| The
Purpose of HEALING - K.I.S.S.
- as stated 12 years ago - was and is
to help me and my potential P E E R s
"to HEAL ourselves into WHOLEness,
and - by extension - all of CREATion!" |
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I focus my experiencing and awareness on being
"a pioneer of Evolution
in learning to feel":
I let my Body vibrate and my Heart 'womb'
pain, shame, fear, boredom, powerlessness,
so feelings can >heal >guide>fulfill>evolve,
and ~~~ offer ~~~"goldmines"~~~ to us all!!
"I
want you to feel everything, every little thing!"
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InteGRATion into
GRATeFULLness
Close-ups of my Past
2006_08_24-Closeup of 1977_12_09
The Pain of "illusionary" Partnership
A
snapshot of my relationship with
Dr. Nimr Ismair,
the exemplary "Partner".
1977_12_09
Letter to Nimr Ismair, Haifa,
co-chairman with me in "Partnership"
[I don't know why I wrote this letter in English,
though we only talked in Hebrew or Arabic,
except when we were on our "Partnership-Tour" in
Germany ,
two months earlier]
Dear Nimr,
I felt
so hurt by your harsh, spontaneous reaction to my question,
if it would be convenient for
you to start the committee session next week even earlier,
that I must do something in order to get the hurt "out
of my system" .
I could,
of course, talk to you face to face, but the way you look
at a person who is hurt and the way you "twist"
the words you said before ("pilpulim", I use to
call it, as you know), always make my heart melt away, always
cause me to delude myself, as if the problem were not real,
as if it were only in my imagination. but I don't want to
delude myself anymore, I want to stand up to the truth and
bear it.
The words
you said, were: "I could
do without the session altogether".
When we
told you about the session a week ago, you distorted your
face in a way that made Naftali Raz say to me sadly: "Nimr
doesn't show much enthusiasm about the session."
I defended you, of course, and said: "Nobody
is enthusiastic hearing about a session, we all have too much
to do, but Nimr knows it's necessary and that is what counts."
But when you threw that answer upon me on the phone, I suddenly
was aware (not for the first time, but for the first time
so clearly and therefore so painfully), aware of the fact,
that in all these past two years it did not happen even once,
that y o u took the
initiative, that y o u asked for a
session, that y o u wanted
me to come to a meeting, that y o u wanted
from me anything. And if you initiated anything, concerning
Bir'am
only, it never ever included me. I have started as a poor
beggar, always asking for small or bigger favors, and this
is what I still am: a beggar. Even the invitation to Europe
was not accepted as a gift, but as still another obligation,
still another "I could do without it!"
I have felt it for a long time,
that my pride is being trodden down constantly, but this time
- especially after that humiliating refusal of your wife and
our ridiculous resort to exerting pressure on you both, to
bring the two families closer to each other - everything in
me revolted. If I would have followed my emotions, I would
have told you: Thank you very much, none of you has to come
to our house, nor have you to come to any session anymore.
I'll carry on all by myself etc. etc. But my dedication to
the aim of "Partnership" is above my pride. I am
a beggar ten times a day, on the phone, in letters and at
appointments with all the people whose help we are dependent
on. This is the most difficult part of my work and revolting
against it, would be revolting against the work I've taken
upon myself.
Some weeks ago I wrote a letter
to Bishop Raya [Bishop of Nimr's
Maronite Catholic Community] , mentioning, that the
partnership and even friendship with you was a "compensation"
for many things I had to suffer because of my work for the
solution of the old conflict. If I could go on and be content
with the fact, that at least you stand by my side in all the
difficulties, at least you understand, what I want and do,
at least you take the responsibility for "Partnership",
a s i f you would really and truly
identify with it, at least you advise me, when I am at a loss,
and comfort me, when I tend to despair, - then the word "compensation"
would be valid even today. And I know, of course, that I have
no alternative than being content with that. The only other
alternative is, that you drop out completely, and then where
would I be, where would I go?
Maybe, I could cope with the
personal aspect of "Partnership without Nimr". I
would make more mistakes, I would have to do without comfort.
My pride would not allow me to take your gifts for my personal
needs. But the whole idea, the image of "Partnership"
would be a lie, if you would drop out. There must be two people,
who sign responsible for the idea, a Jew and an Arab, and
the two must match each other - their personalities, their
education, their age, their character etc. - I'm looking around
constantly, but there is nobody for the time being who could
take your place. So I need you for the work I want to accomplish,
I'm wholly dependent on you and cannot but swallow my pride.
On the contrary I must be grateful, I must thank you humbly
for every week you are still with us, for every session and
meeting you are ready to take part in, for every phone-call
you are ready to answer. I know, I don't have any other choice,
I know it and I accept it.
