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Cross Europe Spiritual Travelogue



(From the right of photo):
Rabbi Goldie Milgram
Barry Bub, MD
Mark Beitman

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June-July-August 2000



This travelogue can be read chronologically or you can choose the locations of interest to you:

Belgium
France I   France II
Germany
Holland I    Holland II   Also Holland
Ireland

We are, dear friends, on the road again. Crossing Europe this time. We've arrived in France after a week in Ireland, which we'll cover in the next posting.

Barry: If a word processor could record sounds, you would be hearing cars zipping through narrow medieval streets with horns blaring, people shouting out windows with joy, the chirping of innumerable birds, and a flutist playing classical music at the end of the square.

If a word processor could record sights, you would be seeing hordes of teenagers walking through the medieval square, a beautiful moon-lit night gleaming off the freshly scrubbed gargoyles atop the Roen Cathedral NotreDame, which sits just yards beyond the bench where we are seated. 

Add to this a generalized background cacophony of exuberant French people celebrating their Euro Cup soccer victory over the Italians.

Goldie: A motor cycle is roaring through this cobble-stoned PEDESTRIAN ONLY SQUARE....OHHH THE CYCLE HAS FLIPPED, LOOKS LIKE THEY ARE ALRIGHT, ONLYSHAKEN, THEY HAD ON PROTECTIVE CLOTHING, THE POLICE CRUISE BY and do not stop....youths in clown wigs run by with multi-colored flaming tapers in their hands...the police again, concerned the cyclists' fall was caused by a taxi running a top sign....here come the cars again, horns blaring, teens on the roof of a zig zagging van are waving french flags.....

Barry: I'm not too sure about the prospects for European unity with nationalism this strong....

Mark: Could it be that it is not mainly based on nationalism, as much as adolescents having the chance to make a scene and disregarding any disturbing the peace policies.

Goldie: Many have shofar-like horns which they are hooting, small groups break into cheers, and are now dancing, a gleeful hand-thrusting-into-the-air-dance, cars have teens sitting in the trunks,six, no, nine of them crammed in are streaming by...the police pass again, looking on complacently at the scene....my husband Barry and son Mark are following the crowd north...there is a destination happening....part of me worries, part is thrilled that my son and his stepfather are heading toward adventure together...

Barry: The flutist has packed up and left, the sweet sounds he was making were drowned by the din. I wonder, through which of the windows facing the square did Monet sit when he painted more than thirty versions of thecathedral?

Goldie: Whoah....a teen steps in from behind and sits beside me, asking if  he can
"bessey toi" - kiss me?!
"Jouraliste?" He asks.
"Comme si, comme ca," I answer, "more or less"....or as close as my residual high school French can muster.
In the distance where Barry and Mark have headed the crowd noises amplify.... The square itself is emptying a bit, as thought the whole city has tilted its contents toward the distant sea.

The Cathedral's numerous and huge bells begin to peal, many tons of bells....beautiful, powerful, almost deafening.....not unusual for me to feel my life has often been lived in the shadow of the Church. To confront this in some way, in the fall I begin a doctorate at New York Theological, a Christian seminary which has a special track for those of all religions who head or have had major leadership roles in religious institutions. I have so much to learn.

You must forgive me as I pause recording events as they are happening now, for I feel myself drifting back in time, the shouting throngs in the distance could also be from the year 1000 CE, when this Notre Dame was first built...Drums are approaching, the crowds unifying their shouts...flags, where do all the flags come from? As a girl 12, 13, for years I dreamt dreams I believed belonged to Joan of Arc....flames around my feet, heat lapping up to my earsand an unremitting conviction that what I had to do needed to be done, to pursue peace and advocate freedom....not that I've ever realized those goals.

She did, Joan of Arc. I have a brochure here about her life....she was born on, whoah, January 6, 1412. Eek. My birthday is January 6, sometimes synchronicity is so spooky. Northern France was occupied by the English. At age 13 (!) Joan believes God has called her to help the French king and free her beloved town of Orleans from occupation.

Three years later she obtains the governor's help, is issued a uniform and meets with the king who gives her charge of a small army and she succeeds in liberating the city. Teenage Joan is at the coronation of Charles VII at Reims. She is captured and sold to the English in 1430 and brought to trial at a church tribunal...the trial is slow, she has no lawyer or advocate.

She refuses to recant, a final condemnation is pronounced and the church hands her over tothe English civil authorities. May 30, 1431 she is burnt alive on the Marketsquare where we stood earlier today.

Picture a town with an Elizebethan look - buildings are half wood, halfplaster - with the wood painted in bright colors, windows open outward, withnumerous tiny leaded diamon-shaped rose, purple and gold colored panes.

Barry: Oddly, the center of the square is occupied by a fairly stunning Scandinavian style memorial church - the ceiling like an inverted wooden ship.Mark: It was a hull of a church.

Goldie: In 1456 the church declares Joan's trial null and void, and in 1910 she is acknowledged as a saint and in 1920 her birthday is made a French national holiday.

Goldie: The church calls this voiding of her trial, "rehabilitation," the reclaiming of a soul that had been condemned. I wonder if political expediencies at the time, needing a way to move forward with the British present right in the face of the church, to prevent further destruction of sacred sites and create some merging of powers...was she a young pawn in a medieval chess match? Another woman up against a stain glass ceiling?

Speaking of chess. My son, Mark, has been enjoying having the pieces come alive during this part of the journey. The faces of locals capture so well my image of bishops and knights...he and Barry are intermittently locked in fierce chess combat, I kept demurring til last night.

Back to the present.......this long haired fellow just ran through the Cathedral square from behind me and leapt onto my bench screaming......I also screamed and scared him back a few steps, then he bowed and seemed to take my howl for a sign of participation in the evolving evening's din.

...in the distance the crowd is growing....do I see flames flaring in the north? Look up - gargoyles, saints, flying buttresses on the huge cathedral...just as I think the scene is dying down...here comes a mob...they are banging on the metal perimeter fence of the Cathedral, designed to shield it during renovations...the pounding noise is deafening...a shot sounds and there is cheering, this looks like a scene from Les Mis, flags aloft.

Barry and Mark return. Now there is another shot - firecrackers? They laugh at my concern, twas a motorcycle backfiring and they head back into the throng quoting the poet Rumi at me: "be the noise".

