“Zo hamedina shelanu,” Osnat said to me as I bear hugged her, her sisters, her brother, her mother and her father. “This is our country,” she said with tears in her eyes as we finished burying her 20-year-old cousin, Netanel Habshoosh, a young soldier in an elite unit of the Israeli Army, murdered on Feb. 22 by a homicide bomber on Jerusalem bus #14.
The young army boys knelt by his grave, sobbing. His parents and siblings mourned, shocked and still disbelieving that the past Shabbat had turned out to be the last they would spend with their beloved youngest son and brother. Each eulogy was more heart-rending than the last as friends, family, and his commanding officer spoke of the kind, committed, warm, spirited young man who loved his family, friends and country. Zo hamedina shelanu.
This is the middle of our fourth year of aliyah and the Sharabi-Chabshoosh family has embraced us, adopted us and given us the true Israeli experience as no other family could. They embody the history of this country in a palpable way that enabled our family to integrate and experience what is best about our people.
Yochai’s family came from Yemen. They came by foot and by hoof (on donkeys to be specific) to this Promised Land. They fought in all of Israel’s wars, including the internal wars. They were part of the underground movement that fought the blind secularization of the Jewish
state. When Yochai was sitting shiva for his father, we came to the family and they stuffed us with Yemenite delicacies, regaled us with stories of their parents, and laughed and cried and shared songs and anecdotes they had learned at their parents’ feet. Our spirits were always raised after being with the Sharabis, even at a shiva house.
To honor the memory of their parents, the Sharabi family dedicated a Torah scroll to the Yemenite synagogue here in Efrat last year. It was like Simchat Torah as the community danced and sang in the streets, bringing the holy scroll to its new home in the beautiful wooden ark of the recently built Yemenite synagogue. We ate our home-baked cakes, listened to
beautiful words of Torah, and joined in the singing and the dancing. Zo hamedina shelanu.
Before her cousin’s funeral I had seen Yochai cry only one other time, when Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated by Arab terrorists. “He was a hero to us,” Reuma explained. “He was a man who stood for what he believed and supported the Jewish state as a state for the Jewish people.”
Mostly Yochai and Reuma taught me how to laugh here. They both have the kind of laugh that is contagious and expresses an optimism and a joi de vivre that truly is infectious and the best weapon against depression – the depression that on a daily basis threatens to destroy our existence here.
Reuma Chabshoosh Sharabi came to Israel on kanfei nesharim, the “wings of eagles.” This was the exodus of the Jews from Yemen in 1949, dubbed Operation Magic Carpet. The entire remaining community was rescued and airlifted in one fell swoop to the newly established Jewish state. They were told to leave everything behind for they would have all
that they needed once they arrived in Israel. Shamefully, they were sent to ma’abarot, shantytown tent-like communities that were supposed to be temporary but turned out to be more permanent than anyone anticipated.
Many Yemenite children were sent to learn and live on secular kibbutzim and were indoctrinated with a different kind of Zionism than the religious Zionism their parents had internalized. This was a secular, socialistic Zionism. These Yemenite children were to be part of the Zionist secular state – after all, who needed G-d? We were going to build an army, make peace with our Arab neighbors and be counted among all of the great liberated nations of the modern world.
Many Yemenite babies were taken from their parents and given up for adoption without the parents’ permission. It was a definite blight on the history of the Zionist state. Zo hamedina shelanu.
Reuma grew up with love and song. She sang her way through every school year, every special occasion, and she brought joy to family and teachers alike with her music. Yochai once told me that they have a storage closet filled with the instruments Reuma had learned and discarded throughout the years; she never, however, abandoned her voice nor did it forsake her.
Reuma opened my mind and my heart to the beauty of Israel, the strength of our people, the compassion of our people and the righteousness of our cause. She and Yochai epitomize a deep belief and faith in G-d and a passion for building and defending our land. If anyone has provided our sons with good examples of the best our people can be it is Reuma and Yochai. You look at each of their beautiful children and grandchildren and your faith in our people is renewed. Zo hamedina shelanu.
So as I sobbed through the funeral of their nephew, Netanel, I thought to myself: Here is another classic Israeli experience the Sharabis have brought me to: my first military funeral. I kept thinking about all of the firsts the Sharabis had brought us to since our aliyah. Our first Shabbat meal with them, playing sheish beish with the family; our first Israeli Independence Day, singing Naomi Shemer songs as we ate our desserts punctured with little Israeli flags; my first henna ceremony for Yemenite brides-to-be, in which they dressed me in traditional Yemenite garb with a headdress of jangling bells and a long embroidered dress – I decided then that in my next life I was coming back as a Yemenite Jew.
Our first Israeli wedding was a Sharabi wedding, replete with ancient as well as modern customs. My husband, children, and I danced the night away in joy and simcha. I tasted my first homemade pita and chilba at Reuma’s and went to my first Hebrew play with Reuma.
There were no taboo subjects with the Sharabis. We spoke about Torah, politics, families, values, our worries, our regrets, our hopes and our dreams. Reuma listened and advised me about my family, laughing with me over all my trials and tribulations with the Israeli bureaucracy. She had infinite patience as I tried, sometimes in vain, to express my thoughts in the new language of my new land.
We shared in simchas and all other experiences – and now the most difficult of them, Netanel’s funeral. We are so blessed to have the Sharabi-Chabshoosh family as friends and family to us. I pray that we will only share in simchas together but, I know very well that life is also filled
with tragedies, especially here in Israel where the Jew is on the front line of the evil that threatens all Jews and, in fact, all freedom-loving, peace-loving people of the world.
With G-d’s help we shall overcome our current enemies and have peace. We Jews pray for it every day. Until then we will take the good and the bad. We have no choice – zo hamedina shelanu.
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