Sauci Bosner

Letters in the Train

Last Tuesday I visited Blaricum for the first time. My friend Denise and I have eaten lunch together two times in the year and a half that we know each other. I have been to her home once and spoken with her on numerous occasions in the course of getting to know each other. When we met again, her hair longer, mine shorter, she suggested that we drive to her birthplace. She wanted to show me the house in which she grew up, the school she attended, those frozen places in time which cast their shadows across her memories of growing up. Roots. Her roots.

It seemed more than appropriate to me, being that we worked together on the Steven Spielberg Visual History project, collecting testimonies from concentration camp survivors and people who were forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. We communicated mostly by telepathy throughout the year we worked together, using faxes and phone calls when all else failed. Most of the times we created together were inspiring so I welcomed once again the opportunity to share a meal and take a walk along another branch of her life.

The goddess graced our plans with sunshine on that crispy leaf cracking autumn afternoon. While driving, Denise pointed out where she rode her bicycle, the Montessori school in Laren with its white washed arches and dilapidated outhouses, the overgrown hedges before her house, the vegetable store where I stopped to buy cabbage, onions, and carrots still covered with clumps of dried soil. We stopped for pumpkin soup and warm French bread at a little restaurant when I asked if this is where she and her family came to drink coffee… Denise laughed at my innocence. “Oh no…..no no no no! You don’t pay for coffee when you live five minutes away.” Post war Holland, essentially different from growing up in Irvington, lower middle class when going out for Chinese take-away on a Sunday evening was the escape from the drugery of t.v. dinners, pizza, Kentucky fried chicken…We did everything we could to escape the reality of poverty. Here in Holland, in het Gooi women read the LadyÕs Home Journal and decorated their homes “ American style” while we read Anne Frank’s diary and knew for certain that everyone in Holland ran around sticking his finger in dikes while wearing wooden shoes
After lunch, we decided to take a walk through the fields spotted with cows, horses and heather.

This triggered a memory of my visit to Bergen Belsen, a former concentration camp in Germany. I had just completed a four day training in past life echoes together with a German colleague Matthias in the city of Celle. The participants wanted to celebrate and invited us for a meal in a Chinese restaurant in town. It was crowded, always a good sign, and after ordering soup and noodles, I decided to ask the following question: Is there a concentration camp in the neighborhood? Now, you may think that this was a crazy question to pose in the middle of a Chinese restaurant, but it seemed very logical to me at the time. You see, every morning before we started our session of the day, I went for a short walk to get some fresh air and collect flowers and stones for the altar we were creating. There were train tracks running behind the house where we were staying and about the third morning I realized that it could very well be the case that traincars filled with Jews, gays, gypsies, communists had passed to their death by this very place where I was walking and doing my early morning stretches. So I just asked,” Excuse me….”

The woman sitting next to me stopped her chopsticks in mid air. “You mean Sauci, you donÕt know where you are? Bergen Belsen is about 20 kilometers from here! In fact, come with me outside now. I have to show you something.” She stood up and took my arm, pushing me in the direction of the front door. Once outside I looked above the pagoda entrance and saw a stained glass window with a six pointed star in it. “Sauci,” she whispered,” this building used to be a synagogue. Celle had one of the biggest Jewish communities in Germany. Look, here is a plaque. This building next to it is a museum. It says that at this place 30.000 Jews were deported to Bergen Belsen….Come quick, around the corner I think you can see another star…” At the back of the restaurant, when I looked carefully between the garbage bins and washlines, I could see the women’s entrance to the synagogue…I remember standing there, looking up at the stars in the sky, and just staring into space.