Police sirens with that WW II "dee-dah, dee-dah" sound fill the square....earlier while Mark watched the soccer match, Barry and I wandered the streets and came upon the palace, beside the old Jewish quarter, and saw how pockmarked it and many buildings still are, from Allied bombardment.

Lots of love from our hearts to yours,Goldie, Barry and Mark

Cross Europe #2: For What Ales You

Goldie: Ireland is composed of 42 colors of green, infinite immaculately kept villages each with 50-100 pubs, and the remains of at least one castle. Why did we wander Ireland?

Barry: We developed code words e.g."apples" when a certain mother is being hyperbolic.

Goldie: In part, this summer's adventure is based upon a hunch implanted during my training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. There our education primarily revolved around a sequential understanding of history and philosophy, in so far as it impacted upon the formation of the Jewish people. Since the primary architect of the curriculum, Dr. Jacob Staub was one of the best teachers I encountered there and also a rather deep person, I imagine he has his reasons for this curriculum, although I would have preferred an greater emphasis upon prayer, holy days, counseling, art, music and life cycle rituals.

I always fantasized about ditching the infinitude of dense readings and circular logic of the seminars where we would discuss them. What if instead the whole class zipped off to wander through the medieval streets of Europe with someone like Dr. Staub and perhaps a saging monk-on-loan from the Vatican to bring it all to life.

So after spending the last decade working on reclaiming Judaism as a spiritual practice, this summer is dedicated to reclaiming some meaning from the bulk of my Reconstructionist rabbinical training. I've read its founder's writings, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, every way over the years, and yes it is good to know that Judaism is an evolving civilization, the point is fully made. Time perhaps, to move on with depth of knowledge of the traditions themselves, not only the historical forces that impacted upon us.

Since one of our five children from our previous marriages is along, Mark - age 14, I've discovered the trip is also about introducing him to Christianity, which as a long-time day school student has left him in his own dark ages. I often wonder, what do other Jewish parents teach their children about Christianity and Christians?

While in Ireland, I learned not to wonder much about what is taught about us, though there are synagogues and a kosher butcher in Dublin and some 2000 Jews in the country, all and all. We have been sticking to the small towns and most young people claim never to have met a Jew before, nor to have given us much thought.

Usually an encounter happens when I explain why I am being so particular about the menu. Then they always ask something like, "Just what is it that Jews believe about Christ?" I'm never really sure what to say that would be respectful of someone under whose roof we are staying.....upon inquiring I usually learn that most have not gone to university, many have never been to even the nearest major city.

...each place we've stayed in Ireland, many little B&Bs, all have been immaculate and the people very kind.

Barry: I'm reading Angela's Ashes, which as you probably know, is about a poor family growing up in Ireland before and during WW II. I'm reminded of the desperate poverty that existed in Ireland and many of the towns through which we pass look like they've been taken over by Disney. The economy is doing very well.

Our host for the week, a generous friend and former patient of mine, Mrs. McCarthy, says the book is hyperbolic and that Ireland was never that poor. I was surprised to hear from her that the Republic of Ireland sat out WW II as neutrals, refusing to aid the English. In Angela's Ashes many of the Irish men worked in English factories and were able to send home money to their starving families.

In any event traveling around Ireland is a delightful break from the intensity and pressures of New York City, also, the emphasis on Christianity [even with all the killing associated with] is for me a merciful change of subject from Judaism and all its issues.

Goldie: The heritage parks in Ireland are well-funded and effective, many have working reconstructions of Celt, Viking and Norman villages - the eruv rav (Hebrew for mixed multitude) from which the Irish are composed. This time, we were wandering among the ruins of a church, wondering why we would even want to be in the ruins of a church. We spotted a guided tour in English and tagged along, usually not that helpful unless it's a Smithsonian guide or that ilk.

Turned out to be a group of Anglican priests and their partners led by a colleague of my own age, Father Marcus. He wasn't just guiding them through the ruins, he was creating an experience during their two week travels together. He quoted a Celtic figure named Bridgette (Bernadette?), who spoke of the idea of "soul friends" and the importance of having them in your life.

He quoted her as saying "being without your soul friend is like a body without the head." Bridgette later was incorporated into the canon of the church as a saint. He asked everyone to recall the soul friends of their lives - many couples looked at each other, a wonderful sight and others spoke of friends near and far.

As Barry and I gentled pressed each other's hands, Father Marcus pointed to a second church nearby. The first was of a fellow no known as Saint Steven thereabouts, the second of his soul friend Saint Kieren. The locals so admired the friendship between the men they erected the second church in honor of it.

Father Marcus then took his group off the beaten track into a heavily overgrown field, when we hesitated to follow he held out his hand to me, apparently having noted my kippah. "You'll be a rabbi then," he said in strong brogue. "We're heading toward a special place which you will appreciate, come along."

Now to be an Anglican priest in Ireland right now is about as great as being a Karaite leader after the time of Maimonides. The Irish of fiercely reverting to Catholicism and spurning the English influences, though they revert to whispers about such matters when tourists are about.

Across the long field we wound our trail and came upon the shell of a tiny chapel. "This was the Women's Church," he announced. After the Celtic church, he explained, certain practices were prohibited by the Catholics. For example, miscarriages and suicides could not be buried in holy ground, only outside the cemetery and could have no eulogy. (Judaism has a similar version of this.) The women created ritual for such losses and did the burials outside the Women's Church, the priests looked the other way or came over to the Women's Church to assist, depending on the decade.

Then he said "the women had a practice of welcoming those who came into the church. Two women would stand inside the doorway and warmly welcome each arriving saying "felcher," "welcome." He asked for volunteers to do the welcoming. I stepped up as did a woman priest.

We held hands like in a Virginia reel, said felcher to each other and stepped inside. Welcoming each colleague, doing what our people call "hachnassat orchim", the welcoming of guests, felt like the next step in this adventure. Once inside he had a form a circle, as he said was the practice in times past. He asked if I would give a blessing in Hebrew and if one of the women clerics would give a blessing of her choice as well.

The parsha that week included the priestly benediction, so I chanted it using a Sufi melody from the Dances of Universal Peace, the stones sang back an amen like a sigh of joy to be heard whenever spirit exceeds the parochial. Looking at me strangely Father Marcus told the group, the Christ comes in many guises. At this I shook his hand and we left, the metaphors are still so uncomfortable and unfamiliar for me.

