Family Affair / The Marmelsteins - Haaretz

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Thu., August 30, 2007 Elul 16, 5767

Israel Time: 01:33 (EST+7)

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Family Affair / The Marmelsteins

By Avner and Reli Avrahami

Yad Binyamin

W The cast: Dov (57), Naomi (53), Renana (20), Ori (18).

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W Not taking part: Yaniv (32), Yonit (31), Lital (25) and Mordechai (24) - married Marmelstein children who live a long way off (apart from Mordechai, who lives very close by).

W The home (Version I): A "caravilla" (upgraded trailer) in a neighborhood populated by families who were evacuated from the settlement of Ganei Tal in the Gaza Strip.

W The home (Version II): "A cardboard box in the refugee camp of the Ganei Tal evictees" (Dov).

W Whatever ...: The family lives in a yellow structure of 90 square meters (living room and four other rooms), detached, alongside a row of similar structures; it has been the family's home since September 2006. In front is a burning-hot sidewalk, in the back a trailer, which is Naomi's clinic for alternative medicine. In the yard, by the entrance, is a retired coffee table and on it a model of a house.

W Model of a house: Made by Dov. This is what the Marmelsteins' final dwelling (270 square meters) will look like after it is built in the new community ("It doesn't yet have a name") that will be established next to Kibbutz Hafetz Haim ("3 kilometers from here, as the crow flies") on a lot of 40 dunams (10 acres), to which they will move in the future ("If no clerk torpedoes it"). In the meantime, they are paying $450 a month to the Disengagement Authority, though "by virtue of the expulsion," they received that amount as part of the arrangement.

W Entering: Straight into the kitchen. The preparations for the Shabbat meal are at their height. On the marble counter is an aluminum tray crammed with chicken legs; on the table (which is covered with a blue oilcloth) are sliced peppers that by evening will be part of a shakshuka (tomato- and egg-based dish). On to the living room. Next to the shelves of religious books is a 42-inch television ("All we watch is DVD"), opposite a faded black leather sofa. We look around. On the walls are reproductions of Nahum Gutman and Anna Ticho (Naomi's choice), along with drawings by a new immigrant from Russia which touched Dov ("I suddenly saw the orange spot in them"). Renana and Ori have to go.

W Have to go: To a memorial ceremony "on the second anniversary of the expulsion," to be held at Tel Gama, which overlooks the area of the Gush bloc of settlements. On the program: organization of a convoy of cars, text readings and community singalong (songs by Ovadia Hamama and Ehud Banai).

W On to the rooms: The parents are crowded into a far smaller space than their former 25 square meters. In Renana's room is a large pink heart, the gift of a boyfriend she met during the "expulsion" (their relations have cooled since). Ori's room contains a bottle with sand from the place that was once their home.

W Livelihoods and occupations: Dov does not actually work. He spends most of the day planning the farm and the home in which they will live ("The only thing that helps me is to occupy myself with the future"). Together with his son, Mordechai, he has leased five dunams (1.2 acres) of greenhouses from the farming village of Hodayot ("It's symbolic: I am losing money only in order to stay in the market"), where they grow flowers. In Ganei Tal Dov had 12 dunams (3 acres) of geraniums, but today he makes do with being a consultant and lets Mordechai run the business with three migrant workers from Nepal ("They live better than we do"). He is also taking a course in real-estate brokerage with the aim of changing his profession. During the day he will turn often to the model or to the computer. Occasionally he responds to articles on Ynet or NRG - the Web sites of the Israeli dailies Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv, respectively - and eats something. It's an unstructured existence.

W Naomi's occupation: Practitioner of alternative medicine for 16 years, fusing acupuncture, healing, reflexology and "guided visualization," all with the aim of achieving a "rapid clinical result." She deals, she says, with fertility problems, muscle atrophy, diabetes, blood pressure, and skeletal and breathing problems in children. Her clinic ("after the expulsion") is in the trailer in the backyard, and she also has a place in Ashkelon. She works a five-day week and her clients range in locale from the Golan Heights to Be'er Sheva. She studied in the College for Alternative Medicine in Tel Aviv, plus two years of Japanese medicine, two years of reflexology and a year of Korean medicine. "I have energies," she says.

W Energies: "I can enter the body like an x-ray." She also treats people by phone ("All I need is the name and the mother's name"). In 1985, she relates, she experienced clinical death of 7-10 minutes ("I remember that I was drawn into the sky and all the dead people I knew gave me a welcome, but the gate did not open"). She takes NIS 200 per treatment.

