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<\/a><\/p>\nI saw down to chat with Judy about her book, just released this week, Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile<\/a> and we\u2019re sharing it with you today as part of an informal series on Israeli authors who\u2019ve written books in English that we think capture something unique and special about Israeli life. <\/p>\n Judy Lev was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and made Aliyah in 1967. From 1984 to 2004 she wrote columns for both The Jerusalem Post and The Cleveland Jewish News. She also writes fiction and teaches both creative nonfiction and fiction to adults, and mentors Anglo Israeli writers. Since October 14, 2023, Judy Lev has been writing Epistles from Israel, now on Substack<\/a>. Our Names Do Not Appear<\/a>, a memoir about the legacy of silenced childhood grief, was Lev\u2019s first book. <\/a>Bethlehem Road: stories of immigration and exile<\/a> is her second book. <\/p>\n Share Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis<\/a><\/p>\n Give a gift subscription<\/a><\/p>\n The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, prepared for our paid subscribers.<\/p>\n Here in Jerusalem, just a few weeks ago, we were running our air conditioners not only during the day, but some evenings and nights as well. It was still hot. Now, though, just a couple of weeks later, it\u2019s gorgeous outside in Jerusalem during the day, and the nights are crisp, even a bit chilly. To many of us, the fresh air feels like a new beginning. In many ways, it\u2019s not only the the beginning of a new season, but it feels like the beginning of a new period in Israel\u2019s history. We\u2019ve all taken a deep sigh of relief with the return to Israel of the 20 living hostages, and while we still pray for those who are not living to be returned as quickly as possible, there\u2019s no question that people here are breathing easier. The war may not be fully behind us, but still, it\u2019s become a bit easier also to look around and to be reminded of the charms of life here in Israel, whether in Jerusalem, where I happen to live, or elsewhere. So today we\u2019re starting a series of conversations with Israeli authors who\u2019ve written in books in English that our entire audience could appreciate, that somehow shed light on dimensions of life here in ways that may not often get discussed. It\u2019s a story of a neighborhood, which happens to be the neighborhood that I live in. Every building that you talk about, every street corner, every store, I know all those places. There was something very charming about reading a really beautifully written book in many different people\u2019s voices, a kaleidoscope or one of those quilts, patchwork quilt, where each one is somebody else. I loved reading about my own neighborhood, which is really fun. But I think there\u2019s something else that\u2019s really profound about this book, and that\u2019s what I want to talk to you about today. You call it in the subtitle, Stories of Immigration and Exile. And Baka is, as I\u2019m sure you\u2019re going to tell us very shortly, very much a neighborhood of immigrants, different kinds of immigrants at different stages. And we\u2019ll get to that when we talk about the first of the stories that we\u2019re going to talk about. But because it\u2019s a neighborhood of immigrants, it\u2019s also a neighborhood of exile. Because, first of all, there were people who were here before we got there, and we\u2019ll talk about them a little bit. But all of us who chose to come here also chose to be in exile. In other words, we were American, you and I, originally, but there\u2019s a lot of French people in Baka, and there\u2019s people from all over. And by virtue of their having made a decision to live in Israel and to live in Jerusalem, they also made a decision not to be where they grew up. And that\u2019s something that you don\u2019t ever quite completely shake. You and I were both saying to each other a different point that our grandmothers who came from the quote, unquote, Old country, seemed to us like immigrants, and our parents were completely situated in America, born in America, spoke English, mellifluously, felt totally comfortable in America as America\u2019s apple pie. And then here we are, once again, repeating our grandparents\u2019 story, just instead of moving to America, moving out of America, and being immigrants, really, until our last days. And so there\u2019s something, if the first book struck me because of its focus on Israel and memory, today, I think we should talk about Immigration and Exile. Well, Bait Zait is very different from Baka. A little bit of history of Baka, give us, please. They built enormous homes. We should make everybody I understand. Something like there were two and three-story homes, ornate with arches. I mean, these are not little houses. No. These are ornate homes. These were wealthy Arabs. They built gorgeous homes. And they never got back in. And what did Israel do with these huge houses? Which were not so gorgeous anymore inside, because when you take a single family home and you put four or five families in it, then the neighborhood changes dramatically. Soviet-style apartment buildings that were just rectangular, ugly, whatever. Now, you moved into the neighborhood in the late \u201860s, right? Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about what Baka was like back then, because as I mentioned to you in a previous conversation that we had, my family made an abortive attempt at Aliyah. My parents made Aliyah in \u201869, and we lived on Rechow Ben Zakai, which you actually mentioned in your book. I think the taxi is going down Rechow Ben Zakai or something like that. But I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s a 15-minute walk from Baka. It\u2019s nothing. And we had bikes, and we were told by my parents, all three boys, you can ride around wherever you want. There\u2019s only one neighborhood in Jerusalem you may not ride in, and that is Baka, because they said, if you ride into Baka, you\u2019re coming home without your bike, in the best of circumstances. Tell us what was going on in Baka. I think you mentioned it on the corners of Yehuda and Levi with Derech Bet Lechem or Bethlehem Road. What\u2019s going on in Baka back in those days? Why did my parents not let us ride bikes? Not all the streets were paved, by the way. The architecture had more charm than some of the people, perhaps. He\u2019s in the book. Let\u2019s fast forward a little bit. It\u2019s a rough and tumble neighborhood in the late \u201860s, early \u201870s. But because it\u2019s cheap, it\u2019s a place where if you\u2019re a a beatnik American and you want to come to Israel and you want to find a place where you can rent or whatever, this was a great place to go because it was Jerusalem, but it was cheap. And a lot of the beginning of the gentrification of Baka, from what I understand, started with these Americans who are more your hippy dippy types, who moved in the late \u201860s, early \u201870s. And over the course of time, of course, the neighborhood gets prohibitively expensive. Just for example, you know the streets very well. On the corner of Reuben and Gidon, which is literally around the corner from the building that you and I met in the first time. So it\u2019s where the park is, a ravine going up and down. On the corner, though, they\u2019re refurbishing an old building. One One apartment is $8 million dollars, not shekel, $8 million dollars. We\u2019re talking about a neighborhood now that\u2019s exploded in terms of crazy price, but it\u2019s still got a lot of the color that it had back then. Right. That\u2019s a whole other can of worms. In this story called The Law of Return, though, you tell It\u2019s a story that a lot of people have experienced, which is that they\u2019re in this old Arab house, somebody knocks on the door. Take it from there. Which they still do a lot of them. He\u2019d actually built the building. Lots of them. Because it\u2019s traumatizing, I think. It really is. Right. Just buying an apartment puts you in that conflict. Exactly. And there\u2019s a really, for me, a very profound line which you have when she wants to go. First of all, she wants to go because she\u2019s very uncomfortable with him being, it doesn\u2019t sound like she\u2019s scared for her safety. She\u2019s just very uncomfortable with him, and the whole story is so uncomfortable. And she also has a meeting with the lawyer to finish the sale of the apartment. So she really does have to go because she\u2019s got a meeting. And then she says, I\u2019m really sorry. I said, again, Would you mind leaving? I have to get to the lawyer\u2019s. And he says, Sure. My family\u2019s used to being kicked out by Jews. And it\u2019s a stab in the heart. Because at the heart of that little story in the apartment is, of course, the story that we\u2019re still living right now. I\u2019m in the news on whatever the news was today on the front page. It\u2019s about the same conflict. Whose home is this? Who gets to be here? Who doesn\u2019t get to be here? Who did what to whom? Competing narratives about that. Well, Baka is an Arab word. Baka is an Arab word that means valley, like Bicah in Hebrew, but it means valley because it\u2019s lower than other parts of Jerusalem. All right, let\u2019s move from Baka or old houses in Baka I want to mention Paris very quickly because there\u2019s a line in the book in a different story where people are talking about this couple, one of whom has come from Paris or both of whom have come from Paris. I don\u2019t know. Then somebody says about them, They\u2019ll always have Paris, which also is a very interesting issue that all of us immigrants here face. Which is, at what point are you really Israeli? I had a boss who was really a mentor and a teacher, Professor Seymour Fox, of blessed memory. When I worked at the Mandel Foundation, he made Ali on \u201867. His three boys were all raised here. They all went to the army. He told me that, I don\u2019t know, in the \u201890s or something, he was on some panel at Hebrew University, and the woman who was putting the panel together said, Yeah, we have you and we have so and so, but I really want to get an Israeli also. He said to her, I\u2019ve been here for, I don\u2019t know what it was, 30 years, 40 years. All my boys went to the army. They were all raised here. At what point do I actually become Israeli? She didn\u2019t say anything, but the answer was, of course, never. I mean, the way my grandmother also living in Borough Park, her English was very good, but if she was tired, she slipped into Yiddish, and her English was fine, but it did have that little bit of an accent. At what point, if you would ask her or ask someone about her, are you going to be really authentically as American as Apple pie and Chevrolet? The answer is never. And when you\u2019re you and I, Judy and Danny, are you going to be really completely authentically Israeli? We\u2019re not. When our kids are going to deal with that, however they deal with it, and what we do understand, and what we don\u2019t understand, and what nuances we pick up when we don\u2019t, why did you think it was an important I would think to put that line in about that they\u2019ll always have Paris? What were you trying to say about immigration, exile, what it feels like to live here? It\u2019s part of who you are. Well, it\u2019s replete in all the stories in the book. And I think that\u2019s one of the things that makes the book so authentic. Even O\u2019Vadia, the falafel salesman, right? O\u2019vadia falafel is still there. I mean, O\u2019Vadia for sure is not anymore because he\u2019s already a pretty older guy when the story takes place decades and decades ago. But it never occurred to me in all the times that I\u2019ve bought falafel at