Other days are peppered with abbeys and castles. Organizing and controlling the human spirit has been and continues to be such a challenging enterprise. My son Mark seems to know from nothing about apostles and I know little more. A patient guide teaches us the iconography of martyrdom of this large other people, Christians.

Court and church intrigues abound in the lore, while surfs toil and monks mortify flesh. All told we visited Dun Laoghaire - home for a bit to Shaw and Joyce, Dalkey, Shenkill, Brae, Glendalough, Meeting of the Waters, Rathdrum Laragh, Avondale, Enniscorthy, Wexford, Killkenny, Jerpoint, Dunmore East, Waterford, Cahir, Cashel, Abbey Leix and Kildare.

We toured the Waterford Crystal Factory, which is surprisingly fascinating. The workers require 25 years experience to engage in free-lance crystal design and each stage of the process is incredibly labor intensive, they re-cycle every piece with even the most minute fla.Barry: It rained only one day that we were there.

Goldie: The last time I came it rained 19 of 21 days.

Barry: There's been quite a radical shift in culture, Mrs. McCarthy tells me. People are no longer as friendly, they don't make eye contact or greet one another and crime is up. A lot of the youth smoke, even grade school kids rove about acting like punks. I question the advantages of prosperity and the technological era and the freedoms that technology have given us. What do we do with our free time? As societies are we using this time well? Why do we seem to have less free time, when it would seem we would have more?

Goldie: Enough reminiscing and blessings to our readers around the world. We leave France today and are heading for Belgium. You will meet us on the beaches of Normandy in the next posting.

Cross Country #3: The Peaches of Normandy

Goldie: The silver metal suitcase was a myth of my childhood. My mother said it existed, this suitcase of my father's, holding his photos from the war. He told me it had been lost. She would mention it from time to time and he would always say it was lost.

He didn't talk about the war, though due to his injured leg and on and off hospitalizations for it, the memory was always there. He used to be a basketball star in high school, his sister Sylvia of blessed memory told me. He never talks about it.

The only tangible reminder was a leather belt bearing his sergeant's stripes, star clusters and signal corps propeller hanging on a hook, I have those stripes in my jewelry box.

He told an occasional story, maybe three over the years, like the one about the big knife - a buddy wanted to borrow it to slice off the ring fingers of the enemies fallen in the field, but he didn't let him.

There was a book on his shelf titled Eleven Blue Men, the only book in the house he wouldn't let me read. Not for children, he'd say, it's about war. I snuck it when I was studying for my bat mitzvah and could never shake the horrors out of my mind, never dreaming they were his horrors. Each story was a day of WW II fighting for a different GI and what they had to do to survive.

Barry and I are downsizing, trying to sell our home in Reading and disburse or store two life times of belongings, the most precious of which (my books) will be temporarily residing in part at my folks. Before leaving for Europe we rushed in, arms full, headed to the basement and upon laying down our boxes, there it was...open and empty, the silver metal suitcase.

Upstairs, almost fifty years to the date, the photos have appeared. One by the mantle, another beside the phone, then a few on a desk top. A handsome tall dark haired guy in uniform. My father is eighty years old this year and the stories are coming out.

The only major difference in his experience of landing at Omaha beach from that depicted in the movie Sargent Ryan, he says, was the smell of boys' bodies burst open mingled with gun powder.. I'd left planning the trip itinerary to Barry, so long as my professional appointments were included, it was all his. We landed at the beaches of Normandy and it was a surprise to me. They are vast beyond anything I could have guessed and empty and silent.

I knew little about the importance of this battle or any battle, though I can name every concentration camp ever recorded and tell you about exotic Jewish groups like the Hasseidei Ashkenaz to which a whole unit of study was given in my training. Until seeing this place, really grasping its incredible proximity to England, and walking the actual medieval village streets nearby, with the famous hedges that could obscure an occupying German at any moment, I didn't get it.

That word "occupation," - of your house, your farm, your business, your bed, your country. I ran a Holocaust archive for five years taking depositions of survivors and allied soldiers. Every step we take here in Europe reawakens those tapes of their lives forever emblazed upon my soul. Today, it is the word "Allies" that stirs within me....

Barry: In contrast to Goldie I have watched many war movies. As we drove towards the beaches I imagined tanks rumbling on the cobblestones, knocking down medieval walls as they turned on the narrow roads. I could picture snipers behind the hedges and shooting from narrow windows. I wasn't prepared for the serenity and beauty of Omaha beach when we finally arrived there.

The US Military Cemetery is beautifully landscaped, the lawn is immaculate. I was very moved by the entire scene. In hindsight, the tranquility was unnerving. It reeks of order - the rows of crosses and stars, the memorials and gardens - everything is under control kind of thing. This is such a contrast between the chaos of battle, the violence with death and destruction that was the reality of the landings.

The only visible evidence of war was that of the artificial harbor and bunkers and bomb craters left at one site perched on tall cliffs over the beach. Rangers scaled these cliffs using hooks to achieve what aerial bombing could not. For completeness, I drove us to the German cemetery. It had far fewer visitors, is stark, and clearly does not have the stamp of honor that the American one has.

Many of the Germans were young - under twenty - and I could not find it in me to feel anger. Just sadness at the stupidity of it all and the waste of so many lives. Goldie felt unable to get out of the car and enter it at all.

Goldie: The American cemetery overlooking Omaha beach ripples today with mature trees and those at the entry are visibly weeping. Mark and I walk among the graves stretching endlessly before us marked with a sea of crosses and occasional stars of David.

We fasted that morning, Mark wanted a ritual way to honor the experience and stayed with it. He asked me many deep questions as we read the names aloud and he tried to comprehend how so many teenagers and young men could perish on one day and why.

Why didn't someone stop Hitler in beginning he asked me with great passion. How could the world let it come to this? If grandpa had died we would never have been born. If we hadn't entered the war the whole world would have been conquered!

The unreal video war games and star wars movies had gone pale, I could see him getting it - war is real, evil is real. In the excellent museum which explains the landing, he points, was Grandpa Sam dressed like that?How did he plant the communications wires?

The British floated a huge platform across the English Channel to these beaches at Normandy to allow the transports to unload trucks, ammo, you name it and unleashed from the freedom forces for the world. Imagine doing a thing like that - it was huge and heavy, with many bridges linking the parts. The version built by the Americans didn't work out, it broke up the storm that hit that day, our casualties were heavy.

My father remembers the scene that lay before him as his group surged forward in the surf, the third wave to land, defended by the bodies before him.

