Posted By James Besser
A Rabbi's World: Taking the Long Way Home / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
After close to two wonderful weeks visiting family in Israel, the time came to go home. It always does, and I'm never quite ready for it. Having lived in Israel for two years and traveling there at least twice a year since, it takes me just a very short time to get back into the rhythms of Israeli life. Once I do, it's like I never left. And then I leave again. It never feels good to leave Israel.
So my flight to the States (not El Al, before you read further) was scheduled to leave Israel at 5:10 PM to arrive at JKF at 10 PM the same day. By the time my plane landed in Israel, the departure time of my return flight had already been delayed to 6:40PM, to arrive at JFK at 11:40PM. Okay, I thought; it's not great, but delays happen.
When I get to the airport, the time is passing and we're not boarding. Clearly something is brewing, and finally, long after we were supposed to be airborne already, it is announced that, because of "weather"- isn't there weather everywhere, I'm thinking?- we need to stop in Europe to take on extra fuel to account for stronger headwinds. Oh joy. And where will we be stopping in Israel, I ask? Germany, I'm told; Leipzig, to be exact. How wonderful, I'm thinking. Just where I want to be. All I want to do is get to Queens, and I'm going to Germany.
Three or four hours later- who remembers?- we land in Leipzig with a cheerful "Welcome to Germany" from the pilot, and are told to stay on the plane while the refueling is taking place. I look out the window at the frigid night, and there are three police cars near our plane with the word "Polizei" boldly emblazoned on their doors. And all I can think about is Israeli athletes sitting on a tarmac in 1972 with the "Polizei" all around, and how well that turned out.
Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I continue to be amazed at how visceral my feelings towards Germany are still, I who was born in the United States and lost no one in my family in the Shoah. How vividly I remember being in the old El Al terminal at JFK, next door to Lufthansa, and getting goose bumps from entering the Lufthansa terminal and seeing a sign that began with the word "Achtung." Of course it did; it's German, and Lufthansa is Germany's airline!
But that very word in that very language conjured up for me a meaning completely out of context, as did an innocuous refueling stop in Leipzig. Sitting there on the tarmac, I felt as if Rod Serling was about to appear, and I had crossed into some eerie Twilight Zone kind of place. But then again, it was the middle of the night, I was tired and cranky, and all I wanted to do was go home- not be in Germany, where achtung and polizei can never be normal words for me.
I walked into my house at 4:15AM. It had been a long night.
The Long Way Home
01/07/08 @ 10:35 PM | Posted By NotatuMy last trip to Israel was in 1982. On the way home, I stopped in Vienna to visit my great Aunt. I flew El Al. As we landed at the Vienna airport, the plane was surrounded by soldiers pointing machine guns at the airplane. I thought that my life was over; I could not imagine what had happenedin the time it took us to land. A new friend I had made on the plane informed me that (at least at that time) either all planes arriving from Israel or all El Al planes were greeted thusly for their "own protection." Although I "got it" it was very uncomfortable. Both of my parents are survivors, I lost most of my family in the Shoah and I am a first generation American.
I fully understand those emotions Rabbi Skolnik.