A different kind of upbringing

02:42 Hi, my name is Nguzi Okiki. Today I'll be interviewing Tamara Shadour. I'm currently in Amherst, Massachusetts, and today is April 9.

02:52 Hello. And I'm Tamar Shah dur. I live in Florence, Massachusetts, the other side of the river from Amherst. And I'm happy to be talking to Ngozi and sharing our experiences. Yep.

03:09 So how this worked was Gloria DiFulvio matched us with our partners, like, randomly. So when we first matched, we didn't really know if we were going to have things in common. But Tamara said a really interesting thing. She said, I noticed that we both have unconventional names, and that just opened up a whole new door of conversations, things that we did have in common that we didn't even realize, things we went through that we had in common, that just from that one comment, we just realized we actually do have a lot of common. So I thought that was, like, amazing. And Tamar, if you would like to speak more about that.

03:46 Okay. So the things we have in common, I would say, is that we do have unconventional or non western sounding names, Ngozi and Tamar and I. And the common part of this is that we come from different cultures, basically from non western cultures, we can say, even though in my case, it's not 100% pure, because my ancestors did come from eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, and in Nagozi's case, from Nigeria. So our names are names given by our parents to continue certain traditions, perhaps, of names that have to do with what was important for our parents. So in my case, the name Tamar is fairly common in Israel, where I grew up. And it means the fruit of the palm tree, the date palm. So it means date, d a t e in English. Well, Hebrew, Tamar. And Tamar tree refers to the date palm tree. Why did my parents name me that? Because they came to settle in the kibbutz in the desert, in the northern desert in Israel, where I was born and grew up just for the first six years of my life. And they loved the desert, my parents, the landscape, the vegetation. And the palm tree was one of the typical trees growing in parts of the israeli desert. So that was the name given to me. It's also a biblical. It has its origins in the Bible. Tamar was the daughter of King David and a book of kings in the Old Testament. And there's another Tamar that appears earlier on. So we could say that what we have, what nagozi and I have in common is a connection to a very rich, different kind of heritage and culture than from other european ones, perhaps. Anyway, there's a lot to be said about that. You know, I don't know if I can say for sure that because of my name, I had experienced antisemitism. We moved a lot when I was a child. So from the kibbutz, which was where I was brought up in a communal way, and even slept in the children's house and was surrounded by a group of 13 other children and caregivers. That was our home in this small community in Israel under pretty challenging circumstances of times of war. And even we had to spend some time in a bomb shelter in 1956 in the Sinai campaign, which is a brief war between Israel and Egypt across the border. But then we moved, and we lived in Jerusalem for one year, where I experienced life in a big city with a diverse, diverse people. Mostly Jews, of course, but from different countries. They were refugees and immigrants from Europe after the Holocaust and or from northern Africa, from or from other parts of the Middle east, from eastern cultures. And I had experienced some form of discrimination based on the fact that I befriended a girl from Iraq from a family that were refugees from Iraq. This was in the late fifties, 1950s, and the girls in my neighborhood across the street were mostly from eastern european families. So it was a matter of racial tension between the white skinned kids and the brown skinned skinned kids. So that was, ironically, that happened in Israel itself, among Jews. And then we moved to England, to London. So here I was exposed to a whole new culture and language and Christianity, which I learned a lot about in school and around me. And I don't remember really. I was warned by my parents that I may be discriminated against being jewish and probably the only one in school or one of the very few. But I actually had a very nice social life there. I learned to adapt very well. And then there were more changes in my life, in my childhood. And I always adapted socially. And I had friends and they liked me, and that wasn't so much of an issue. Later on in life, I was happy to have a non jewish last name. When I was married to a non jew, to an American with the last name. That made me feel that, oh, good. When I go to the bank in the small New Hampshire town, I don't have to worry about being looked at funny because of a strange last name. Our first name I can say a lot, but I will stop here for now. Regarding that, the issue of discrimination, racism, all that. Yeah, okay, go ahead, nagozi.

