Today felt like a day of the stories of women.
We met a Jewish woman who chose to send her children to a mixed Jewish-Arab school. Though she explained her reasoning for this decision, I don’t think it’s something I can understand.
We met 3 Arab women who teach English in an Arab school. Our visit to their school was the first ever of a group of American tourists. Our conversation was dominated by one of the teachers who when asked to introduce herself, exploded with anger and frustration about her life. I wondered if it was even possible for her to not convey this rage to her students, and decided that it was not. Another teacher spoke English like an American, and smiled widely at us from beneath her hijab. I wondered what she was thinking about our group, our yarmulked men and the conversation.
We met a mother whose youngest child loved to play basketball, and swim, and play the drums. He loved nature, wasn’t great at academics, but was genius at friendship. He worried about taking his position of officer in the Israeli army, and wrote advice to himself in his diary, hoping to find the right words and actions to lead his troop. In the last line of the entry he wished himself success. He was killed 5 years ago in the Gaza strip by a roadside bomb, at the head of his comrades. He was 21 years old. His name was Arbel Reich. His mother, calmly, bravely, and without tears, told us about her son and his life. She showed us the beautiful memorials in his memory. One was in the local school, where his picture hangs among the pictures of other fallen soldiers from the area, most of them heart-breakingly young. We then traveled to the memorial his family created in a beautiful park-like setting overlooking the hills of the lower Galil. His mother explained every detail, including the conversation she had with her husband and two daughters, the day that the army sent someone to tell them the news, and they decided, as a family, that life would continue. She was serene. We wept.
There was more – lots more, but this is all I can process right now.