Tuesday, December 22, 2015

"And New Families Emerged From the Ashes"

Very nice piece from Tablet on a Tel Aviv gathering of Jewish children born in DP camps. 

"We were children together. All of us. We shared very special early childhood years. Some of us were born in the same DP camp. My friend Aviva Tal’s parents and mine were friends in Bergen-Belsen when the two of us were born there, and the two of us actually did play together as children. But it does not matter if we were born in Belsen, or in Landsberg, or Feldafing, or Foehrenwald, or Eschwege, or Zeilsheim, or Bindermichl, or in one of the many other DP camps across Germany, Austria, and Italy. We were all born in a particular time and place, the transition between hell and normalcy, a surreal twilight that enabled our parents to catch their breath and rediscover their bearings. And these places of our birth have to a greater or lesser extent shaped our identity."

“The hand of Adonai came upon me,” declared the prophet Ezekiel."

“He took me out by the spirit of Adonai and set me down in the valley. It was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many of them spread over the valley, and they were very dry.”