09:52 Okay, so I'm gonna ask my second question. So I'm going to ask my second question, and it's tell me about a special place, like, in your life.

10:06 Right. Okay. So this also has to do with the sort of unique upbringing that I had. So I will choose to zoom into a place in Jerusalem. It is a 19th century building that was a hospital built for french pilgrims in the Holy Land in the 19th century, where Europeans were coming to explore and visit, well to do european Christians were coming to explore and get to know the Middle east, and they would come to. And Jerusalem was always a favored destination based on its importance for Christians, Muslims, Jews and its interesting history. So this hospital is still today, it still acts as a hospital. And the reason I chose it is because my mother was a patient there while I was a very young girl, maybe four or five years old. My mother, when we were still living in the kibbutz that I mentioned, my mother had cancer. She was a young woman in her late twenties, and she had to be away from the kibbutz for a long time, receiving treatment in Jerusalem. This hospital is also a hospice for people who are eventually going to pass away from cancer. And it's also run by nuns because it's adjacent to a big monastery, a church. A french catholic church. Yeah. And so she was there and treated by nuns. And the building in the interior was very ominous in a way, for a little girl because there were high ceilings, a stone building with high archways and high ceilings with frescoes of emblems. And in the stairwell, there was a big hovering statue of. I think it was St. Michael of St. Gabriel. St. Michael. And so as a little girl coming to visit my mother there, I would walk up the stairs, see this humongous statue hovering over, looking at us as we come up the stairs. And then I would find my mother's bedroom and see her in the bed there. And then I would explore the building, run around the building. And another unusual and fascinating thing about this building is it sat right on the border between Jordan and Israel, because the border went right through the middle of Jerusalem. So we have east Jerusalem and west Jerusalem. And that was the point at which east and west were divided. And back then there was even a wall, kind of like the Berlin Wall. Smaller, perhaps, but so Israelis at the time, after the war of independence and the state of Israel was founded, were, could not go across to the. To East Jerusalem because that was an enemy's hands. Today it's different. But so the building, part of it were this. It was built before that separation. So part of it was in Jordan and part of it was in Israel. And here we and the nuns were neutral members of society. And they were there to. To heal the sick, to attend to sick people. So I remember standing on a porch looking over into East Jerusalem and feeling nervous because there may have been even some soldiers, because there were always soldiers guarding the borders. So I remember feeling kind of a little scared. But this fear of the enemy next door. I grew up with that fear in the kibbutz because we were right by the border with Egypt. The fields of au kibbutz, which is like a communal village, abutted the border. And there were egyptian soldiers pointing guns at the israeli farmers who would plow the fields. And Israelis had watchtowers to guard the place, too. And members of the kibbutz, including my parents, would take turns in rotation, guarding at night, walking around with rifles and sitting in the watchtower, and even joining my parents up on the watchtower one or two evenings. Anyway. So there was always that aura of this fear. And the searchlights at night were very scary to me because they would shine into the bedroom where we slept, a few of us in a room. So, anyway, back to the hospital. That was a real ominous kind of experience. Now, another reason I chose this place is because, fortunately, my mother recovered, which wasn't expected at the time. But years later, in about 2004, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, another cancer that the doctor said was probably a result of the cobalt radiation that she received in her youth when she was being treated for cancer. She had kidney cancer back when she was young, and her kidneys were. One kidney was removed, and she was getting radiation treatment because it was extremely toxic, they think, that had affected her blood. And multiple myeloma affects the blood in the bone marrow. So she, after quite a few years of being sick, and then later on in her life, from mid to early eighties, she had to be in hospitals and nursing homes. And she had other problems, too, of anxiety and depression. And I was her main caregiver once my father passed away, about a year and a half into her illness. So I would commute back and forth from here. I was living in Amherstede at the time, to Israel. And sometimes two or three times a year, I had to spend a few months each time to care for her. And finally, I just spent the last year there, and she was nearing the end of her life. And the last three months she spent in the same hospital. It was one of the two hospices in Jerusalem. And I was very happy that there was room for her to go back there. It was in a convenient central location that I can walk to from the apartment I was staying at. And the care there was very wonderful, humane. They had volunteers from young people, volunteers from european countries, coming to serve and care for patients in this hospice. They had built a newer wing, so it was a little different than in the old days, but it was still a fairly small hospital, very intimate. And the man who took care of former monk from Italy, who became an israeli citizen after living there for many years, was her main caregiver. And he was wonderful, very gentle and with a sense of humorous. And I made connections there with other caregivers and patients, and it became like a second home to me. And this is after going to nursing homes and hanging out there. And that became my second home because I'd spent so much time there when my mother was there. So I have a very fond memory of this place. Not only that, later I discovered that the filmmaker, a young filmmaker, made a film about this place. And what drew him to make this film called the island, was the fact that it was one building in the center of Jerusalem where Christians, Arabs, Palestinians and Jews were patients. The caregivers were all from all these different cultures and religions and backgrounds, and they all worked together. So the doctors, the nurses, the social worker and the staff and the patients, they were all mixed from all these. And it was just a safe haven where people were respectful of each other and cared about each other. And in the midst of all these political tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, you had this, and you still have this one amazing historic building that still functions as a hospice, where the care is just wonderful. And I just have to mention that at Christmas time and Hanukkah, the jewish festival of light time, which is around the same time as Christmas in December, they had these amazing parties there. And I'll never forget how they brought in a rabbi musician with two other musicians. They brought a keyboard. And we had also a wonderful Christmas party with the volunteers singing carols and, you know, an enactment of the Jesus story. And at some point, they were dancing to Kleesmer music, and the nuns were dancing with a rabbi. And where else would you see something like that in this one amazing place in Jerusalem? So if any of you have a chance to see the film the island, and I'm sorry, I can't quite remember the name of the director, but if you put it, if you google the island film, it will come up. And it just so happens that this director was doing around showing his film a few years back, I think about five years ago, four or five years ago, going to film festivals all over the country. And I discovered that his relatives lived in Hartford and he was staying with them. So I managed to bring him over to do a presentation and show the film at the jewish community of Amherst. Wow. So that was a wonderful thing that we could do. And other people in the community became familiar with this great building, and I see this wonderful film. So my mother died there, and I just managed, I had just returned back to the US after wondering whether I should leave her, knowing that the end was near, but they encouraged me to go back. I already had deferred the plane ticket a few times, and then a week later, I get a call to come back and I flew back home a week later back to Israel, and I managed to see my mother the last night of her life, and the following morning she passed away. And I was glad that at least she was in a good place rather than in a hospital or in a nursing home or. Yeah. And so that's the place.

