My Life's Testimony
to
my Life's Learning

1982

2003

2011

p. 334 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"
         
The second part of the drama - the entry into Judaism, the conversion in Frankfurt with the only rabbi in Germany who was recognized by the rabbinate in Israel - wasn't less painful. If not for my deeply rooted love for Judaism and my longing for Israel, I would not have stood the test. But in the end - in February 1964 - "Christa" became "Rachel " and Immanuel became circumcised.
Since my return from Israel in 1961 "my heart was in the East and I was in the West" [Yehuda Halevi]. I did not feel I had the right to pass "from the nation of the murderers to the nation of the murdered", as I used to say then, in my extreme style. Such fateful decisions should be taken only if there comes alon some "fateful coercion"' as Franz Rosenzweig commented to a poem of Yehuda Halevi: "Yom nikhsefa nafshi". The coercion was, that I became the mother of a Jewish child.
And when i stood in the Mikvah, naked as on the day of my birth, covered all over with my long black hair, and said the blessing over the immersion, I felt that this was my call of solidarity with the Jewish people, the call of solidarity in front of the world.

A month later came my child's father from Israel. We married ' legitimately' in the synagogue of Stuttgart (present was also Eberhard, my late brother, black-haired as well: "you are also a Jew, right?" he was asked, and without waiting for the answer they dragged him into the Minyan!), and on the 15th of April 1964, we immigrated to Israel.

Israel! Finally I was in the beloved country!
And nevertheless - there I was , having left my people, my state, my religion and my language, and because I now was the wife of a husband and no longer "Christa Guth", also my personal identity. I had to hammer out a new identity in the following years.

How can I prove that I am Jewish , but do not keep the commandments? That question which nowadays bothers so many young people, tortured me, and even more since my "security-impulse" was still pulling me strongly towards the fulfillment of commandments in all their details. Yet since "God" did not marry me to a Jew from Mea Shearim but to a Jew who sent me a telegram on the day of my conversion in which he warned me of "keeping pseudo-religious commandments", I understood that I had to continue and grow in that freedom which later I would call "freedom through responsibility" (kherut daerekh akhrayut),
In our home we created new, very Jewish patterns for celebrating the Shabbat and the festivals: Pesach especially, but also Chanuka, Rosh-Hashanah and even Shavuot, Succot and Simchat-Torah. But inside I knew, that my Jewishness would have to express itself not only in a certain way of life but in all the way of my life. And only too soon it became clear that the real test of my Jewishness was still looming ahead of me.

This happened after about 3 years, following the Six Day war.

My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west--

How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet

Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me
to leave all the good things of Spain --

Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold
the dust of the desolate sanctuary.

Translated by Nina Salaman, 1924
Found in "Jewish Virtual Library"
My Heart Is In the East
By Yehuda Halevi (c. 1141)

"Judah Ha-Levi, Yehudah Halevi, (Judah Ha-Levi)
was a Jewish physician, poet and philosopher.
He was born in Toledo in Spain, about 1085
and died about 1141.
Much of his poetry reflected his love for Israel,
and kept alive the love of Zion
as a part of Jewish culture,
rather than just a ritual to be expressed in prayer.
At the end of his life
he actually traveled to the Holy Land
to settle there and fulfill his dream.
However, according to tradition,
he was murdered by an Arab
as he knelt at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem,
soon after he arrived.
Ha Levi's poetry
used a relatively simple, direct style
that is very close to the modern idiom."

In "Medieval Hebrew Poetry"
YEHUDA HALEVI (ca. 1075–1141)
“A light thing would it seem to me
leave all the good things of Spain.”—
View of the countryside around Toledo.
s. also a site in which I found the original poems

But Franz Rosenzweig called "Der Zwang" -"The Coercion"

That day when my soul longed for the place of assembly,

Yet a dread of departure seized hold of me,

He, great in counsel, prepared for me ways
for setting forth,

And I found His name in my heart a sustainment.

Therefore I bow down to Him at every stage;

And at every step I thank Him.

