An excerpt from “Searching for Holy Land”

December, 1954. When I was a young girl, my parents read children’s Bible stories to me every night as they tucked me into bed. Either Mom or Dad read a story, listened to me say my prayers and kissed me goodnight. I heard about Joshua fighting a battle at Jericho. An ark saved Noah’s family and two of each creature they could coax on board. I heard about the miracle of the loaves and fishes at the Sea of Galilee. In the land of Canaan, Jacob gave his son Joseph a coat of many colors.

My Grandmother and I slept together when I stayed overnight at her house. She told me Bible stories to put me to sleep: The god of Israel protected David in the Lion’s Den; Shadrach, Mishach and Abednego were protected by God in the fiery furnace. Ruth and Naomi gathered shafts of leftover barley and pledged "where ever thou goest, I will go.” Baby Moses was found at the riverbank by Pharoah’s daughter in a basket made of bull rushes. I loved her soft voice as she recounted the stories, and I asked her to tell them to me again and again. She sang songs: Jesus Loves Me. “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

The world was somewhere out there beyond the 2nd Presbyterian Church in Spartanburg, SC. I knew that people lived in Jerusalem. They lived in Egypt and at the Red Sea where Moses miraculously parted the waters and the children of the Israelites escaped from Pharaoh’s army. (“Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you moan; Pharaoh’s army got drowned”). They lived by the Jordan River, (that was chilly and cold) in Nazareth. Some people rode camels across the desert. Some of them were shepherds who tended sheep.

When I became a teenager, I questioned religion and forgot the Bible stories except for Christmas. I celebrated by exchanging presents with my divorced, dismembered family every December. I performed “Silent Night” a cappella from the balcony of the church during my senior year of high school. But I never imagined going to the little town of Bethlehem. In college, I was caught up in peaceful protests against the war in Vietnam. If I went to church, it was much later in an Atlanta Unitarian congregation that espoused liberal views on race, gender and other social issues. I was comfortable with agnosticism. I learned mindfulness meditation and disavowed prayer.

Fast forward to 1981. “Transformations,” music that I composed for piano and chamber ensemble, was performed as an opening act to Kay Gardner in Atlanta. In 1981, the recording of “Transformations” was created by Janet Snyder, a sound engineer in Atlanta. The recording was distributed and eventually produced by Ladyslipper Music. During the early the 80’s I performed local venues: the Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta Arts Festival, Judy Chicago’s the Dinner Party exhibition in the Egyptian Room at Atlanta’s Fox Theater. The music was well received and I began, with the help of my friend Jo Hamby, to create press kits to promote my work. I was asked to play at national venues within the women’s music network: National Women’s Music Festival, the New England and Southern Women’s Music Festival, Campfest, and the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. In 1985, I am asked to perform by Liora Moriel, the producer of the International Women’s Music Festival, to be held June 23-28, 1986, in and around Beersheba, Israel. Atlanta concert producer, Pam Martin, collects funds from lesbians in the Atlanta community to make my trip possible.

I leave Atlanta alone after summer solstice, 1986, and by June 24, I arrive in Israel. From the Tel Aviv airport I board a bus to the central festival site in Beersheba. Beersheba is little more than an outpost in the Negev desert, but it is known as the “capital of the Negev.” 1 It may have been a strange place for an international gathering of women musicians, conductors and composers. Liora manages to produce the festival over a year and a half on a shoe-string budget of $20,000 with three volunteers from Beersheba: Tslila Zagagi, Susan Kirshner, and Miki Goralski. Liora has contacts at the Desert Inn. They provide free accommodations for the performers.

Liora is a well-known Israeli singer-songwriter and reporter for the Jerusalem Post. Her media contacts ensure that word about the festival is widely distributed. Her intention is to reach as wide an audience as possible to celebrate “women’s musical creativity.” 3 The scope of the festival is ambitious, to say the least. The festival is dedicated to the well-known cellist, Jacqueline Du Pre, who was forced to end her career due to multiple sclerosis. 4 For five days, fifty women from a dozen countries representing classical music, jazz, traditional folk, new age and pop, perform, conduct workshops and network with each other to share their challenges and success stories. Performances are held in a variety of places in and about town: in the courtyard of the Negev Museum, outdoor concerts in Beersheba, at Ben Gurion University, and the Beersheba Conservatory where my performance will be held. I also read in the program about a “Magical Night in the Desert,” but have no idea what that means. 5

I meet Avital Schlanger and Haya Shalom who will host and guide me to the festival venues. Avital is a social worker who worked for Shatil, a human rights organization serving NGO’s that deal with human rights. Although she loves classical music, she tell me that one of her favorite singers is Israeli Chava Alberstein, known for her liberal activism and advocacy for human rights. She has spoken out about Arab-Israeli unity as reflected in the children’s song “Had Gadya,” (trans, “One Little Goat”) often sung during Passover after the Seder dinner. Chava sang an anti-war version of this song until it was banned by Israeli State Radio. I notice that she is not performing at the festival. Perhaps she is too radical for a mainstream Israeli audience?