22:18 When you first told me the story, I just thought it was just, just a really cool experience, how she was there when in your younger life and then in your older life, they still accepted her back into that same hospice. And it's just like, it just kind of shows you, like, the circle of life. Like, who would have thought that she'd be able to go back there years later?

22:37 Exactly. Yes. That. That is what's so fascinating.

22:41 Yeah.

22:42 It's almost like a magical. Maybe the saints were in her favor, honestly, because even cool connections to, to the fact that that became maybe the place where her life was saved when she was younger.

22:56 That's exactly what I was going to say. Because they thought she wasn't going to survive when she was younger. And not only did she survive, but she lived many more years.

23:04 That's correct. And I was glad that that's where this very humane and wonderful care was given to her. And I managed all the care, so I got to know the doctors and everybody, all the whole staff, and I made friends with the art therapy teacher, who was a wonderful person. And. Yeah, and of course, it was also my home. Jerusalem was where I lived for many years, for about five years before I came to the US in 1980. So from mid seventies to 1980, that was my home. So it was good to kind of connect with my roots and I can write books about what I experienced. But that's for another discussion.

23:52 Yeah, yeah, I think. Sorry, my voice is a little raspy. I think this is probably one of my favorite stories that you told me when in the beginning, and we were just sharing just different stories. From our life. So this is why we included it.

