THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

So I assumed that Eichmann was probably a very important person if a massivegarbageeating frog was placed there in his honor.The school was in the vicinity of the market. In my memory, “the market” is theopen-air produce market of Mahane Yehuda, a magical place of vivid colors, strongscents, loud shouts, and all the flavors of little Jerusalem. Half my schoolmates camefrom the market neighborhoods, Sephardic children of Middle Eastern origins. Theypronounced consonants differently, in a guttural manner, and their prayers weredifferent. It was said that they were poor, but we did not see their poverty. At thetime, everybody bought their clothes in the Labor Federation’s Ata stores, everyonewore the same Hamegaper shoes, ate black bread with margarine and olives, andprayed for better days. The rest of the schoolchildren were Ashkenazis. We lived inRehavia, which is considered an upscale neighborhood today. In school however,there were no such boundaries. I loved Avram ben Zekharia, who was a tall andtalented athlete. I adored Shimon Cohen, who was stronger than all of us. I enviedMatzliyah Cohen, who always had cash “from his father’s can in the souk.” I wantedto be as strong as Shlomo Vaaknin, who we left behind in the second grade, thoughnot before we had a fight. Rafi Refaeli’s father was a Kabbalah scholar and a cadaverwasher in Hevra Kadisha, the society that buries the dead. Shlomo’s father was aninsurance agent. Most mothers did not work outside their homes then. Yossi’s motherwas a great cook. The other Yossi’s mother worked with his father in a Hungariantailor’s shop. Avram ben Zekharia’s father owned a concession stand at the CinemaOrion.This is how we were, very similar yet different. One toiled all day in the sun,another owned an electric fan; each of us had his own accent, his own origins, hisown neighborhood. When school was over, we went home, Ashkenazim here andSephardim there. The space between the market and Rehavia became the ethnicdivide. I would walk with the two Yossis, whose parents were Shoah survivors, andwith Shlomo and Friedman, who prayed by the Ashkenaz Siddur and later becamerabbis. The other children returned to the market and its neighborhoods.Then that big green container suddenly appeared. One day, as four or five of uswere returning home from school, we adventurously decided to deviate from theshortest path, which my mom preferred. We were tired from school but excited bythe prospect of mischief. There stood the green monster and we were thrilled by thenew technology, trying to figure out how to operate the green trash machine. But the