A family gathers around a star with fresh flowers to set down. The woman is my age, her son has his hand on the star, she bends to place the flowers and says to the stone: "Uncle Ben, I'm Miriam I was your niece and this is my son, your namesake Ben. We came to say thank you."

Over by our star Mark asks if we aren't supposed to say something, I begin to chant El Maleh Rachamim, "God full of compassion", the Jewish funeral prayer. I can hardly get the sounds out, it is not my sense of God at the moment.

I once found my father's tefillin mouldering in the basement. "What is this daddy?" He said he used it and kept kosher and said the "krishma" (kriyat shema at bed time) his whole life until that part of the war and then he stopped. (Daddy, please forgive me if I've merged some of the details of your stories...my memory isn't so perfect these days.)

Before he was wounded and evacuated to spend, I believe, six years in Walter Reed Army Navy Hospital successfully resisting amputation of his leg, he would move along with his unit. "We didn't send men ahead to dangerous combat if they had children at home, often the single kids would volunteer...not for adventure, for kindness to those with families.

His group were sent to lay wires one day and then given a few days furlough to the nearest town, which was where he entered and learned about the day before liberated - Auschwitz. My awareness has always been of the war the way Dr. Lucy Davidowitz put it "The War Against the Jews," this bit of the trip is helping me understand why others call it World War II.

As we leave the shadow side for the Chateaux region in the Loire Valley, a small correction from the last posting. I put "eruv rav" for mixed multitude and meant "erev rav". A neat Freudian slip in that I'd been reading about the controversy about the use of an eruv in Brooklyn a few minutes before sitting down to write to you. We received many interesting notes about Jews, Ireland, the war.

This posting is dedicated to Rav Gedaliah Silverstone, was a rabbi in Belfast for several years before coming to D.C. in 1905. They called him the "Irish Rabbi" because he spoke Hebrew w/an Irish brogue. He was reputed to be quite an interesting rabbi, and prolific writer. A book about him is in the offing we have learned from his granddaughter Marlene.Blessings to all and appreciation for your thoughtful notes back to us!

Our next posting will come to you most likely from Belgium.
Rabbi Goldie Milgram, Barry Bub and Mark Beitman

Cross Europe #4 Part I: The Chateau Side

Goldie: Upon leaving France my work obligations soared, our house in America
achieved an agreement of sale and one of Barry's close friends died. So  while we have kept careful notes, the time commitment to write a proper  travelogue installment was not to be found until now.

Our deepest thanks to the many, many readers who e-mailed to make sure that we are ok. We have just returned to the States and over the next few days will fill you in on the balance of the journey and given a few days to get over jet-lag, will then begin to return individual e-mails and phone calls.

The headlines in Europe, at least where we had been, are steadily about the  Jewish victims of the train station bombing in Dusseldorf, skinheads,  neo-Nazis and the burgeoning of such incidents inside of Germany. This all occurred the week after we left Dusseldorf, which is an industrial city of  great drabness compared to the French countryside.

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six Jews and their three significant others, those who were bombed always attend a language class for new immigrants the same day and time each week. Europe has been shaken by the event, my father tells me America is relatively oblivious to it.

To me, this bombing and those near our family in South Africa are reminiscent of when I learned about the rape camps in Bosnia. Foolishly I had come to believe, as a teen, that once the world knew about the Holocaust, these things would never happen again. The day I realized that idea was a big self-deception felt like it was truly my first day of conscious adulthood.

Do you remember when you first felt like an adult? There was a time when I might have said it was the first time I took myself out alone to a restaurant. Or the first time I realized that having a child had come to mean that his/her happiness came before my own. So now, perhaps it is a hallmark of mid-life to feel disillusionment in the human potential to
collectively support and tolerate peace simultaneously with a great, growing passion to prove we can go to a positive new level as a species!

Until last week throughout the trip I heard from Jews that they are not worried, the war was so recent, their children will at least live in peace.  Ribbono Shel Olam - let it be so!

There are about 80,000 some Jews who live in Germany today, perhaps 6000 in
Dusseldorf alone. The vast majority come from the FSU, seeking a better life and entering under special legislation which is a kind of self-assessed emotional reparations of the German people. The offer covers absorption costs - such as language training, and for a generous time housing, etc. Why not go to Israel? Many reasons, including stories of how hard life will be there that drift back daily from families on aliyah, the perceptions of better
employment possibilities, and a general cluelessness of what it is to be Jewish anyway.

The German Chancellor and government are in agreement that the attack was likely racial and anti-immigrant. He offered dramatic statistics on the rising and rampant nature of such crimes and called for his nation not to be silent this time, that they must be fully intolerant of intolerance, violence and the spreading of hatred.

We are praying for two victims' lives which hang in the balance - Tatyana and Michael Lerner. Tatyana's fetus died from shrapnel wounds during the attack and she has had to lose a leg.

For us these are not fully strangers or solely statistics. The chief orthodox rabbi of Dusseldorf is a dear friend, colleague and one of the great menschen and honest scholars of our times, his name is Michael Goldberger.

A walk through the great synagogue in Dusseldorf is usually full of the light of Torah, which he sheds with every word and obvious careful ethical consideration given to the expression of thoughts. He sometimes works a wonder, for example, when he wanted to open a day school.

The board thought there would not be enough children, despite some 5700 congregants (in Germany there is a mandatory religion tax on everyone and the funds and names are given to the church/synagogue/mosque system in their town, according to their stated religion.) Some specific number of students was required by the government to create the school, I think 24.

Rabbi Goldberger only had perhaps 8. He negotiated with them, when the authorities said, how about 18? The synagogue board thought this would be impossible. He pressed the civil authorities harder, they said something like, "no - sixteen then." Still impossible, was the opinion of the board.

Where in Dusseldorf would one find sixteen children for a Jewish day school?  He thought and thought and then went back to the town authority saying, "We are not asking to open a new school. We are simply continuing the large day school from before the war, it is not our fault that all the children died."

This approach worked immediately and today there are over 100 primarily immigrant Jewish children learning his rich, warm, loving approach to Jewishing, including one all Hebrew classroom imported from Canada.

As regards the Dusseldorf bombing, Rabbi Goldberger reports effusive support from the non-Jewish community and urges us not to generalize about the German people.

