Dearest Friends at Itamar,

I just wanted to share with you my feelings about Eretz Yisrael and the special bond which exists between you and I. So let me tell you how I came to you..

JUNE 1967: I was part of this huge crowd, (several thousands) mostly people of my age, that is in their 20s, in the front of the Israeli Embassy in Paris. As a I had been to Eretz Israel, five months earlier, I was coming to volunteer for going to Israel to help.

How I managed to get inside the Embassy building is certainly close to a miracle. There somebody asked me why I wanted to go to Israel. My answer was simple “I was there before and I loved the land and the people”. Unknown to me, I was being filmed by a major French TV channel. Years later, some people with whom I had worked in the past, back in my home town, in Eastern France, told me about it “We saw you on the television.. We knew it! You must have worked for the Mossad!” All this was highly cryptic saying.. I didn’t understand what they were hinting at? I was at that time (1969) still pretty innocent, not knowing much about religion nor politics. Surely, I had to grow up.. fast.

September 1967: And here again, I am in Israel, several months after the end of the war. Thanks to G-d HaShem, the country did not need me, as seven days were sufficient to defeat the Arab armies which had tried very hard to annihilate the whole of Am Israel.

I went back to the kibbutz where I had lived for a few weeks, Degania Alef. I did not recognize the grounds and the beautiful lawns around, as trenches were still there, like scars on a body’s skin. Indeed the body of Israel was injured, bleeding, but not his soul, still pure and intact..

Eager to discover more of the land, I moved later to the Tel Aviv area and there I met some French Jews who told me about a kibbutz Ulpan where I would be able to learn Hebrew.

Kibbutz Haogen was certainly the right place for learning Hebrew, but for the remaining part of knowledge regarding Am Israel, his G’d, his intimate and distinctive history , it was definitely the wrong place, but what did I know about all this? I was a pure ignorant.. (more..)

This period of my life was anyway perhaps the richest of all, although quite disturbing at the same time. The Ulpan was gathering people from all over: a sprinkle of French (who would know the whereabouts of Clara Bauman from Paris, who had her aunt in Ramat Gan? I have been trying for years to locate her) Polish Jews who were fleeing their “new” anti-Semite government (really “new”? I doubt!) and American Jews. While others came from Morocco and Latin America, Argentina I believe. In this international melting pot I could not feel but at home.

From time to time, the kibbutz offered us a tiyyul and this was a real bonus to us, enabling us to see new places and feel the country with our feet. I shall never forget the kibbutz truck’s wooden benches which were not very kind to our “civilized bottoms” but we managed and happily survived. I remember vividly the Yam HaMelakh –Dead Sea- trip. Tasting the desert dust and blinking under the harsh sun. We felt the land with a sense of adventure. Everything was “brand new” in spite of the numerous encountered Biblical milestones..

One day, our destination was in the “new territories” in the area of Shechem. We had a slight idea of what this region meant at the time. Arab villages and towns, now under Israeli rule. We also knew that prior to the war, all the Jewish settlements were squeezed between the Great Sea (the Mediterranean Sea) and the (totally artificial) border with Jordan. A mere XX distance of XX kilometres. The difference between tranquillity and anxiety, and sometimes, between life and death. We could feel this, although in a very imperfect way, as people coming from peaceful (and spiritually sleepy?) lands.

Yes, I shall remember this tiyyul! The Arab huts made of mud and straw, not higher than a man, with only an absent door for an opening. I couldn’t believe it! Dust, or mud, and desolated fields. A tense atmosphere, people turning their heads away or looking darkly/somberly at our truck passing by. I must confess that I thought about hand grenades being suddenly thrown at us. Pure imagination? I can’t say that I felt very happy riding in this oppressive atmosphere. You could touch the animosity, the tension, if not the hatred. My knowledge of local history was, true, at a minimum but I knew that these people never appreciated the presence of Jews in the area.

Instinctively (or was it somewhere in my genes?) I knew that Arabs were not “at home” while Jews WERE! How did I come to this conclusion? Was it my German uncle whom I met regularly and who kept talking about the tribes of Israel as if they were next door and still striving? He even knew some Hebrew. I am wondering..

Looking at a map, this day of 5768, I can see that our tiyyul went not very far from a place with which I have since a few years built a very special bond, an extraordinary place: ITAMAR! But then one realizes that the Itamar yishuv, back in 1968, did not existed yet as it is now, so strongly.

You can ask me now “how did you then discover Itamar if you did not go there physically?”

Well, OK “beseder” I shall explain to you. By the way of one of the most marvellous technological instrument man ever devised since the printing machine of Gutenberg, the computer and the web.

Nearly every day, I am offering myself a “low-cost trip” to the land I have never forgotten, to Eretz Yisrael. Just type these magical and holy words and millions of places are opening their doors. Imagine billions of words appearing, just for such a minuscule nation. So small that a finger tip on a globe, makes it disappear totally!

Look on the map, the word “ISRAEL” is squeezed between other names, and, seems in danger of sinking into the Mediterranean Sea! (the dream of some.. but never fulfilled)

Oh yes, billions of words of all kinds, from love, passion, sympathy to criticism, contempt, and hysterical hatred..

By some “miracle” (life, living are miracles and so everything happening to us must be a kind of miracle, small or great, they are there with us, but we, most unfortunately, realize this only from time to time) I came to the Itamar website and learned about its existence. This was in 2004. More to follow…..