|
InteGRATion into
GRATeFULLness
Singing&Sounding keeps me Sound
We carry torches in gloomy nights
| 2007_07_29 |
lyrics:
Aharon Ze'ev |
|
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This is a Chanukka- song, so why now? I don't know. I was swirling in the swimming-pool - the space for intuition and inspiration - when I had this strong urge, to finally create an homage to Mordechai Zeira, who made the music not only to this dear song, which I've sung for 40 years, but also to a song, I learnt only at the beginning of this Song-Game, since I found it so moving and relevant. |
The story is this:
In February 1963, when I was preparing for my exams at Heidelberg University,
and at the same time trying to get along with my
new-born baby, whose father was not with me,
I was so pressured, that I forbade myself to answer letters until after the
exams,
except for the letters to my baby's father.
During that time I got a rather strange letter from an Israeli song-writer.
I wished I would remember, why and what Mordechai Ze'ira wrote to me,
and how he found out about me.
After all, I had returned from Israel already in July 1961.
But I put the letter into a paper-bag with all the other unanswered letters,
which was hanging on a nail on the right side of my wooden desk.
When I was pregnant in the seventh month with an "illegitimate"
child,
and could no longer live in the students' dormitories,
I was welcomed in the home of one of the few Jewish families in Heidelberg,
holocaust survivors from Poland, Helen Gutmann and her husband,
who lay in hospital with severe multiplis sclerosis, but supported his wife
in taking me in.
They had a little daughter, Esther, whom I had taught Bible the year before,
since no Jewish teachings were provided in her school.
When Immanuel was born, and I could no longer help with the household,
a student from the dormitories, whom I recommended, became the cleaning woman.
One day she thought, that that bag on the nail was a garbage bin and threw
away its content.
I don't remember any letter but the one from Mordechai Ze'ira.
I was very angry and very sad.
The question is, why didn't I, when I immigrated to Israel, inquire about
him there?
After all he was famous,
and even at a time, when there was no Internet and "Wikipedia",
it should have been possible to find him.
But only when I heard, in 1968, that Mordechai Ze'ira had died,
did I feel the sting of a terrible regret and even guilt.
It was such a rare incident, - that some famous person was interested in me,
moreover - he was a song-writer and singing had always been my safety-belt,
but that was not the reason for my feelings of guilt and regret.
"If he wrote to me, he must have had some hope in me!
And I have failed him! I have shamed his initiative by not even answering."
Of course, there are enormous projections in my feelings....
But that doesn't change the fact, that I can never hear the name Mordechai
Ze'ira,
without having to face that terrible regret again.
I know, that many many people are pained by much bigger regrets,
and I am fortunate, that it's only some small blunder with which I have to
cope.
The other one - of the few - has to do with that Helen Gutmann,
to whom I owe a world!
And whom I have failed in the right moment!
She came to visit us in Israel and stayed in our house as so many guests did.
One day she knocked at the door of our study, perhaps without waiting for
an answer,
and blurted some question or some observation.
My husband felt annoyed, yes furious and got down on her as only he could
get down on another person...
My heart, my stomach, my everything twisted and screamed inside:
"Leave her alone! She is the last woman you are allowed to curse!
She was there for me and your son, when you didn't even tell your wife about
us!"
But as always - I couldn't open my mouth,
like people who have a night-mare and want to scream and can not.
Helen said gently, quietly, politely: "Ich bitte um Verzeihung",
packed her things, and we never saw her again.
A few years later she died of cancer ....
The regrets I have to carry, are almost all connected with this cowardice
of not having stood up for persons, even for my own children, when they were
victimized by my husband.
And - in two severe cases - of not having stood up for myself,
but that has nothing to do with my pain concerning Modechai Ze'ira...