That German woman whose name I’ve long forgotten, took me the following morning to Bergen Belsen, to walk among the purple heather and wonder how long it takes for bones to dis-integrate…It was colder, the trees were covered in light frost and heavily laden gray clouds hovered low in the sky. I remember trying to walk cautiously between the stones placed in memory of those dead bodies, thrown recklessly one on top of the other, row after row. Mass graves, hundreds of them, and names, hundreds of them, engraved on stones. The only evidence that each name stood for a person. Someone who had lived and had been killed. I was searching for a place to say Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead which in actuality is an affirmation of life and does not mention the word death once. I needed to find the right spot to stand, to give testimony, to let the dead souls know that I was alive, to know if this had been a place where I had lived, a time when I had died.

Suddenly I stood still in my tracks. I felt a warmth on my face as I half spoke/sang those ancient words of mourning. Something happened, moved, inside and outside. I knew I was finished when a strange cool breeze lifted from my shoulders. I opened my eyes and saw my friends standing next to me, smiles on their faces. Only when we said our good-byes two hours later at the train station did they tell me the following story… As soon as my eyes were closed a golden ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and remained until the moment I finished my prayers.

I could have almost forgotten this story had it not been for the heather we crossed on our walk that Tuesday afternoon and the fact that Denise wanted to visit the graveside of her mother. It had been her wish to be cremated and the desire of her daughters to bury the urn with her ashes in a little cemetery close by. We decided to drive there before making our way back to Amsterdam. Denise explained that many Jewish people having non-Jewish partners moved to the Gooi after the war. This was new information for me. We started to walk through the cemetery, checking the dates and names chiseled into the various colored stones. Some people had miniature gardens, candles, or pictures on their graves. I had only seen this in Italian cemeteries before. So there we were, walking quietly through this graveyard, almost whispering, searching for familiar sounding names, heading towards a wide open field freshly plowed on one side, recently sprinkled green grass on the other side. An older woman was busy tending the graveside of a young child, placing handpainted pictures and potted plants with precision around its edges. As we approached the site where Denise’s mother was buried I told her of the Tibetan traditions concerning death rituals, one of them being the belief that the soul was finally free to follow its personal evolution after a period of approximately three years, often returning before that time to help loved ones get settled after their loss. Fate would have it that Denise’s mother had moved on two years and fifty one weeks before…

****To everything, turn, turn, turn,
There is a season turn turn turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die.
A time to laugh, a time to cry.
A time to love, a time of hate
A time to forgive a time to forget
A time to refrain from judgement
To everything turn turn turn****

by Sauci Bosner

Letters In Between Times

Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high…These lines from Gershwin’s musical “Porgy and Bess” filtered through my memory often in these past few weeks. Cotton summer dresses, Portuguese slippers in beige, black, and marine blue, bought on sale at Bristol when the temperature stayed above 30 four days straight, hair cut short when the sweat dripping down my back became unbearable, Chinese fan won at the fair four years ago finally proved to be not only beautiful and useful while sitting in the metro listening to two ex-junks sing “No woman no cry”, tapping harmony on a red plastic treasure chest, Ola’s summer surprise after winner’s taco melted away…..Hot time, summer in the city.Ice creams, lots of them, in all sizes and flavor combinations. Orange soledos at the lakefront, butterscotch ripple at the Amsterdamse Poort, rocky road at Ben & Jerry’s (Leidseplein), bacia at the gelatina around the corner from the Royal Victorian Hotel in Pisa. Yes, Pisa, as in leaning tower. That was a great ice cream…it took me three tries over a period of two days to get the name pronounced correctly. You would be surprised how much you can achieve with prego, pronto, and presto in a land where the zeros never seem to end, when everything seems to revolve around food and no one seems to wear anything over a size 38. Where a summer breeze flies over you faster than the scooters racing almost over your toes. And there I was smack in the middle of it, Italian style.

