Group 8

My name is Maram which means in Arabic and Hebrew the high place which everyone wants to reach.

My Grandfather Abraham asked my parents to call me Maram because he felt like he arrived to that high place he always dreamed of when he saw me when I was born.

I like my name because it makes me special .

My name is Alon, which means Oak, and it’s actually a tree. It is quite common to name people after trees in Israel, just like Oren and Erez.

I was named by my father after Yeegal Alon, who was a high ranking officer in the IDF, and also a prominent politician in the Israeli Knesset and cabinet. I very much like my name 🙂

My name is Almog, and it means “Coral” in English and “Mirjan” in Arabic. It is a beautiful marine animal that lacks a backbone. Corals grow in warm shallow waters and get lots of light. Each individual coral is called a “polyp”, and most of the corals live in groups of hundreds to thousands of  

genetically identical polyps that create a ‘colony’.

My parents chose to call me by my name ‘Almog’ because both of them love the open sea and to walk with bare feet along the coast. Moreover, my father used to dive deeply and got inspired to name me after he had seen many sea creatures.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEWJAEkGeNk     

My name is Einat and in hebrew it means open water ,spring ,fountain. My father really liked the name Einat and my parents decided to name me Einat. I’m not named after someone in the family or someone famous, but I like my name , even though it’s not an international name.

My name is Ranen , Ranen is an Arabic name

and it means  ring: the voice, the voice of sad;

my father and mother choose this name for me

because they really liked it and not for a specific

reason , I like my name because my parents loves it.

My name is Dunia , which means “ The world or life “. My father named me . I was the first child for my parents. He was passionate about life , living each moment with a lot of joy and pleasure . My mother always reminds me of a sentence that he used to say :” she will be as beautiful as life .”

***

Since I was born, I used to hear my grandfather telling me that we are unique. At first, I didn’t understand what he meant, but later he explained it to me. “We are parentage of the prophet Mohammed”. “Our family which called Hamza was named according to the uncle of Prophet Mohammed, who was known by being impartial”. Then, I asked him about being unique, and the answer was a surprise for me. “Our family follows Prophet Mohammed, but also follows the rest of the prophets without concerning the conflict, which we have in our country. We never concentrated on the disadvantages of each religion we just focused on the advantages. The first thing we taught you in our family is to be impartial, to accept others without concentrating to the conflict or to the stereotype, and to  respect others just like Hamza. These things will brought to you good relationships with different religions and cultures, you may face a lot of people who will try to destroy them ,or to convince you to change your way of thinking by distending the conflict between the religions in our country, just like they did to us in the past, but they never succeed. These things brought to us a lot of problems, but we never changed, because it is the right thing to do. It is a bequest of our  family, and the thing which make us unique.

Maram Hamza

Sakhnin Collage

I chose to share a family story from my mother’s side about my
great-grandfather of blessed memory, Haim and the journey that he and my great-grandmother had gone through to make an ‘Aliyah’ to Israel.
I heard from my mother that my great-grandfather was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924. After World War II had ended, he came to Italy and married my great-grandmother of blessed memory, Haya. He was alone there because his whole family members had died in the Holocaust. He saw his father in the last time when the latter was put into a train on the way to the extermination camps. Afterwards, my great-grandparents were banished from Italy and wanted to come to Israel, however the British refused to let them enter the country and sent them to Cyprus by a ship. When the gates of Israel were opened, my great-grandparents made an ‘Aliyah’. My family says I share the same hobbies and qualities of my great-grandfather. In his free time he used to

draw paintings and read newspapers. He was well-mannered and good-hearted man. 

Almog Yehuda

Seminar Hakibbutzim 

When we usually talk about the Holocaust, we think of the jews that came from Europe. Not many people know , but jews that came to Israel from many Arab countries also suffered from racism at that time. My father’s family lived in Iraq and ran away from there after the “Farhud” , the pogrom carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq. My grandparents had nine children and they had a good and wealthy life there until racism started there too. My grandmother told me she ran on the roofs of the buildings with her babies in her hand. My father was only one year old then. She managed to escape and hide with all her children. My family left all there belongings and  came  to live in the Ma’abarot ,refugee absorption camps in Israel, with no money or possessions. Ever since I was little I was told to be a good person, care for others  and to be happy and thankful for what I have in life and that’s the way I also raise my children today.

Einat De Leeuw

David Yalin

I choose to share a story that my grandfather used to tell me , it’s about how he meet my grandmother when they were working in the field , and how he loved her and he couldn’t talk to her because he was suppose to marry his cousin , because in their days it was not their choose who they want to married , they get married who their parents choose, but he didn’t listen to his parents and married my grandmother and his parents spent two years not talking to him , but when my grandmother give a birth to my big uncle , they went to visit them , that’s why my grandfather always says to me not to give up and follow my heart .

Ranen Shally

Ohallo

Many times it is said that one’s Identity is associated with the place they grew up and lived, and so I chose to tell the story of how it came about for me to live and grow up where I did. I’m the third child and youngest in my family. Not long before I came into this world, my parents and two older brothers moved from the central part of Tel Aviv to its northern part.

According to the story that runs in the family, it is told that my parents considered a few different places, and even signed a memorandum of understanding with one potential seller, only to stall him for a little while, while they are finalizing a deal elsewhere.

At last, my parents decided to buy an apartment in a newly developed neighborhood in northern Tel Aviv, a place which will be considered in the future, as one of the best places and highly regarded areas in northern Tel Aviv, and this is the place which I grew up. I only mention this not brag or anything of that nature, but to show how that decision of where to live, was not up to me at all.

Personally, I find this interesting every time I mention where I’m from, and can sometimes feel the silent judgment of the other person. At that moment you’re not really you, but you’re the place you’re from. Obviously, a lot of places have stereotypes of their own, some good, some bad. Are those stereotypes necessary? They do exist, that’s for sure. 

Alon Yoaz

SMKB

Who am I?

I always ask myself

And whatever I do.

Countless of flashbacks races before my eyes

Telling me that I am this and I am that

Making me feel uncomfortable on my own skin

Confusing me

“Who are you?”

I ask again

But I don’t really know

“Who are you?”

For the third time I ask myself

And I remember how I used to be

Acting differently between people I meet

And for the last time

“Who are you?” I ask

Still flashbacks,

The memories of me being innocent

Memories of me being a monster

And I ask myself again

“Who am I?”

Dounia Helew

Sakhnin Collage