O\u2019Vadia falafel, which over 25 years in the neighborhood is a lot of times because it\u2019s really good. By the way, you actually explain in the book why there\u2019s no schwarma there. I\u2019ve always thought to myself, what an idiot doesn\u2019t add schwarma to his falafel stand? The answer to that is in your book. But again, even O\u2019Vadia was in his own way an immigrant. There\u2019s nobody even, the old timers are in their own way immigrants. So this question of how authentic do they see you as being, right? How authentic do the quote, unquote, real Israelis see you as being? I won\u2019t mention the name of the person in this case because I don\u2019t have his permission to, but he\u2019s also passed away, but I could ask his kids. But He told me he was a colleague of mine many years ago, a wonderful, wonderful man. And he told me that he made Alia sometime before the \u201867 war, I guess, just a couple of years. His parents were not keen on it. They were also immigrants from the old country. And here he was, the seeing America with all of its promise and going off to this God forsaken place. Israel in the mid \u201860s was the Wild West, so to speak. And they made him make a promise. And the promise was just promise us, you\u2019ll never give up your American citizenship. And he made a promise. He said, okay, I can make that promise. Then there\u2019s the period called the Hamtana, which you actually talk a little bit about in your book. I don\u2019t know if you call it the Hamtana, but there\u2019s this period where there\u2019s shells being fired before the Six-Day War. In May. In the very first chapter, the person goes running and they heard something. In \u201867. In \u201867, right. So everybody thinks that the war started suddenly with Israeli jets racing off and taking out the Egyptian Air Force. No way. It\u2019s not exactly how it went down. We knew for a good 30 days that the war was going to happen. They just didn\u2019t know that Israel was going to strike first. But they were shelling us, and the straits of Tehran were closed, and Israel was being embargoed. I mean, it was a whole to-do. And it\u2019s getting very, very stressful in Israel. And he taught at one of the Israeli universities, and somebody said to him, Well, don\u2019t worry. You have your American passport. And he told me that that night, it was a big deal to make an international call back then, he called his parents and he said, I have to break my promise to you. I have to be able to tell that man, No, I don\u2019t. I\u2019m in this as much as you are. And he actually went to the embassy and he de-Americanized himself, whatever that even means. But he was so traumatized by having broken his promise to his parents that he told me this story probably 40 or 50 years after that. And what does he say to her? And his sense of belonging. And the fact that his kids could have been on that bus, too. So he tells her to get out of the cab, and then what happens?<\/p>\n And then she apologizes. She apologizes. And she explains that she\u2019s been upset all day, and she\u2019s a nervous wreck.<\/p>\n If I remember correctly, and you remember it better because you wrote it, but I think he leans into the glove component or something like that, right? He gets her a tissue or something. Exactly. Yeah. Cabs are such a, they are a study in and of themselves. I remember when I used to work at the place that I worked at before I worked at Shalem, where I still work, we used to have to go around from place to place, and there would be a driver that would pick us up. One day, they told us that the driver, whoever he was, was not going to come. There\u2019s going to be a new driver. I get in the car. He actually, believe it or not, picked me up on Rechow Ben Zakai, I still remember. He\u2019s playing classical music in the taxi. It\u2019s a little unusual. It\u2019s not unheard of, but it\u2019s not the norm. Israel has a great classical music station. He was playing it. That already won me over. I had never even met the guy at all, and he already won me over. There\u2019s a picture of him. He\u2019s in his 50s, I guess. There\u2019s a picture of a beautiful young woman on the dashboard. What do you say? I don\u2019t know. I was trying to make an idle chatter with him, and I said, What a gorgeous picture. He said, Yeah, that was my daughter. She was killed in, and then he told me what bombing she\u2019d been been killed in. He remained the driver for the place that I was working for many, many years. He since passed away. Then his son also then worked with us. But there are bonds that happen in taxis, especially around some of these terror moments. In this case, it was the man whose daughter had been killed. In the case of your story, it was a completely innocent man who had done absolutely nothing wrong. But she tosses him in with all the bad guys, and he\u2019s hurt. And she knows that he\u2019s hurt. And the part of her that\u2019s not insanely nervous about her fianc\u00e9 feels badly that he\u2019s hurt. So again, here\u2019s why I wanted our listeners to know about your book, because it\u2019s so different. Pick up the history of Israel or read I don\u2019t know if there is one, a history of the Neighborhood of Baka. If there is one, I\u2019ve never read it, and I don\u2019t plan to, it would be boring. But this is a way of showing the kaleidoscope, all the shapes and colors changing all the time of a neighborhood. Yeah, I said the hostages. That\u2019s all we talk about. And your book is an opportunity for people to re-meet the Israel of Old. It\u2019s not a perfect Israel. There\u2019s a war, there\u2019s a conflict, there\u2019s terrorists, there\u2019s good people, there\u2019s bad people, there\u2019s nice people, there\u2019s some not nice people. But it\u2019s The Israel of Old with its colorful tapestry. I don\u2019t know if you set out to write these stories in order to show that, or maybe that was just your coping mechanism for leaving Baka. But you really did show that. I want to ask you the following question by way of beginning to wrap up. It\u2019s being published by an American publisher, which is fascinating to me. They pick certain books to publish, and they turn down a lot of books, and they picked yours. They decided they wanted to go and publish your book. And I\u2019m curious, what do you think spoke to them about the book? I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re Jewish or not Jewish. I have no idea whatsoever. But they\u2019re not Israelis, and they\u2019re not professional Jews. And it\u2019s not the AJ, whatever press, American Jewish, whatever press. