B is for Bar-On and Beersheba

B is for Bar-On and Beersheba

Today I want to take the opportunity to introduce myself. My last name is Bar-On, as you might have already guessed. I was born in 1967 in the city of Beersheba, in the heart of Israel's Negev desert. We lived on a kibbutz, a utopian socialist agricultural settlement until we moved to Ashdod, an Israeli port town south of Tel-Aviv. It gets so hot in Beersheba in the summer that 45 degrees celsius is not unusual! And I was born on June 23, 1967, shortly after my father participated in the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. I can still remember his Che Guevara-like beard that was the cool fashion of the age!

I was born a Bar-On, but my family is Jewish Moroccan and Bar-On is not a Sephardic name (i.e., Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 that found homes largely in the Arab world). My mom was a Mrejen and there are rumours that they might be from Sarajevo. No wonder I get along with people from the Balkans, their zest for life so grand, bold, and explosive! I even played for a local soccer team in Toronto, a Bosnian side called FC Sarajevo. My dad was a Bitton, one of the most common Moroccan Jewish surnames. Perhaps as many as 1 in 10 Israelis have Jewish Moroccan origins. My dad's father, Samuel Bitton, was one of the leading rabbis of Tangiers, the port city made famous by the writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs.

Bitton is a village in England, but I am definitely not English. The name Bitton roughly means "life" or also "house of worship." I was told by my parents that the Hebrew equivalent was Bar-On. Now somehow I always suspected this story. When my parents came to Israel in the early 1960s, Israel was politically, culturally, and economically dominated by European-born Ashkenazi Jews. As my parents came from the Arab world, they were viewed as suspect, less civilized, and all those other nice assumptions that supposedly smart human beings make. A Bar-On sounds more Ashkenazi than a Bitton. So my theory is that my parents saved us the hassle by adopting a surname of the hegemonic Ashkenazi group. But Sephardic I remain, despite my name. And proud of it! Proud that I am swimming between worlds: Jewish, Arab, European. Proud that in my home I grew up with Hebrew, Arabic, French, Spanish, Ladino, and English. Bring on the cultures and you bring on a multiplicity of ways of seeing and being in this awesome universe!

Beersheba, the city of my birth, is known as the City of Seven Wells. It was a city that was known for being a home to Jews from Arab lands (Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen) and increasingly in the 1990s Ethiopian Jews. When the Partition Plan was proposed by the UN in 1947 (a kind of two-state solution that we often speak about in respect of the current Israel-Palestinian conflict), Beersheba was part of the future Arab state. It was an important strategic centre for the Egyptian army until it was conquered by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on October 21, 1948. It has been part of Israel since that day in October. Had Arab politicians decided to accept the Partition Plan, there would be no war and Beersheba might today be in the hands of a Palestinian state. This is the tragedy of history and both Palestinians and Israelis pay a heavy price.

Let me complete this posting by saying that in 1974 my parents took us to Toronto, my new home. I was 7 then and I can still recall how my mother prepared us for the trip by teaching us English. My dad had been in three wars and upward mobility was made difficult for Sephardic Jews in the period (there have been some changes since this period). My parents hoped in the new Israel and loved it with all their hearts, yet understood that we needed to go to a new land called Canada to try our luck. I have only visited Israel once, in 1984, or ten years after we left. I am a dual citizen and love both countries immensely. I see their warts indeed, but I also see the potential of both nations. I call for self-determination for both Palestinians and an assorted collection of Native groups. So long as self-determination works both ways.

When I came to Canada in 1974, there were very few Sephardic Jews in Toronto. The bigger community is in Montreal. I can still remember my mother telling me that Irving Abella, the eminent historian of Jewish history in Canada in the inter-war years, did not know that there were Moroccan Jews in Toronto. The exchange took place at a local Toronto synagogue. A world they have not told you about!

In coming to Toronto, I have found a welcoming home. The entire world is here! The land is cold and people growing up were, at times, inhospitable and reserved. Yet Canadians, as I learned from Canadian intellectual George Grant, are Europeans that are not Europeans. They have charted a unique identity vis-a-vis the United States and Europe that I have come to respect and relish. I sometimes wish we were more bold. That we would celebrate greatness more in the arts, academia, poetry, music, economic and political life. I sometimes wish we would say more and not be afraid of a collision of political views.

Yet, I love that Canada accepts a Bar-On with a funny hyphen (which my parents often made the Scottish Baron for simplicity's sake!) from a desert city called Beersheba. Like Canadians in general, this Bar-On is an amalgamation of cultures. He asks the most of his country. He says let merit ring across the land. Let excellence of performance, credentials, and the aristocracy of the spirit win the day. We are too great a country to settle for second or third best when Canada can be a world leader in people, ideas, national soccer teams, jazz, or literature. Let us all ask better of ourselves and our country. This is what this blessed country has taught me.

Tamir Bar-On