I had been invited to be a guest lecturer and workshop facilitator for an international congress on Homophobia and fascism. An international assortment of young activists gathering together to explore the historical, political, psychological, and spiritual contexts of hate, exclusion, judgement, fear, stereotypes which contribute towards the oppression of individuals and groups of people. The title of my workshop was Surviving Survivors. What follows is an excerpt from my paper:
We are all survivors of survivors. The purpose of life is to LIVE, and not merely survive, nor repeat painful patterns of feeling helpless, hopeless, or powerless. Our choices of study and work are often an intuitive yearning of the Whole Self to heal the wounds and beliefs we have inherited from our families and societies. It is my intention to explore with you our individual and collective images of internalized oppression, while creating new options for releasing our memories of being a victim, sexually, politically, or religiously.

I had the unique opportunity to present my workshop three times throughout the conference, facilitating personal and group processes not only for the participants. These experiences continue to be a source of inspiration and strength for me both personally and professionally. One of the reasons I am writing about this here is to share one individual story in particular. Perhaps the most important meeting in the entire Pisan adventure…

Lunch was just completed and we were resting in the little shade that was available at 1 in the afternoon and 32 degrees. An assorted melange of women, ranging in ages from 24 to 43 years, writers, therapists, and teachers. I sat across from a Dutch journalist who was explaining in detail the particulars of discrimination against female colleagues. We listened attentively as feminist doctrine dictates. At a given moment, she began to speak about individual versus collective memory, embellishing on the fact that she is an individual and not part of a group. History begins with her. It is now more than fifty years after World War Two and still people were talking and writing about that period.
One of the Jewish women present bravely decided to speak out and share her personal story, what it was like growing up in Holland, between her mother’s nightmares and father’s silences or jokes pushing back the tears. One aunt who walked back from Auschwitz. 200 aunts, uncles, cousins killed simply because they were Jewish. No one to look up to, seek refuge with, listen to, fight with. History and its impact on individuals became actual with her story.
The journalist’s reply was: ”We all lose someone at one time or another. I know all about the Holocaust. I lived in Israel for a year.”

No one knew what to say in response. The conviction of her self-righteousness silenced even me. I stood up and walked away, searching for the appropriate response. I was filled with rage and despair. How is it possible that with a few well chosen words the experience of thousands of people, perhaps millions of people, could be negated, wiped out, as swiftly and as efficiently as then and now in countries all over this planet, at this very moment that I am sitting behind my computer and telling you my story…She didn’t speak with me for the rest of the conference and it took me quite some moments of meditation to be thankful to her for giving me that specific experience. Understanding the importance of knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. When to break and when to respect the sounds of silence.

Words are needed for inter-personal communication. Written and spoken words have an impact, are means to express that which is communicated without the limitation of form. Love, unconditional love is what it is about. Love searches for the similarities. Fear separates and fuels the differences. I choose for love, for being in connection.

Summertime and the living is easy, so hush little baby and don’t you cry….

Letters in Djerba

Sipping a cup of freshly brewed mint tea while agonizing behind the computer screen, I am recalling the sites and sounds of Djerba, a tiny desert island on the coast of Tunesia. We went to visit with friends who had fallen in love with the dry sandy winds and pungent aromas of paprika’s, curries, peppers, and mint spices blending with the sweet smells of cinnamon and ginger in the marketplace. The unforgettable sounds flowing from the minarets, calling her believers to prayer. Most of whom continue to carry on with their daily routine, drinking mint teas or sweet, thick coffees in tiny cups and glasses, swatting flies with their colorful shishas, water pipes, and making their livelihood in the most unusual and precarious ways…

One sunny afternoon, dressed in jellayba and made in Pakistan gold ridden orange scarf draped around my freshly cut Cleopatra style hair, I was sitting at the terrace drinking freshly squeezed orange juice while enjoying the interactions unfolding before me. A man drove in his tricycle four meters away from me. He was wrapped in red and white cloths, a tattered gray slipper dangling from his foot. Upon further inspection I realized that he only had one foot and that his stump was neatly tucked under the cloths. This man drove with his bike, which was a mixture between wheelchair and rickshaw, and stopped within inches of my recently purchased H&M blue rimmed sunglasses. I don’t know who looked stranger to tell you the truth. He looked me straight in the eyes and whispered, “Islammah, labez,” to which I replied, “labez, shoechran.” He winked at me, unless he was blinking from his reflection in my glasses, started peddling with one foot and a stump, and disappeared in no time from sight. Two days later I saw him again at the fish auction, selling plastic bags while sitting like a lotus in between the piles of crevettes and flounder…We both laughed, sharing a secret moment in quasi time…

