Recording Rehavia

After my interview with Ronit, we jumped into the car and got a ride to Noemi Guttfreund Segev's home in Rehavia (a centrally located neighborhood in Jerusalem). Noemi agreed to meet us in between appointments; she is a psychotherapist in private practice. Despite having just arrived from her office, Noemi maintained her classic presence. Tall and slender with bright expressive eyes and auburn hair, she radiates a deep sense of calm.

My first glimpse of Noemi was in my own home in Houston. The family hallway (my favorite part of the house) is filled with pictures of our entire family with everyone from great-great grandparents in Germany to my Opa's bachelor days in Salvador to weddings and graduations to the newest Alpert/Reich addition: the first grandchild. In my mother's bridal portrait, she is surrounded by a group of lovely young women. I was bewildered on a daily basis by one bridesmaid whose long red hair and soft, light-skinned face I had never yet met in person.

"She doesn't look like she is from Salvador." I would say outloud.

"Well, she is." my mother would reply.

This exchange entered my mind when I was setting up the interview. I was finally going to meet the face that I knew so well from the picture.

Noemi is the daughter of Heinz (Quique) and Gerda (Gush) Guttfreund. The Guttfreunds have five children: Andre, Noemi, Miriam (Mia), Ruth (Cuchi) and Daniel (Dani). It is my hope to interview all of them by the end of this year so keep your fingers crossed. Noemi and Gush live in Jerusalem (Quique, a very distinguished member of the Salvadoran community and former Ambassador to Israel from El Salvador passed away some years ago), Miriam and Andre in Los Angeles, Cuchi and Dani in San Salvador. They are pretty evenly spread across the globe.....

Noemi remembers Salvador fondly. She smiled as she told me about some of her favorite memories...

Noemi, while still in elementary school, began teaching some younger, indigent children how to read and slowly word got around that "la Senorita Noemi" was providing this valuable service at no cost. Eventually she had quite a group of students and arriving home from work one day, her father saw it for himself. Quite impressed by her dedication he said that if she was truly serious he would get her books and desks for the next day. In less than a few days, she had a classroom full of kids, books, and teaching assistants (friends from around the neighborhood). Slowly, this classroom developed into a true organizational effort and Noemi was busy beyond words.

"I always knew I was different," she says. "I think this teaching experience is how I resolved some of the difficulties of living with more than enough in a place where most people had so little."

Her very first memories are of the ocean, playing in the waves and imagining herself as a fairytale-like character. Later on she remembers interesting artists, travelers, wanderers invited over for dinner....her parents maintained a sort of "salon" atmosphere in their home. Noemi also mentions her two younger siblings. "When my parents had Cuchi and Dani it felt like a gift for the rest of us. We used to run home to try to hold each of them first."

Skipping forward I ask about her adolescence. "I believe that my high school experience in the States changed my life." Noemi explains how her creativity was encouraged with discussion and dissent becoming an integral part of the classroom. "The American School did not have the same sort of educational mentality at that time."

"College was the most difficult transition ever." Ending up in the midwest at a small liberal arts college would probably shock any foreigner....but for Noemi it was more than a shock.....it made her think about finding a more permanent place in which to develop and perhaps one day call home.

What I find most compelling about Noemi is the incredible insight with which she remembers the most important and the most difficult periods of her life.

"I never felt like I had a language. Yes I spoke Spanish but I heard German at home. I learned English at school and now I also have Hebrew. I never made an effort to develop an Israeli accent. I am from Latin America and I have a Latin American accent. I wanted people to know that I was not born in Israel. There are more layers to me even if they are not immediately visible."

Again, the language theme appears. I asked her how she communicates with her children? In which language?

"Hebrew. Always Hebrew."

Never Spanish? English? (both daughter Natalie and son Itamar speak an excellent English).

"This is it," she says almost with an audible air of new understanding. "I wanted my children to have a language, their own language, a definitive homebase. I never felt that way and I truly wanted my children to have what I could not."

"So it is OK that they are Israeli through and through...no collage, no mixtures of identity?" I ask, obviously thinking outloud.

"Oh yes." Noemi smiles...finally leaning back on the sofa. "Oh yes."