24:05 Good. And I didn't even practice, you know, it just came out.

24:08 Yeah.

24:10 Nervous. Will I be able to say what I really want? It's just.

24:13 Just being natural with it. Okay, so our next question. This question is one of my favorite question because I just. I'm going to ask it, but the next question is, what is your favorite childhood memory?

24:30 All right. And here is where food comes in, right?

24:33 Yes.

24:36 I think memories of food stay with us because of the smells that we remember and the tastes. Those are the kind of where our senses come in and we don't forget. Certain. Thanks. Okay, so, again, it relates to life in the kibbutz.

24:51 Before you continue on, do you want to just explain a kibbutz for people who don't know what that is?

24:57 Okay, so a kibbutz, I think older Americans may know, because it was a pretty amazing concept when people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties were young. It's a communal village in a way, where. Where people have a common goal of having a life. In some cases, there were children houses where the children did not sleep with their parents at night. They actually slept in the children's house. Now, it was a pretty kind of radical way of raising children, which some people objected to. And then a lot of studies have been made and books written about how this kind of upbringing for children affects them. And I can speak about that on how, you know, how I developed from that and how it affected me and my family and other people I know, and how it affected parents who couldn't really, you know, raise their children. They would see, we would visit our parents after the workday. Our parents worked in different fields and branches that needed work there. And then we would see them in the afternoons, and they'd bring us back to the children's house for supper. Sometimes we'd eat in the main dining hall with the adults. The children would eat with their parents. So there were times we'd spend more time with our parents, but at night we didn't sleep with them. And I could not imagine allowing that to happen in my, you know, when I was raising my son. And there are some interesting films about that, too. The document this, how it affected salaries. It all went to the communal bank, the communal budget. Eventually, kibbutz actually became very wealthy, and they had very successful industries, and their members were given amazing privileges and opportunities to travel, to be very well educated and develop themselves. So there are a lot of really fine, educated people, artists, musicians, that came out of kibbutz in Israel. Because they had these opportunities. Today, I think it's very rare to find children houses where parents don't have control over raising their own kids and having them at night with them. And people have their own little houses and apartments. Back in the old days, it was just a room with, shared bathroom with a neighbor when I was growing up. So it's changed a lot today. But they still have kibbutzes all over Israel, and, and they have contributed to a lot of success of the economic base, agricultural base of the country. Does that answer the question? Yeah, please don't. Yeah.

28:13 So do you want to talk about, what is your favorite childhood memory?

28:20 Oh, and I forgot to talk about that. Okay. So we were, because we were in this country during hard times. And even my, I had grandparents in the US, my father's parents. Well, all my grandparents were in the US, so I also didn't grow up with close family members because my parents left. They immigrated to Israel as pioneers to live on a kibbutz. So all their parents and siblings and cousins and all remained in the US. Even my father was a refugee from Nazi Europe. He did not grow up in the US until he was, he arrived there only when he was twelve. But that's another story which he wrote a book about. But so my grandparents would send us packages and one of the things which included wonderful toys for us, like I would get wonderful dolls from America, which all the other kids in my group in the kibbutz were very envious. And I became popular and everybody wanted to be my friend and play with my dolls. And of course, we had to bring out whatever possessions we had, we had to share. It was part of the culture of the kibbutz, as you share whatever you have. So my dolls were at the children's house and other children played with them. But I was kind of the, you know, the one who generated this fascination with dolls like they didn't have in Israel back then, with eyes that opened and closed and long auburn hair and wonderful clothes and teddy bears and other wonderful things that came in the packages. And another thing is my grandmother would bake chocolate chip cookies, tall house cookies, and in order to ship them over far away to Israel, from halfway across the world, she'd pack them in tin cans with crystallized ginger, airtight. And it took about two months for the shipment to arrive because they would ship it via ship rather than airplane, because it was way too expensive. By the time we got those chocolate chip cookies, we opened the package and there was this wonderful aroma of chocolate mixed with baked cookie, chocolate and ginger. And to me, that was like, the best aroma I remember from my childhood. And the taste of those cookies was just out of this world. And we were allowed, when we came to visit my parents in the afternoon, we each allowed one, maybe two of these cookies for, you know, for the afternoon snack. And that was a very special thing for me. So that is what I read, a very special food memory from my childhood. And we kept getting these packages even when we left the kibbutz. Lived in Jerusalem for a year. And we call them, I call them grandma's cookies. That's what I. They were named grandma's cookies in Hebrew.