I often work with those seeking to convert to Judaism. I love Judaism. When someone really wants support to enter our tradition, if it's at all realistic and feasible time-wise, I try to do so.  In many countries it's nigh-impossible to find a way into the Jewish people.
Batei din (religious courts) are reported to turn people down repeatedly in some areas, others are told flat out that if they are married to a non-Jew, or had a civil marriage first to a Jew, that they simply must forget it.

Several individuals hopeful of converting in Holland told me that they could  not gain entry to pray in the liberal synagogue's services unless they were accompanied by a known Jewish boy/girlfriend. Two years ago I led high holiday services at Bet Ha Chidush in Amsterdam, a relatively new independent congregation contemplating Reconstructionist affiliation, non-Jews who attended were verbally attacked by members for participating and told not to return. After some interventions, apologies were made but wounds remain in those who experienced the rebuff.

When a soul knows that we are her people, no matter what is happening for that person s/he won't stop trying to join us. One day, in Amsterdam two years ago, such a couple approached me upon the recommendation of Rabbi Shefa Gold - neither were Jewish or clearly descended from Jews, yet for almost six years they had been living as Jews and studying and growing in love and commitment to our tradition. Local rabbis wouldn't let them in, perhaps because of their five children of diverse ages, or, more likely because in
Europe it doesn't feel intuitively right that anyone would want to become
Jewish if they aren't already.

Or perhaps the situation had become difficult because of a stunning comment the mother made to me and perhaps others, something like "I know I am a Jewish soul. After the war there weren't enough Jewish women left alive to give birth to all of the returning souls of the Jews killed in the war. Perhaps those Jewish souls have to be reborn into the world by non-Jewish  mothers. I believe I am one of those souls." And in her dreams a Yiddish
name came to her as the name of her soul.

And then there was her bemused husband, who yet remember how his mother's fierce participation in the resistance, helping to hide Jews during the war.  Out of love for his wife he began to explore Judaism and discovered a way of  life he would come to love and desire, as well. And the matter of five  children, each needing to decide on his/her own whether to join the Jewish  people and face the challenge of even finding enough Jews to date.

After our time together and endless, fascinating e-mail correspondence rich in their profound questions and truly exceptional self-written Torah commentary, I knew with all my heart and soul that there had to be just the  right, most brilliant and creative and halachically impeccable European rabbi to facilitate their conversion. I could have done it on my own authority but didn't want a matter of feminist politics to get in the way of their
successful acceptance on their home turf.

So who would be just right for this conversion of a family?! You guessed it,
Rabbi Michael Goldberger. He worked with them for two years and finally it all came together during this trip to Europe.

After the orthodox beit din met and examined them individually over the course of almost six hours, I was so glad to be a woman and able to bring the mother and two of her daughters for their individual experiences in the body-temperature mikveh in the synagogue in Dusseldorf.

When I do a sea-based mikveh, I learned from one loving husband to place long
stem roses into the sand at the water's edge to create a pathway for the person converting to walk through on his/her way into the ocean. Upon returning, they find a path of rose petals upon which to tread, symbolizing transformation.

At the synagogue mikveh, I paused for inspiration. Many converts complain of how unspiritually and pro-forma the mikveh ladies handle the matter of immersion. To me nothing is regular in a conversion, each soul is as magnificent and individual as the most precious imaginable element of creation.

In this case I experienced a new element, the first immersion is done wearing a robe, to be witnessed by the Av Bet Din who then leaves. For the next  immersion, I envisioned every Jewish person who ever lived or who ever will live holding out their arms to receive and welcome this new Jewish soul....sharing this intimation with her, she then immersed so that every floating hair went under and then she arose to chant the shema. The final immersion  we designated for personal prayer, to envision what she needs to fulfill this
destiny, to pray it and then to float,  to be,  finally.....a Jew.

So it is with awareness of how impossibly bizarrely the Cosmos operates, that  four magnificent new members of the Jewish people emanated from Dusseldorf,  just some ten days before the shadow would rise again in that very town.
Much love, Reb Goldie

Cross Europe #4 Part II: Spire or Mire?

The shadow appeared everywhere we went in France and Belgium, even penetrating through the two solid weeks of rain.

The shadow has many guises. It can be cloaked in the greatest of art and architectural brilliance, yet it hovers over every village and town, appearing in multiples even in the cities. Often in Europe it feels like it is the shadow of the cathedrals and churches, even incredible places like Mt. St. Michel and the Cathedral at Chartres carry it. I hadn't felt this so keenly on other trips to France, however this time we have consciously kept to the small towns and country-side.

We passed many fairy-tale like chateaus dotting the Loire Valley. I never imagined such edifices actually exist. Didn't Disney invented Cinderella's castle as a graphic image?), Even these confectionary resides of overdone times do not take away the dark energy I have come to associate with the approach of Tisha b'av, which takes on ever greater significance during each step of this journey.

One reader sends a reminder of the part of the shadow of which we are well aware because he feels we are too romantic in our attitude toward the medieval period. Fear not, that enchantment wore off quickly, spires no longer inspire, they are more like bayonets to my soul.

A reader writes: "What about the birth of the accusation of ritual murder and profanation of Catholic unleavened bread for Pesach beginning in 1243, the most famous one being "l'affaire des billettes" in Paris in 1290." and he continues...

"What about the massacres of Jews in Anjou (not so far from Rouen), or the crusade of Pastoureaux in 1251 in the north of France, or the multiple autodafes of Talmud made by most of the French kings (autodafe, coming from auto da fe, act of faith, consists of burning books in the name of God)"

And he adds: "Or the so romantic date of 1390 when Philippe le Bel king of France expelled the Jews from France, or the hunting of Jews all over Europe after the "black plague" epidemic ? and what about the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the inquisition?"

Quite so, I once wrote a thesis on the impact of the black plague upon the Jews. The same year I read and shed tears of sorrow and terror over the translated testimony of a Jewish woman who argued eloquently with the Grand Inquisitioner before she was burned.

Oostende is the Jewish Museum in Belgium, even at its height it seems that only 300 Jews ever lived there. It disturbs me to see museums that seem to proclaim to the world that they should love us - sometimes the theme is because we have suffered so much as a people, other times because we have been so creative in art, sciences, literature - because we are useful. Believe me, the shadow doesn't care.

