Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (22 page)

Before sunrise on June 5, 1967, I heard whispering and wandered out of our room to find my parents on their knees in the darkened family room, their faces aglow from the flickering light of our black-and-white TV. The sound was turned down low, and they were both listening and watching intently. Israel was at war with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

The fighting was not unexpected. Neighboring countries, officially committed to its destruction, had harassed and threatened Israel ever since its creation. In the weeks before the war, Egypt cut off Israel’s access to the Red Sea and completed a military alliance with Jordan and Syria. All three countries began positioning arms and men on their borders with Israel, and Arab sentiment shifted decidedly in favor of armed conflict. The rest of the world feared the United States entering the conflict on Israel’s side and the Soviet Union joining the Arabs. After negotiations failed, Israel’s leaders had decided that the best defense would be offense. This was a tactic my father favored in life as well as war.

The scale of the attack far exceeded anything that outside military experts expected from the Israeli Defense Forces, and in the early
hours of the war reporters struggled to provide information. No one watching television or listening to the radio could be certain about what was happening. Still my parents craved information and remained in front of the television. They knew scores of people who lived in Israel and all were within range of enemy warplanes and artillery. They also understood that the IDF was vastly outnumbered as the enemy fielded twice as many troops and three times as many aircraft and tanks.

I stayed with my parents while the sun rose. Ari and Rahm got up and we went to Anshe Emet, where the atmosphere was filled with apprehension. By the middle of the day the news reports said that Israel had overwhelmed its enemies with the almost flawless execution of a brilliant strategy. On June 10, as the fighting ended, Israel held the Sinai Peninsula, the entire city of Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the strategically vital Golan Heights, where Syria had located guns that had shelled the Galilee region of Israel, including a kibbutz where one of our cousins worked.

As stories of heroism and victory poured in from the battlefield, military experts around the world marveled at the IDF’s proficiency. Israeli planes had all but destroyed the much larger Egyptian air force. Counterattacks made by Jordan, Iraq, and Syria were repulsed. It seemed as if in an instant, Israel had become mature, muscular, and feared, and this recognition by the world community made Jews around the world feel exceedingly proud. As international Jewish organizations and Israeli agencies appealed for support, millions of people sent donations. My mother and father decided to send us.

Considering the fact that gunshots could still be heard in border towns and terrorists still living within Israel could attack anywhere in the country, it may have seemed a strange—even irresponsible—moment for my mother to haul her three sons from Chicago to Tel Aviv. But the decision to send us there, in this time of emergency and danger, was not made lightly. My parents read everything they could find on conditions
on the ground in Israel and my father called friends, who reported that life was quickly returning to normal. After concluding that common sense and a little extra vigilance would keep us safe, my parents considered the import of the moment in history and decided that it was the perfect time for us to learn more about our heritage, not to mention the country that we, as Jews, could claim as our own.

Once the question of safety was resolved, the big challenge of this trip would be maintaining our sanity during the six-thousand-mile journey. My mother brought snacks for us, plus an armload of little games, books,
Highlights
magazines, and word puzzle books. The books, puzzles, and magazines helped Rahm and me pass the time but were of little interest to a dyslexic kid like Ari. Unable to stay in his seat, Ari, who was just six years old, roamed the Boeing 707 aircraft and became the darling of the economy-class cabin, accepting treats and engaging in long conversations with the other passengers. He prodded us to play with him and tried to burn off energy by marching up and down the aisle. My mother spent so much time exploring the plane with Ari to make sure he did not annoy people too much, she said, “I walked all the way from Chicago to Israel.”

Between 1967 and 1970 we would make four of these long summer trips to Israel. Each one lasted the entire summer and was financed in part by my father’s shrewd investment in the stock of a company called McDonald’s. These were not so much vacations as a chance to live, for a season, as Israelis. We ate the local cuisine, played on the beaches, swam in the sea, shopped in the markets, and practiced our Hebrew.

On our first trip Ari, Rahm, and I fought with one another to see who would be the first to scuttle down the stairs that were brought up to the tail of the plane and stand on Israeli soil. I won, and after I put my feet down on the ground I also bent down to touch the oily tarmac with my hands. All around me people were doing the same thing, making direct contact with the land that represented acceptance, dignity, and, should he or she need it, a safe haven for every Jew in the world. Even at age nine I understood the seriousness of history
and the pride and joy represented by a Jewish state. And it did not seem strange to me that some of my fellow passengers cried as they stood beside the plane.

The military presence in Israel made a big impression on us. The recent war had heightened security concerns and led the authorities to put even more troops in the streets. As boys, we were in awe of the soldiers. Whenever we were in a car and saw them hitchhiking we urged whoever was driving to offer them a ride and then seized the chance to examine their rifles and pepper them with questions.

Except for the many soldiers we saw, Israel circa 1967 struck us as a place where the climate and the pace of life were relaxed and comfortable—more Mediterranean than American. The place was much poorer, in material terms, than America. There was no television and very few people had phones in their homes. And compared to the United States, where we were accustomed to seeing roads and highways jammed with private cars, most Israelis rode buses, walked, or pedaled bikes.

Tel Aviv was a city of smaller, low-rise buildings set along streets lined with palms, cacti, and flowering poinciana trees. Designed by Jewish architects of the Bauhaus era who had fled Nazi Germany, hundreds of these buildings were distinctly modern, with plain lines, flat roofs, airy balconies, and unadorned façades. Many were built around courtyards with ground-floor day-care centers, tiny grocery shops, and other amenities for the residents.

