Anatomy class feedback by me

Dear Prof. Ben Shalom,

I have wondered to myself as I read your name on our schedule where you last name came from: it means son of peace. Did your Palestinian Jewish family bring peace to the people around it during the Ottoman or British rule? Were they farmers that shared their produce with their neighboring Arab villages? And, why is there “son of” in your last name- was someone the son of a father? Were you a family with many cousins? My last name is Abu Ata, which means "father of giving". My last name comes from Arabic but the root is similar to that in Hebrew: latet.

I have wondered if an abu (father) gave (ata) a ben (son), as two family members share things, and so it came to be that I am Abu Ata (father of giving) and you are Ben Shalom (son of peace). I have wondered about the dead sea scrolls, the ones you and your ancestors have come back to be able to read. I have looked at them in the Israeli museum and have wondered how many times they were read on shabat in the synagogue, rolled out and put back in place by different readers and devout prayers- till the fearful day of destruction and uprooting of a people who were home. Now, having lost all sense of familiarity of home, even the temple of their God that called them out of Egypt, to pass (and hence Passover, pesach) to another country was no more.

I have always pictured Jerusalem torn, with each rock dispersed. Amidst the chaos, someone snatched the dead sea scrolls, ran to the desert, holding on so dearly to the only thing left of his place- those dead sea scrolls. Did that person walk around in the desert of the Dead Sea and stumble upon a cave and decided to hide the scrolls there away from all the fear and destruction he felt and witnessed? While rolling out the scrolls on the ground one last time, did he wonder, “Who will keep those possessions of my own people? Who will know of us? Will we read those scrolls again? We worked so hard to be in this land. He promised us this place. It is our home now, where else can we go? Where has my family gone? Were they killed? Who will keep those scrolls till we come back again?”

I picture that displaced refugee of more than two thousand years ago, in agony, not wanting to leave the precious scrolls but rather die with them- much like others behind him in Jerusalem had chosen to stay and die, rather than leave.

Did he stay near the scrolls till he died, hoping that someone will find them, know what they are, what their value was, preserve them and return them to their original owners and with them retell the story?

I have imagined that as this person walked out of the cave, because he heard noise, he saw shepherds with his sheep. They were nomads that he had never met because he lived in the city all of his life. The two shepherds spoke a language similar to his. Somehow the two nomads understood that the scrolls, he had hid in the cave, were important to that foreigner. So, they promised they would keep them and watch over them.

And that they did, until the 1960s, when a Bedouin boy revealed them again to archeologists. And, the scrolls went back to Jerusalem. That refugee’s pleas of more than two thousand years ago were answered, with the help of Bedouins.

To study the anatomy of the human body is illuminating because one realizes that each muscle, nerve, artery and vein are together needed to perform a task. When one member of this group is missing, the person feels the difference. What I learn to appreciate in studying anatomy is that every part, however small or insignificant it might seem, is needed in the body.

And yet also being a Palestinian whose family’s roots go back to the early Christian Arabs that lived in this land, I also realize how important it is to have all the people, however different they are, in one place,one land. The case is no different than what I study for my anatomy test- nerves, muscles, arteries, veins and bones exist in one body together. The median nerve innervates the abductor pollicis brevis, and thus moving it. And, a Ben Shalom might have well helped an Abu Ata sometime before walls were put up and funny colored papers given to one group of people, and not the other.I am glad that I, too, can read the Dea Sea scrolls.

I am also glad that my people were as intermingled and meshed in the history of this land as yours. Who knows how each people was needed throughout history, so that a function in the body of this land could take place. I think that two weeks are not enough to study limb anatomy.

We need more time to learn how all the different parts fit and work together, without over-riding one another, and thus we have abductor pollicis brevis, next to flexor pollicis brevis, next to opponens pollicis, an Abu next to a Ben, to abduct, flex and oppose the thumb, thus giving a signal of some sort.

Sincerely, Nisreen Abu Ata