After Tisha B'Av I feel grateful our daily liturgy includes a prayer for "geulah" which appears rights before the amidah. Rabbi Robert Freedman has described this as a prayer for "liberation from our concern with history."
I wrote this notes while we were driving through pastoral Dutch country-side on our way to the glorious, remote island called Ameland for a week-long retreat. Carola de Vries Robles is our primary host in Holland. She is a well-known therapist and teacher of therapists in Europe and teacher of Jewish spirituality and spiritual eldering. We met during my first trip to Elat Chayyim retreat center in NY state, we were room mates and over time, have become true friends. Carola is a helpful interpreter of life here in Europe, which is essential to serving here.

Carola: We especially need the blessing about "liberation from our concern from history" here in Holland.

Goldie: As an American, it is hard to understand what it is to grow up in a recent battlefield. I used to be a professor at Gettysburg College, where the Civil War history supports the economy of the area, yet no longer seems to saturate the psyche of those who reside there.

I had not noticed on previous trips that there are German bunkers which dot the fields everywhere one goes in Holland, more intensely so along the southern coast....they are for playing in now, or storage. Yet unlike in America, here EVERY person seems to have been scarred by the war in so many ways...and this still unfolding. Recently have come the confessions of Dutch about exactly how and when they informed on their Jewish neighbors, and archives newly opened revealed about two years ago a huge scandal about the government.

Carola: In the archive it turned out that money and precious things which were brought to the bank by Jews during the war for safekeeping were kept until 1950 by the Dutch government and around 1952 they items were sold at auction and the funds were given to the employees of the local version of the IRS tax service.
What turns out now, is that when the Jews who survived couldn't get back into their houses because they were occupied by others and they weren't helped or welcomed, and rather were sent away and sometimes couldn't claim their possessions at all. Only now does this come into the country's consciousness and Jews also realizing how much they lost.
All our energy was involved in trying to build up a decent life, no one was talking about this until now.....when we were growing up after the war being Jewish wasn't talked about....at a recent children of survivor's conference I was surprised to see my college roommates...we had never talked about being Jewish with each other. To show feelings about this is called "zeelekh", unacceptable and weak.

Goldie: In America there is a lot of criticism about law suits to secure funds for losses in the Holocaust.

Carola: That's here too.

Goldie: I feel much more compassionate and less judgmental about that now. The suits are clearly a part of healing, releasing anger and dealing with so many losses.

Carola: My brother was born in the camp, it's not just anger, it's a bitterness of not being recognized ...the Prime Minister of Holland apologized for this and some people think that its very important that he did that, the recognition of responsibility, that the picture of Holland being a tolerant culture must be corrected.

Goldie: In Holland, almost daily someone finds out from their parents that they were hidden Jews and in a sentence that will resound for a lifetime their inner experience begins to make sense and a chaos and clarity simultaneously seem to begin.

    The preoccupation with history is so intense here, there is almost no such thing as an idle conversation. We are passing Harlingen now, Carola mentions to me that only her uncle survived from here, no one else, he just refurbished the remains of the synagogue as a monument...there are no Jews left in the town to attend.
    In the ancient Portuguese cemetery outside Amsterdam we visit the grave of Carola's uncle, a rabbi so beloved that his tomb stone is inscribed with glowing love and respect from his students.....after the rain a red resin has pooled atop many of the most ancient stones which are elegantly carved with figures, lions and phrases, giving an eery impression. The grave of Spinoza's mother is there, she died when he was only eight years old.
    In the excellent Jewish museum in Amsterdam there is a map with dark dots throughout Holland. Press it once and all of the Jewish communities here before the war light up - 140,000 souls. Press it again and only in the south are there some lights, 40,000 souls.
At almost every meal I hear their stories. The stories sound different over here.

    In rabbinical school we read the Diary of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch woman who died in the war. Beside me, our friend and host tells me her mother of blessed memory, knew Etty well. Her mother did not consider Etty to be a hero because she voluntarily went into the camp, her mother's choice was to do everything she could to stay alive. I appreciated the diary very much because it was the only text we studied at RRC which modeled praying from the heart.

    Speaking of prayer and healing, Carola has also helped in the development of three important new Jewish groups here - an alternative congregation called Beyt HaChidush - attractive to American ex-patriots and open to gay and lesbian Jews (though not non-Jews), and she is the initiator of a fully inclusive Jewish renewal havurah called Makom Or Zarua which holds monthly gatherings, and a network for Jewish inspiration and renewal, Ruach Chadashah.

Carola: I feel we are bringing light and joy back into Jewish life here. Dutch Jewish culture is Calvinistic.

Goldie: A great creative spirit also shows in the work of two reform rabbis and a woman who functions as a chazzan (there are no official woman rabbis or chazzanim in Holland). Together they have created a truly great children's department in the Jewish museum here. It is cutting edge work involving all forms of media to touch the soul and the imagination of children and truthfully my inner child was dancing too.

Now that Tisha B'Av has ended, this post concludes with a real-life funny.

In Antwerp, Belgium we steer our car through the endless rain into the very, very Jewish diamond district in search of a kosher restaurant since it is the time of month where this Goldfish dearly desires a hot pastrami sandwich. (Diamond polishing, the local museum declares, was invented by a Jew in medieval times and long perpetuated as a family secret. times.) The center of the tiny district has an active shul and the streets have strong security including James Bond-like metal poles that can be electronically activated to block streets.
    We find a kosher shwarma place run by an ebullient Israeli, who upon seeing my kippah and learning I'm a rabbi, he still serves us kindly but feels called upon to state that "I'm sorry, but I don't believe you exist." Assuring him that I am real, I inquire after the bathroom. He ushers me to the back, pointing to one door as men's and opens another. I step through it as he declares it to be the "bathroom for feminists"and find myself in the back alley. Laughing he opens the door and offers me the true seat of honor. We were both laughing so hard it was a good thing the proper facilities were at hand.

Our last trip posting will be emailed before Shabbat.
Much love and blessings, Reb Goldie & Barry & Carola

Cross Country Thoughts from Barry

Barry: I have to keep reminding myself that it's not winter, just a Central European summer. Gray, cold and except for brief moments of clearing, steady rain. I have stopped counting, perhaps ten days worth. People in the street are scruffy looking, dressed for the most part drably - olive green, grays, black, brown. The water of the canals is brown. The side walks and buildings are brick colored or gray.

Every now and then there is some color. Bright red incandescent or flourescent lights in some windows facing the sidewalk. The little red rooms or cubicles are either empty with a for rent sign in them, or occupied by women in their underwear. How do they keep warm?

