A promise long forgotten

I ran into someone last week who reminded me of a promise I made and never kept.  Following this chance meeting I realized that while writing this tear-inducing post (there, you've been warned), I had promised to revisit the details of a surreal business meeting in its own journal entry... and I never did.

Until now.

Almost exactly a year ago two business colleagues and I were visiting the pretty coastal community of Zichron Yaacov in order to discuss some potential business dealings with a local company there.  If you'd like a more guide-book take on my day in Zichron, you can read that other post (2 tissue warning)... today I want to talk only about the surreal meeting and what I learned therein:

As we pulled into the parking lot of the headquarters of the company with which we had scheduled the meeting I experienced the first of what would be many instances of cognitive dissonance that day.  The building itself did not look like any of the other Mediterranean-style structures in the area, nor did it look like a modern high-tech complex. 

The main building was bordered in very dark wood and the selection and placement of trees lent the place almost a storybook quality.   I was just about to comment to one of my colleagues about the 'Hansel & Gretel' architecture when one of them said, "Someone check the map... are we in Israel or Bavaria?"  We all had a giggle over that and then put on our business faces as we filed into the lobby.

Once inside we noticed that our first impression of 'German-ness' was reinforced with signage in English, Hebrew and German.  We weren't exactly sure where our meeting was supposed to take place so we approached a woman who was standing in the lobby. 

Even this woman's appearance seemed just slightly out of cultural focus.  For lack of a better way of saying this, she was dressed in the same manner as small town German women from the 20s and 30s I've seen in historical photographs.  Her skirt was heavy wool and came exactly to mid-calf.  Her blouse was starched and white with tiny flowers embroidered on the collar, and her front was primly covered by a business-like gray apron.  She wore knee socks and no-nonsense leather flats on her feet.  Her hair was the sort of gray that had certainly once been blond, and was gathered severely in coiled braids into a tight bun. 

Standing there in the lobby and staring at her pale white skin and impossibly rosy cheeks I felt as if I had fallen into the setting of one of Grimm's Fairy Tales... the only thing missing were the bread crumbs!  When I politely asked her where we could find our 9:30 meeting she answered us in German-accented Hebrew. By now our 'business faces' were long gone and we followed her towards the conference room.

We were welcomed into the conference room like long-lost brothers by the  company's President and several of the its executives and introductions were made all around. Once again I noticed the German accented Hebrew and tried valiantly to get my bearings in this increasingly unfamiliar territory.

I gathered that the disorientation we were experiencing was a common occurrence for visiting Israelis because while coffee, tea and pastries were being served the head of the company graciously provided much of the missing information.

He explained that his company was one of several enterprises undertaken by a small group of Christian German immigrants that had come to Israel in the 1960s to form a collective community based on modesty, hard work and a love of the land and people of Israel.  He went on to tell us that they were not affiliated with any of the mainstream Christian denominations and that they did not believe in converting the Jews.  They lived according to a literal understanding of both the old and new testaments without any additional commentaries.

From what I was able to gather, their two biggest tenets seemed to be that only those Christians who lived among the Jews would merit a share in the world to come, and that those who help/protect the Jews would themselves be helped/protected.

The president interrupted his opening remarks at this point because he noticed that I hadn't helped myself to any of the pastries.  A few whispered words in German sent one of the attendants (who were dressed almost identically to the woman we'd met in the lobby) scurrying to bring the original packaging so he could show me the kosher certification.  I was a bit mortified by his sudden solicitousness having come to enjoy the relative lack of notice my kippah garners in Israeli business circles.   But he rushed to put me at ease by saying that all of the products they served were strictly kosher, and that many were even produced by one of the community's other businesses (under the supervision of Zichron Yaacov's Chief Rabbi). 

This by itself would have been the single most surreal opening to a meeting I'd ever experienced, but he then turned to me and asked if I would mind making the blessing on the pastries since I was the only one present with a kippah. 

