Three months ago:
It's Shabbat noon. We're standing in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people, on Pisga Street in the Beit Vegan neighborhood, where we live, talking to a couple of friends. A family, parents and three small children, passes by to our right.
The little boy runs in front of the camp, the parents call out to him, tell him something we don't understand, call him back? Joking that they'll catch him in a moment? Warn him? Coax him?
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To our left, a group of young men passes by, looking like all the young men from the Shabbat yeshiva, only when we get closer do we realize that they speak French. They haven't even passed yet, and more French-speaking people are approaching us. They are talking in Arabic.
""Well, well," say our interlocutors, "the riddle that has been asked in Beit Vagen for years is well-known: What is the second most spoken language in the neighborhood? Hebrew! If not the first one is French!""
I've never understood those who are concerned about the neighborhood being filled with French people. Aren't they our brothers, and what do we want? It's true that as soon as there is demand for apartments, prices go up, but when prices go up, someone loses and someone gains.
Why should we be so hard on the earners? That's what they bought their apartments for, and if they can make money from it, what's wrong?
It's true that as soon as the new immigrants settle in a neighborhood, the neighborhood changes its face, so what? Can anyone decide what the character of a neighborhood will be? And doesn't a neighborhood develop with the character of the people who live in it?.
About two months ago:
Shabbat at noon. I go down with my grandchildren to the Snake Garden, which is near my house. Only a few children are playing in the garden at this time. The parents are resting their Shabbat rest, and around me are about twenty or thirty rambunctious children and two mothers who are tiring out their children before they lie down for their afternoon nap.
A mother chases her baby who is rushing out of the garden, she calls out to him something I don't understand and rushes after him. What did she say to him? I ask myself. Did she yell at him? Did she laugh at him? Now the child is lying on his back, screaming on the path, she goes up to him and offers him a hand. Scolds him? Coaxes him? Threatens him? What???
The woman next to me sat one of her children on her lap. She said along with him, "Shema Yisrael, I don't understand what prayer of the day this belongs to? Still for Shacharit? Maybe they're at Mincha? Certainly not at the evening prayer. She said a few words of affection to him, apparently, and kissed him on the head, then continued to say things to him.
What does she say? Explaining to him how it is permissible to behave in the garden and how it is not? Maybe explaining to him the meanings of the words of the prayer? The previous woman lifted her child in her arms and here she is approaching. Sits down on the bench and starts talking to the previous one in... French, of course.
I began to understand the people who complain about the new immigrants from France who are crowding the neighborhood.
These aren't the people who are bothering someone, it's the language that makes you, a longtime resident here, feel clearly out of place, that makes you feel like this neighborhood is no longer yours, you're beyond the fence. You're not supposed to understand everything that's going on around you, you're just a second language.
About a month ago:
I traveled by bus. I like traveling by bus much more than traveling by taxi or car. I feel freer, not tied down or hidden, and I also see people around me and hear voices.
I sat by the window and tried to understand what was happening around me. I felt like I was traveling to another country. Hebrew was not heard in the night of sounds.
I looked around. People who look like me, but they are not with me, they seem to have remained within themselves, within their people, in their country, in their country of origin, and I, here, within the zone of my being, felt betrayed, orphaned, different and other.
I said to myself: How can you think like that, when aren't these your people, these Jews, Haredi, welcome, very loved by you, and what is this view and why is it so narrow-minded? And yet, my exclusion from the field made me feel uncomfortable. I'm just a second language.
Yesterday-the day before yesterday:
I felt a strong need, like every person in the nation of Israel, to go and comfort one of the families of those killed in the attack in France. I went to Ramada to comfort the mourners at the home of Philippe's dear wife.
Hundreds of people were sitting in a large hall. I knew we were all sitting quietly and thinking the same thing. I knew everyone's step was a stir in my heart.
Around me, the first language spoken in the house and garden was whispered. I understood nothing. We all shed a tear. I couldn't tell if my tear was hotter than theirs, or their tear was hotter than mine. If I could exchange a word with them, they would sit in one group and I would be outside. A second language.
And suddenly I didn't care about anything.
Let them speak whatever language they want, let them behave differently from us, if that's how they behave, let them talk to each other, as if there were no Hebrew speakers among the comforters, let them hug each other and leave me alone on the sidelines. The main thing is that they come, that they come and sanctify us with their presence.
The Holy Land is not a land of the Jews who were here before, it is a land of all Jews. And maybe, maybe if we, the veterans, become less suspicious and less critical, more hospitable and more moderate, it will be to the benefit of us all.
Perhaps if we all know what is truly important and love one another without any difference in language or accent, then God will see this and gather us who have been cast away from all corners of the earth to our holy land and bring us our righteous Messiah quickly in our days. Amen.
Then, from the deep pit of grief and bereavement, I knew what the first language is in the home, in the garden, and everywhere else in our country. The first language is neither Hebrew nor French. The first language is the language of love!
