The story of Eve Roshevsky
"Adoni, tasir et hadegel mipni! Lo y'chola lirot!... Mister, move your flag! I can't see!" Jerusalem, 1968. Yom Ha'atzmaut -- Israeli Independence Day. And not just any independence day, but the first one since Israel won the Six-Day War. The crowds are berserk with joy. Everyone's shouting and singing. I want to see the tanks, get a glimpse of the soldiers in their cute little shorts. And so, with mounting irritation, "Buddy," I say, "get that flag outta my face. Achshav. NOW!" And he does.
And then it hit me like a p'tzatza , an onomatopoetic Israeli bomb. I had brusquely, impolitely without any American pleases or thank yous, told an Israeli, in Hebrew no less, to quit waving his flag in front of my face. And miraculously, he did what I told him to. The Israeli listened to me, twenty-three-year-old me from Elmont, New York who had spent the year working in kibbutz fields and factories and exhausting her brain with daily ulpan classes. For all he knew I was just another bossy Israeli and for that moment I was. I was Israeli. I was Jew. And I loved it. The entire world glowed with personal and national triumph...