With the setting of the sun came the cool desert breezes. The windchime we had given our friends in Amsterdam now hangs in a knotted old olive tree and plays a different tune with each subtle movement. That mixture of chimes, stalking wild dogs searching for food at night, barking donkeys, and crazy roosters crowing when ever they felt like it kept me up most nights. I was relieved when order was returned to this nightly chaos, and sought solace in the callings of the mosque and the sun rising quickly , in anticipation of yet another day.

My stay in Djerba helped me to remember how happy I can feel when I listen to my memories of just being in the moment, living my life. In one week I had forgotten what it is like to live in a city where eye contact is rare and the joy of hugging infrequent. I slept in my own bed last night and didn’t wake up until my alarm went off at 6 a.m. I already miss the roosters. The sun was rising and the mist was lifting from the lakesite Life is back to normal. Shopping at the supermarket, running for the trams that are almost always on time, waiting at a bus stop while no one says a word to/with each other.

In case I begin to forget what it is like to be in contact, listening to the inner and outer voices, one thing is certain. I’ll book another trip to that little taste of paradise. In the meantime I have enough mint tea, halvah, and true life stories to keep me going for a while….

Letter in the 90’S

Once upon a time, many bodies ago, a young man stood up and offered me a seat in the tram. That moment is clearly imprinted in my memory. I was wearing my white woolen winter coat which when wet reminded me of my years in Jerusalem. When kerosene and goat smells never quite lifted from Abu Tor, one of the rocky valleys before approaching the walled city of Jerusalem. I was a hippie then , wearing bells around my ankles which attracted the attention of the goats and their herders as I crossed the valley on my biweekly meanderings though those ancient stones and emptied green colored seven-up bottles. This all in a time when soda cans didn’t exist and everyone could walk freely in those hills. Even girls and women , with or without veils. Danger lurked in fresh droppings and goats taking nibbles at shiny bells tinkling and moving along the dampened earth, before the sun dried up everything and anyone with any sense sat inside sipping sodas and waited for the sun to set.

Standing on a crowded tram seventeen, AH plastic bags in one hand, my red tram card in the other, I must have looked desperate, tired, lost. My coat was wet and already I was worrying how long it would take to dry with one small heater in the living room and the coat rack in the hallway. The tram came to a quick halt and I almost landed on some stranger’s lap. A young man , dressed in Levi’s 501 and motorjacket stood up, motioning for me to sit in his place. I smiled saying, “what a gentleman”, catching a glimpse of my disheveled appearance in his reflector sunglasses. I only realized later while hanging up my coat and unpacking the groceries that he gave me the seat because he thought I was pregnant.

Years later, bigger and pregnant, I understood that this was the very first time in my life that I had total permission to eat, to enter my body. Kundalini yoga, meditation, rebirthing and a sensitive doctor supported me in both these inward and outward journeys. I began to release myself from patterns of bulimia and self-destruction when I gave myself permission to be. Without judgment, without projection, without having to choose between servicing the world or sacrificing my particular individual needs and desires. Not an easy task when motherhood, partnership, work and religious and spiritual conditioning cast their shadows and demands on a fragile emerging identity.

My body is consistently changing, adapting her forms to the needs and concerns of the outside world as I practice listening to the songs, tapes, wisdom, experience flowing through my bones, blood, fluids, systems, through my thoughts and accumulated memories. An evolving, harmonious dance, balancing between the realm of memory and the ability to see, hear, feel, smell, touch Life, my life here, now.

