Guns and Roses

A few weeks ago Yedidia returned from his basic army training, exhilarated about impersonating action hero ‘Rambo’ in the sand dunes adjoining the Northern Gaza Strip.Like many other adventurous Israeli youngsters watching the 'Survival' reality show, he enormously enjoyed camping in the droopy, rotten tents, where all new recruits are accommodated to get a flavor of desert 'joie de vivre' sprinkled with a whiff of authentic dust carried here from Saudi Arabia. Continually in danger of being blown over to enemy territory with all their wet belongings during a 3- day raging winter storm, all trainees were eventually forced into evacuation to the secure dining room. They ended up bunking down in a chaotic heap of damp mattresses, cheesy socks and muddy boots, mingled with half eaten provisions from the camp mini market.He elated in disassembling and cleaning his machine gun, firing bullets at paper-mache opponents and posing for the notorious heroic photographs with his manly co-fighters, looking extremely fierce when holding up the deadly weapons in imaginary victory. These digital ‘trophies’ are uploaded to the thousands into young Israeli’s Facebook accounts.However, the boys in his course neither possessed the physical stamina nor the desire to serve as combat soldiers. Most of these wannabe militants were equipped with medical attests, or, as in Yedidia’s case, were granted special status as ‘outstanding musician’, entitling them to alleviated terms during their 3 years of army service, enabling them to pursue their musical training while ‘fulfilling their duty to their country’ as so called ‘jobnicks’.But given a sandy exercise playground and a hot weapon, male creatures gladly transform into suntanned, sweaty die-hards, screaming hoarsely while storming the spiky concrete barricades, crawling on their stomachs, guns at hand through the mud like guerilla fighters through a jungle of old tires, rocks and building trash.The sirens giving 15- second- warnings of Cartouche rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas terrorists unto southern Israeli territory, the adrenaline produced while rushing towards the shrapnel shelters, the sandy Mediterranean scenery with rolling waves behind mysteriously moonlit dunes, all these created the ideal backdrop for my son’s fictional and unhesitant self sacrifice, when fervently ‘defending’ his fatherland.To completely knock us out with worry, he deliberately called home from the shooting stands to the ringing sounds of bullets or at night shivering on a forlorn watchtower guarding the border to our Islamist adversaries. He explained to us the different steps of warning to be followed, if a suspicious shadow would approach the twilight zone between the fence and the camp. From his lengthy account it seemed that before he would have had a chance to complete this whole series of shouts and shots into the air, he‘d be already dead and done with, if the intruder really came with malicious intentions. After all his sleepless nights under the Mediterranean stars, Goofeef was always happy to return for lazy weekends to our pastoral civilization, mostly sleeping like a log and occasionally tantalizing his orphaned violin with a few frantic bow strokes.These intermissions from warfare were also a great opportunity for us to admire his good looks in olive green uniform and Ray Ban sunglasses. Values like a non-violent approach to conflict, which we previously tried to implant in our offspring and a critical attitude towards militarism were hopelessly fading into oblivion. Following Goufeef’s call to arms, our family became suddenly infected by an ardent spirit of national pride, escalating in memorizing the names and symbols of the different ranks in army hierarchy up to the Commander in Chief and raising the flag every time he returned home bringing in his loads for the domestic washing machine.After basic training Goufeef was sorted into the army’s Educational Division and is now stationed high up on Har Gilo, a 15-minute drive from his mother’s kitchen stove, a well-kept base, which looks like a comfortable guest house embellished by geranium and fragrant pine trees. His job consists of organizing and evaluating different courses and seminars offered to officers as well as upgrading the library. He’s entitled to lots of free days in between duties to devote himself to the study of musical theory and the secrets of the ‘devil’s instrument’.Gone are the days of imaginary hard-bitten war games opposite the enemy’s lines and meanwhile my son turned into a desperado with guilt feelings of ‘not doing enough in the army’. Suddenly his privileges seem to him as an undeserved luxury and he sees himself as a parasite eating army meals and traveling for free on public transport. The army does not hold musicians in high esteem and their seemingly ‘lazy days’ are envied by the ones ‘doing the real thing’.It doesn’t matter how much we sweated bringing up young Mozart to enjoy his present Shangri-La, when he, instead of strumming the guitar on the beach with his gang, endured endless hours at lessons, accompanied by our efforts to supply him with fresh strings even during paralyzing snow storms in order to keep him motivated and prepared for the caprices of his demanding East European ‘torturers’.But when it comes to army service and national security Israelis are convinced that we can do without raising crazed artists and vain athletes. Even higher education can wait for much later. Everything has to jerk to a halt for 3 years of as much combat training as possible. Yedidia feels he's not ‘doing the real thing’ playing the violin for the troops or for bereaved parents at their son’s funerals, pursuing his musical ambitions while others are holding the Arabs at bay.I admit dreaming of saving my precious son from active combat by becoming a musician in the army since his childhood. We never encouraged our children to romance warfare as an adrenaline producing cliffhanger. Music was also one of the ways to keep us from falling into depression over the ongoing hostilities over territories, from getting sucked into the dead water of chauvinism and religious zeal.

