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""Although I always like to talk only about the positive, about love, they asked me to talk about the wounds today as well." Veteran author and educator Rabbi Chaim Sabato was invited to the Knesset this week to speak to about 500 school principals about the difficulties he experienced in the education system.
The words should also be published outside the hall where they were spoken, and they are especially appropriate for a week when approximately two million students receive their diplomas.
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""I was five years old when we unexpectedly immigrated to Israel from Egypt, after my father was arrested for Zionist activity," he said. "They deported us all from Egypt within 48 hours, father, mother and five children, the oldest of whom was seven. We arrived on a ship called 'Moledet' at the Haifa port, and from there to the transit camp in Beit Mazmil, Jerusalem.
""Love covered every wound we had. I remember how my father excitedly bought us tickets to the 'Decade of the State of Israel' exhibition at the Nation Buildings. We came there, ran around and didn't understand anything, but we only caught one thing: my father's immense excitement. That was the main thing. In the transit camp there were Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, Tangier and Persia.
""I saw them get up every morning at five-thirty, and after morning prayer, they go out with a tow truck on their shoulders to Mount Herzl, to dig holes and plant trees. They returned after dark to a small house, in the mud of the crossing, but I never heard a complaint from them or a desire to return. I told this at a conference of historians and they got angry with me, but this is my truth, without discrimination or anger. I remember from my childhood a great love.".
His grandmother spoke before Haim Guri passed away, but she described exactly the years in which Guri became a poet in the young and developing country. After all, that is the job of a man of letters. To build, to empower, to elevate. The common feeling back then was that a culture, a state, communities, a nation were being built here. The wind blowing today in some of these districts is the opposite, of dissolution – the state, the community, the family, everything is worthless, everything is only subject to cynical criticism.
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"But I promised to talk about the wounds too," his grandmother recalled. "The first thing that bothered me was the insensitivity to our financial situation. As a child, I never had textbooks, but that didn’t bother anyone. Everyone sat in the classroom with math books and I – had to guess everything, think in advance what the teacher would ask, glance left and right. No one ever thought that we didn’t have money, we just didn’t have any.
""We studied at the same high school, my brother Shabtai (now Rabbi Shabtai), my brother Mordechai (now Dr. Mordechai) and I. There was no money for tuition, and if the principal, Rabbi Aryeh Bina, hadn't intervened, they would have kicked us out. I once thought to myself how much the education system lost because we didn't pay, but how much the three of us have since paid back our tuition.".
His grandmother says the last words in a trembling, almost tearful voice, and then there is thunderous applause.
""Sometimes tiny gestures can change everything: Rabbi Leuchtner, the famous director of our Talmud Torah in the Beit Vegan neighborhood, saw me walking to school in the pouring rain, without a sweater or a coat. To this day I remember the bone-chilling cold. There were no resources back then, but he took a towel from the school, wrapped it around my neck and said: At least you'll have a scarf.".
""It's been 60 years since then, but I don't forget. The towel didn't warm me in the cold of home and garden, but the gesture, the knowledge that someone was thinking of me - did. I remember myself at the age of 20, in my Hesder yeshiva, the Kotel yeshiva, without a penny in my pocket. I taught the children of rich people, the sons of professors from Merhavia, in order to buy myself a sweater and to buy myself a Shas.
""The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yeshayahu Hadari, saw that my face was shining and asked why. I told him that I had bought myself a Shas. And again, decades later, I remember his warmth and enthusiasm in response to this purchase. I appeal to you: Be sensitive. It is difficult for a rich person to understand what he does not have.".
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But Israel has developed since the days of slavery. The existential hunger is less bothersome, the spiritual hunger still exists. Even the grandchildren of those immigrants can tell that their extensive cultural heritage was excluded, erased, suppressed.
""Educators must be culturally sensitive, even today," his grandmother continued. "Once at the 'Yeshurun' school, all the children were rioting in the morning during prayer, they didn't cooperate. You know these discipline problems. There was a teacher there named Rabbi Yitzhak Revach, who taught Gemara, agriculture, nature and singing.
""He said: Let me try. He took a class that obviously prayed in the Ashkenazi style, even though everyone was Moroccan, and turned it into a real Sephardic synagogue. He put chairs around it, put a box in the center, set up a choir and appointed three gabbaim. A few days later, the principal was invited to see this wonderful synagogue, all in Moroccan music, like in the children's homes, with enthusiasm. The principal was so amazed, he couldn't believe it. You just have to trust, identify with the tradition.".
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He had two more messages, burned into his flesh, that he wanted to convey to the 2018 directors.
""In third grade, they gave us forms to fill out, with the names of our parents, their place of work, and more. We also had to write how many rooms we had in the house. My friend, Harosh from Ein Kerem, wrote: 'We are eight people in the house and a grandmother, and we have a room and a half in the transit camp.' The teacher read the forms one by one, and when he got to his form, he said: Eight people and a grandmother in a room and a half? So who lives in half a room, the grandmother? He burst into laughter, and Harosh was forever offended, to the depths of his soul. It is almost impossible to erase an insult.
""I have been an educator for 43 years and know, like you, that sometimes it is difficult in the classroom, and that we are all human, but we have a huge responsibility not to offend soft souls. If you want, punish, punish severely, just don't insult.".
But he did not come to demand things only from the teachers, but also from the children. This Shabbat we read about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, in the parshah "Yatro".
His grandmother told how his connection to Torah took shape: "I came back from school at five in the afternoon, tired and thirsty and hungry. You may not like this story, but what can you do, this is the story. I came home and asked to go and rest, and my mother said: Start the Torah lesson in the synagogue, go and come back and then we'll talk. That's how it was. She didn't feel sorry for me. Later, I didn't feel sorry for my children either. You have to fill yourself with content, work hard, excel.".
The boy from Egypt became an armored warrior and later a Rosh Yeshiva Hesder and an award-winning author.
He concluded his remarks this way: "When we were children, my brother went to my father and said: Let's change the family name, no one knows their grandmother's name, let's find something else. Father replied: Don't change the name, you will make the name.".
The column is published in the newspaper 'Yediot Aharonot''