I do accept it now. You don't
have to react or to relate to what I wrote.
You wanted me to be strong,
"like a man'.
Well I am strong, but not "like
a man", especially not like you. What you mean by being
strong, is to overcome hurts all by yourself. Nobody must
know it, nobody must see it.
In my eyes this is a waste
of energy, which you could better use for being c r
e a t i ve , and it is also an insult to your fellow-men,
saying: "I don't need you, I don't need anybody".
I am strong by sharing my hurt
with you or with another friend. By the very process of sharing
it I'm already overcoming it. You need only to listen and
maybe understand part of it. You need not pity me, because
now again I am really so strong, that I can end this letter
by thanking you - without a feeling of humiliation - for whatever
you do and are for "Partnership".
From an
earlier letter: 1977_11_03
Nimr, don't misunderstand me, I am not
blaming you. How could I blame anybody for coming to conclusions
which are, though they differ from mine, as rational as mine?
But we also have to be aware of this vicious circle: You don't
believe in my approach, that's why you don't adopt it. By
not adopting it you contribute to its failure.
...I did
succeed in winning over people who w o r
k for the same aim. But so far I did not
succeed in getting people to understand what I mean by
the w a y of partnership,
except maybe Abraham Lisod and Naftali Raz. I console myself,
that more important than understanding is working, but when
"working" means "thinking and planning"
as in your case, the misunderstanding undermines the efficiency
of this approach.
Now, you must believe me, that
I'm analyzing this without any emotion or even pain. At this
hour of the night it seems completely natural to me, that
you with your independent mind could not and would not adopt
another person's thinking.
I have to follow my path alone till I'll achieve that amount
of success, that will prove, that my tree is not just growing
but is able to produce fruits.
I do accept that now fully and
wholly as part of the things "I cannot change"
[One of our slogans was:
"May I have the courage to change things I can change
and the serenity to accept things I
cannot change
and the wisdom to differentiate between these two every moment
of my life "]
But there still are things I can change: I can try to provide
you with more information about the facts and the thoughts
of o t h e r s that helped
me to develop that approach.
All the enclosed material is part of the thoughts that shaped
my political concept. With the difference, that I apply everything
that's written there about negotiating between governments
- to the interaction w i t h our own government,
Roger Fisher suggests this application himself (p.162 in "Negotiating
strategy")...,
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In front of the Building
of the Northern District of Israel in Nazareth, July 1976,
after out meeting with the Governor of the district, Israel
Koenig,
concerning
the Bir'am Project.
From left to right:
Eli, the Arab architect ,
Mtanes Ayoub, the chairman of the Bir'am committee
He died a few years ago, as
I was told, when I hitchhiked with a man born into a family
from Bir'am in 1963..
In July 2007, I was on my way from the new train-station Lehavim
to Arad,
and he was on his way to a settlement across the border, to
build them a Mikveh ....
Nimr Ismair, the
second chairman of the Bir'am committee
and also the second director of the Arab Teachers College,
then still in Haifa.
Next to Nimr stands Heide
Kloeckner-Fuessler, the Swiss architect,
who had done most of the work of the "Bir'am-Project".
She was my classmate, later my friend. She died of cancer
in 1981.
After the Bir'am
Project failed (see the reasons in the page about Bir'am),
we founded "Partnership", in April 1977
together with Ibrahim Sam'aan and Rushdi Fadilah and Abraham
Lisod
(all three died already in the late eighties)
and many others.
Our first outstanding activity was a 7 day summer-camp for
Jewish&Arab youth,
at
Neve-Shalom,
Nimr - Neve Shalom, July 1977
from which a participant, Nava Sonnenschein,
realized the dream of a Jewish-Arab village,
dreamt first by a Jewish Christian monk from Egypt: Bruno
Husar.
Nimr Ismair with Dr. Gid'on (?)
during a "General Assembly" of elections for the
Partnership Committee
in the Baptist Village (Ibrahim Sam'aan was a Baptist Minister),
1978.
b) A Leadership Workshop with Dr. Nel Allerhand and the historian
Yig'al
Elam,
in Abraham Lisod's house at Rishpon, - next to Nimr: Rushdi
Fadilah. 1979
A day of Preparation
for Partnership Facilitators in Herzlia, July 1979.
Next to Nimr, myself, my son Immanuel, my foster-child Levi,
my daughter Ronnit,
We all sing the Partnership-Hymn
A Session of the
seven member Partnership-Committee in 1980:
From left to right:
Rachel Rosenzweig , Fawaad (?), Prof. Benjamin Yanouv (dead
now),
Abraham Lisod (also dead), an Arab member I don't remember,
and Nimr Ismair
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Addition on 2007_07_25:
An excellent article by Nimr Ismair
about the task of Arab Israelis or Israeli Arabs
for both, Israel and the Arab World.