Translated by Nina Salaman

Chagall chose to dedicate two paintings to "my" theme:

Water in the Wilderness.
And so did the Bible:
it relates the story of the water from the rock twice !
And by doing so, depicts the constant rebellion of the slaves
against their liberator.
How could he survive this?
Seven times they blame him for having freed them.
Several times they are just about to stone and kill him.
If he would have been a ruthless dictator, a man of power and elbows,
they would have adored him, followed him in servitude and servility.
But he was just Moses, like you and I.



They encamped at Refidim,
and there is no water for the people to drink!

The people quarreled with Moshe, they said;
Give us water, that we may drink!

Moshe said to them:
For-what do you quarrel with me?
For-what do you test YHWH?

The people thirsted for water there,
and the people grumbled against Moshe, and said:
For-what-reason then did you bring us up from Egypt,
to bring death to me, to my children and to my livestock by thirst?

Moshe cried out to YHWH, saying:
What shall I do with this people?
A little more and they will stone me!
YHWH said to Moshe:
Proceed before the people,
take some of the elders of Israel with you,
and your staff with which you struck the Nile, take in your hand,
and go!
Here, I stand before you there on the rock at Horev,
You are to strike the rock, and water shall come out of it,
and the people shall drink.

Moshe did thus, before the eyes of the elders of Israel.

And he called the name of the place: Masa/Testing, and Meriva/Quarreling,
because of the quarreling of the Children of Israel,
and because of their testing of YHWH, saying:
Is YHWH among us, or not?

[Exodus 17, 1-7]
Translation, as in most cases on this page , by the Buber-Rosenzweig pupil Everett Fox

p. 336 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

It was the time when I already dedicated all my free time to research.
Before that, during the first three years I improved my Hebrew and began to learn Arabic and worked on the legacy of Franz Rosenzweig in order to publish it. Now my husband encouraged me to achieve a Ph.D. : "After all you don't have any profession"!

Prof. David Flusser, who with his letters stood by my side in the difficult years in Germany, had suggested this already in the years before. Without him I would not have started or completed this work. Already in the year of my scholarship Flusser let me sit before him and listen or discuss, when he explored issues in Judaism and in Christanity, talking with himself aloud. This was an experience that only very few students are priviledged with in modern university life. Flusser also helped me to acquire a new realtionship with Jesus of Nazareth. He used to talk with the figures of that time as if he had been dining with them yesterday! And so - in a completely natural manner - he helped me to put aside the ideological partitions which hid from me that Jewish figure and his message. I saw, how Jesus continued the path of Moses, continued, but did not complete it.

The university fixed that the second mentor that would accompany me, would be Prof. Shmuel Safrai, lecturer for the history of the Talmudic period. He didn't really feel enthusiastic about the direction of my research. But I found in him a scientist who applied the "objectivity" which is claimed by science, in a rare way. "I'm not congruent with your opinions, but I'll correct and add to the material on which you based them!" He did this during 3 hours after I delivered my thesis. Versus the emotional attitude which I had encountered so many times during my studies, his comments were like drinking pure water on a hot day.

"Is there a meaning to the suffering of the murdered in the holocaust?" This had been my existential problem at the beginning of my path, and it was to this problem I wanted to dedicate my research. And yet - during my first gropings someone suggested that I should call the late Prof. Chaim Hillel Ben-Sasson. "Your question about the meaning of the suffering is a Christian question and not at all a Jewish one!" he yelled at me and closed the line. I felt hurt. There they blamed me of "Jewish concepts" and here they begin to blame me of "Christian concepts"?
Soon enough I discovered, that in the depth of the matter he was right. The "Jewish" question is not, if suffering has a meaning, but, how suffering can be prevented!

In order to know how to prevent suffering, I had to learn from the sources, what causes suffering. It was then that I discovered the threefold law of which this book talks much, and in the center of which is the law of "vouchsafing", of guarantorship: the mutual dependency, the mutuality between person and person and between the individual and the community, are such, that all human beings have an influence on each other. You are vouchsafing/a guarantor for what others do, and you make others vouchsafe/guarantors for you.