31:27 I think. I think when people think about childhood memories, I think a lot stems for food, because, like you said, food just unlocks a lot of memories in your brain that you didn't know you had.

31:38 That's right.

31:40 And my last question for you is. Sorry, I'm just gonna repeat that. And my last question for you is, how would you like to be remembered?

31:55 Oh, wow. So that. That's a very big question, because it's like writing your own obituary, which I think is important to think about and even do, especially in a case like mine, where I've had so many changes in my life. And. And I have a son, a grown up son with three children. And I know that they know very little about me because they grew up in the US and they don't know much about what it's like growing up in Israel, and they haven't. So we have had very different childhood experiences. And their first language is English. My first language is Hebrew. And I became bilingual when I lived in London in the early sixties. And later I came to New York as a teenager, and I graduated american high school and then went to college for a year as an art major and then went back to Israel. So, anyway, my life history is another story, but I can tie it into how I want to be remembered. And that is, I think that I had developed a very strong sense of how to adapt to new situations. And the first one being from kibbutz life that I described a little bit, to moving to the city and going to a large school with kids from all different backgrounds, and then moving to England a year later and learning English and living in a whole different climate zone and culture and learning about english history and Christianity. And it was, I'll never forget the first experience of Christmas on Oxford street in London. My mother took us out on Christmas Eve to experience the beautiful decorations and lights and displays and windows and enactments and films and then I. And then coming back to Israel and kind of relearning Hebrew because I had almost forgotten Hebrew when I was ten, coming back to Israel and then on and on, more and more adaptations by changing countries and schools and languages. So I really learned to adapt. And fortunately, I. Socially, I don't think I really lacked social connections because people liked me and I made friends. And there was some, you know, there was also somebody with some. For example, in England, there was a few israeli kids that I knew. So we had these things in common, and then, and appreciating the new things that I could learn and how it enriched me, but it also made me kind of an outsider. Each time I came to a new place, I was an outsider. I was different than others. Even coming back to Israel, I had missed three years of pretty important childhood years in Israel. So I kind of missed a bunch of stuff like learning how to dance, folk dancing, israeli folk dancing. I picked a few of those later, but being part of the youth movement and that kind of thing. And so today, looking back, I really appreciate this ability to adapt and the wealth of experiences it gave me from all the changes and the experiences I had. I want to be remembered, I think, for somebody who has not been afraid to take risks because, you know, having such a kind of changeable lifestyle from very early age, I, you know, it gave me some. I was a little insecure at times, you know, because I was always in new situations, and I did. And. But I learned to. To just sort of wade through the insecurities and the unknowns. And later on in life, I fought depression and kind of not knowing where I was going, coming to a sort of crossroad of not knowing when I became a young adult. How will I support myself? When I was growing up in the fifties and early sixties, I thought, oh, no problem. I'll just get married and I don't have to worry about anything. But reality kicks in when you're in your early twenties and you realize that, no, you have to have a profession, you have to support yourself. And today it's very different, perhaps for young people, because young people today are raised to know that they have to be independent. Right? Is that true? And everybody works towards a goal of a career, even from high school already. But something saved me from really kind of going under in a worse, you know, really becoming kind of discouraged about a lot of things is tapestry weaving. I dropped out of art school. I was an art major, and I became a tapestry weaver in the late seventies in Jerusalem. And I there was a studio. And for two years, I worked there, learning this complex skill of weaving very fine tapestries, large mural size pieces with a partner, weaving partner next to me by the side of me, all handmade. And it's a whole culture that opened up a door to a whole art aesthetic and field of art that wasn't very much known. At least I had a profession. I earned