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s a press. It\u2019s a press that puts out books of all different sorts. What about this book? What about a book called Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile? Spoke to them in 2023, \u201824, \u201825, whenever you started to work with them. Why do you think they wanted to publish this book? You don\u2019t care as long as they did, by the way. I mean, we\u2019re all like that. We don\u2019t care why they said yes, as long as they said yes. It\u2019s very well written. That\u2019s putting it mildly. What did you think it was going to be a book? How long ago? And what made you think, Oh, this isn\u2019t a bunch of stories. This is going to be a book one day? What triggered that? Yeah, it\u2019s certainly a great spine, so to speak, for the various stories to hold together. The book, I guess if you buy it in person, comes with this incredibly charming map of the neighborhood of Baka with all the streets, and then it\u2019s got numbered there where each thing takes place. And if you know Baka, you actually recognize little drawings of the buildings, which are really beautifully done. Some people will buy it online, I guess, and maybe the map doesn\u2019t come with those books. I don\u2019t have any idea. But for people that buy it online, people that buy it in person, people that buy it in, is it going to be on Kindle also? I don\u2019t know if they do that anymore. Okay, so there is an e-book. Okay. What do you want people to walk away with? I mean, aside from the fact that these are really beautiful stories and the characters are rich and it is beautifully written, is there something about Israel that you would hope that Jewish readers, non-Jewish readers, would put the book down, back on the table, sip their coffee? What do you hope is going through their hearts and their souls when they finish the book? It\u2019s a hard time to visit. It\u2019s a hard time to live here. And for those of us who are immigrants, it\u2019s, I think, a complicated time because we, theoretically, do have an option to go somewhere else. I have a very good friend who wrote a piece on Yom Hazikaron, Memorial Day, Two years ago in Times of Israel. He\u2019s American. His kids are all born here. And he wrote a piece about, How will I know when it\u2019s time to leave? And he told me he got a tremendous amount of heat because a lot of his Israeli friends said, What about those of us who don\u2019t have that option? Did ever occur to you that you\u2019re thinking in terms that real Israeli is, quote, unquote, real? Don\u2019t really get to think about. And he felt bad. He felt badly that he hadn\u2019t thought about that. He\u2019s an incredibly extraordinary, wonderful person. But he just said, I never thought about it from that lens. And so even the tough times, you\u2019re right, it\u2019s not exactly a pinnacle of tourism in Israel right now. But even these tough times are a way of all of us asking ourselves, Where do we belong? And where am I at home? And where am I at home? I think American Jews, who are a lot of the people who are going to be listening to this conversation, are unfortunately asking themselves that question in a way that we haven\u2019t asked it in America for a couple of generations. What\u2019s this place going to be like for my children and for my grandchildren? Is this a temporary blip or is this a new trend? Where do we belong? Where\u2019s home? Where are we immigrants? Where are we in exile? Where are we completely part of the fabric of the place? They are complicated questions. I know it\u2019s just stories about people along the road, but that\u2019s doing it a great disservice. It\u2019s really a book about the richness, as you said, the richness of the fabric that makes up Israel. Also just fabulous stories and windows into Israeli life. Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile by Judy Lev. Thank you so much, and good luck with the book.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
We begin today with Judy Lev, who has lived in Israel since 1967, and who has written two books, the second of which we\u2019re going to discuss today. Her second book is called Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration Exile, and it\u2019s just now come out. I really enjoyed the book for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it\u2019s about the very neighborhood that I\u2019ve called home for 25 years. So I learned a lot about the stores that I frequent and the places that I see and the history that\u2019s behind them that I didn\u2019t know. But I also really appreciated the fact that Judy pointed in a very subtle and powerful way to the fact that all of us who are immigrants have also been exiled in a way. Stories of immigration are also stories of exile, as she notes. And I think she captures something very powerful about Israeli society in general when pointing to that, because, of course, so many Israelis, either this generation or the previous one, were immigrants. It turns out that our neighborhood\u2019s charms began long before we got here. And Judy points to them by bringing to life the struggles of 12 immigrants searching for meaning and happiness on what is now one of Jerusalem\u2019s vibrant thoroughfares.
