I'm back in front of the computer again and itching to blog! Firstly a big thank you to everyone who offered a comment on my first blog...it's given me the encouragement I needed to carry on! I was quite surprised that people from Brasil would be interested in the mundanities of my life but I am very grateful.
One lesson I have already learnt about blogging is that you have got to fill your time with something if you want to be able to write. Since the last blog I had an uneventful evening playing a lot of online chess while Keren watched a film. Rock 'n' roll huh! But I was in the Ulpan again today and it does give my life some much needed variety!
All the same characters from my class mentioned in yesterdays blog were in attendance plus another Lena (this time from Ukraine) and a different teacher (Irit doesn't teach on Tuesdays I was told which makes me wonder how many Tuesdays I have missed coz I had never seen this new teacher before and I have been going to Ulpan since the start of March!). I was immediately presented with 2 pieces of text and told I would be reading them to the whole School at 10am as part of the Holocaust Day memorial.
Next thing I know Ricardo from Brazil is putting together his claranet and the class is practicing the song we are performing for the school...all of this got sorted while I was at home waiting for the BBC to call yesterday. On that subject she didn't call again today so I fear my wit and insight may never grace bbbnews.com :-( I have sent her a link to this blog though as she took up 2 paragraphs of it yesterday!
So, while Ricardo plays his claranet the class attempt to sing a hebrew song...total and unequivical disaster. Plain awful. It seemed riddiculous to think we were going to attempt to sing this in front of 70 people in just 2hrs time. There were 3 of us from our class selected to read and light a candle and we were asked to attend a rehearsal at 9am...this suited me as reading English is a whole lot easier than trying to discuss which season I prefer and why in hebrew!
The following is the 2 passages I was asked to read (I should explain each passage was read out in Hebrew, then in Russian and then in English and was written by the Director of the Ulpan who is a well meaning, if slightly hysterical, woman in 60's):
"There is no way in any language to properly describe the Holocaust, neither in books nor in movies, in pictures, nor in music. History does not recall such atrocities on such a scale: six million Jews murdered, including one and a half million children who were massacred according to a precise systematic plan. This was the Nazi program to solve the Jewish problem - the Final Solution."
"In 1939 there were eight and a half million Jews in Europe. The Nazis exterminated 72% of the Jewish population in Romania, Hungary, France, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and many more countries. And where was the world? The world pretended that it had neither heard nor seen a thing. The Jewish population was not important enough for anyone."
At the rehearsal the Director was encouraging us to say every word with "20 kilo's of emotion attached"...fair enough, she likes drama. But I had a slight problem, I didn't totally agree with the sentiment of the final 2 sentences. What to do? Do I refuse to read them or raise my concerns...I did mention the Director is prone to hysteria didn't I? Do I simply read them and stop being pretenscious? In the end I opted to say nothing until the ceremony itself and then apply a very subtle edit, the words I actually spoke at the ceremony, in relation to the last 2 lines were:
"It seemed that the world had pretended it had neither seen nor heard a thing. To many it felt that the Jewish population was not important to anyone." This left my conscience clear. While the horror of the Holocaust is undeniable, to suggest no-one cared or tried to do anything doesn't fit with my understanding of that piece of history. Certainly Britain and America could have done more. Bombing the train tracks that lead to Aushwitz would have been a start.
The rest of the ceremony was really emotional, we looked at pictures of the Ghetto's in Warsaw and Budapest as 1,000's upon 1,000's of Jews were being herded onto trains bound for the gas chambers. It remains hard to imagine 1,500,000 children being gassed under the auspices of a nation. Some people at the ceremony were crying. Anabel my German friend attended and also read a piece of text in English, she felt quite shocked.
To lighten the mood my class was called to perform our song...oh dear! From my point of view I didn't know the words or the tune and I had already done my reading so I felt I should be exempt...quite the opposite as it turned out. Those from my class sat in the middle and back of the hall kept their heads down when called while the 3 of us at the front (having been told to sit there by the Director) were named and called up to sing...oh shit! There we were, me, Anabel (also no clue on words or tune), Ludmila (slightly closer to being able to sing) and Ricardo on claranet..facing a hall of 70 people. It was as bad as you might imagine, I hummed while Anabel stiffled laughter and our teacher did her best to sound like 15 students and not just herself singing.
Since finishing the Ulpan for the day I have done very little but I am waiting for Keren to get home so I can go to my local pub to see my friend Lior. When I say "local pub" I am of course not being accurate! Israel does have plenty of pubs but, Schunat HaTikva has precisely none! I have had to improvise! I drink bottled beer (brought there myself or from the shop opposite) at what I call the "Pitta Porter". There are 2 reasons why I have named this market stall with side bench so.
First it is primarily a pitta and lahouch stall. But it does have a bench and some high chairs where people sit and drink, eat and chat. 2nd, it is on the corner of Tel Aviv's best food market and 5mins from my apartment. Those reading this who knew my life in London will see the similarities with a certain pub on the corner of Borough Food Market in London Bridge...The Market Porter.
http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/pub_of_the_year/
I go to the Pitta Porter regularly and am never disappointed...there is always something happening there!
I need to go see Lior today because we are desperately trying to secure some accommodation for ourselves and our workers in Berlin in advance of the World Cup. We have got 2 market stalls on the Kudamm Strasse (Berlin's answer to the Champs D'Elyses) and will be selling T-Shirts and temporary tattoos to footballs fans for 33 days in June and July. I will try and blog from there aswell! But getting the accomodation sorted is proving a real hassle. Oh, and he also has some stuff from India he wants me to check...
I hope to blog lots more about the Pitta Porter and what goes on around Schunat HaTikva in the coming days but in the meantime, anyone who is interested, google a chap called Gad Tsabari (spelling of surname can differ slightly)...he's Lior's relative and a regular at the Pitta Porter...very interesting man. Told Spielberg to kiss his arse...google him to understand why...
That's all for now folks...comments welcome.
Cheers
Andrew
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