The people smoke, drink beer, scrawl graffiti and roam the streets yelling at 3 a.m. Perhaps they are instinctively drawn to adding color to the walls.

I think I have cabin fever. We are staying with a friend in Amsterdam. A wonderfully hospitable well-read therapist, teacher, artist whose apartment is overflowing with books, art and interesting artifacts from her travels. The apartment abuts the Anne Frank house.

We are one floor up and face both the canal in front and the garden behind. The garden still contains the gigantic Chestnut tree that Anne described. Every few minutes tour boats stop in front and tourists click away with their cameras. Except for late at night, there is always a small crowd of people hanging around on the sidewalk below.

Recently the Anne Frank foundation built an ugly administrative building/museum here. It was supposed to take care of the problem of people standing on the sidewalk and street.Yesterday I counted two hundred and fifty tourists patiently waiting in line. Many more were standing around having their pictures taken in front of the building. It takes a committee to design a building that has all the neighbors up in arms, doesn't look good , and doesn't work.

Cabin fever breeds cynicism. I have been shut in for days - by rain. Anne Frank was shut in by gestapo - for years. How did she survive emotionally? Not only survive, but write about it in a way that people pilgrimage and patiently stand in the rain for hours to see her hiding place. Surely not cynically. I am going to read The diary of Anne Frank. Then tour her house. There is a lesson in it for me.

Graffiti and antigraffiti

One of the things I like so much about Manhattan is that the the city has been so spruced up. I remember the time not so long ago, when almost every building, subway car, tree, dog and cat (a little hyperbole is in order) was covered with graffiti. This is no longer tolerated. Knowing that it is possible to do something about this blight makes it particularly irritating to see beautifully preserved medieval buildings scribbled on.
Ireland, France and Holland is where New York was a few years ago.

By the way, petty crime - theft, pickpocketing, car and bicycle theft are also prevalent and seemingly tolerated. The poet Rumi said it well. Butterflies need two wings to fly. Every point needs a counterpoint. Matter requires the existence of anti matter.

Walking the streets of Amsterdam, I wondered aloud to Goldie: "Why do people put so much energy into vandalizing other peoples' property? There must be some gratification for them. Spray painting graffiti is an act of aggression towards society, to me it implies anger, disrespect, a desire to destroy and make ugly. How does one counteract this?

A few days later, we were taken to a sculpture garden by our friend Carola.Amstel Tuin is located along the Amstel river near the site that Rembrandt used to sit and paint his landscapes. It is quite close to the old Portugese Jewish cemetery, about 2 acres in all. I have seen many famous gardens including Kew, Longwood Gardens, Kirstenbosch. Big, impressive, beautiful. This is small and a gem. To quote my friend Rumi again: "A ruby is not a mountain."

Groupings of shade plants with many swathes of ferns, astilbe, various ground cover, bamboo, accent trees and plants. Interspersed, are ninety five pieces of sculpture, each very different andcleverly complemented by the plantings in its neighborhood. They are by various sculptors and for sale. We were shown around by the proprietress, a woman in her sixties who herself is a sculptor. Her husband is a man who appears quite a bit older and appears quite frail. He is the landscaper.

She shared with us the challenges of designing and maintaining the property over the past ten years. We expressed our appreciation of it and that this as possibly the single most impressively beautiful piece of work we had seen in Europe. "And its quite mad, isn't it? We don't even own this property!"

The owner has apparently expressed interest in taking the property back and living there. My mind boggled at the thought of the hundred s of thousands of guilders and thousands of man hours invested by them in the garden. Owner, ill health, old age can wipe it out at any time. Then I realized that this is not about permanence. Its not about improving one's own property, its about not only respecting someone else's property but improving it. The opposite of what we have been seeing. It is anti graffiti.

Patriotism, Nationalism, Racial HatredYee! Armstrong wins his second Tour De France. That will teach the French!Tiger Woods wins his fourth title at 24. Both fellow Americans. The summer Olympics soon. Country against country.

Watching the riotous celebrations in the streets of Rouen when France won the European soccer tournament, I was conscious of celebration turning to violence in the screaming motor cycles, cars, banging, noise makers. Nationalism gone wild.

At the Anne Frank museum there is an exhibit of nationalism and hatred. Politically, Europe has changed dramatically since her time. Have the people?

Goldie says the Torah portion this Shabbat contains a very difficult segment. God asks Moses to do one more thing before he dies, to wipe out the Midianites (Moses' in-laws, as it happens.) While I can view this parsha from a viewpoint that it was intended to stop the spread of a venereal disease epidemic, (Moses adds the killings of all Midianite women and girls who have had sex to the original order to kill all the men), but that's not much help given the historical applications of the portion.

This parsha has been used by right wing religious groups of all types to insist upon purifying by purging unwanted peoples off of the land one perceives as one's own and from one's midst. Nationalism kills.

Back to "Civilization" Five days on the Island of Ameland in north Holland with friends. Sand dunes, enormous number of birds, sea lions in the distance, deer, rabbits, broad expanses of beach. All the cottages have thatched roofs, and are scattered between the dunes. Nothing to do except read, eat, bike ride, swim walk and look at nature. Our last walk on the beach we encounter seven people riding horseback. The air is so pure we can smell the horses hundreds of yards away. They gallop, two fall off and their horses run away. No one seems perturbed in this idyllic environment.

Now back to CIVILIZATION and Amsterdam. First night back the scenery is dramatically different. Two police women on horseback were galloping in the narrow streets yelling at each intersection to warn traffic. They are in hot pursuit of a man wearing a pink shirt who is running as for his life. In the background, an alarm is wailing and three half dressed prostitutes are shouting from a doorway. At first there something comical about the scene, it seems staged and as it becomes clear that it is all for real, the sadness sets in.

Making one's mark in the world.
My friend Gerrit, on reading my writing about graffiti, says his view of it is that it is done by people who need to leave visible evidence of their existence. An affirmation of themselves. Territorial, like dogs marking their territory. Like American presidents and their libraries. Point taken.

Cross Europe #5: Herring Loss

Barry: After days of incessant rain, the most logical thing was to give up on
being tourists and make a dash to friends in Holland. Once we stopped being
tourists we actually began to experience the culture of the country we were
visiting.

Goldie: Truth to be told, friends are golden beacons of light for me. Perhaps in travel hearts are like magnets, compelling the journey.