As I mentioned, the book is just out, and we are attaching an Amazon link for those who\u2019d like to explore it further. And we hope you\u2019ll enjoy this conversation with Judy Lev about her new book, Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a very long-winded way of saying. I\u2019m thrilled that you\u2019re back. I love your second book really very much. It\u2019s just like I loved the first. Tell us a little bit, and we\u2019ll put your whole bio in the notes for today so people can read all of that. Tell us why you wrote this book.
Okay. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for inviting me again. It\u2019s lovely to be here back in the hood. Why I wrote the Book. So I lived in Baka for more than almost 40 years. And then when I left Jerusalem in 2005, I moved far away to Mosha Bait Zait, which is all of a half a kilometer from the city limits of Jerusalem. But I felt like I was in Galut. Exile. I felt like I was in exile, even though I was a half a kilometer away.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right. It\u2019s a beautiful suburb. It started off as a Moshav. It\u2019s still a Moshav, theoretically. No, it was lovely. It\u2019s the dream of a lot of people to have their own home and a large garden and mountains, surrounded by mountains and lots of trees and all kinds of critters. And indeed, it was lovely. But I miss the city. And my way of coping, pretty much with any strong feeling, is through writing. That\u2019s my coping mechanism. Just like I started the epistles from Israel, four days after this war started that we\u2019re currently still in. And so I started writing stories that take place on Derech Beit Lechem on Bethlehem Road, the main artery of the neighborhood of Baka, which is located in South Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Yes. So the French built a railroad from the town of the seaport town of Jaffa to Jerusalem in the late 1800s. It was completed in 1898. And at that point, there were well-to-do Arab families, both in Bethlehem and in the old city of Jerusalem, who wanted to create a garden suburb, the Arab version of what Talpyot was, a garden suburb. And so during the Ottoman Empire, they built the first few homes, mainly along the train track, because the train track opened up Jerusalem to the rest of the world. Then after the British came, then in the \u201820s and the \u201830s, there was really a lot of building, and they built beautiful homes out of the local- <\/p>\n
Well-to-do Arabs, Christian Muslim and Armenians. It was an exclusive neighborhood in that everyone had a large garden area, and they planted pomegranate trees and fig trees, and And they had vegetable gardens. And they also built buildings for apartments. And there were tennis courts in the neighborhood. I\u2019m not sure exactly where. And it was a strictly Arab neighborhood until 1947, \u201848. More than 99 %, probably 99 99% of the population were either forced to leave by the haganah, by Israeli soldiers, or they were told to leave by the leaders of Jordan who said, Get out now and for two or three weeks, we\u2019ll finish off the Jews, and then you can go back to your beautiful homes. So they got out, and we on the war.<\/p>\n
And they never got back in.<\/p>\n
So immediately, they displaced persons from the old city, Jews from the old city of Jerusalem, who had been defeated during the war, so they couldn\u2019t live in the old city anymore. So they were placed in homes in Baka. And then in \u201849, \u201850, \u201851, the Jewish agency housed refugees from DP camps and from people who had been living in the tent camps, the Maabarot in Talpiyot, and they placed the families in these homes. So in a gorgeous home where maybe one family lived or an Arab family, and the son maybe had the second floor, the Jewish agency would place maybe four families. So you had people from DP camps in Europe, from Yugoslavia, from Romania, And you had Moroccans who were in the 10 cities in the Maabarot, Moroccans and people from Kurdistan and Libya and Tunisia. And you had a really potpourri of populations all living together in these gorgeous homes.<\/p>\n
And then in the early \u201850s, the government started building these shikunim, public housing.<\/p>\n
And they built schools in the neighborhood, and It was a completely immigrant neighborhood, except for the few Armenian families who still live in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Yeah, I lived in one of the oldest Arab homes that no longer exists. In \u201869, I lived there for a year.<\/p>\n