Haya is a lesbian peace activist. I will spend a few days with her in Jerusalem. She is a Sephardic Jew whose family has lived in the same home in Jerusalem for four generations. Both she and Avital are members of Women in Black, a feminist organization, begun in Israel after the first Palestinian intifada 6 in 1987 to protest human rights abuses by Israeli soldiers in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Every Wednesday, the Jerusalem group protests the occupation silently, wearing black to signify mourning for victims of the conflict. They protest in a variety of locations around the city and country. (The organization has since expanded internationally to over 10,000 activists 7 ). I am ignorant of this history, other than brief accounts of the Israeli war of independence in 1948. I simply learned that survivors of the Holocaust fled to Israel to establish a safe haven for all Jewish people. I did not know of the Israeli militia’s brutal treatment of indigenous Palestinians who had lived in Palestine for generations. Palestinians call May 17, 1948 ‘Nakba,” the catastrophe.

Amal’s Story
Amal is a dear friend. She is a Palestinian American who knows the catastrophe first-hand. I meet her in 1995 when I join the faculty at Utah State University. At a women’s faculty luncheon I introduce myself and my passion for “women’s music.” After the luncheon, she approaches me and asks, “What kind of women’s music do you play?” Those of us who play within the genre know that “women’s music” is code for “lesbian music.” Music composed, performed, produced, and recorded by lesbians. I tell her about my work at the women’s music festivals. I tell her about my experiences in Israel, and we become friends. Eventually she shares her own story.

May 17, 1948. Amal’s family is forced from their home by Israeli militia (now called the Israeli Defense Force), in Akka, (Acre) Palestine. Akka has been continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age, one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on Earth. Maps of the Holy Land from centuries past show Ptolemaise, the old name of the ancient port of Akka. The city sits on the Mediterranean Sea, and has been subject to centuries of destruction and conquest, including the time of the Crusades. In 1918, Akka is taken by British forces and becomes part of Palestine under British mandate. 8 After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the population changes drastically when Palestinian families are forced to flee 9 . Amal is almost three years old when the Israeli soldiers come. She has typhoid fever at the time, and Amal’s mother warns the soldiers to wash their hands after they force them from their home. Her Palestinian Christian family escapes on foot to the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Old City, taking as much as they can stuff into a baby carriage. They shelter there until they find another home, imagining an eventual “right of return.” Over 400 Arab villages are destroyed during the nakba, the days of Jewish Independence.

After the nakba, Amal attends a Franciscan school called Terra Sancta. Holy Land. Sacred Earth, located in the Old City of Acre, now under Israeli occupation. Her mother dies in 1965. She was buried in the old cemetery in Akka. Sacred Ground.

Amal’s brother is the first of the family to immigrate to California. Amal follows alone on a ship to New York in 1965 carrying $150 that she saved while attending Terra Sancta. She enters the US on a student visa. Her brother meets her and the two of them travel across country, in time for her to begin her freshman year at Fresno Pacific College, a liberal arts college originally established by the Mennonites. Five years later her father and sister arrive. After completing her undergraduate degree, Amal pursues her MA at California State, Fresno, a hotbed of feminist activism at the time. Lilian Faderman, the “mother of lesbian history,” was Dean while she was enrolled. Dr. Faderman wrote the seminal book Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. Judy Chicago established a Feminist Art Program at Cal State, Fresno, in 1970. Amal attended her first consciousness- raising group at Cal State, Fresno. She completes her PhD in Political Science at the University of Utah.

In 1979, after teaching for one year at University of Nevada, Reno, she accepts a teaching position at Utah State University with a focus on International Women’s Studies. Women’s Studies conferences bring her into the broad world of international feminism. Her sabbatical leads her to Ramallah, Palestine, to interview leading women of the Palestinian National Movement. Her book is called Daughters of Palestine.

The International Women’s Music Festival
On my first night in Beersheba, I have dinner with Aaron Cohen, author of the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. 10 He is interested in my work as a music therapist, and we discuss the potential for music and healing. He shares the concept of the songstress: the first woman to carry the chants. According to him, it is the Egyptian called “Iti,” the first documented female professional musician.” 11 Woman becomes the instrument, the vessel for sounds that eventually become language. When language loses its musicality, voices that sing still serve as vessels for healing.

I am introduced to Wera Goldman, a Jewish Indian woman living in Tel Aviv. She is a dancer, a spiritualist. She invites me to a movement class the next day. She speaks her belief that the “whole world is being created through our art.” “Yes, I know. I do know.” She offers to host me in Tel Aviv. Wera introduces me to her friend Marta, who has lived among the Bedouins.

