מאגר סיפורי מורשת

My name is Rhisa Anne Erlich Teman but I usually go by Rhisa Teman. I was born and raised in Portland Oregon on December 18th 1946 which makes me 77 years old. my parents were Ruth AKA Rachel Napalm Erlich and my dad was Robert Erlich she was from Portland he was from New York and they met because he was a sailor in the Navy and came to Seattle and met her there. I have two sisters, my sister Marcy who lives now in Switzerland was born in 1950 and we were very very close. my other sister Barbara was born in 1953 we're not that close. my grandparents were Manuel and Tilly napalm both of whom were from Galicia he was from what is now Belarus and came to America in 1917 to run away from the army because it was the revolution, and my grandmother was born in the northern part of what is now Ukraine and she came to America in 1913 and she was 13 years old and they were the centers of my life.

Rhisa Teman – סבתא לריסה

I was born in Portland Oregon to a mother, a father and many other relatives. I grew up with one cousin who was my best friend, her name was Joanny, and we did everything together and that was really fun. When I was almost four my sister Marcy was born and that was the glory of my life, because I loved her very much. Even when she got to be a little older and I went to school I had to take her to my classes because my mother was playing golf. From first grade until eighth grade I had lots of friends. I wasn't a very good girl in school, I was a bit of a rebel because I would read everything before we were supposed to, so when it got time for quiet reading I was finished and I didn’t have anything to do so I made cartoons.

I had a friend named Jack and another friend named Anne and they also were board, so they made cartoons with me, and we laughed and laughed and ended up sitting in the hallway. Then as I got older and the teachers and everybody found out I could draw they had me decorate the halls so I had a kind of a strange education to tell you the truth. but it was fun going to school and I kept those friends even to this day. I had two lives one friends from all over Portland who were Jewish which I met on the weekends and the other ones who weren’t Jewish. But that was OK because I kept up both lives and eventually I joined them, because I introduced some of my school friends to my Jewish friends. Every summer I went to the camp with my Jewish friends and so I brought also my school friends with me and that was good too. Navy camp was the highlight of our year because we all went there, sometimes for three weeks sometimes for six weeks it just depended. I eventually became a junior counselor and then a senior counselor. We used to have such good times, there was a place called the boat house, which had like a dock around it and we used to sneak there at night and go swimming naked it was all girls. In the mean time my mother had another baby and we got to name her and we named her Barbara, and that was the beginning of all the trouble because she was a very difficult child to this day. but she didn't get to go to school with me because she didn't behave very well.

Jewish kids didn't have a Jewish school so we went to Sunday school which was where you went and you learned Jewish things. Sunday was also my mother's favorite golfing day so I had to take Barbie with me to my classes before she started. One day she was very angry and she bit someone named Lydia brown and that was the end of taking her to school with me. Every summer we went to the beach, the Oregon shore is very beautiful and in those days it didn't have so many people so it was pretty wild, it had some dunes and it was really fun. We met other kids and we had cookouts where we would make a bonfire on the beach and make hot dogs and s’mores which are cracker with chocolate with toasted marshmallows. My mother loved the beach so that's why we went there and eventually after I finished high school she and my father bought a house at a different beach so we used to go there all the time.

I finished school and I moved on to high school. In high school I studied art and I studied French and I went to math classes, I wasn't very good so I can't say I studied. That was the first time I ever ran into antisemitism because the math teacher would not give anybody Jewish, especially not girls, more than an 80. She said it's not worth it you can't do it anyway, so I found out after all that I really did like math but they did their best to discourage me.

High school was a big challenge because it was also pretty boring and I also read all the books and they also found out that I could decorate halls, so I spent a lot of time out of the classroom painting pictures and things for the hallway. In school you were supposed to wear long skirts under your knee and high socks and closed shoes, but I was kind of a rebel so of course the minute I left my house I rolled up my skirt over my knee, took off my socks and went to school. When my mother found out she was not happy. In those days they there was a big problem because you couldn't wear jeans to school or pants at all, you had to wear skirts and you couldn't wear pattern leather shoes because they said it reflected your underpants. I had one more story with anti-Semitism when we found out that the school vice principal hated Jews, all of a sudden my cousin and I and the other people found out we never got to go to the Honor Society or we never got any awards scholarships or anything, and I don't know how they found out but they found out that this woman hated Jews and she would never let the Jewish kids get ahead in anything. And another rebel story of me – I always worked on all the shows for the school and this last show the last year they decided to do a show about communism. So I had a Big Bear skin coat and high red boots and I was supposed to be a communist  with other two kids. We made fun of everything in the school especially the very most honorable thing was the Rose festival and each school had to send a princess, and then a queen was chosen and we pretended our princess was pregnant and she swung into the stage on a rope. So they called our parents in after the show and they said they are not gonna graduate they did bad things they made fun of the school they made fun of everything. Our parents said no no you can't do that they have to graduate going to high school, their careers will be ruined. And the principle said well they should have thought of that before and that's how I finished being 18.