Well, apparently, there were street gangs. I wasn\u2019t so much aware of the street gangs, but it was a very neglected neighborhood. When my husband and I moved into a home in \u201872, there were drug addicts sitting in the entrance hall of the building. There was no electricity to get to the third floor where we lived.<\/p>\n
Not all the streets were paved at all. There was a bus or two busses that went back and forth on the street. But it was, some people, from Rehavia would call it a slum, perhaps, but it had a lot of charm. I mean, the architecture was just still-<\/p>\n
Exactly. And the choices were, we could have bought an apartment in the newly built neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol in the northern part of the city for the same price, or no, for maybe even more expensive. But I don\u2019t know, I fell in love with the apartment that we bought, mainly because it had an 80 square meter attached roof from which you could see the whole city to the west, and the and the sky because the buildings were all low. So you could see all of the Judean Hills, the hills surrounding Jerusalem, and its sunset and at dawn. And it was just so poetically gorgeous. I didn\u2019t care if there were gangs, and I didn\u2019t have children at that time, so I didn\u2019t really care if the school was a lousy school. We had some wonderful neighbors in the building where we lived, people who had, our downstairs neighbors, especially, they had fought in the war of Independence, and the father of these three children had lost an eye.<\/p>\n
Yeah. They were just wonderful people.<\/p>\n
I remember when we had a block party years ago, our downstairs neighbor organized a block party. We lived in the building for, I don\u2019t know, 15 years. Everybody recognized everybody from parking their cars on the street, but nobody knew anybody. They put out flyers in all the buildings for people to come and have like potato chips and Coke and whatever. A lot of heel came was very sweet. That That was when I learned, by the way, that not all of the streets had been paved. It never occurred to me that. Of course, the streets were always paved, but they weren\u2019t because the old people from the neighborhood, mostly Moroccans, were arguing about, did they get paved in \u201873 or did they get paved in \u201874? When did they change the names from the Arab names to the names of the 12 tribes? Then they made a joke, which was, Me Marokaim le Amerikaim. The neighborhood went being from Moroccan to American. It wasn\u2019t all Moroccan, and not all American, but their point was that the gentrification really changed the neighborhood dramatically. It\u2019s still very colorful, though, and a lot of things that you talk about in the book are still there.
I want to dive into some of the issues that you raised, not so much about the neighborhood, but about Israel and exile and so forth. There\u2019s, I don\u2019t know, how many stories are in the book? I don\u2019t remember anymore. Twelve stories. Twelve stories. They\u2019re great. Each one is in a different person\u2019s voice, and they\u2019re written beautifully. It\u2019s just no way to capture the beauty of these stories without us reading them out loud, which we\u2019re not going to do because people can get the book if they want. But I want to talk about three little comments that get made in the book, which I think touch on this whole idea of immigration and exile, and what they say, not only about Baka, obviously, but what they say about Israel in general. Because this is a book about Israel. It\u2019s about Baka, but it\u2019s really a lens onto Israel. I want to start with a story that you call the law of Return. The law of Return, as I\u2019m sure most of our listeners know, was a law passed in the summer of 1950, which basically says that anybody with one Jewish grandparent, which was the same definition of Jewishness that the Nazis had used. So this was a way of getting back. If you were Jewish enough for the Nazis to kill you, you\u2019re Jewish enough for the Israeli state to accept you as a citizen, any Jew could automatically become a citizen and come here. Other people, like in most countries, you have to apply to become a citizen. But if you\u2019re a Jew, that right just is given to you if you have one Jewish grandparent. And that, of course, has created all sorts of issues because lots of Soviet Jews have come with one Jewish grandparent, but it\u2019s perhaps, let me be on the paternal side. So they\u2019re halakhically not Jewish. There is for the Ministry of the Interior, they are Jewish. It\u2019s all to do. We\u2019re not going to go there.
