One of My People

I received a few Christmas cards this year addressed to my maiden name. My friend Dave mentions my last name every time we talk. "Well, Mssss. Beeeeeen-Aaaaaammmmi" he drags it out whenever he calls. "Still a Ben-Ami, huh? Hmm." I didn't change my name when I got divorced. Going back to my father's name didn't appeal to me at all. Been there, done that. I was so against doing it, I thought of taking a made up name for myself. I played around with Linsey Leigh, which is actually the way my ex-in-laws turned my name Yiddish- Linseyle. But no one had to know that. It would be a nice, boring, name that would fit a blond. In the end, making up a name for myself seemed too artificial, and then, I stopped caring much about my name.

Originally, I didn't want to change from a maiden name to a married name. But when I moved to a new city and had to get a new driver's license, bank account, and everything else, I went for the switch. "It's instead of converting," I joked, "It is the fastest way I could become 'one of the people'." My last name means, 'one of my people'. It was a name that was chosen by my ex's grandfather when he came over to Israel from Slovakia with nothing. He was the only member of his immediate family to make it out of Europe. Everyone else was killed in the camps. When he came to Israel, he chose a new, more appropriate name for himself. This man was devastated when his grandchild chose a non-Jewish wife, but slowly came around when he saw that I was becoming one of the people, in more ways than one.

Lately though, I have felt less like one of the people than I have in a long time, due to the fighting in Gaza. Not because I think, "I don't want to be associated with that mess!" But because this is the first time since I began to care about Israel that I sleep through the night, in spite of the violence. I wake up in the morning and it isn't the first thought in my mind. I listen to the news, of course, avidly, hungrily, wanting to hear more, but cringing at what I am hearing. I started crying listening to the story of the doctors waiting at the Eqypt/Gaza border, unable to get through, but begging for the opportunity to help. I am grateful that people like this exist. That these men and women left their families and rode in dusty caravans to beg for the opportunity to be let into a war zone. I am not one of these people.

In fact, what I have become is someone safely ensconced in a very cushy life. "We are the lucky ones," I remind Vin. I recognize that. And I recognize my tendency to want to pull my head inside my shell, away from the economic tumult around me, away from the violence that has exploded in Gaza, the ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and here, on this side of the ocean. My new year's resolution for this year is to fight that tendency and to find a way that I can contribute something above and beyond what I do right now, in a way that will help me remember that I am not just "one of my people", but one of many, many peoples- no matter my last name.

I started with Amnesty International. In less than a minute, you can send a letter to Secretary Rice to call on Israeli authorities and Hamas to immediately cease all unlawful attacks and help reverse the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza by exerting pressure on Israel to open the crossings to allow adequate quantities of humanitarian aid -- including food, water, medicine and fuel into Gaza.http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=11553