Barry: You know you are in Holland, when on a vacation island the line for the raw herring is longer than the line for ice cream.

Goldie: Imagine herring that melts in your mouth and doesn't come out of a jar, imagine at least 9 kinds of herring - smoked, pickled, in curry/wine/cream sauce, etc. If you are a vegetarian, as I am some years, please don't imagine.

Barry: You know you are in Holland, when the superman t-shirt a young person
is wearing has a big Z on it for - Zuperman. Never had the opportunity to check, but suspect that there may be more "z's" in the Dutch version of  Scrabble than in the English version; also suspect that the letter has a value closer to one than ten over here.

Goldie: Dutch has quite a repertoire of Yiddish words, "rochelling" (readers - spell check please?) means the substitution of one item for another when you didn't expect this to be the case.

Barry: Walking in the countryside, a car pulled over, a head popped out and in Dutch I was asked if I had just lost a horse. Apparently there was one running free in the area and there was something abnormal about me being on foot (in contrast to being on a bicycle or horse.) With the economy doing well, many farmers are finding it more profitable to raise horses.

Goldie: Our Dutch friends have been quite vociferous about keeping us off of bicycles in the cities, for survival reasons. While the density of cars would not seem high to a New Yorker, one boggles at the four lanes of traffic. A walking lane, a bicycling/motorized wheel chair lane (sometimes going four abreast), car lanes in both directions, then again with bicycles and those on foot. Now think about turning left on your bicycle....in
Amsterdam. I imagine in our friends' minds is a misstep of the sort that sends all dangerously sprawling in the Tour de France...

Barry: You know you are in Holland, when you see men in suits with briefcases biking to the office.
Goldie: My favorite was an elegantly dressed woman in high heels and stockings sitting on the rack of a bike ridden by an equally dapper man.

Barry: In other words, when we actually stopped looking for things to see, we began to see them. Yesterday, we experienced summer and spent the day on the beach. Saw two adults in a ring wall of sand surrounded by the incoming time. I smiled, remembering, my childhood, playing sand and furiously trying to keep the wall from being swept away. Then I realized these were not kids but adults in their fifties. Gerrit said this is a common activity on the beach and it clicked that this is Holland where keeping the ocean at bay is
a never ending national preoccupation.

Goldie: Mark, who is now visiting Paris with his father, didn't want to leave....not that it was the historic sites that captured his heart. Our friends have five children, the twenty-year old son became his idol and the four drop-dead gorgeous younger daughters.....well, let's just say that when he stayed with them on his own for a few days he called to say he was remaining there for either the week or the rest of his life.

Barry: I'm writing this on our flight home, since we are returning early in order to pack up our house which has just been sold. We are particularly sad about having to leave, especially since summer arrived yesterday and we're leaving really good friends.

The past two days were spent in a summer house of friends in a little town called Bergen, adjacent to the seaside town Bergen en Zee, which is a short zigh zagh" (guttural g) on bike away. There are very few English speaking tourists here and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Holland. The village is quaint, a bit of an art colony, with genuine Dutch country-side, as one might see in a landscape of the seventeenth century,
i.e., canals, windmills, cows, cows, cows, herons, horses and sheep and an
endless skyscape.

Here it happened that we would have two mysteries revealed. Struggling with the menu in a café (Barry's South African fluency in Afrikans helps a lot with Dutch), a refined fellow leans over in a proper English influenced by a gentle Dutch accent offers to translate for us. Finding him a kindly sort and seeing whereas he was sitting alone with his beer, we invited his company and perhaps his thoughts on the village.

He told us he'd make the big move from Alkamer (some 5 miles away) to a house by the forest of the village 30 years ago and serves as an English teacher, almost retired at age 63. Upon learning of Goldie's passion for Dutch appelgebak (this must be what Jewish applecake once truly resembled, awesome - and never, never forget the country-fresh hand whipped cream!) he announced that he himself made and consumed an applegebak once a week and offered to instruct us in how to make one and so he did - 150 grams of
creamery butter, this particular tart apple-not that one, or heavens forfend, never Granny Smith! and so on. We took copious notes.

We asked are there many American tourists in Bergen? "Mostly Germans, unfortunately," was his reply. Seeing me wince a bit at the nationalism, he explained: "They took our homes, our cattle, our cars, killed our sons and do you know, they killed 100,000 of our Jews, the highest per centage per capita of any country." He didn't know we are Jewish, Goldie's kippah was under a baseball cap intended to shade the sun.

He went on, "I'll tell you a miracle happened here recently. You see, my grandmother sheltered a Jewish boy for five years during the war, not here, in Alkemar. One day a neighbor told her that he knows she is hiding a Jew.

Then, sadly, she had to find him another safe house in another city. We never knew if he survived the war. And, just recently, here in Bergen, I see someone who looks just like him....still I am not sure. I go up and ask him "Are you Kim?" This was his hiding name. He looks scared, very unsure and uncomfortable and backs away. "Wait, I cried out, I am the grandson of Berga, I was young with you in her house." He looks at me and says, "Yes, I am Kim."  "I learned that day that he is a professional in Amsterdam. He only wished he had found Berga to thank her, though she died long, long ago."

Our luncheon companion suggested one problem with the appelgebak recipe, there is a special Dutch flour that must be used. So, he brings us to his lovely forest home with an enchanted garden of fourteen varieties of fuchsias for a nip of sherry.

Barry: Our last few days were deeply touched also by the death of our very close friend Kenneth Barnett, may his memory be for a blessing. He had been courageous through decades of chronic illness and we will miss him very, very much. Generous, always ready with a joke, a kiss and dinner (he was a four star chef), the appelgebak we bake is dedicated to Ken, who would have so
savored the encounter, the story and the recipe.

So as we wing our way west, across the Atlantic, we say good bye to appelgebak en slaag, toasties, nieuwe herring, frietjes (fries and don't trust the spelling), cheeses galore, kibbeling (bits of fried fish) and friends so precious and holy we still can't really pronounce their names such as Frouke, Jouke, Nimjke, Gerrit, Carola, Kees, Anya and the only clue we'll give is that the "g" in Dutch sounds as a "chet" in Hebrew, and the "ou" is like in cow. And course there's Tzeitl, it takes a Dutch Jew to redeem a Jewish name with a Z in it.

Thank you for the kindness of virtually being on this journey with us. See you in the BIG APPELgebak. Lots of love and blessings from our hearts to yours.