30.06.2007 I felt a Jew with Messianic Complex

I made an alia Ц I ascended Holy Mount Zion. The center УHolocaustФ and УYad va-ShemФ Institute invited me to work on probation in Eretz Israel.
The State of Israel was founded in 1948. 50 year before this truly dramatic event for Jews of all over the world Theodore (Benjamin-Zeev) Hertzl on the First Zionist council of August 29, 1897 in Basel said: УWe joined here to lay the cornerstone of the home which shall stand as an asylum for the Jews.Ф Who could then conceive of the prophetic meaning of his words?
УBeit Lochameh ha-GhettaotФ is a memorial to the Ghetto fighters, the first Holocaust museum in the world. It is well-equipped and includes a great archive, library, tolerance center, memorial to children victims of the Holocaust and a hall dedicated to J. Korczak Ц a great pedagogue, who taught to love and respect a child. Korczak said that an adult must stand on tiptoes in order to reach the child. He died with his little charges in a concentration camp. УIf I had known the things would go this way, I would have preferred to stay little foreverФ Ц wrote Korczak before his death.
I got acquainted with two Resistance members in Jerusalem. Those were willful, energetic people, who never grumbled on petty subjects or moralized. They were marked with modesty, equal to their worth, and dignity. They were the people who saved mankind, simply working for their home, their nation and their country.

УYad va-ShemФ national memorial opened in 1953, in honor of the 6 million Jews, 1,5 million of them kids, killed by the Nazi. It is located in Memory Hill and embraces several buildings with exhibitions, Holocaust history archive and history museum representing photographs and video materials. The memorial complex also includes International school of Holocaust studies, Alley of the Communities, Garden of the Righteous and the art museum.
These are extraordinary people who work there. One of these people is Dr Irit Abramsky, who supervises Yad va-Shem programs in Russian language. Dr AbramskyТs lectures are highly inspiring due to a marvelous blend of her academism and artistry. She treats with ultimate respect any statement made by her students, striving to find in each of them a kernel of good sense, to see in the heap of sometimes senseless words a serious problem worth discussing. The program is staffed mainly by our former compatriots, scholars and talented writers.

Our group was selected by Moscow Holocaust center. It was this center that gave an opportunity for ordinary teachers to make a trip to Israel. For some of us it was the first time they went abroad. УI think everyone must visit this place just to live this through, not for the sake of death but for the sake of life. It is the place which gives confidence in human power,Ф says Alla Gerber, chair of Holocaust center, about Yad va-Shem.

Is fascism defeated for good? Fascism is the eternal satellite of humankind. It is bred by social injustice, poverty, money power, bureaucratism, boorishness and lack of thinking. Fascism challenges consumer society with its product worship. So long as human remains a means, not an aim, we risk to slip down to reciprocal extermination.

What does ghetto mean? It means hunger. It is when a mother cuts her babyТs corpse to eat it. According to the Nazi norm Jews got three times less provision than people in Leningrad of the blockade. It means living penned together. 13 to 16 people live in one room. (Nowadays the problem of housing in Russia is one of the most topical!) It provokes conflicts. It means a ban on child-bearing. WomenТs brooches bear the pictures of bread ration card Ц the most precious thing in ghettoЕBut ghetto also means a desperate and heroic resistance.

In his book about Nazism УAverage PeopleФ Browning asks: how was that possible from the human point of view? One of the answers is the strict subjection of a little man, who is encouraged to change the world according to the instructions of the authorities. It makes free initiative necessary as a means of avoiding chaos and tyranny. To abort group pressure on the individual, the individual has to develop an independent outlook and learn how to defend it. A developed critical thinking is a panacea against propaganda.

We visited УLeyadaФ gymnasium and met with one of its students Ц a grand-grandson of a great Israeli writer S.J. Agnon, Nobel laureate. The kid is a pacifist, he thinks that the solution of Middle East tensions can be reached only in a peaceful way. This point of view is unpopular in Israel, but it being tolerated and respected speaks in favor of the state, constantly at war. Besides, what is the Security Fence but the embodiment of a non-resistant idea of preserving lives?

The National Museum of Israel includes a unique Temple of the Book. The latter stores manuscripts accidentally found at Qumran. Their copies are represented on exhibition while the originals are kept in armored rooms which can presumably endure atomic bombing. The Qumran texts, copies of Isaiah, Nahum, Deuteronomy and original writings of the Essens, foretelling the battle of Children of Light and Darkness and coming of the Mashiach (Messiah) who shall transfigure the world. It is the triumph of individuality principle when one saves all. There is a theory that Jesus belonged to Qumran enthusiasts and shared their views.

I visited the astonishing Wailing Wall tunnel. Some stones there weight 600 tons and measure 13 to 16 meters. The tunnel brings you in touch with the great. Going out of the tunnel I uttered: УI saw eternity today!Ф
It was late at night. I approached the Wailing Wall and leaned against it touching it with my hands and forehead. Spontaneously words came forward, which expressed my main values. The articulation of my axiology inspired me. I stepped away from the Wall, then came to it again. Throwing my head back I saw dark sky and the Wall surface which now stood for the ground, the effect being emphasized by bushes growing on the stones. The edge of this ground was near, yet it was endlessly distant; the abyss shone but didnТt consume. Suddenly I felt planet Earth gathering supraluminal speed and becomes flat like a wall. It was a total transfiguration of the universeЕWhat was that: a revelation or an average outbreak of Jerusalem syndrome?

Israel is the stronghold of democracy in the Near East. All sensational scandals and denunciations are the results of an open state system, balance of power branches and social institutes, independence of the Media. I dislike the idea Уto be like everyone elseФ, but in one point it is right Ц the Jews must have their democratic free state like other nations.

Maxim Efimov,
Chair of Youth Human Rights Group, Karelian Branch