This blog post was written by Hannah Straub, a Yahel Social Change Fellow living and working in Kiryat Haim, Haifa.
It is winter in Kiryat Chaim. Back home in America, winter is when trees stand bare waiting for snow while we hide in warm homes waiting for spring. But here, winter is when this sleepy Haifa suburb turns green as the earth slowly wakes up from the dry summer.
Every week, I weave through roundabouts, green buses and beeping taxis, ducking behind a crumbling apartment building, to a small dirt patch. Here, Ehud, like his biblical namesake, organizes us—handing out shovels instead of shields; seeds instead of swords.
In this garden, he tells me and the neighbors that “we are planting community” as we bury shy seeds into the dark brown dirt.
As the sun slips behind Mt. Carmel, Sarah beckons me under the shelter with “Teh o cafe?” and hands a warm cup into my cold fingers. My broken Hebrew attempt to thank her is met by equally warm laughter from the old fisherman filling his jacket pockets with lemons from the tree behind us.
When I first stepped into Kiryat Chaim—city of life—two months ago, I unconsciously expected to be a social change warrior. I expected to fight for change in this underserved community with chemical-laced streams and low graduation rates. But instead, I find myself here, kneeling in the dirt and whispering plants back to life with Hebrew words my mouth can’t quite form.
Ehud hands me and my neighbor a stack of wilted geranium cuttings. They look like compost fodder to me.
“Be’emet!?” I ask him, “Are you sure?”
He laughs, “Rega! You will see…”
So we stick these sad stalks in small plastic pots and wish them well with a sprinkle of water. Next week, to my surprise, the geraniums are alive and well. Their small new roots snugly homed in the sandy soil. These plants were just mostly dead, apparently.
The city of life—Kiryat Chiam—is also coming back to life around me.
Beaches that were empty in November are now full of old men swearing over cards, swimmers floating in cold water, and joggers gossiping about their too-single grandkids. Teenagers stay out late, basking in the fluorescent dusk at Night Cookie while music wafts down Achi Eilat St. as the sun sets on our small main street.
There are no tourists gawking from their big white buses here like the ones that wind around Mount of Olives or under Masada’s strong walls. And I’m glad. They’d probably see only the trash on the sidewalk and the crumbling buildings, missing the gaggle of Ethiopian moms walking their kids to school or the old women who paint landscapes in their yard every Monday or the Russian fisherman in the wheelchair on the pier delighted with his morning catch.
The life of Kiryat Chaim is something you can’t quite catch on camera. It’s something simmering below the sea’s gray-green surface.
In my English class at the community center, the retirees tell me of their children in uniform and what it means to be a mother during war. It’s an act of hope from them to sit around these worn tables every week, learning a new language in hope of cheap family flights again one day. It is an act of hope to plant a garden together, leaving unsaid that maybe, by spring, everyone will be home to eat the carrots and lettuce we plant today.
There is a hidden steel in this neighborhood, built years ago in straight rows for trainyard and factory workers. My tiny neighborhood doesn't have the glamour of Tel Aviv’s lights or the holiness of Jerusalem's streets, but there is something sacred in the dirt of these garden beds and the seeds I plant alongside my Krayot neighbors.
I am learning what it means to plant community and to sow dinners filled with fresh vegetables and laughter. I am learning that what seemed wilted and sad may actually come back to life with a little love. That these forgotten communities are a source of strength in a war-sick country. The summer’s sirens have stopped, and the winter streets are coming back to life in the Krayot. It is the season of life in Kiryat Chaim, and I’m glad to be here.
As the seasons change, so does this neighborhood, coming back, le’at, le’at—slowly slowly.
So, we plant these hopeful seeds and speak over them the promise of spring: “L’Chaim, to life!”
Comentarios