I was a passive guarantor for my German people, when my father was killed, when our flat was destroyed, and when my mother sank into depression, and we were on the verge of poverty from day to day. Will my children one day be passive guarantors for me and for my generation? will they have to suffer the outcomes of our failures? The results of our incapability to be masters of our destiny, is expressed [in the State of Israel today] in a thousand self-victimizing voices day by day: "What can be done! The entire world is against us!"
Suddenly I understood, what it actually was that I had declared and signed, when I said that blessing in the Mikveh: It's no big deal to be solidary with the suffering Israel, at least not for someone who like me has a tendency to martyrdom. What self-interest requires is to be solidary with the "sinning" Israel" if talking in the language of the Ancient. After all I've nowhere to go! For there is no other option than vouchsafingfor the flawed behavior of others in no community in the world. Not only Israel are guarantors for each other, also all the Germans are guarantors for each other, and all the Europeans are guarantors for each other, and nowadays all human beings are guarantors for each other. And here in Israel I'm at least in my own community. Here I can convert passive guarantorship into "active guarantorship", into responsibility for my community. When I'll cope in the future with one of the problems of the community, like with the conflict between Israel and the Arabs, there will be no doubt, that I'll do this for the sake of my self-interest. No one will claim:
"This one came to sojourn and (wants to) judge , play-the-judge?" as the people of Sodom threw against Lot (Genesis 19:9).
In order to take responsibility for the matters of the community - or more exactly - for my dependency on the matters of the community, I must be a part of the community.

p. 337 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

For lack of an English edition of my German/Hebrew book,
I'll quote here the English Summary of my Ph.D. thesis,
which I had been obliged to prepare,
when delivering the thesis to the Jerusalem University it in 1972.

Since my English then had gone underground
because of the two new languages, Hebrew and Arabic, I had to learn,
if I wanted to take responsibility for my new community,
Israel,
it was my husband, Rafael Rosenzweig,
who translated the summary and digests.

Among the few thing I'll change in his translation
are his terms for 'arev="bondsman" and for 'arevut ="bond".
As I've explained -
I'm translating arev as "being a guarantor",
and 'arevut as "guarantorship".
I'm not happy with the terms "individual" for yakhid
and "outstanding individual" for yakhid-segulah,
because this translation misses the connection
between yakhid as opposed to tzibbur = community
and yakhad = together.

But so far I haven't discovered how to convey in English
this immensely important concept
petrofied in the Hebrew language:

the concept of how the uniqueness of any one person
follows from his/her  relation  to  his/her community.

February 2000: a raid by the masses against "Moros",
guestworkers from Marokko and Algeria,
in the Spanish province Almeria around the town Aljido,
with the police standing idly by.
"One man has killed a woman out of jealousy,
and many thousands of his kind are persecuted on his behalf."

This phenomenon among human beings
expressed in that ancient Jewish proverb is the title of my book:
"All Israel are guarantors for each other",
are held responsible for each other.
My research shows,
how victimhood (I'm held responsible) is transformed
into mastership (I am responsible, I take responsibility).

......
I now - 2002_09_19 - decided
to translate 'arev as "being a guarantor"
and 'arevut as "guarantorship",

and not to use verbs like:
"to vouch for", or "to pledge", or nouns like: "warranty" or "surety"
because I cannot derive from them "vouchers" or "pledgers".
Also: "to guarantee" has too many additional meanings to be an equivalent.
For the word in Hebrew can have an intransitive, even passive meaning:
"I am a guarantor,
i.e. I am held responsible for something
that was done by someone else."
or an active meaning:
"I am a guarantor,
i.e. I take responsibility for preventing something
from being done by someone else."

I still need to derive a new word: "guarantorship".
For the word "suretyship" is too confined as a legal term.

Thus I succeeded in interpreting the reality in which I found myself' in the light of tradition, and since then I never again had problems of identity, at least not with the Jewish part in it. I was for ever integrated in the people of Israel.