W Renana: Communications student at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, lives at home. In 2005 she wrote an "Expulsion Diary" for Ynet, which generated thousands of talkbacks. Last year she did a year of service in South Tel Aviv ("I gave lessons in Judaism in secular schools"). Her ambition is to be a television reporter.

W Ori: Completed 12th grade (five units - the highest level - in biology and Gemara) and is exempt from the draft due to health problems. He is a "miracle child," his mother says, referring to the fact that his birth weight was 950 grams, but he survived. Next year he will teach in the yeshiva at Moshav Telem and after that will do volunteer work in the Institute for Holocaust Research in Kfar Haroeh. He took the disengagement hard. "He has developed a big 'anti' attitude to the army," Naomi says.

W Naomi's bio: Born 1954 in Persia; at age 3, she arrived with her family at the Napoleon transit camp in Acre ("We were seven brothers and sisters - four others died"). From there they moved to Tel Aviv, to the disadvantaged Hatikva neighborhood, because her mother (a cleaning woman) wanted them to be close to the university ("We are all academics"). After elementary and high school she studied physical education at Givat Washington, completing an undergraduate degree when she was already a mother, including practical tests. She taught in the Azata Regional Council and helped Dov in the greenhouses, until switching to healing in 1987 ("I like to help people"). Now she is the main provider. This evening, Shabbat eve, there will be 21 people at the table, all from her family, and she will do all the cooking by herself.

W Cooking: Traditional Persian dishes, including meatballs and rice, and calf's tongue and vegetables.

W Dov's bio: Born in Tekuma, a religious farming cooperative in the northern Negev. His father, Czech-born, was a Holocaust survivor; his mother, the daughter of refugees from Romania. When he was two, the family moved to Ashkelon. At 14 he was sent to the Youth Village, a religious vocational boarding school in Jerusalem's Bayit Vegan neighborhood ("Dad wanted me to have a profession under my belt"). After completing the mechanics track, he did his army service in the Nahal paramilitary brigade, serving with Moshe Ya'alon, who was afterward the chief of staff ("He was an extraordinary person, quiet, not a manipulator"), and was cited for liquidating a senior wanted man ("No. 2 in the Gaza Strip at that time"). He then entered an officers' course, but was disappointed in the commanding officers and returned to his Nahal core group in the Golan Heights, where he was injured by a flare and missed the Yom Kippur War. "Here," he says, "is where the story of the meeting with Naomi comes in."

W The meeting: 1973 elections, everyone was still mobilized. At his father's request, Dov came to Ashkelon to help out at the polling station ("It sounds as though we were political functionaries, but that is absolutely not the case"). Naomi, a phys-ed student, also wanted to earn a bit of money by doing the same. They met as observers in a polling station (working for the National Religious Party), talked a whole day and then went to his home "to hear the results," and eight months later were married.

W The wedding: Tel Aviv banquet hall on Ibn Gvirol Street, against the backdrop of the death of Dov's grandfather. Their honeymoon was also disrupted, Dov relates: "We rented a car in Be'er Sheva, but it never arrived because the guy who rented it before us was a prisoner on leave who made off with it."

W Life (cont.): They bought an apartment in Ashkelon, lived in Kfar Maimon (Dov worked in a yeshiva there, Naomi as a teacher in the area), moved to Be'er Sheva (Dov studied mechanical engineering), until in 1978 the Ganei Tal episode of their lives began.

W Ganei Tal: After the Golan Heights option proved unviable, Dov and Naomi joined the group that settled in the southern Gaza Strip as the 18th and last family. Life there, they relate, was pastoral back then.

W Pastoral: "I used to go to Gaza City for dental treatment," Dov says. At the time, he also had a franchise to distribute ice cream in the Gaza Strip, including at the refugee camps ("When you live in a place, things look different").

W Mortars, rockets: "I believe in the Creator," Naomi says, "and if something has to happen, then it will happen." Dov: "It's true that there were troubles, but until then we had the 26 most beautiful years of our lives." He adds: "Anyone who didn't live in the Gush will not understand the strength that the place gave people."

W And the children: "They are healthy - this was examined psychologically," Naomi says, "a lot more than with city children."

W Compensation: "Every clerk thinks he is going to save the people of Israel from the Gush Katif thieves" (Dov).

W Leaving the country: "That will never happen" (Dov); "This is our country, not Ehud Olmert's" (Naomi).

W Relationships and disengagement: "The expulsion intensified all processes," Naomi says. "There were a lot of divorces, but not in Ganei Tal."

W Dream: "To live in an orderly home again" (Naomi); "For them to say tomorrow morning, 'Come and sign [the contract]'" (Dov).

W Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Dov - 10 ("If I put the disengagement aside"); Naomi - 9; Renana - 8.5; Ori - 7.

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