Old Stones, New Friends

046

In a summer of sweaty, dirty, demanding volunteer work, one particularly arduous morning stands out. We were dismantling a Persian-period wall at Ashkelon. My job was to work the stones free with a pick and then carry them in my arms over a treacherous terrain of balks, pits and trenches. That was the first time I paid much attention to Denis and David.

They were as different as could be. Denis was 17, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Ukrainian in jeans and a T-shirt. David (pronounced dah-VEED), a dark-skinned Ethiopian, was about 60. He dressed in shorts, battered ankle-length dress boots, an oxford shirt buttoned to the neck and a green wool cap. But they had two important things in common: Both were Jewish, and both were olim—recent immigrants who had come under the Law of Return, which welcomes any Jew in the world to live in and to become a citizen of Israel.

The wall we were pulling apart was the last remaining component of what appeared to be a fifth-century B.C. residential structure in Ashkelon’s upper-class neighborhood. The wall had been described, measured, drawn and photographed, and now it was time for it to come down.

The staff was eager to get down below the Persian-period remains to the Philistine period underneath—that’s where the action was. In other sections of the dig, excavators had already encountered evidence of the 604 B.C.E. destruction, when the Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar swept down from the north and obliterated the city, taking Aga, the last Philistine king of Ashkelon, back to Babylon as a captive.

As I passed the stones from the dismantled wall to David and Denis, I could feel a growing, wordless change in our relationship, our awareness of one another. Sharing physical tasks can do that, even when few words are spoken. As we struggled with the stones, some weighing 60 or 70 pounds and more, each of us tried to take more of the burden on ourselves to spare the others. We grunted and made noises of encouragement and concern. Our fingers overlapped as we hefted the rough ashlars, and we reached out to steady one another when one of us swayed or stumbled. When the task was done and the wall was down, I felt that I had made two new friends.

Unfortunately, our ability to communicate was limited. I spoke no Hebrew and Denis only rudimentary English. David, though he had studied Hebrew at an ulpan, was fluent only in Amharic, the ancient Semitic language spoken by Ethiopians.

David communicated without language. At breakfast time, he invited me to join him and the other Ethiopian workers for a meal of injera, the big, spongy wheat-flour pancakes that are eaten with a spicy paste of chickpeas and vegetables. I would bring my Israeli breakfast of bread, cucumbers, tomatoes and cheese, and we would sit on the grass in the shade of a tamarisk tree and share.

One morning Denis asked me in his simple English if I had seen the film Lethal Weapon. When I told him that I had, his face brightened. “I see Lethal Weapon and other film of American police, and I think police in U.S. have life always exciting and fun, and therefore I want to go to America and be policeman.”

I spent the better part of that morning trying to persuade him that Hollywood cop films glamorize the lives of police, which in reality can be tedious, frustrating and often very unrewarding. I’m still not sure whether or not I got through.

Although I volunteered at Ashkelon primarily to learn about Israel’s ancient past, some of my most memorable encounters were with people like Denis and David, representatives of Israel’s present. I learned that the modern State of Israel, no less than its ancient counterpart, is a meeting place of cultures, a truly diverse society in which the forces of contemporary history converge. And perhaps because verbal communication with my new friends proved so difficult, I made it my business to learn as much as I could about them from other sources. Many of the answers to my questions could be found by looking at Israel’s recent immigration history.

There are now about 43,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, the majority having arrived during two massive airlifts—Operation Moses, which took place between November 1984 and January 1985, and Operation Solomon, which airlifted 14,200 Ethiopians into Israel over 36 hours in May 1991.

The migration of Soviet Jews to Israel has risen and fallen according to changes in Soviet policy. The numbers remained fairly high during most of the 1970s, dropped to a trickle during the early 1980s, then, with the coming of perestroika, rose to a torrent in 1990, when more than 185,000 Soviet Jews entered Israel. In 1991, 145,000 arrived, and the estimate for the first half of 1992 is 27,000. Immigration authorities project that a total of one million Soviet Jews will enter Israel during the 1990s.