Our aunt Esty—a heavyset, potato-shaped woman with a loud voice and sarcastic demeanor—lived on Mapu Street in one of these typical Tel Aviv apartment houses, located three blocks from the Mediterranean beaches. Her place, on the third floor, was just two rooms with a small kitchen and a balcony but she welcomed us to stay with her for more than six weeks. If you included her two hairless, rat-like Chihuahuas, the population of that little apartment totaled seven, including us three hyperactive boys.

Life at Esty’s was a mix of challenges and delights. The tiny space, which required that Ari, Rahm, and I sleep on thin mats on the “living
room” floor, forced us to become more patient and flexible, a positive development. In fact, when we were in Israel very few brotherly arguments ever escalated beyond a few angry words. Away from our home and our friends we depended on one another for fun and companionship. We spent many lazy hours on the beach reading, swimming, making sand castles, and soaking up the sun.

When I think of it now, these four summers might be the single most important factor in cementing our brotherly bond. For weeks on end, we spent every waking moment as a threesome. We slept together. We walked to the beach together. We swam, bodysurfed, built sand castles, and lay in the sun together. We went shopping at little groceries together. We made and shot rubber band guns at the neighborhood cats together. There was nothing we did not do together. And it wasn’t just being in physical proximity. While we could speak some Hebrew, we were more comfortable in English and this led us to rely more on one another for companionship and fun. Even when we got angry with one another, it never lasted for long because the next day it was just the three of us together. Years of this togetherness—along with sharing a bedroom for so many years—forged an inseparable bond.

Rahm would have fond memories of riding horses on the beach with some girls we met one summer at camp and less fond recollections of touring the country with our mother. “We went to Sinai, Jericho, Nablus, and Jerusalem. She would take us all over the countryside in 110-degree heat and we’d say, ‘Mom, can’t we get some water?’ and she wouldn’t want to stop. We had to go to see some cemetery somewhere or we would have to hurry to get back before Shabbat.”

My mother used the bus system for most of these tourist outings and we learned to take the bus ourselves. Sometimes we’d grab our fishing poles, hop on a bus, and ride to the stop near where the Hayarkon River empties into the Mediterranean Sea. Once a free-flowing stream, the poor Hayarkon had been reduced by diversions to a brackish trickle. However, it did support a few tiny fish. On our most successful expedition we caught about fifteen of these little swimmers and brought them home. For a scientifically minded kid, learning the
not-so-fine art of gutting and skinning our catch—and a chance to examine eyes, gills, and intestines—was fascinating. And of course there was the pleasure of filling our bellies with the panfried fillets we had caught.

On other bus trips we went to parks and markets. When crowds were light and there was room to breathe, we often fell into conversation with Israeli adults. They were quite surprised to encounter three American boys who dressed and looked like Israelis and were adventuring on their own in Tel Aviv. We were more outgoing than typical Israeli kids and open to conversation. Communicating in a mixture of Hebrew and English we’d manage to explain that we were from Chicago. Half the people responded immediately by fashioning their hands into the shape of a handgun and saying the name Al Capone.

We were a curiosity and an amusement for adults who considered us precocious and who would either test our Hebrew or try out their English on us. Sometimes the buses were too crowded for conversation, though, with rush hour passengers who filled every seat and stood toe-to-toe in the aisles. On one of these trips Rahm’s small stature served him quite well. I’ll never forget the expression of devilish delight on his nine-year-old face when he was wedged between two riders in a way that left his head nestled in the bosom of a buxom woman. The woman in question did not seem to care about providing support and a bit of a thrill for my brother. She even let Rahm remain close after the crowd thinned out.

Life in Tel Aviv was so different from what we knew at home, even the most ordinary activities could seem exotic. For example, like most people in Israel, Esty owned just a tiny refrigerator, so every day was a shopping day. Sometimes we took a bus with her to the Carmel Market, a large outdoor market where vendors sold fruits, vegetables, fish, cheese, meats, and everything else you could imagine. Indeed, Esty even knew a butcher shop that sold bacon—which at that time was not openly sold in Israel. Jammed with people who haggled over prices and debated the quality of the wares, the market was a much livelier place than any grocery store back in America.

On days when we did not troop to the Carmel Market, Esty would
send us downstairs to the grocer on the first floor of her building, who had a limited but reliable supply of canned goods, bottled juices, fruits, bread, milk, and yogurt. We also listened for the men who sold fresh vegetables from old-fashioned carts pulled by tired and slow-moving donkeys or horses. Street vendors, who had long disappeared from Chicago, brought a bit of excitement to the neighborhood. When we heard the cry “Avah-tee-ach! Avah-tee-ach!” echo up from the street, we knew that the watermelon man was coming and raced down to meet him. We reacted with even more excitement when we heard “Ana-vim! Ana-vim!” because that meant we could buy a pound of sweet grapes that had been picked at the peak of ripeness just a few hours earlier. Thanks to the standoff between growers and farm labor leader César Chávez, our mom had banned California grapes from our house, which made the Israeli ones taste even more delicious.

When we ate outside the apartment, we might grab a shawarma sandwich of sliced roasted meat with onions or visit Café Gilda to get some pistachio or chocolate ice cream to enjoy as we walked the shopping district bisected by Dizengoff Street. Named after the first mayor of Tel Aviv, Dizengoff was then the equivalent of Fifth Avenue and Times Square put together.

The debates and storytelling heard on the sidewalks and in the shops of Tel Aviv were, to my mother, like jazz sessions where she was always welcomed to play along. Whether the topic was the Six-Day War (1967), the hijacking of El Al Flight 426 (1968), or the election of Golda Meir (1969), my mother was ready with an opinion. But what the Israelis really wanted to hear from her was news about America. The political assassinations, urban uprisings, and antiwar protests fascinated them because many of them had family and friends in the States and because America was both Israel’s protector and the leader of the West in its Cold War standoff with communism.