Who is a Jew?<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
Yeah. And this story takes place on the anniversary of the Sixth Day War. And there\u2019s a young woman from London who\u2019s buying an apartment on Bethlehem Road, and she wants to see the apartment after the people who lived there before had left. And she was dancing around the apartment, and it had beautiful tile floors.<\/p>\n
Right. And the windows were gorgeous, and there were these two tall palm trees in front of it. And then there\u2019s a knock on the door. And it turns out it was the son of the of the original owner of the building.<\/p>\n
He was a builder. He was the owner, and he and his family lived there not for a very long, well, no, they lived there. They could have lived there. I\u2019m not sure what year it was built in, but they could have lived there for 20 or For sure. Right. He wanted to see this man, who was the owner\u2019s son, wanted to see his apartment, his house. He had been trying to see it for years since 1967, and the previous owners did not let them in. Now, this actually happened in many homes in Baka.<\/p>\n
So This new immigrant from London, she let the man in. And then he tells her the story of what happened the night when they left and what a trauma it was for them and has been for them, even though they\u2019re resettled in Ramallah. And the woman, the 27-year-old woman who\u2019s buying the apartment is not traumatized, but shaken. She\u2019s shaken.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t know what she was getting into when she bought this apartment that she\u2019s buying into this whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n
I thought that this whole idea of who\u2019s in exile here. She\u2019s an immigrant, but she\u2019s in exile because she came from some other place. He\u2019s in exile because he had a house that was taken away. There\u2019s nobody who\u2019s situated where they started. There\u2019s nobody in the story who, his father\u2019s already gone, but his father didn\u2019t die where he had built this house. Everybody someplace else from where they had been born. That struck me as being very instructive about this country and the neighborhood in general. By the way, I have friends who lived on Rechow Yehuda, which is literally it intersects the the street that you\u2019re talking about. Exact same thing. A guy knocked on the door. They were very hesitant to let him in, but they\u2019re good people. If a guy says that, you don\u2019t want to be a jerk, but he could tell they were very nervous. I said, Look, I\u2019ll describe for you. He remembered the apartment. I\u2019ll describe for you the layout. I remember it as a boy. When he said, There\u2019s a window here, and then there\u2019s a kitchen. It was so clear they knew the apartment. She let him in, and he looked around, and he didn\u2019t take pictures. He didn\u2019t say anything. He just walked around very quietly, and then he left. But she also was not an unpleasant interaction, but she was so shaken. I heard about it a couple of weeks after it happened, that she was still visibly shaken by that. Because, again, every house has a story. Every stone has a story.
And it\u2019s easy to deny it and not, you mentioned to me about a young woman who didn\u2019t know that it had been an Arab neighborhood. I mean, it It was a completely 100% Arab neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Both were in Paris at the same time. I mean, both Annie and Ted.<\/p>\n
Well, I once volunteered at the Beth Moses, which is a home for the agent here in Baka. It\u2019s still there. Yeah, it\u2019s still there. I did writing workshops with them. I was amazed when I heard this one woman who had been a principal. She came from Germany. She was a principal of a girls\u2019 school in Haifa. And the memory that she shared with the group was how in 1934, \u201835, she was at home and she heard this parade outside, and her father closed the curtains because the father didn\u2019t want her to see the parade. But she snuck, and she saw her friends from school marching with the Nazi youth down the street, and she felt like she wanted to be with them because they were her friends from school. And the father got so angry. And I don\u2019t know, just hearing this story from her made me realize that this woman, she had contributed so much to Israel. Her Hebrew was exquisite, and she was a principal of a school. And yet one of the strongest memories that she had was being a young German girl who wanted to be with her German friends. And I don\u2019t know, from that, I had the feeling that like, she\u2019s also an immigrant. Like, oh, I\u2019m an immigrant. I\u2019m always going to be an immigrant because I\u2019m always going to have this American background and this American accent when I speak Hebrew and my American education, and I don\u2019t want to get rid of it. I mean, I love it.<\/p>\n
Yeah, it\u2019s who I am.<\/p>\n
Totally. I remember also once when I was at Kibbutz Ginosar, there was an old man who was guarding the gate to the beach, and I sat and spoke with him, and he was thinking about his father\u2019s shoe repair shop in Pinsk. And this was a man who had been the first fisherman on the Sea of Galil\u00e9e for 2,000 years. What he had achieved, building this kibbutz, Ginosar, on the shores of the Galil\u00e9e, And this is what he thought about when he was older, which is, I mean, it\u2019s natural. I think older people, they think about their childhood. <\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s in the very first chapter.<\/p>\n
It was quite powerful. But again, you shed light on this. You peel You peel layers of skin off the deep wound and expose it. I don\u2019t know exactly where I\u2019m from. I want to be from here, but I\u2019m really from there. They think I\u2019m really from someplace else. But it\u2019s all very complicated And I think your stories, they shed light on it in a really, really beautiful way. I think that people who read the book will understand something about Israel that they\u2019re not going to understand in any other way. Everybody Everybody here is from someplace else. A lot of people were born here, obviously, but then their parents were from someplace else or their grandparents. The number of people here whose great grandparents live in this country is minuscule, just minuscule. And it\u2019s really a powerful thing. I want to turn our story back to the conflict, which is not all of this book, but it\u2019s a theme throughout the book because it\u2019s a part of Israeli life. There\u2019s a scene, I actually think it\u2019s on Rechov Ben Zakai, which I mentioned earlier. That\u2019s the street that I used to live on when I was a kid. There\u2019s been a terrorist bombing. The woman who\u2019s telling the story of this particular chapter, and again, the chapters are all told in the first person by… No, that\u2019s not true. Not at all. But a lot of them are told in the first person, of whoever\u2019s story it is. The first person is not Judy. It\u2019s whoever the character in that chapter is. She\u2019s racing to Hadassah and Karem because her fianc\u00e9, they\u2019re about to get married. Actually, they\u2019re days away from their wedding. She doesn\u2019t know, is he alive? Is he dead? She\u2019s been called, you have to get to the hospital right away. And then she has this conversation with a taxi driver. Tell us about the conversation.