I went to college in UCLA and I became an English teacher and then I went to university in New York and I studied multicultural counseling. I got a masters and I began to work as a multicultural counselor and an art teacher. I met my husband Nissan while I was in New York and we got married and we had Ellie Shalev’s aunt. We moved back to Portland because my grandmother was very sad that I wasn't there and she said she wants her grandbaby close, so we lived there and after two years we had Shalev’s dad Adi, and we also acquired another kid who was a refugee from Iran. Anyway, so we also acquired a new house, and after a while I got another masters, and the kids went to school. But when I was younger, I came to Israel and learned all about Israel and Zionism and I wanted to come back.  I wanted to take my grandmother with me but she said no. So we packed up everything we got a container and we came to Israel. We moved to a place called Hod Hasharon where I taught school in Kfar Saba because they wanted English teachers who spoke English. Nissan got a job as an investigator in the Ramat Gan police and we went up to Pardes Hanna because my friend offered me a job there. and the program for English speaking students came for a year we bought a house and Ellie and Adi grew up in that house, friends came friends when they did all kinds of things Ellie went to the army and then she went traveling and then she went to university and met her husband Avi. Adi who had zillions of friends had a wonderful time, he went to the navy and was an officer, so he was a big shot but he never acted like a big shot. Anyway when he finished he went to university in Beer Sheva and met Shalev’s mother so they got married and after a while Shalev was expected. I had to go to Portland to stay with my dad who was dying and to stay for a month. All of a sudden, I got a call from Adi that Hadas went to the hospital the baby is do now! So I was very upset but I sat with him on the phone the whole time and I hurried up to finish my month, and I got back and there was Shalev and she was beautiful she was teensy. I'll tell this story, they went out one night leaving me to take care of her, they said she'll be fine they closed the door and she cried and cried, so I called them back they said she'll be fine. So I picked her out of the bed held her close to me and said I'm gonna be your best friend so you better not cry anymore, and she tucked up and went to sleep and since then I'm her best friend besides her mom and dad. Anyway, so Ellie had three kids one was born in Israel in Jerusalem one in America and the third one was born back in Israel. I did a lot of things I would take care of the kids each one as often as I could, and my husband would go also but then he got sick, and he died from cancer. So then I had to take care of my house by myself but I was still very busy with my grandchildren because that's my favorite thing to do.

I wanna talk about what it means to me to live here in Israel. When I was 15 years old I read a book called Exodus by Leon Uris and until then I didn't know anything about Jewish history or anything. I read about how Israel became and I wanted so much to live in Israel so I got accepted to a program. When I went to say goodbye to my grandfather I said I'm gonna go to Israel but after I'm gonna go to Russia. And he said no no no you're not! It took me forever to get out of Russia but you can go to Israel because my brothers were kidnapped from a train by the Russian army and I never saw them again and they were on their way to what was then Palestine to help us stablish the state. So I got the blessing from my grandfather. Then when I came to Israel I was very surprised because first of all we lived in an apartment building with mostly Yemenite people. We learned all kinds of new customs and everything. I'd say my son would not ever eat anything except peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches. He made friends with one of the kids and with another kid that didn't live in the same building and he learned to eat everything he really thought that he should have been born a Yemenite. Anyway as I grew accustomed to Israel I thought this is a very strange place it's wonderful the history is amazing the country is beautiful the people are very different but there is a lot of prejudice here these certain groups of people don't like each other. Now I like everybody because until they do something bad to me or my family I just give them all the breaks. So when I learned about Moroccans I thought I think I'm part Moroccan I think I'm part of Yemenite I think I'm part Russian I think maybe even I'm part Ethiopian, because all the people had shared something with me that made me whole. To this day I fight very hard against when people say I don't them they're Moroccan or I don't like this one they're this, I fight very hard against that because each one of the people their culture has made Israel the beautiful place it is today.

הזוית האישית

שלו: היה לי מעניין לשמוע על החיים של סבתא שלי עם יותר פרטים. למרות שאני מבלה איתה הרבה, למדתי עליה דברים מרגשים ומפתיעים שלא ידעתי עליה קודם. היה לי קשה לעשות את החלק הטכני של העבודה למשל לשבת הרבה שעות על העבודה כדי לתקן את השפה לשפה כתובה. גם היה לי קשה להבין   הרבה מהמשימות והיה לי מבולבל, אבל אני אוהבת את הרעיון של לעודד ילדים להקשיב לסיפורים של הסבים שלהם. כי לדוגמא ילדה כמוני שמבלה הרבה עם סבתא שלה עדיין למדתי המון עלה ולא הייתי לומדת את הדברים האלה בדרך אחרת

 סבתא (ריסה): FROM THE VERY FIRST MOMENT I HELD SHALEV, WHO WAS BORN TWO MONTHS PREMATURELY AND WHO WAS AS LONG AS MY HAND, I FELL IN LOVE WITH HER. SHE WAS SO TINY, BUT SHE HAD A HEART FULL OF LOVE. SHE HAD SO MUCH COURAGE AND DETERMINATION TO LIVE AND GROW AND PROSPER. SHE ALREADY LOVED HER FAMILY, INCLUDING ME. SHALEV HAD A SERENITY LIKE HER NAME, SHE KNEW SHE WAS STRONG AND WOULD WIN HER BATTLE. SHE HAS GROWN AND STILL HAS DETERMINATION, COURAGE, SERENITY AND LOVE. SHE IS A WONDERFUL DAUGHTER, SISTER AND ESPECIALLY GRANDDAUGHTER. OUR SPECIAL BOND HAS ONLY BECOME STRONGER: WE TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING, WE LAUGH A LOT AND WE RESPECT EACH OTHER. I AM SO BLESSED TO BE PART OF THIS WONDERFUL FAMILY AND ESPECIALLY TO BE THE GRANDMOTHER TO SHALEV AND HER BROTHER ARBEL. THEY ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE AS ARE THEIR PARENTS.