Not a word about Hebrew today, but a very Hebrew kind of story.

A postcard arrived just before Christmas in handwriting I could not decipher. Since I was struggling to read it, and very hungry, I took a picture, posted it on the ‘Israelis in Oxford ‘WhatsApp group and sat down to eat lunch with my mother. Maybe someone in the group could tell me what it said..

While I was enjoying my grandmother’s soup (T’shisha – tomato soup with garlic cinnamon and toasted semolina – a traditional M’jab dish) the Israeli group went into overdrive.

One person tracked down the stamp, another employed Chat GPT to decipher the writing. Of course, it being an Israeli group, everyone – with the exception of myself – is a computer wiz

The group noticed what I had failed to. The postcard had been sent in 1905! It was addressed to a lady who had passed away in 1933. She lived in the house I live in today. Her child has also since passed away, but she has a great grandchild who resides somewhere in the UK. I only know all this thanks to the detective work of my fellow Israelis in Oxford. As immigrants ourselves, we are struck that a postcard could take 119 years to travel a 20-mile journey, yet still reach its destination.

What are the chances that I could receive a postcard sent to my great grandmothers?

Masuda Z”l was illiterate like all the women of that time in the deepest parts of Algeria. Does anyone remember her there? Does anyone remember her family? Her community?

Would anyone in Odessa know that Mrs Ginsburg HY”D actually had one surviving daughter? That Hannah has a grand - daughter that knows nothing of the Ginzburg family other than that it existed?. If the house that they lived in still stands – is it plausible to think that the people living in it now would forward me a postcard sent to her in 1905?

I once met a young mother in a playground in Barcelona, her child and mine clicked and so we started talking. I asked her where she was from and she said Algeria. I exclaimed ‘So am I!’, thrilled to meet someone from the mythical place I heard so much about. When she heard what kind of Algerian I was a Jew, from Israel – she picked up her kid and ran away. She came back the next day and apologised. ‘I never met a Jew before’, she said, ‘I didn’t know what to say to you.’ We are so absent from the narrative of her national story that the idea of a Jew that thinks of her homeland as hers too, is peculiar to say the least. We became great friends, they came with us to our Sephardi synagogue (where her husband sat next to mine, eyes shut , enjoying what sounded to him very much like a mosque). We went to their house for Iftar and the kitchen smelled like home to me. I am not angry with her for initially running away. I understand her completely, we are the product of our up bringing. I ran away the first time I met a German person in my early 20s. I simply did not know what to say to someone “from there”. It wasn’t the individual that didn’t think of me as a person with a similar identity – it was the country. That hurts more. My people are no longer part of this nation. We are not just dead; we are truly gone.

Dose that happens to all immigrant communities? That once you, the individual, is gone, you, the community, is gone also? The Algerians that immigrated to France in the 1960s - how much are they “home” when they return?

Those with and Israeli passport cannot return at all. When they shout at me “GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM” at anti- Israel rallies – I often wonder where I can return to.

Odesa, on the other hand, is more reachable to me, at least physically. I can fly to visit the place my paternal grandmother came from. However, I cannot return emotionally.

The last piece of genealogy in my heritage is Palestinian. That is what is written on the birth documents of my father, and his father before him: Palestinian Jew. It is an identity made null both by Jews and Muslims. Today, at least since 1967, Palestinian does not mean Jew. If I reclaim the category on my father’s birth certificate, I will be making a political statement that will make me persona non grata by all sides equally. So, I cannot be Algerian, or Palestinian, and I’ll be dammed if I call myself Ukrainian. Brits also make it very clear that I am not “really British”. That leaves me with only one piece of land to be part of – Israel. Here we are – 2025, a Jew is looking to belong, to make a home. There are not many options, are there?

The answer to my identity crisis is right there, in the hypothetical question, I am a Jew. An Identity category that does not depend on land, a category that transcends the here and now.

If a postcard reached me from my great grandmothers – I would not be able to read it. It wouldn’t only be a matter of handwriting. My paternal ancestors spoke Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian. My maternal side spoke Judeo Arabic, counted in Spanish, did business in Tuareg, and later on French. I speak none of these languages. Just like most of my generation.

Part of the Zionist nation’s building effort included erasure of all other languages. The idea was that the languages of the diaspora should stay in the diaspora, not be brought “back home”. My mother had to learn lullabies from the community nurse to sing to us so she wouldn’t sing the Arabic songs. It was only with my children, at my request, that she sang them again. My great grandmother and I share very little in common, but I have her soup, with garlic and cinnamon, eaten so far away in time and space than anything she could have imagine. Maybe it’s enough? After all, it is so much more than anything that survived from the Ashkenazi side of the family. A taste of home, no matter where home is, and in what language.

Once my fellow Israelis find out the location of the lady’s great grandchild, I hope to give them the card. I like to think it would make a lovely belated Christmas present. However, I don’t think I will risk sending it by post.