Unfortunately, Israel without its army would not exist. The gap between us and our Palestinian neighbors deepens with each new act of reprisal and we experience the renaissance of animosity fueled by fundamentalist leaders. Both conflicting sides trust in solving the conflict with guns and the peaceful serenity of rose gardens we hoped to plant here for coming generations seams Paradise Lost.
As long as we will not finally cultivate and nourish a different belief, we will fill the trenches intended for roses with more and more victims of these hostilities.
On Memorial Days lamented to the sounds of a ‘surplus’ outstanding musician's instrument, more children will be cut off from their dreams like roses cut from their stems that dry up in graveyards instead of populating the Garden of Eden.

Not all those who wander are lost: Little lamb’s family reunion in Middle Earth

Rachel, in Hebrew “little lamb” and also the lovely matriarch of two biblical tribes, journeyed as far as one can go on this globe without eventually taking off into space.

She chose the legendary ‘Lord of the Rings’- country New Zealand as the destination for her ‘after the army’-getaway, inevitable for most Israeli youngsters after 3 years in a tight, un-personal and demanding military set up.
Free at last and far away from our complex Middle Eastern afflictions she sought to rid her mind of unfavorable impressions and find fresh dimensions and inspirations on foreign ground before settling again into a steady framework of studies and survival.

In early January she took off to catch the summer season in Oceania, with a backpack sporting a few clothes and utensils, a forlorn sleeping bag attached by a shoe-string, hiking boots and her credit card backed up by substantial savings from her army years, first stopping over in Hong Kong and then continuing the jet leg prone tours de force to the remote former British colonies.

In Wellington she reunited with her childhood girlfriend Tal and the two best buddies, after initially checking out the local bus system, soon nonchalantly opted for renting a sleek Mazdah limousine for invading the wildlife as motorized 21st-century ‘backpackers’, carrying their load on four wheels and unfolding their tent somewhere in the heartland of Middle Earth.

Presently our communication pipelines are e-mail, Facebook and the occasional phone call, when our lambs are brushing up their furs in the vicinity of modern civilization.

But if they blissfully graze on the fenceless, sweeping green pastures amongst their wooly brethren, joining the flock of thousands of their kind by roaming the meticulously protected New Zealand outdoors, releasing in a mischievous joined effort some powerful gastric blasts to widen the ozone hole to unprecedented dimensions, we can only imagine their detached, intoxicating adventures in the Shire of Hobbiton, in Elf- populated Rivendell and in the glorious Kingdom of Rohan. Pony-tailed Legolas Greenleaf might utter his enchanting, memorable lines of poetic verbiage and make our lambs' innocent hearts flutter and Shadowfax, the whitewashed sorcerer's horse will volunteer to take our sheepish tourists for a rocky ride.

They will be tempted by Gandalf to immerge into the strange world of medical herbs and pagan magic, absorb the picturesque culture and folklore of the native Maori and we breathe a sigh of relief, if they return with feathers alone adorning their furry scalp and not have their faces elaborately tattooed in colored ornaments.

And if our lambs wander on more challenging trails, balancing their little hoofs on dangerous bold mountain tops, dangling from ropes while crossing a sparkling glacier named "Franz Josef", who surely is an Austro-Hungarian invader to Middle Earth, picking their way through the eternal ice, we might not even want to know about the gruesome risks, to which our little lambs are exposed when attempting to destroy the evil Ring in a sooty Mordor crater, before Gollum gets there.

And when the nightmarish task is done and Aragorn still hasn't washed his greasy hair, will they accompany him for a makeover to a bathtub and Laundromat or will they prefer to roll and rub themselves on the velvet lawns of their Kiwi hosts, nuzzling the feline and canine members of the households?

How is it possible that our notorious black sheep Rachel, born on Friday 13th on Purim 22 years ago and nearly strangled in a dramatic twist of fate by her own umbilical cord, seems such a lucky little bugger amongst the furry population of this environmental island?

Here all of her most favorite things are present under one heavenly roof: women’s rights, a rather restrained male population, vast unspoiled outdoors, legends of subtle elves, soft-spoken horses, princesses with an attitude, Shawn the sheep and his bashful relatives and never a doomed stray cat in the clean-swept small towns along the coastline.

Here she is pampered by friendly, laid back people with a distinct British slant, surrounded by the global, easygoing community of environmental tourists in shorts and bandannas, and clouds, lots of lofty lambs , mirrored from the impressive sky onto the lush grassland crowned with snow covered mountains, forming flocks of thousands of bulgy, wool-laden sheep, whose coats give such a primal texture to a hand knitted sweater.

'My precious' Rachel, defender of animal rights, veterinarian and animal whisperer to be, will emerge from Middle Earth with the ingredients of her dreams rolled up into balls of wool and will try to weave these into a soft cloudy carpet lining her future path.

Hopefully she will team up with people of her own gentle kind and make the world into a place, where animals, trees and waterfalls, the sky and the earth are allowed to tell their intimate stories and sing their soothing songs to open eyed and open mouthed children, who might elate their parents and grandparents into opening their hearts as well towards such powerful messages and connect their souls to these eternal images and be satisfied with just listening, watching and wondering about it all.