I now [2007_07_25]
discovered an article,
which Nimr Ismair wrote shortly after I had written the above
letter.
I don't know, for whom he wrote the article,
but he must have copied it especially for me,
and I'm grateful he did, for even today
nothing more poignant could be said
about the "metaphysical" task
of the Israeli Arabs or the Arab Israelis.
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"The Arabs of the State of Israel"
by Nimr Ismair 1977
In 1985 I chose my "two best friends"
to help me establish an iron symbol
on the grave of my Christian mother, Maria Guth,
in the Protestant, old Templar, graveyard
in Jerusalem.
My sister had asked me to create something,
which would express the belonging
of our mother's two daughters:
Christa Rachel Rosenzweig Bat-Adam is Jewish
and Ursula Kasper is Christian (she died in 2004)
And these were my best friends then:
Yanina
Zimnowdski,
the holocaust survivor from Poland/Germany,
whose mother had been ripped away from her
and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944,
and Nimr
Ismair,
the leader of the Arab-Christian community of Bir'am,
uprooted by the new Israeli army in 1948 |
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I
visited Nimr one last time in July 2003,
hoping I could win him over for my new "project",
"Noah's
Ark".
He had just read a special ad in the Hebrew newspaper "Haaretz"
about a new partnership between Ami Ayalon & Sari Nusseibeh,
he referred me to those and I did try with Sari & Lucy
Nusseibeh...
I made these photos:
Nimr on the veranda of the
house in Haifa,
with which he finally put up, after the last chance of the resurrection
of his Bir'am Village was gone.
From his veranda the view on the Haifa harbor is magnificent.
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Completion:
In contrast to what was illusion concerning the
partnership between me and Nimr Ismair,
there also was something real in it, and for this I want to thank
you, Nimr, after 30 years.
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Nimr Ismair at my home
in Ramat-Hadar
with Rafael Rosenzweig, my husband & Mona Yahia, my intimate
friend.
August 1979 [before "Nes-Amim"] and
October 1979 [after "Nes-Amim"]
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The most satisfying work we did together,
Nimr Ismair,
was the preparation of the 11 day workshop/course for Partnership
Facilitators at Nes-Amim.
We were sitting for many hours in my home,
while you suggested extremely valuable modifications for the program
of the course, which I had written.
It was one of those rare experiences in my life, for which I have
been yearning all my life:
true cooperation, true working together.
The second memory conjures up the scene of just a moment:
during a break in the intense program, you and I were walking slowly
on one of the pathes through the houses of Nes-Amim.
And you said to me:
"Why is it, Rachel,
that you immediately give up your own ideas, long-grown, deeply-rooted
and far-seeing,
once even the most naive person presents the most naive idea for the
very first time?"
I must have had tears in my eyes.
To be understood, and be it for a moment,
brings up tears even now, 28 years later.
Yes, I do this, because I did not come to this world to realize my
own ideas,
but to empower others to realize theirs.
[On January 5, 2012 ,
I came across this passage in the Violet
RUOW Book, p.78
"Because
We were so afraid that they might not get the light they needed,
we had, without realizing it, gone to the other extreme of giving
them more light than they could handle.
Because We had guilt telling Us we wanted
to be God whether We were rightfully God or not,
and that it was not right to be attached to Our position,
we were unconsciously pushing out more light and power onto the Manifested
Spirits than they needed or wanted to have,
in an effort to make sure
that We did not block anyone's chances
to be all that they could be." ]
2010_12_23- old slides which I've scanned now
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Nimr,
Ibrahim and I during the Partnership Course
at Nes-Amim August 1979
with two
"big shots"
Eliezer Shmueli and Immanuel Koppelewitch, Ministry of Education
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Nes-Amim: Riad (?) with Aharon
Megged, journalist, author, playwright,
who once had interviewed me and written an article in a newspaper,
in which I did recognize myself, unlike in so many other interviews
in newspapers, radio and television.
To the right: Nimr, behind the open door: Daniel Padnes, "Rachel's
Star", as other "partners" mocked.
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The first appearance
of Erika Knoller in my life, a psychologist and New Age teacher
and later a long-term guest in Succah in the Desert , [see
Succah
Diary Fragments 6 and see L&L4]
here during a Partnership workshop in Haifa 1979 (visible
also Sara to my left, and Nimr's niece, I think)
As to this scene, I don't
remember where, when, with whom and in what workshop
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The final separation
- as far as I can guess the future -
from Naftali Raz
on November 29-December 1, 2011
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to
next accidental closeup of my Past
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