I looked desperately to one of my colleagues for help but he had a big grin on his face and was enjoying watching me squirm.  All I got from him was "Go on Rabbi, we're waiting".  I quickly made the proper blessing on the pastry and with my cheeks now quite red, turned the meeting back over to our host.

The primary business focus of the company we were visiting was filtration systems... specifically filters that could protect the interior of vehicles, rooms or even entire buildings from the poisons present in the air after a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.  He explained that this went back to their guiding principle of 'those who protect the Jews being protected'. 

The rest of the meeting and tour of their facilities was pretty much what I had experienced at other Israeli hi-tech and manufacturing facilities, except that everywhere we looked we saw men and women (with names like Hans, Dieter, Gretta, Ingrid, etc.), dressed as if they had been plucked from a pre-war Bavarian village. 

During the tour I was able to speak informally with the president and he gave me a bit more background about his group.  They lived in a close-knit community and grew/produced much of what they needed.  They had their own schools and their children were taught both Hebrew and German. 

It turns out that in the 80s several of the group's members had taught themselves engineering after becoming interested in filtration systems and had gone on to win Israeli government approval for their unique devices.  The '91 gulf war saw them perfectly positioned to provide their adopted country with extremely effective and cost-effective air-filtration systems for military facilities, hospitals, homes and vehicles.  They also earned the grudging trust from their neighbors during those tense weeks of Iraqi SCUD attacks by inviting local residents into their protected facilities whenever the sirens would sound.

He acknowledged that the surrounding Jewish community had always viewed them with a jaundiced eye, both because they were German and because they were Christians.  The former because of obvious bad feelings (now there's and understatement) following the Holocaust, and the latter because of ongoing missionary efforts by many of the evangelical Christian sects to convert Israeli Jews.  He acknowledged that a certain amount of collective guilt over the Holocaust was likely responsible for the Genesis of their group, and he said that a generous dose of distrust was both expected and accepted by the group.  He also said that though his group did not believe in seeking converts they all knew that it would take many years before this became apparent to their Israeli hosts.

Even though he was being extremely forthcoming and open I didn't dare ask him about the apparent irony of Germans manufacturing devices to protect Jews from poison gas.  However, an article I read several months later (* linked below) confirmed this as one of the motivating factors in their choice of industries.

Last week Zahava and I attended the wedding of a neighbor's daughter which was held in a hotel in Ariel.  During the ceremony we noticed a couple that seemed to look, uh, less like the others.  There were plenty of secular guests among the mostly religious crowd, but this couple just seemed 'different'.  Afterwards I was making my way to the bar to get drinks for Zahava and myself when I came face to face with that couple.  It turned out to be the President of this company I've been telling you about and his wife.  Not only did he remember me, but he asked how my beekeeping was going and extended an invitation to come see his community's hives so I could observe some of the German apiary techniques they had imported.

While we stood and chatted I thanked him again for the warm welcome he had given me during our previous meeting and told him it must be extremely difficult to begin every social or business relationship with a preemptive recital of who he was and what he stood for.  Even thought it was only last week I honestly don't recall how he responded because at that very moment I realized that as an observant Jew living in a 'settlement', quite frequently I feel compelled to provide an accounting of myself to people who view me with suspicion or even contempt.

You may think that the title of this journal entry refers to the promise I made in that earlier post to write about the 'surreal meeting'.  But in fact it is a reference to the promise I made to myself many years ago that once I moved to Israel I would no longer feel compelled to explain myself to anyone.  Unfortunately such arrogant promises are made with youth's enthusiasm as well as its ignorance.

I still feel that Israel does not owe an explanation to anyone on earth for decisions we make regarding our safety and security.  But I know in my heart that for any hope of a national rapprochement to occur we Israelis need to get used to doing a bit of explaining to one another.

* I obtained additional information for this post from this article originally published in FAKTEN ONLINE about 6 months ago.