In those years I called my research: "Israel's coping with its destiny".
I was fascinated by the courage and the honesty with which Israel's thinkers phrased the question: "what   c a u s e d   the destruction"? I analyzed the way they coped with every single one of the national catastrophes - the Fall of Samaria, the First Destruction, the Second Destruction and the holocaust of Betaar. The exterior causes - the superpowers of that time, the enemies, all those were of no interest to them, for on those they could have no influence. What they explored - were the inner causes. And though they not always found the rational causes, decisive for Israel's destiny was the principle tendency - t o   a c c e p t   r e s p o n si b i li t y   f o r   wh a t   h a p p e n e d   to   u s.
Whoever accepts responsibility for what happened in the past, has more of a chance to be able to take responsibliity for what happens today or will happen in the future. Like then, so today I think, that here lies the secret of the recovery of Israel after such crushing catastrophes and holocausts. The people of power and also the people of violent fanatism, yes even the different kinds of pharisees, were wiped out and disappeared. In the breach stood the people of spirit, the yekhidee-hasgulah, [July 27, 2011: perhaps I could translate this so vital term as "special-treasure-individuals"? see below] and took all the responsibility upon themselves. Whoever were those, who were guilty of the suffering and disaster - the enemies outside and the authorities or the dumb masses inside - the power of coping of the individual in Israel was and will be in saying: "I am a guarantor, I am responsible, "this depends on me!"

Now I also saw, what was the purpose of "Zionism" in our times is nothing but the same Jewish calling for freedom: "Till when shall we make our selves dependent on the benevolence of the nations of the world or the benevolence of the Messiah? Come and let us be once again masters of our destiny!" this was the spirit in which Leon Pinsker wrote his "Autoemancipation"! A motto preceded the book: the proverb of Hillel: "If I'm not for myself, who will be for me, and if not now, when?" (Pirke Avot 1:13, listen to the chorus of the "Partnership-hymn" in 4 languages!)
And yet there is a central sentence to this slogan of Hillel which says: "And when I'm only for myself - who am I!?" meaning: 'I am not just I, I am dependent on other people, and if I don't take responsibility for my dependencies on the others, how am I responsible for myself?' [See the Partnership-concept!] This central sentence Pinsker omitted, and the Zionist pioneers mostly ignored their dependency on the inhabitants of the country and area. Perhaps they didn't have a choice:
"a time to everything..."! perhaps this double responsibility, for myself and for my dependency on others, was too difficult, and if the pioniers had grasped the meaning of the threefold slogan, they would have been deterred from even beginning anything. But now, after one hundred years since the publication of "Autoemancipation", the time has come to truly put it in practice, and it

is possible to do it, if we take the center part seriously, the "and if I'm for myself - who am I?"

                 
Who will take this seriously if not first of all I myself ?

At the time of the elections in 1969 my patience burst. Till when will I think and write and not do? I had no idea, how to do anything that would be effective. I therefore did what others do: I registered for party activity ["ha-olam ha-zae"]. I still believed, that there were people who were "better" and those who were "worse" and if the better ones would have more power, there would be less suffering in the world. It was only too soon that I woke up from this illusion. I saw the contradiction which is in a parliamentary democracy between the fight for power and "the fight for peace".
In every family and in every group there are power-struggles, but in a parliamentary regime the fight for power is the highest need and even value. For only if a party will reach a status of power, can she be of influence, and in order to reach a status of power she must fight other parties. In the case of Israel this means: Jews fight against Jews in order to bridge between Jews and Arabs. Isn't it logical that then the Jews against whom I fight, will stand between me and the Arabs, and how can I thus bridge between Jews and Arabs?

The value of the fight for power burdens makes difficult also the work inside the party, for it can't be helped that even the highest purpose will turn into a weapon between the fighters for power, and it doesn't matter at all, what the agenda of that party is . Already in Germany I was a member in a party, and the experience was the same.

The disappointment and feeling of powerlessness that came with it were hard. I also watched my own behavior and saw, that I still didn't fulfil the condition which Buber talked about: I had not yet found the way which would integrate and balance between the poles instead of polarizing them even more. I withdrew.
      
            

I returned to my research and came to understand that the manner in which I wrote the first one hundred pages would not be acceptable to the faculty members and that I had to cling to the theme of suffering to which they had agreed. I started from the beginning.
And yet the question did not leave me: from where did Israel have this uniqueness, this power to cope with their destiny, the freedom through accepting the responsibility?

