness. “So many have tried to kill us, again and again.”
I search for an answer I know I will not find. Suddenly the other kids bounce into the room. “Yoel can walk!” He hobbles towards Hadas. She beams.
Touched at the core, I look around me. My Jewish grandchildren. Jewish children. For all the ones taken, I have given some precious ones back.