Her journey, from Germany to Israel via England, has been a full one so far, packed with accomplishments, lessons, contributions, loves, losses and regrets.
By HAVIVA NER-DAVIDAlice Shalvi in her Jerusalem home(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)At last, Alice Shalvi has come out with the long-awaited memoir she began writing 12 years ago. Never a Native begins with the births of Shalvi’s parents, and their marriage in Germany – where Shalvi grew up – and ends with 93-year-old Alice meditating in her garden “surrendering [her]self to the Divine Spirit.”Her journey, from Germany to Israel via England, has been a full one so far, packed with accomplishments, lessons, contributions, loves, losses and regrets. And in this 322-page memoir, complete with photos and perhaps too many details, she closely retraces every step along the way.Shalvi does a wonderful job of mapping how a life can look when one follows the signposts, keeps eyes open and says “yes” over and over again to life itself. Shalvi has been blessed with angels who have supported and encouraged her along the way, like her brother, who helped support her family financially when Shalvi was working without pay as the principal of the Pelech school, or her husband, who was the main caregiver and homemaker for part of the time their children were still at home – and she is careful to acknowledge them in these pages.But her biggest advocate and guide has been her own inner voice, which has led her to follow her heart and believe that she can make a difference in the world and grow her own soul in the process.What is perhaps most surprising is the discovery that many of the achievements for which Shalvi is known seem to have fallen in her lap, rather than her having chased after them. In fact, some of the things she most wanted she did not achieve. Yet she also discovered that there were things she did and only realized she wanted once she had them, like her academic English career, which was a great source of fulfillment to her in the professional realm of her life.Shalvi had wanted to be a social worker when she immigrated to Israel in 1949, having earned that degree while still in England preparing for her move. She had wanted to help the war refugees and underprivileged populations in the new Jewish state, but she could not find work. Desperate for employment, she accepted a job for which she had not even applied: to teach English Literature at the temporary Hebrew University campus at Terra Sancta College in West Jerusalem – only to discover that she loved teaching. Years later, however, she was able to help the underprivileged through her activism even if not as a social worker.Her 10-year stint as principal of the Pelech Religious Experimental High School for Girls also fell in her lap. The school was going under, and the woman who was the principal at the time announced that Shalvi – who was not even a teacher at the school but only an active parent – was taking her place, before she even asked Shalvi if she would take the position. Similarly, Shalvi says that she “found” herself “de facto chairwoman” of the Israel Women’s Network. And when she became rector of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, this was also not a job for which she had applied. She had barely even heard of the institution.She had previously put herself forward as a candidate to head an academic institution, Ben-Gurion University, and was rejected outright – because she was a woman. That is how Shalvi found herself an outspoken activist against sexism and an advocate for women’s rights, and therefore an obvious candidate for the Women’s Network position.Although she is known today as a religious feminist, Shalvi’s first aliyah to the Torah in synagogue also came unexpectedly. She was scholar-in-residence at a Modern Orthodox synagogue in the US one Shabbat and found herself at a Women’s Tefillah service for the first time. Not only that, but she was offered an aliyah. It was not something she had planned, but when offered the opportunity, she agreed.Resisting the attempt of the gabbait to wrap a tallit around her shoulders – perhaps that felt too radical to her – Shalvi “trembled” as she experienced such proximity to the sacred that had felt taboo to her as a woman until that point. At the end of the aliyah, she instinctively recited the sheheheyanu blessing over new things and experiences, as she cried “sobs of joy at being granted the privilege of the moment,” and sobs of “anger” as she “realized that [she] could have had this revelatory experience 40 years earlier had [she] been male.”This experience, as well as the discrimination she encountered in academia – in addition to other forms of sexual discrimination and abuse she experienced and witnessed others experiencing in her life – are what made Shalvi an Israeli feminist leader, and empowered her to speak out against gender discrimination and fight for women’s rights. She was not born or even raised a feminist, of course. In fact, she