I left the phenomena in the history of the people and searched for the roots in ancient Jewish

p. 340 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

thought. And it was then that in the book of Genesis I began to discover a kind of immense and wondrous "midrash" which explained to me the deepest meaning of the two great central events which created the people of Israel - "the Outgoing from Slavery" and "the Giving of the Torah". I remembered how one day, while turning over the soil in my garden with a hoe, I detected the tip of a metal thread and when I followed it - there was an entire fence of which I didn't find the end - another thread and another piece of fabric and another square meter of fence. In this way the stories of "Genesis" and "Exodus" revealed themselves to me as an intricate artwork, a tissue, in which everything is connected to everything and all of it interprets it all. The veneration I felt expressed itself in the style of my writing - each Hebrew sentence was as if hewn in rock.

"A very pretty style"' said Prof Jacob Licht, to whom Prof. Safrai sent me in a kind of despair,
" but not acceptable for scientiests!" and then he added heavy criticism:

I loved this reaction despite my pain. There was a human being who understood, even if he did not accept! He rejected my way of integrating science with life exactly because of the reason for which I was choosing this way! The absolutism which still was one of my dangers was undermined once again, in the form which hurt but was healthy.

I returned home, I hid also this second research of 135 type-written pages, and again began from the beginning. This time I clang to my original theme. I took care of a scientific style, and the thesis, indeed, was finally accepted - a paper like most doctorates, with 600 "scientific" notes, difficult to read.
Then, when I returned to Prof. Licht, I felt as if was going to sell my soul: Science for the sake of science! While the world was screaming for a science for the sake of life. even today I do not agree with the accidentialness which I see in the goals of the scientists. It seems to me sometimes that the science determined criteria for every thing except for the choice of the problems which are worthy to be explored. But I am grateful for the strict discipline which was put upon me, I would not give up on the tools which science has given me, and I hope that this book shows their effectiveness:

I too care, that each person with a highschool education and who is searching for an approach to the sources of Judaism, can acquire these tools also through this book. On the the other hand, I tried to find a discrete graphic design for

p. 341 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

[July 21, 2011 I'll translate the "instructions for beginning scientiests on the basis of the Sages' advices" on the pages 321-343- if at all - then only after the completion of the entire 45 pages or this autobiography]

p. 342 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

[July 21, 2011 I'll translate the "instructions for beginning scientiests on the basis of the Sages' advices" on the pages 321-343- if at all - then only after the completion of the entire 45 pages or this autobiography]

p. 342 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

p. 343 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

Thus I completed 25 years of studying and prepared a protective "nest" for the eggs which were ready to be laid. And , indeed, ideas were laid and deeds were hatched [mainly my "Partnership-Work], and only the nest was forgotten.
For an entire year the paper was "with" the judges useless, unwanted, and only at the end of the year the official announcement reached me, that I attained the title. No resonance, no feed-back. I had to run after the judges, in order to hear at least the following reactions: "in your work there is only 20% of Judaism, the rest is all yours!" (Eliezer Schweid) or " this is an interesting demonstration of Christian Theology" (Zwi Werblovski) . Since then the four typed copies are rotting in the library.

What a waste of precious energy! of power to think and power to create! And this at a time when the world and the problems of humans cry out for such energy. But if science is unable to discern between a research that is vital and a research which could be postpone, and if science ignores the need for creating balance and equilibrium in her inner ecology - who is capable?

It's clear, that I myself wasn't then in a situation of judging if my research was vital also to others or only to myself. More important - for many years I had trained myself for what
.

I still deemed to be my task in my life. I still wanted "to lessen suffering in the world", in general, and to cope with the problem which in my eyes threatened and keeps threatening Israel, in particular. I didn't want to waste additional time and care for what would happen with my research.
Therefore, when in 1974 two men, Reinhold Mayer, my former teacher from Tuebingen , and Ludwig Ehrlich from Basel, asked me to publish my research in German, I laughed. My work is with Jews, with Israel, and not with Christians, with Germany, that's how I argued, and there is no legitimation in investing additional time in science. But the trust which the two men put in the book and the efforts which they invested in providing a contract with a publisher, finally melted my opposition.
When I sat down to translate the research into German, I also gave it the present form: a scientific book, yet relevant to our reality, written in a form which every avarage educated person could understand [or so I deluded myself..July 27, 2011...]. The title of the book: "Solidarity with the sufferers in Judaism". The introduction to the German edition I wrote at the end of the year 1976, but the print appeared only at the end of 1978.The resonance which reached me was in line with the statistics mentioned above... The publisher himself did not believe that the book would have a market - he printed only a minimal number of copies at a high price and gave the book an exterior appearance as if it should warn from afar: "There comes pure science!"