Well, the news is on the radio, and she hears the news, and how many have been killed, and the taxi driver feels empathy for what\u2019s gone on. And he says, Oh, it\u2019s terrible, isn\u2019t it? And she says, What do you care? Yeah.<\/p>\n
He asks her. He pulls over to the side, and he asks her to get out of the car because she\u2019s belittled his humanity.<\/p>\n
Thank you. Yes, he gives her a tissue. Right. And she keeps that tissue, and the tissue appears again and again in the story, later in the story.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s really about Israel. I think that part of the tragedy of our current situation is so complex, and it\u2019s tragic on so many different levels. But all we think about now, Israel, Hostages, War, Gaza, genocide, not genocide, ostracism, not ostracism, embargo, no embargo, Bibi, no Bibi. That takes up 99 %.
Hostages.<\/p>\n
Well, this is all conjecture, because I don\u2019t know for sure.<\/p>\n
The press is She Writes Press. So it\u2019s an independent, hybrid press, and they only publish women writers. I think one of the reasons they took it is because they want to, of course, they accepted it. I think they accepted it before… No, they accepted it after the war began. I don\u2019t know. I think maybe they want to broaden their horizons and have a story that takes place outside of the United States. I mean, they do have authors. They\u2019re putting out at the same time a memoir by a Japanese woman who\u2019s an immigrant to America, and another woman is writing about the Holocaust. And I mean, they have Jewish authors. They\u2019re not afraid of Jewish authors. I\u2019m very fortunate in that sense. And I think they saw that it was well written.<\/p>\n
I mean, I\u2019m I\u2019ve been working on these stories for 20 years, and I had a lot of people read them.<\/p>\n
When I was 60, I went back to college for an MA in English at Bar Ilan. At that time, then they had their Shaindy Rudoff Graduate program in creative writing. I was part of that program, and they offered poetry or fiction. I chose fiction. And in order to graduate, you had to come up with a thesis, which was 110 pages. And the thesis had to have a connecting theme, the stories. So once I heard this from our mentor, our teacher, Alan Hoffmann, it was just clear to me that I\u2019m going to write about Bethlehem Road, that all the stories are going to take place on Bethlehem Road. It was clear because it was at the same time that I had left Jerusalem. And so I started writing these stories that all took place on Bethlehem Road. And I took some stories that I had written before that. I had one story that had been accepted to Kenyan review in 1991 or \u201892, I don\u2019t remember. And so it was easy to put that story also, and it was the theme of exile and family violence and how that can lead in the echoes of the binding of Isaac. So it fit very nicely on Bethlehem Road.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an e-book. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I never really thought about that. But now that you\u2019re asking the question, I think I would say that I want them to realize what a rich place this is and how layered it is and how complex it is and how deep it is and how it has a history. I mean, all these streets are all from the Bible or from the Mishneic period, and people live surrounded by this history. It\u2019s a very different place than anywhere in the United States, for instance, which is really a new place compared to this place. And I want them to be open to I\u2019d love for people to come visit because of it. And I know this is a terrible It\u2019s a terrible time to visit, but I hope times will change and get better.<\/p>\n
Thank you so much for having me.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Click the text banner above to listen to the rest of Im Yesh Ba\u2019olam. Click the cover image above for the rest of the album Ru\u2019ach Ba\u2019ah Mi\u2019darom.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I begin today\u2019s column with three photos of a falafel stand. Kind of innocuous, the sign that says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-16636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}