money doing this full time in the studio in Jerusalem. And those days are kind of over. Today they don't support these kind of industries so much anymore. But when I came to the US later, it became my main career for a while with my ex husband, my son's father, who I met at the weaving studio in Jerusalem. And we. We produced tapestries, and we became basically tapestry artists. And I also collaborated with my mother, who was an artist and developed, became renowned as a reviver of an old tradition of jewish paper cuts. And that's a whole discussion, and I do have talks about that alone. So we wove tapestries that my mother designed, that we designed. And then that became my sort of stronghold for being grounded and having something to do if all else fails. But it didn't really support me financially, so I had to gain a career and support myself. So I went. I finished a two degrees, one in art education and one in a master's in the school of education at UMass. And I became an ESL teacher, mostly with adults, occasionally with children, high school kids. And I was a hebrew teacher on and off in different places, and gave art workshops, paper cutting, and tapestry weaving. So I developed a career as a teacher, and I worked at Holyoke Community College and at UMass and the ESL program and at other local community colleges. And now that I'm not doing that so much, I had to interrupt all that, by the way, to go to take care of my mother. For seven years, I was going back and forth to Israel, and that interrupted my career as an ongoing teacher in certain institutions. So when I came back and moved to Florence after my mother passed away, I focused most of my energy on tapestry weaving and giving workshops and doing these kind of things, and also working on the side as a consultant in the field of ESL and anything I can do. I also got involved as a volunteer with a Yemenite, the jewish community of Amherst, and local food pantries like in Amherst, not bread alone. So I've become. I'd like to be known as one who contributed to my community, both in educational ways and as a volunteer. And now, lately, I have more opportunities to exhibit my work and my mother's work and give talks about it. And in fact, right now, this month and in May, there's a show in Michelson gallery, Northampton, called generations. And my work is. My tapestry work is alongside my mother's paper cuts. One of them is the very large, the largest and most complex mural tapestry that I have woven, that my mother designed, called Yizkor Holocaust Memorial Tapestry. Yizkor means remembrance. It's the prayer said over the dead and over the victims of the Holocaust. And I urge people to go to see the show generations. And I'm in good company with many other very fine artists in that show. And my website. On my website, there's also a description of. Of what this tapestry is about and the other tapestries too. But this one is the major work that took many years for me to complete, with all the interruptions in my life. And it's sort of a memorial piece that symbolizes the life of Jews in Europe before the destruction by the Nazis, with a lot of jewish symbols that my mother incorporated in her paper cuts. And it includes my personal memorials of my own family members, including my brother, who passed away early on when he was only 38, and my two parents. And there's a homage to 911 by the letters WTC World Trade center on the top border. It's all part of the memorial tapestry and events that happened over the many years that this tapestry was on the loom that enabled me to commemorate my personal memorials beyond the memorial for life of Jews in Europe, which was my mother's intention in the design. I know it's a mouthful, but those are sort of main anecdotes in my life. I think that if I were, this is by no means an obituary text for an obituary, but if I write all this down, hopefully some of this will be included. Yeah. And who knows what else awaits me.

44:04 Yeah. I believe you still have many, many, many more years.

44:09 Thank you very much. Yeah. Public health issue. Right. That's part of what you're learning in your course, that it generates all kinds of problems and diseases, and many of us, one stage or another, suffer from that, perhaps. And it's important to get people together and also bridging generation gaps is very important. And this is a wonderful opportunity for both of us to learn from each other. Yep. And I think it just opened the door. We just touched on the surface of so much that we can share, keep talking about and learn from each other about. So I'm very grateful for meeting you and this opportunity.

01:11:04 I'm extremely grateful too, and I want to thank Gloria DiFulvio for just making this whole thing happen.

01:11:11 Same here. Thank you, Gloria DiFulvio

01:11:16 And I think this is the end of our interview.