Lifta

Lifta

Watching Eliyahu’s lush wide angle lens capture the homes and landscape The empty, silent buildings The green shrubbery and hills surrounding The cold water gushing into the Mikveh I used to take my sons to, before the Holy Days

I am filled with shame, Having never questioned the silent witnesses The dilapidated stonework and arched rooms The emptiness of what once was Merely accepting the fact as part of history Never asking who lived here?

Are they still alive?

Where?

Now watching the human rights groups visiting The screen focuses on the single survivor Who eloquently points to where he once lived He speaks of Lifta with emotional warmth Some 3000 souls living in peace In hundreds of stone walled homes Now vacant and rotting.

The detritus of iron beds still sticking out of the earth growing Inexorably on the floors.

I would walk here often Across the valley from my home Never questioning the dotted stone homes Zigzagged along the side of the hills Hugging the landscape, seemingly haphazardly Like small toy box houses when seen from my garden across the valley.

Then came the highway that divided the valley in half And walking the dog became more difficult And the noise made the sweet smelling valley Less inviting, as did the diesel fumes.

Back then the mist filled the valley early in the morning And the deer frolicked carefully Always wary of possible threats The dump on the top of the hill was filled with rainwater And Gilbert loved to jump into the cool refreshing water Albeit emerging muddy and filthy.

The heather in April and the perfumed moss The wetness and fructification of the spring valley flora

Supported and formed the sustaining natural backdrop to this village.

Now memories are darkened by the history brought to my consciousness Having read of Allenby reaching Lifta Seeing the photos of the British army And the capitulation of the Turks And the realization that Jerusalem was theirs on reaching… Lifta!

A fateful place, a turn in the fighting 1919 Allenby dismounting off his horse out of respect for the old city The Rabbis and Imams and Mullahs there to greet him A new dawn The realization of a millennial dream Allenby, Balfour, Weitzmann, making this happen.

Lifta, the place triggering this new change The place of no resistance Of capitulation to Empire, once Turk, then British now Israeli.

A place of forgotten memories Of lost dreams Where families lived generation after generation Now denied their collective story even In the rubble of what once was.

Lifta looms large in my memory Times of bonding with my sons The climbing and talking The jumping into the cleans waters The questioning of tradition’s claim as to its association With Joshua bin Nun And our participation in, yet critical discussion of tradition This LIfta as the trigger of our approach to tradition, culture and religion.

It’s almost as if Lifta was the very blind spot I am now forced to see The lacuna, my son, himself so attached to, Now had to demythologize, In exploding the gentle leafy green family myth Embodying the good times The family times The conversations we engaged and broke our intellectual teeth on; Now shattered by the light focused on the very retina that gazed unawares.

The ethical lacuna In not questioning In not seeing these homes These families This village As an open moral wound.

Too much time To allow it to fester in memory He focuses his wide angled lens over the valley And the zigzag homes form a jarred knife That cuts deep into my heart.

Lifta captures the imagination for many: Now neo-­‐Hassidic groups Squat in hovels And the night air is interrupted by the wails of Breslover Chassidim Pouring their hearts out to the Almighty silent One Now nature groups pass through the valley with middle-­‐aged folk Sun capped and binoculars suspended Chatting and jovial Unawares of the history of this place Beyond the flora and fauna Now horses carrying school girls wearing their riding gear with arrogance And pride, walking carefully along the path Anxious to avoid the rocks.

I think back in shame My time here My assumptions My appropriation of the Zionist idea My acceding to the reigning powerful myth Not questioning more Not asking who lived here and why they were absent

These silent spaces This once thriving village Souls living and dying Generations passing down stories Now skeletal structures Chimeric shadows of the past This story of Lifta

Points an accusing finger……at me.