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!"
It was then, that it occurred to me,
that "Noah's Shore" on the
Dead Sea,
that "Healing Space for War-and Terror Stricken People from Both
Sides"
will at first invite
CHILDREN ...
and that the pond amidst the six tents
has to be a replica of the pond of ashes in Auschwitz-Birkenau
except that there will be swings all around like those,
on whom lately 3 of my Jewish grandkids happened to swing together
with 3 Arab kids, probably from Jerusalem
I didn't have my camera with me, when the 6 kids swang together in
the Canada-Park,
once the no-man's-land between Israel and Jordan at Latroun Monastery.
The next day we had a chance to go there again.
We found the six swings empty, but when we moved to another corner,
we were again joined by Arab kids.
Who can see the difference?
Together
with the Arab kids (red-orange)
are
Itamar (farest left)
and Ayelet (farest right)
both five years old.
That was the age of Yanina, my friend,
when her mother pushed her
under the skirt of a gentile woman,
whom she had paid,
and that's how little Yanina escaped
the liquidation of the ghetto
and the destiny of her mother in Auschwitz.
While walking on her own through Birkenau, Yanina found a
bird's nest... a sign of hope.
Her mother's ashes might have been thrown
into this deadly pond.
But the pond on Noah's Shore will resound
with children's laughter,
and I can finally cry -
imagining their faces and voices
while sculpting this composition of
1943-2003.
Then there was scheduled an "Interfaith Service" .
And where? Exactly there at "my" pond.
And what is more:
there finally rose sound above the pond.
Rabbi Ohad sounded the shofar, and
then someone suggested "to circle the pond".
People started to hold hands.
I was urging some people to get closer to the edge of the pond,
so that we had more of a chance to encircle it.
A participant hushed me: "Shhhh!"
I sent her a furious glance.
That SHHHH symbolized for me what had been wrong for me all along.
But then people started to move around the pond, to really walk and
move!
And then there rose more sound, not a wild sound from a broken heart,
more of a structured singing with melody and rhythm,
but I savored it anyway.
And when most of the people had walked on, I saw this picture:
Genine and Adina screaming on their knees.
Even now this image brings up tears in me.
I joined them.
We sang and tuned and sounded and screamed,
and I told them, what I had been missing.
And Genine said: "Why didn't you tell us!"
And we hugged, the four of us, tightly.
This was "redemption"...
Genine Bar-El's photo and letter after the retreat:
"...the cruelty that
arises from ... disconnecting with feelings"
Dearest beloved Friends and fellow Journeyers,
It’s so hard to put into words how
I feel after Auschwitz-Birkenau. ...
Let me follow the council rule – TALK ONLY FROM THE HEART.
.…I feel longing.
Longing for our circle of caring hearts that drew close for five wintry
days under the grey skies of Auschwitz/Oswecim,
which, remarkably and significantly, revealed to us the most beautiful,
complete and inspiring rainbow I have ever seen,
just as we entered the Birkenau death camp.
After a morning spent at the Auschwitz Museum witnessing one of mankind’s
darkest cruelest times,
we entered Birkenau – ‘place of the Birch trees’
and Zyklon B and deaths of millions
– where we would spend the next four days.
Just then, we were sent a message:
a rainbow, a symbol of hope, just days after we read the Chapter of
Noah in the Torah reading at synagogue.
Auschwitz-Birkenau today is not a place
of darkness but a place of hope.
It takes darkness to reveal light.
I felt in Auschwitz such a light, a grace, a promise of a better future
if we remember the past,
remember the cruelty
that arises from hatred,
from disconnecting from feeling
and from caring about other human beings.
So Auschwitz for me was feeling.
feelingthe pain of those murdered, torn from
their lives and families.
feeling my pain, my pain as a Jew, carrying
the wounds of thousands of years of hatred and persecution.
I didn’t realize I had so much Jewish pain...
I went to Auschwitz to go into my pain,
to “plunge” into the darkness inside which I have spent
a lifetime escaping.
I recently discovered that I have been running from feeling.
I kept myself so busy
doing,
“accomplishing,”
aspiring,
regretting,
projecting,
thinking
– that I lost myself.
I operated from the throat up and lost touch with my heart,
because my heart was filled with so much pain it was too frightening
to really feel.
So I went to Auschwitz to feel the pain.
What better place to encounter pain and suffering than Auschwitz?
And I encountered the pain in my heart.
And the pain, concern and love in the hearts of the other participants
who came to Auschwitz for their own reasons.
And I opened my heart to them.
And then I was able to open my heart to God, the ultimate light.
It’s been really hard to return to
mundane life after Auschwitz.
It’s great to see the kids, the husband. I really love them.
But the daily grind: the chores, the appointments, the business commitments
– I feel like an automaton, doing what I need to do, but something
is missing.
My open heart, that’s what is missing.
In Auschwitz we plunged into the pain,
I entered into my broken heart and stayed there the entire retreat.
I cried from my broken heart,
I mourned from my broken heart,
I listened from my broken heart,
I understood from my broken heart,
I loved, I sang and even laughed from my broken, now healing heart.
For good measure I then fell on my head (for those present late Friday
night).
...
May the One who created my heart
give me the courage and strength to keep it open and loving
even when the enviroment is less than supportive
and may I always be one with my feelings
and sensitive to the feelings of others.
May all you dear friends, be blessed with
maintaining your open and loving hearts,
and may we continue to love and support each other as we did for five
wintry days in Auschwitz. ...
GENINE
"It's for decades that I've been waiting
for such a letter.
It is as if you said it "all"!"
I wrote to Genine.
We were not enough to circle the pond without disconnecting our hands
But we shall fill the "diluted rows" of the little murdered
poetess Eva Pikova ,
(see my dedication to her in my book "All
Israel" and see how I integrated her in my fragmentary novel
"Azmeeyeh"]
we shall dig out the new pond on
the new peninsula at the Dead Sea,
we shall reinvent
the method of catching and gathering rain-water from the waterfalls
above the Dead Sea,
and lead this water to the new pond,
and then children, who became mutilated or orphaned by the terror
and war in 2003 will dance and hail,
like Yuval ( mountain-rivulet )
- the granddaughter of Moshe's
murdered family on her eight birthday
For
the sake of uniting
the Holy-One-Blessed-be-He and his Shekhina
(Divine Presence in female gender) to unite Y-H with W-H in complete/whole unity
in the name of all Israel and let's say: Amen.
These Aramaic
words are said
before blessing over the fulfillment of
certain kinds of commandments.
YHWH is the so-called name of God,
but is actually a verb: he who happens
except that there will be swings all around like those, 
and
then someone suggested "to circle the pond". 
