Two Pictures that Meant Most to Me at Beit Hatfutsot

Last week I visited Museum of the Jewish People - Beit Hatfutsot as part of the senior citizens program in the Ofra Girls High School, Ulpanat Ofra, with the students who worked with us on our oral histories. As we were all taken from exhibit to exhibit, we were told to look with our student and choose what means the most to us.

Here are two things that meant a lot to me:

This Life Magazine article was tucked away among other things, which is a shame. This article tells of the illegal Jordanian Occupation from 1949-1967, when Jews were forbidden to go to their Holy Places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and more. There was a border, and the Jordanians also shot at Jewish neighborhoods. The world didn't care.

I took a selfie of myself next to this picture of children leaving a boat docked in an Israeli port, making aliyah. We made aliyah by boat, but as a young married couple, almost twenty years after the photo had been taken.

It's such a strange feeling to know that my life is considered part of Jewish History. I really don't feel that old, but in my head, I know that what others learn as history I experienced and/or remember being part of.

My Story on Beit Hatfutsot, Diaspora Museum Site

As part of the Senior Citizen program in the Ofra Girls High School, I told "my story" to the "harav dori," multi-generation site of The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, formerly called The Diaspora Museum.

ממחול בניו יורק לתפילה בתל שילה From Dancing in New York to Praying in Tel Shiloh

It's in Hebrew, as you can see if you click above. I know that they also have an English version of the site, and I have to find out how to redo my story in English.

There are two basic aims to this oral history program. Besides having the stories of thousands of Jews from all over the world on their site, the museum also wanted the younger generation to hear about the lives of us older ones. That's why we were matched up with high school students, who asked us questions and typed up the stories on the computer.

Since our program began last fall, we've participated in many activities in which we "veteran Israelis" got to tell the teens about ourselves. I went from feeling that I had either no story worth telling or too many to choose from. This isn't meant to be a full biography, just one small but important aspect of my life.

When I found a couple of pictures of my marching/dancing, while holding an Israeli flag, at the 1970 Salute to Israel Parade in New York, it seemed like the perfect example of my "old life" to contrast with my present one. In the mid-late 1960s I was one of the prominent Jewish student "activists" in New York, SSSJ, NCSY, Betar and more. Today we live in Shiloh, and over a decade ago I initiated women's Rosh Chodesh Prayers at Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh.

Yesterday, as part of the program with The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, we went to the museum for a special tour. I hadn't been there since it had first opened forty years ago. They've changed it so much, not just the name.

To continue to build our connection with the students, we were told to walk around various exhibits with them and choose the items that we both felt connected to. By doing this we shared experiences and backgrounds. The students are the ages of our grandchildren, so they know very little about us. It was a very interesting exercise.

I definitely recommend visiting The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot, and hope to go again, soon.

I couldn't resist a selfie next to this photo of olim chadashim, new immigrants leaving a ship, since we, too, made aliyah by boat, though about fifteen 15 years after this photo was taken.

Me? Do I Have a Story?

I'm the neighbor many come to when they want to know the history of the yishuv, the return to Shiloh and early life here as a mother, the backstory of the schooling in our county Mateh Binyamin and more. But when it comes to a personal story, I'm stumped.

Unlike many of my peers, there's no heroic family Holocaust saga. My grandparents made it to America before World War One in steerage like so many similar dreamers, real dreamers. They played by the rules, paid the fees, passed the medical tests of the time, eventually learning enough English, American History and Law to pass the citizenship tests etc. They suffered discrimination, antisemitism and poverty. My paternal grandfather, like most of his relatives, began a successful business in America; they had businesses in Nasielsk, Poland, too. And everyone of them, some more some less, reduced their Jewish observance to what they considered most important, ranging from speaking Yiddish at home to not working on Shabbat even when their wasn't money for food.

A century later, here I am in Shiloh living a full Jewish Life, observing the Mitzvot my grandparents had set aside. And even more unexpected, I left America!

Do I have a story?

There's no real drama to my story. It feels so boring and trite to me.

Part of the senior citizen program I take part in includes telling our individual or family story to a couple of high school students who will write it up for the oral history project of the Diaspora Museum, Museum of the Jewish People - Beit Hatfutsot.

I don't see anything very dramatic or unique about my life. My teenage years was during the 1960's when many of us searched for a "truth." I found it in the religion I was born in, Judaism. The NCSY activities and YU-Seminars I participated in facilitated and encouraged my return to the Judaism my grandparents had abandoned. And I abandoned their refuge; I moved to Israel and live in the Biblical city of Shiloh. To me I was part of a "wave." My decisions came easily. My story is so boring.

This was taken a few years ago. I am holding my GNN67 graduation picture.