For a small country like Israel, finding work for such massive numbers of new citizens is an awesome task. Archaeological digs are able to absorb only a small portion of this vast potential work force, and usually only for a few weeks or months during the summer, but every little bit helps. One result is that if you volunteer on a dig, chances are you will work with members of one or both of these very different groups.

Jews from the former Soviet republics tend to be highly skilled and well educated, but, unfortunately, the jobs they have been able to secure in Israel are not always up to the level of those they left behind. The situation is especially poignant on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, an upscale pedestrian mall lined with sidewalk cafes, jewelry stores and T-shirt shops. In front of nearly every store front stands a street musician. Violinists compete with flutists, saxophonists, trombonists, keyboard players and singers for the attention and the shekels of passersby. The music ranges from pop to folk to opera. All the musicians are Soviet Jews, and, what is more disturbing, all are extremely good.

Among the new group of Soviet olim there are not only musicians but artists, physicians, engineers, scientists, teachers, writers and scholars. They represent a 047staggering influx of human capital, and the question on everyone’s mind is will the economy succeed in assimilating them while their skills and knowledge are up to date and their self-esteem intact.

“Many Soviet Jews have come for the sake of their children, but they want to make a contribution, too,” said Inid Wortman, director of the Jerusalem office of the Council for Soviet Jewry. “Already, many new orchestras have sprung up. I think the quality of musical education will go up, the quality of medical care will improve. Soviet Jews will really change the face of the country.”

Ethiopian olim seem the opposite of the urban, highly educated Soviet Jews. Most Ethiopian Jews come from small, remote farming villages. The majority are illiterate but extremely devout, faithfully adhering to laws and traditions that developed during 2,400 years of isolation from mainstream Judaism.

Ethiopian Jewry’s origins are uncertain. According to legend, their ancestors were Israelites who joined the entourage of the Queen of Sheba when she returned from her visit to King Solomon. Some historians believe them to be descendants of the ancient Jewish community in Upper Egypt that had been founded before the Babylonian Exile. In any case, their separation from mainstream Judaism appears to have occurred before the destruction of the First Temple in 587 B.C.E. Certain post-Biblical additions to the Jewish calendar are unknown to them such as the Fast of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of both the Solomonic Temple (the first Temple) and the Herodian Temple, and the Feast of Purim and Hannokah. Having lived in a way that has changed little since Biblical times, the Jews of Ethiopia now face the problem of jumping forward two millennia within a single generation.

An observer described the dramatic completion of Operation Solomon in 1991. “Planes touched down and people in Biblical attire got off. The Ethiopian Jews were extremely disciplined. Throughout the entire operation I didn’t hear a baby cry. And when they were led into a room where food and drink had been set up, not one person touched a drop until it was placed in their hands.”

It was not hard to imagine my co-worker David behaving in this way. Endlessly cheerful, patient, friendly and considerate, he was a joy to work with and invariably made our tasks quicker, smoother and more fun. I will always remember working with David as well as trying to answer Denis’s questions about the United States.

In thinking back over my summer as a volunteer, of what I learned about the ancient Near East, the endless conquests and migrations that have enriched as well as troubled this narrow corridor between empires, I cannot help but think of my friends Denis and David as modern examples of that ceaseless movement. Like so many before them, they came to this part of the world filled with dreams. I can only wish them well in fulfilling those dreams. I know they have helped to fulfill mine.

In a summer of sweaty, dirty, demanding volunteer work, one particularly arduous morning stands out. We were dismantling a Persian-period wall at Ashkelon. My job was to work the stones free with a pick and then carry them in my arms over a treacherous terrain of balks, pits and trenches. That was the first time I paid much attention to Denis and David. They were as different as could be. Denis was 17, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Ukrainian in jeans and a T-shirt. David (pronounced dah-VEED), a dark-skinned Ethiopian, was about 60. He dressed in shorts, battered ankle-length dress boots, […]