Marta is a lonely woman. She has no one to talk to about her feminist beliefs, but she confides in me. She teaches physical education at Kay Teacher’s College in Beersheba. The administration is threatening to fire her because of her radical views on the status of women. She advocates birth control in her health classes while the Israeli government strongly supports “procreation.” She tells me that the government encourages women to have large families. The more babies that come into the world, the more the military can afford to lose soldiers (all high school graduates are conscripted to serve two years in the Israeli army). “This,” she says, “assures the continuation of the culture. Who needs to end the violence?” The administrator of the college asks Marta if she really thinks that women would do things differently. She is bitter and cynical. She has no faith in women when the government is controlled by patriarchy. Netanyahu had never supported a two-state solution during any negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Marta is cynical. She feels that she must stop fighting the powers that control her. Fighting alienates her from others. She must give in, grow more tolerant. She tells me a “legend.” A magician comes to a village and performs great magic with the people. Miracles are performed and the villagers are awed by his power. Soon, however, wonder turns to mistrust and the magician risks being thrown out of the city he has grown to love. In desperation, he mixes a potion and pours the liquid down into the well. The potion, instead of having a positive effect, makes the villagers turn against the magician even more. As a final act, he drinks the potion himself, and suddenly becomes like them. “This is what I must do,” Marta says. 12

Later, I perform “Transformations” as a solo piano piece at Beersheba Conservatory. Listeners fill the auditorium, and as the music fills the hall, I let go and enjoy my conversation with the audience. I feel comfort in the knowledge that music has its rightful place as a tool for healing. It holds potential to transcend and connects us, and I approach this performance with intention to bridge political, cultural and social differences. I bow to an appreciative audience.

After the performance, Marta takes me and a jazz singer, Marla Brodsky, (whom I am meeting for the first time), for a drive south to a Bedouin encampment. We drive through the rolling hills of the Negev desert, dotted with green reforestation projects, further south still until the land is reduced to sagebrush, white sandstone, blue sky. Every few miles we spot tents: the government settlements of Bedouin tribes. I realize that these people are “settled” similar to the reservations in the US where Native peoples are confined. Marta tells us that the Bedouins no longer cross the desert freely with their herds of goats and camels. They are no longer allowed to trade, to barter for goods and services. They do have some access to education, medical and welfare services.

We turn left, drive down a dusty road leading to a settlement, past a school where children, mostly girls, are boarding a bus that will take them to their homes. They see Marta, wave, and immediately surround our car, faces full of smiles and greetings in Arabic. Further on, we are met by the sheik of one tribe (Within the settlements, I am told, several sheiks and tribes, live together.) Now sheiks are predominately ceremonial leaders, beholding and responsible to the Israeli government. His leadership, however, still commands great respect in the tribe; he is literally the elder, the patriarch who settles disputes and procreates with his multiple wives. We have left the car by now and the sheik welcomes us and introduces us to his fifteen children. They gather around him and he points to each one proudly. They are splendid, beautiful children, with shy smiles and curious stares. Marta thanks him in Arabic and we take off on foot into the hills of the Negev, past donkeys and simple homes, dogs and children running behind us. At the top of the hill, three beautiful Bedouin women in black embroidered robes, greet us, escort us to an outdoor patio. They are professional women: one is a lawyer, one a doctor, and one an educator. There is a strong tradition of hospitality amongst the Bedouins. It is customary to welcome the stranger and they pour Arabic coffee as we sit down to listen to a story [How I wish that I had written down their names.]

During the 1948 so-called “war of liberation,” the Israeli army enters her family home, killing everyone there except her and an uncle. She is ten months old, and is seriously injured by shrapnel in her belly. Her uncle flees to take her to a doctor in Jerusalem. The doctor graciously agrees to care for the child, and her uncle escapes to Egypt. The doctor becomes her adopted father, and when she is thirteen years old he provides the means for her to travel to the US to be educated. When she returns to Israel she marries a doctor in a Bedouin settlement, loses contact with her adopted father, and settles into life as a Bedouin once more. Her uncle finally returns and she implores, “Why did you leave me?” “It is better for you to be educated than to be here with the goats” he replies. Her uncle reunites her with the doctor who saved her life, adopted her, now accompanied by her husband and child. The reunion continues to this day. She smiles. “Once, I had no family. Now I have three.” 13

As we leave, the women gift us with freshly baked pita bread from a stone oven.

Notes
1 The Jerusalem Post, July 4, 1986
2 Marsha Pomerantz, The Jerusalem Post Magazine, July 4, 1986
3 The Jerusalem Post, June 16, 1986
4 Lee Peri, Israel Scene, August, 1986.
5 IWMF program, June 23-28, 1986
6 The first Palestinian Intifada or “uprising” was a series of protests, civil disobedience and riots that were held in
the Palestinian occupied territories and Israel beginning in 1987.The Israeli army (IDF) occupied Gaza, the West
Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 following the Arab-Israeli War. (Bennis, Phyllis [2012]. Understanding the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. Olive Branch Press: Interlink Group, Inc.)
7 Women in Black: Wikipedia.org
8 Acre: Wikipedia.org
9 Ibid, Wikipedia
10 Journal, June 24, 1986
11 Lisa Manniche. 1991. Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press.)
12 Journal, June 25, 1986
13 Ibid, June 25, 1986






Elizabeth York had a 30-year career in Music Therapy. She also composes music and performs internationally. This excerpt focuses on her travels to an International Women’s Music Festival in the Holy Land. She lives in Spartanburg, SC.