At that time I no longer needed a "nest". Since four years I had been immersed totally in what I called "the application of the message in the research", or with what the Zionists called [and still call- July 27, 2011 -put "Zionists-hagshma in Google's search!:] "hagshama", manifestation, realization.
The beginning was extremely difficult, the "splitting of an abyssmal Yam Suf."

In the first year after the delivery of the research I again learnt Arabic, five to seven hours a day, in every possible way, though without a teacher. Twice a week I drove, also in the cold winter months, on my "tustus" to Tira, the closest Arab village (12 km), in order to listen to the the lessons in Arab Literature in the highschool thee. But the language continued to be a mountain which I didn't succeed in conquering. Also when I learnt Hebrew - in the first semester of theology at Tuebingen (summer 1958), and 6 weeks at Ulpan Akiba at Natanya (autumn 1960) and later on my own, - I often "fell in my spirit", as we say in Hebrew. But in Hebrew I feel at home, moreover, I'm able to use it creatively.
After a year, when I could use my title in order to open doors more easily, I tried to build a work for myself, from which I intended to also make a living one day: I wanted to give "professional consultation", but in a different manner than what was the usage.
Since an early age I felt troubled by two problems; one - the great sufferings of people

p. 345 in the Hebrew edition of "All Israel vouchsafe for each other"

on earth and too few who are ready or skilled to cope with them, and the seccond - the lack of satisfaction and meaning which most people feel at their daily work. Sometimes I succeeded in encouraging this or that person to get out of the powerlessness of "there is no choice" and to change a job or a profession, and it was thus that I learnt that the direction was right: I have to combine the two problems together and then there will be found a solution for both. This means, that whoever works at a job or a task where he and his skills are truly needed, will find in his work satisfaction and then, anyway, by itself, he'll carry it out effectively. And on the other hand - the difficult problems in the world will be the challenge for the person who searches meaning and satisfaction.

One of the documents in which I (in 1973) lined-out a practical way of achieving this goal, is called:
       "Academians: Receivers of Welfare
        or
        Initiators of a revolution in the area of work?" [Hebrew original inserted in Learn&Live 5]
After a detailed analysis of the state of work in the Western world in general and in Israel in particular, I developed a model of "education towards the world of work, in which every person can find his/her vocation and reach satisfaction, and in which every task in economy and society, in the people and in mankind, will find the person who is able to fulfill it with responsibility and effectiveness "
It seems to me, that only today the time is ripe to remember that goal [July 27, 2011: what an illusion then in 1982! Even today there is no such concept, leave alone agenda yet!] and to combine it with the goal which stands in front of my eyes now. At that time the searchings and interactions with all kinds of experts didn't lead me to any place. I finally started to take up a job, which had some relevance for the problems of work which I wanted to study into depth: in the office for work for Academics which is attached to the Ministry of Labor, they searched for employees who would work with Academic immigrants from Russia in the Absorption Centers, in search for work-places for them. I worked with the immigrants for an entire year, but work-places were rarely found for them.

One day I came across an Institute for the Training of Teachers which belonged to the Ministry of Education and the name of which today is "College of Academics". Today (1982) it is located in Givatayim and trains University graduates in all subjects towards becoming educators in the different discliplines of primary schools, high shools and informal education. The meeting with the director, Dr. Yitzchak Peri, which actually too place for the sake of one of my clients, gave a new direction to my searches. Peri pleaded with me to make the transition to teaching and to teach in the institute which he directed. "I propose, you teach 'History of Zionism in the modern time' , he said, a proposal which totally amazed me. What do I have to do with teaching history?
But it turned out that Peri believed in putting challenges. Perhaps I would not have found the gate to the realization of "active guarantorship", if this new task had not forced me to teach [continued]