December 15, 2017 | 27 Kislev 5778
MS Kungsholm approaching Halifax, June 26, 1954. Photographer Unknown.
A Moving Target
by Jerri Zbiral

I was standing next to my parents and sister, hanging over the railing of the MS Kungsholm. We were approaching a pier. There were people waving small flags and white handkerchiefs—we were landing in Halifax, our third sanctuary haven. There was a lot of cheering and excitement, which I’m sure I felt at the time, but that’s not what I remember. What I remember was a heavy dark cloud descending, as if the sun had disappeared.

I celebrated my first birthday in Murnau, Germany, a refugee camp for people fleeing oppression in Czechoslovakia and other Soviet bloc countries. Quite an irony that Germany provided our first sanctuary—the Nazis had killed my mother’s first husband and forcibly separated her from their daughter. She spent three years in a German concentration camp while my half-sister miraculously survived living underground in Berlin through the bravery of an aunt. Meanwhile my father, as all Czech workers, was forced to work for the German occupiers in his own country. I was born into a family with a painful history.  

So on that 26 th day of June in 1954, I was too young to really understand that what I was experiencing was depression. I was only 5 ½ years old and we had just left Norway, our second sanctuary. This beautiful country of mountains and fjords and ice and herring and the aurora borealis had welcomed a family seeking a permanent home. But it was not to be very permanent—only four short years. I think however that those were the happiest years of my life. I lived to be outside—on the rocks, in the snow, on the fjord. Now, on that boat, something was not right—something was amiss. Everything was about to change.

Initially, Canada was not what my parents had hoped for. Because of a familial betrayal, my parents and sister endured poverty, abuse and undeserved hardship. I was shielded from the worst of this, but as most children do, I absorbed their anger, disappointment, and anxiety. It took them years to build a stable life but in many ways, one foot could never leave that refugee/immigrant quagmire. I was more fortunate, I had the luxury of self-examination and introspection. They, on the other hand, had spent too many years within the fundamental confines of survival.

If I were to continue with a geographical perspective, the United States would be my fourth sanctuary. But that is not how I want to consider my vagabond life. I wish instead to define it in a less concrete form, one of home. What indeed is home? It’s where you plant your roots. Where you are embedded. Where you feel protected. It’s where you secure a foundation for not one, but for both feet.

I have always envied people who can answer the question: “Where are you from?” with one word. My answer always is: “Well, it depends which part of my life you’re talking about.” For me, “sanctuary” has been a moving target.


If you’d like to share your thoughts with the congregation on what sanctuary means to you - a time in which you felt like a sanctuary dwelled within you, or how we can extend sanctuary to those who need it, feel free to reach out to Ellen Blum Barish and David Barish . 
Jerri Zbiral is a fine art photography dealer and appraiser, who has taught and directed photography and community art programs in a past life. She is also a visual artist with an honorable exhibition record, a filmmaker with three award-winning films to her credit, and a curator who has organized dozens of exhibitions. Her most recent endeavor (along with Alan Teller, her husband of many years) is a Fulbright-funded project titled Following the Box , which has been taking them to India for the last five years. She is also the very proud mother of two pretty terrific humans: Emma and Max.
In Exodus 25:8, God says to Moses, “Create for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” These words set the building of the Tabernacle into motion. But the verse’s ending has an interesting grammatical anomaly. Instead of telling the Israelites to create a sanctuary so God can dwell within it, the wording suggests that the dwelling may be amon g the people, or within them, suggesting that God can live within us rather than exclusively in a physical sanctuary. This year at Beth Emet we’ll explore the multiples meanings of sanctuary—as physical space to gather as a community for prayer, as spiritual space where we feel safe and whole, and as an attitude that is welcoming and accepting of everyone.

This weekly e-mail project, curated by David and Ellen Barish, allows congregants to express themselves in any of a variety of media: speechmaking, poetry, essay, story, photography, film, paint, sculpture, printmaking, textile, sound or music. If you'd like to contribute, please email Ellen and/or David .

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Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
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