Responsibility- the ability to make the appropriate response to the situation now. Total permission to live life and not merely survive. Looking, adjusting, releasing that which is no longer necessary.. My lessons for this life are what I share with others. That which we need to learn is hopefully that what we can offer in the physical form of work.

Adjusting to new realities is confronting. The body changes on the physical level as well. My hair is graying. I fall asleep within minutes of getting horizontal on my new hard mattress. There are light brown spots emerging on my hands. Sometimes I don’t hear the television so clearly (or is it that I don’t need to hear MTV six hours a day and half a night any more). My teen aged daughters tuck me in bed at night when they want to stay up to watch the late movie. Once in a while someone stands up to give me his/her place in the metro (“Gaat u maar zitten mevrouw”)…..

Luckily the dawn of Aquarius has arrived, I can buy Indian bells and chimes at the Dappermarket, and Cora Kemperman has wonderful hippie clothes, in XL! A sense of humor and realizing that the biggest secret of the body is that there are no secrets anymore. It is an unfolding true life story.

There really isn’t very much to be afraid of then, is there?

Letters in Mokum Aleph

Beloved Brothers, Sisters and Friends, I picked up  my phone at the Jewish student  mensa Ijar in Amsterdam.  Shabbas was calling and I was busy, fixing to get ready to get home on time, this time. I picked the phone up on the last ring. Hello.  My name is Sam. Sam Silver.  I just got in to Amsterdam from California and I need a place to stay and somewhere to eat for Shabbas.  I am a little low on cash and I heard that you are the Jewish student worker…Can you help me? This was the beginning of Sam’s and my soul talking friendship, starting in the early 1980’s and beginning once again when I read wednesday’s request on the mail for prayers of tehillim. I replied with a mail:  what is going on with your father?  I thought Leah had sent the mail. I received an answer right away, not from her.  Later that night I read that Sam Shmuel Silver z”l had left his body. Sam and I met and spoke, soul to soul, with each other often.  The stories were told in his well chosen words, photographs and silences.  A great -shidduch-was made with Wolf Stein, a generous Dutch man who offered his home and friendship to Sam.  There on the Den Texstraat in Amsterdam, Sam made his home, in between the chaos of the Shoah’s shadows and the crisp blue skies and canals of Mokum Aleph’s streets and canals.  Sam’s search for his roots and the daily struggle of LIfe brought him often to me.  We would have a coffee, tea and a little something sweet, catch up on all the breaking news of our lives and move forwards , a bit stronger a bit more alive. Sam was sent to visit Jews in the Soviet Union, a visit which with hindsight, changed his life.  His meetings with Soviet Jews, listening to their stories and admiring their struggles, were captured in poignant photographs.  Upon his return to Amsterdam and us his chevre, he became restless once again.  Our meetings and soultalks took on an urgency of time and space.  Sam needed to move forwards and the time was NOW. We were sitting at American Cafe close to the Leidseplein.  While waiting for  our second round of coffees and teas, i remembering saying to Sam:  I can not think of anything else for you to do here in Europe Sam.  The only place, the only one  to go to now is  Shlomo. Here is the address of his moshav.  Go there, give him a hug from me.  Don’t worry anymore. You will be fine. The rest is His-story. Sam called me to say he arrived safely. Sam called me to tell me that he was making the best peanut butter EVER. Sam called me to tell me he met the sweetest woman Ever. Sam called me when his children  were born. Sam called me when his flight had a delay and he and his family needed a place in Amsterdam to stay for Shabbas.  I called Anja Bryna on her mobile and told her to pick up a few extra challahs, chickens and honey  at the kosher butcher.  I called Jenna Rachel to  stop by the market and get some more fruit for the fruit salad.  We were having guests for Shabbas. I took a taxi home from Beth Shalom Friday afternoon so that I would have enough time to get the shnitzels and salads prepared on time. The table was set and people were sleeping all  over the place.  I felt like goldilocks and the three bears:  Who is sleeping in MY bed? I walked into my bedroom to hang up my coat…and there was Sam, now Shmuel, laying down on my very hard mattress.  His back was hurting and he needed to rest.  We had  not seen each other in what seemed like lifetimes. And…there he was with his wife and two children , having a pre shabbas menucha….. Needless to say, we had the Greatest Shabbas EVER…  I have not made so many shnitzels since.  We dovened together and Noam taught us a new niggum for Shalom Aleikum.  The kids all took a walk around the Gaasperplas Shabbas afternoon.  The alte kakers enjoyed the shabbas menucha.  Havdalah was sweet and we all sang in a perfect harmony which has permeated all of our memories past and future since. The last time Sam called me was a few months ago.  He asked me to send him some vitamins. I told him that I saw him in a film that was made about Reb Shlomo z”l.  We talked about the kids and everyone else we remembered to ask about.  He renewed the invitation to come for Shabbas. I never did send the vitamins. May our memories  carry us higher and higher.  Amen. Sauci Bosner, Miracles By Appointment, Amsterdam -Mokum Aleph The Netherlands

