21 years ago, my father, my childhood friend who was about to marry his choice of heart at the time, Einat, asked me to perform the wedding ceremony for them. Since ceremonies I like, and my father even more, I sat down and created a ceremony especially for the newlyweds. The audience at that wedding spread the rumor that there was a different kind of ceremony, and soon more invitations began to arrive, and more weddings and more couples of all kinds, and conducting wedding ceremonies became one of my regular occupations. The couple I married didn't survive the crises of time, but the ceremony did, and to this day I conduct it here and there.
Why am I telling all this? Because this week I had the privilege of holding such a ceremony in its halachic version, together with Rabbi Yosef Arbiv, my dear friend Baruch Ben Yigal and his choice of heart Daniella Afriat. If the name only rings familiar to you, then Baruch is the father of Amit z"l, a Golani soldier who was killed in action in the village of Ya'bad when a Palestinian threw a stone at him from the roof that hit him in the head.
Amit Ben Yigal z"l, photo: courtesy of the family
I met Baruch on the morning show, in the middle of the shiva days about Amit, and then he became a regular interviewee around all the charity projects he established in memory of his beloved son together with his ex-wife Nava, who attended the wedding. This man always did something in my heart. The abysmal sadness on the one hand, and the choice not to sink into it and be active on the other, raised in me every time the question of how I would have acted if fate had struck me this way, whether I would have chosen life or sunk into the depths of despondency forever.
Then Ido Salomon of Channel 12 did an article about him, in which Baruch wanted to find a woman who would bring with him a brother to Amit, who was his only son. Thousands of women applied. A whole year passed before Baruch received a message from Danielle, but when he did, something in his heart moved. They met for coffee and Rogelach in a café in Beit Shemesh, where they sat and talked for four hours, which passed in the blink of an eye. From the first moment it was clear to both of them that there was an extraordinary connection here, and despite the considerable age difference between them, 25 years without the evil eye, there is a one-time soul connection.
He lived to fulfill his son's will. Baruch Ben Yigal at Amit's grave, photo: Efrat Eshel
So this week we stood under the chuppah – Baruch and pregnant Danielle, who by the time you read these words may have already given birth – and we were privileged to fulfill the will of a colleague who asked his father to remarry in a voice message he sent him before his death. And it was the happiest and most moving wedding I've had the privilege of having since that ceremony 21 years ago. Baruch chose life, and I was privileged to be by his side at this moment. How a ceremony unfolds, how life in Israel unfolds. May they be privileged to raise their new son to a good and long life. Artist.
vacation
We said - we will go to Italy for a week. We will rest from the heat and all the bad mood in the country. We boarded an Israir flight, where the seats are as pampering as the bench in the Bakum and the meal is hot, and we flew to northern Italy. We landed, and then the plane doors opened. We immediately felt: we had arrived in Dubai. A heat wave burst into the interior of the plane and melted all the plastic parts.
We were filled with wonder. We knew that the money of the Emirates was buying everything, but we did not imagine that they had managed to move all of northern Italy to the desert without feeling the difference, but the climate betrayed the plot. 40 degrees day and night, may Tel Aviv be gone.
We took the rental car, drove to the hotel. In the parking lot a strange sight: dozens of cars with shattered windshields and deep dents in the trash. It seemed as if Mount Vesuvius erupted again and rocks from it hit the local vehicle fleet. The walls of the hotel were also filled with dimples that looked like Jordanian Legion bullets hit the wall of the Jerusalem municipality. We were told that a few days earlier hail had fallen with lumps the size of tennis balls. The damages are unbelievable. The climate is completely crazy, and as always in Europe - there are no air conditioners. One day I'll start an air conditioner company and get rich selling them to Europeans who have been surprised by every heat wave for 50 years.
How cozy this Italy is. Her landscapes are green, her houses are beautiful, her manners are respectful, her language grumbles on her tongue, and her drivers, who for some reason are customary to denigrate and compare them to us, were simply wonderful. Maybe because it's Dubai after all. We plowed the highways and side roads and didn't encounter a single truck driving in the left lane, and we heard three sirens a week. Something in the nervous system calms down so much when you aren't being killed on the road every minute. A refreshing change.
And what's also refreshing is a nice custom they have there - that machines for pouring cold water and soda are placed on street corners, and instead of buying polluting plastic bottles, you can fill a bottle from home for 10 agorot per liter with good cold water. And Milan, and we were glad we didn't pollute, and we wondered why there wouldn't be some here too.
And it turns out that we weren't the only ones who thought about the idea of coming to northern Italy. Several million more people flocked to this region, crowding the attractions and beaches and roads and restaurants, creating huge lines where we also stood and cried.
But even in the biggest queues, there was one thing – talk about reform. And no matter how much we sweated, how many hours we waited, and how many traffic jams we encountered, the fact that no one talked about Ben-Gvir and Kaplan was worth every penny of the travel expenses.
Grandmother
The school year has begun, unless a strike breaks out. And unlike in the past, when there was joy at the beginning of the year, it seems that this year, as in the past few years, there is more concern surrounding this event than the joy of learning and development.
One of the most serious concerns is the quality of staffing in kindergartens and dormitories, and there is no need to recount the atrocities that were discovered only this year. I don't see anything being done to solve the difficult problem of caregivers and kindergarten teachers who are not suitable for the profession and do not come to do educational work but to make a meager living, and who do not have the tools, knowledge and heart to give the children what they need, which is love, patience and support.
What do you do until the systems are up and running, if that ever happens? The reader Alina Sharak sent me a beautiful idea that she herself implemented in the kindergarten years ago: shifts of grandmothers and grandparents who come to take turns sitting in the kindergarten and keeping an eye out. How simple, how cheap, how excellent. Every day, a grandmother or grandfather comes to the kindergarten and spends the whole day alongside the educational staff, both with light help and observing and supervising the work that takes place in the kindergarten.
That's what everyone benefits. The grandmother and grandfather who have the opportunity to be with the grandchildren for a long and significant period of time and see them in their natural environment, the kindergarten staff who receive reinforcement from responsible adults, the child himself who receives a changing adult figure who brings a different human color to the kindergarten every day, and the parents who can sleep soundly. The deal of the century.
Such a grandmotherly presence is a thousand times preferable to any camera, since the camera does not help and only gives a sense of violation of privacy to the visitors to the kindergarten. In general, the culture of incriminating videos is a toxic culture, which unfortunately has taken over our lives in all its spheres, but this is not fate. When the camera is replaced by the grandmother of one of the children, the whole atmosphere in the kindergarten will change, and the only camera that will be required is that of the photographer who arrives at the end of the year for a period photo.
What's better about it is that you don't need any legislative amendment, no equipment, no internet. Just get together, Rakefet kindergarten parents and Peshosh parents, and inform the kindergarten teacher that from day one there are two more eyes in the kindergarten, and two hands for help, and another heart for love. And if the kindergarten teacher objects - immediately take the child to another kindergarten.
Try it, and let me know if it has changed your whole sense of security in kindergarten. And have a great year.
avrigilad@gmail.com
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us