admits that she did not even notice gender inequities until they hit her personally.If one reads between the lines of Shalvi’s story, one sees how none of her life really did happen by chance. Perhaps another person would have refused to take on the challenges she adopted with a flourish, especially with such an overflowing plate (six children, a university teaching job, and more), but what makes Shalvi especially unique is that she steps up over and over again to her callings. Invitations that another might have passed by to her became part of her life story. As she writes of her decision to chair the Israel Women’s Network, “I realized that if I myself did nothing, nothing would follow.”Another striking element of Shalvi’s memoir is her candid, honest and self-reflecting approach. She writes about how she was raped by the man in whose Jerusalem home she was boarding. She was a young woman, alone in a new country, and her landlord clearly took advantage of her. Looking back now, she writes, “When I told the story I used the word ‘seduced.’ Today, we call it rape.”She also reveals she had an abortion – illegally and for medical reasons – when she was already the mother of four children. Her obstetrician performed the procedure in a back room of his clinic.“I never told [my husband] Moshe about the abortion,” she writes. “In fact, I told nobody. I have never spoken of it. Yet, similarly, I’ve never forgotten it.” Years after the abortion, she could not bring herself to fight for a woman’s right to abort, because from the first-hand experience she did not feel she could share, she knew how complicated a decision and act it is for a woman.This book is the story of the birth of a feminist, a woman who raised her own consciousness by looking at the world around her with awe and wonder, but also with a critical eye and the feeling that she personally had the power to help change the status quo. She attributes this trait, at least in part, to her father, who taught her to love humankind and have compassion for the oppressed. She recalls how, on a visit to Paris, when her father saw the prostitutes at the Moulin Rouge, he sighed: “Nebach [poor things]! What a way to have to earn a living!”One especially candid section is when she speaks in retrospect about herself as a mother. She writes:“I erred in my undue, excessive, dedication to social causes at a time when mothering should have been my major focus. The numerous prizes and awards, tokens of the ‘fame’ I achieved, are poor substitutes for what in Yiddish is called naches – delight, satisfaction. Ruefully, I contemplate the cryptic final lines of Robert Frost’s tellingly entitled poem, The Road Not Taken:I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.”Shalvi writes a narrative that spans a century at least. The book is not written to captivate the reader. There is often more minutia than the reader needs to know, and more reflection and reminiscence than the reader wants to hear. A better editing job would have pared down the manuscript to the most essential and telling scenes and stories to create a more gripping and accessible book. Yet, it is worth sticking with it so as not to miss out on this incredible life and the pearls of wisdom only Shalvi can provide.For example, the final pages of the book touched this reader deeply. Reading them is hearing the voice of an enlightened wise matriarch quietly sharing her secrets, her lessons learned, with those who are open to hearing her message of universal human connection:“And now? The words no longer suffice. The traditional prayer book no longer embodies my belief nor expresses my innermost feelings. I can no longer pray to the Father, the King. The Divine Spirit that inspires me knows no gender. Unlimited in time and space, vast and all-embracing, it is a source of universal love, sustenance, joy. Schiller knew it. Beethoven expressed it in music that lifts the soul…“To that force, that source of life itself, I now address my songs of praise and gratitude. It inspires me to love all aspects of creation. It leads me to seek out the best, the noblest in myself, in others. It bids me love my fellow creatures. It leads us upwards, to the firmament, to perceive the wonders of nature, the depth of human feeling, the height of human achievement. It is everywhere around us, challenging us to awaken to its presence; beckoning us, summoning us to create a better world, a world of fellowship and human kindness. All that is required of us is to open our hearts to welcome and embrace it. No words are needed. No words suffice. Just as two lovers sit side by side in silence, each absorbing the other’s presence, so I sit absorbing and at the same time surrendering myself to the Divine Spirit.”EpiphaniesSanctityExaltation.When she was young, just a child, Shalvi had dreamed of being a writer. This book is one life dream she did fulfill, even if belatedly. And what a gift to us all that she followed through.■
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