Letters in Cyber Space

Jerusalem

Dear Wi-Fi,

I have been looking for you since I arrived.

Gone is the hope of trojans bearing gifts.

Gone is the time of snail mail and steamed stamps.

Gone are time warped recollections of  dreams yet discovered.

Gone is the taste of tomorrow.

Here reign locked passwords and guarded secrets.

Here rules the haste of the entitled.

Here lies  the clue somewhere  between now and when.

Here and now is one tri-angle away.

Waiting for the walls to break open

Sincerely yours,

sauci bosner

Letters in Mokum Aleph

I never learned to bike when I was younger.  No, this is not the whole truth.  I did receive a black and silver English racer for my 11 birthday. After dinner, my father would take me out for a bike ride.  Scared of falling, my biking adventures were wobbly attempts of moving forward on cracked pavements and grass fields.  It took a few tries…but finally i moved forward and my father was not at my side.  I was biking all by myself…until my father’s laughter shook me up and I fell down.  He reassured me that I would lose weight when I was able to bike…and that it would be easier for me.  I got up off the ground, threw my bike as hard as I could on the pavement.  I swore I would never ride a bike again.

Letters in Jerusalem: Alleys and Pavements

16 June 2011

Jerusalem

Dear Alleys, Roads, Streets,

I have walked on your footsteps.

I have slipped in your freshly washed surfaces.

I have had my toes stubbed  by  heavily laden carts and  familiar strangers.

I have been engulfed by black and white  masses making their way

to and from your holy places.

I have touched your cool walls, seeking support and comfort

in the midst of hunger and confusion.

I have heard the horrors of hysteria

echoing through your ancient corridors.

I have learned to rise above the whispers of your existence.

Sincerely yours,

Sauci Bosner

Letters in Jerusalem : Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate under construction

15 june 2011

Jerusalem

Dear Damascus Gate,

I have walked through you countless times.

I know your merchants selling sun ripened tomatoes,

kumquats and apricots on scorching summer aftenoons.

I know your colored lights announcing Ramadan’s arrival.

I know your carton boxes brimming with Nikes and plastic sandals.

I know your money changers, settling in for a days work

in tiny wooden shelters, their rubber tipped fingers  deftly counting

dollars, gulders and marks without skipping a heart beat.

I have tasted date and tamarind juices, poured effortlessly  from brass urns

wrapped with rags, camel belts and bells on the backs of your mustached men.

I have bought fresh mint and almonds from  jellabiyah clad women, sitting

crosslegged on your steps.

I love your stone pavements, polished throughout centuries of

pilgrims, merchants and tourists who have passed before me.

Shadow & Light Damascus Gate

I will always remember the shadows of your greatness.

Sincerely yours,

Sauci Bosner