Beutiful dreamer

The one who dreamed did not forget his dream

the one who fought remembers what for

the one who is gone will never return again

the one who promised will not leave his defense

"

The one who loved is expected to love  many times again

the one who is gone can never love again ever

"

-The one who dreamed- mi shechalam-an Israeli song

Who is Yair Lapid ?

For many  all over the world the name Yair Lapid is new , someone they have come to know as the newest rising star of  the Israeli elections but for me it is a name with history.

Who is Yair Lapid? you may ask..first ask where he comes from ? who is his father and mother, that is how you know who a person is, that is the way we used to "know" people in the little town i used to live in a long time ago..

Tommy Lapid was born in  Novi sad , nowadays Serbia in December 1931 as Tomishlav Lampel , a son of an Hungarian Jewish family

the same year as my mother was born in near by slovakia, both raised in

Hugarian Jewish homes , though my mother was born in Slovakia, they had

come to meet eventually in Israel..

Tommy Lapid's family had been deported for being Jewish to Budapest during

the war by the Nazis where the father of the family was murdered in a concentration camp however Tommy and his mother had survived the war and had arrived in isarel in 1948.

Tommy Lapid had served in the army then went on to law school and had married a writer , shulamit with whom he had three children, amongst them Yair.

Tommy lapid was a journalist who began his path at the Hungarian newspaper

"Oj kelet", a newspaper every self respecting Hungarian in Tel Aviv read..

my maternal  grandmother too..

After moving on to a large Israeli Hebrew speaking newspaper, "Maariv", Lapid went on to direct the Israeli Broadcasting service and finally began a career in Israeli politics founding a political party called "Shinui", "change" who acheived a great victory in the elections in the 90's , came out as the third largest party and sought to confront the ever growing power of the orthodox Jewish parties with a clear goal of establishing a secular party to represent the secular majority in Israel.

The political scene in Israel changed, the party went down, Tommy Lapid died in 2008, about a year before my mother died .

In 2008  my mother had suffered a stroke, she kept a secret from   me and so my mother died a year later in the spring of 2009 , no one of that time arrived to express their sorrow as no announcement had been made to the local newspaper

as i had nothing to do with the organizing no longer living in Tel Aviv i still wonder and miss what would the people who had known my mother from those days when everyone knew eachother in Tel Aviv and it was a small town where people shared a similar history, having been expelled from the country where they had been born and raised and then re planted in this new old land, what would they have said?

I had nothing to do with a lot of what went on in Israel and in the family since having left  Israel after the first gulf war but there is still an undeniable  connection that can not be severed , a connection built through years of history through deep roots that grew deeper and are now  i am unable to disconnect .

When i had heard late last night that Yair Lapid had received an unprecedented number of votes i felt a certain excitement in the air...for me personally it takes me back to the spirit of my forefathers in trying to establish a secular society where one can choose whether or not to practice religion and to which extent, where one is not defined by one's social label , it was a dream once upon a time when Jews left lands of dispute and turmoil where racism raged against them and used them as an excuse for the failed social agendas of the leaders , it is still a dream of a person living in a world that fails to recognize and honor and tolerate the difference choices people make and the lack of choice to be born black, white, yellow, brown, of a certain ethnic origin, country , religion, creed or gender to be able not to live as destiny what they did not choose or want to be their destiny.

Yes, this continues Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and it certainly has roots in the same sort of dreaming of being free and yet acknowledging that place where we were born, where we come from in order to have the strength and courage to face the place where we are going to eventually and are we not all going to the same place at the end, a place of great compassion and forgiveness and tolerance for all that we could have been might have been and should have been ?

One day, i dont remember exactly which, i was walking with my mother in the familiar urban landscape of my youth in Tel Aviv when we ran into Tommy Lapid , my mother said, hello Tommy so casually and i dont remember if he recognized her, after all he was a jouranlist but i think it was important for her to say hello and to recognize him as she had great respect for him and his accomplishments , i can understand that only now, years afterwards, what it is like to respect the work of a person you feel the need for.