I Remember Marcia Freedman

Marcia Freedman (1938-2022), peace activist, plus. My recollections in community.

I remember Marcia Freedman.  I met her at an anti-nuclear meeting, when I lived in Oakland, California, and had five or six brief but memorable conversations with her, over the years.  Diana Russell had started a feminist anti-nuclear group, and at the first meeting, women were milling around for a while, talking, and Marcia and I introduced ourselves,   

When she said her name, it rang a bell, and I said, “Oh, are you the Marcia Freedman who was in Knesset?”   

And she said, “Knesset is nothing!” flipping it off with her hand, adding “I started the peace movement in Israel!”   

I liked her instantly, for her clarified bluntness, and for her values, that helping start a peace movement is more important, and more the essence of her, than being a member of a parliament.  She told me, then or on another occasion, or maybe I read in her memoir further down the road, that she had dragged all her family members out into the street, to walk in the very first march for conciliation between Jews and Arabs, and for stronger Palestinian rights.  This was an unheard-of thing to do and was met with controversy from the general community. 

On another occasion, down the road, I ran into her some place, and she was with a teenage girl who was taller that she, and she introduced the girl as her “little niece.”  She put her arm around her, drawing her close to accentuate their height difference, which she referenced jokingly.  Marcia was one of a very few women I knew who was shorter than I.  At some point, I learned she was ten years older than I.   She was already grey haired.  She was American and Israeli, both, born in the U.S. and she spoke English without an accent. 

Another time, down the road, I ran into her at a grocery store.  We greeted each other and I asked “How are you?” 

She said she was “completely exhausted.”  She’d had very few hours of sleep, specifying the number.  She had jet lag.  She was returning from the airport from a speaking engagement in Michigan, or Minnesota, and she had not even been home yet.  

Marcia told me, that after her speaking engagement, she spent two hours arguing with three Palestinians who were “rejectionists," and it was "completely exhausting.” 

I had never heard the word “rejectionist,” and I asked her what it meant.  This was in the early ‘Eighties, probably 1983.  She explained there was a faction in Palestinian politics who did not see any possible future role for Israel.  They called themselves rejectionists, and I found it most interesting that she argued with them for hours.  The implications of this had not been incorporated into the general public’s understanding of the Israeli peace movement.   

To leap ahead, I soon left the Bay Area.  Then, in the mid ‘90’s, I had the chance to talk with Marcia again, in Washington, D.C., at a conference of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish justice and peace group Marcia had co-founded in the U.S.  I reminded her of our conversation in the grocery store, which she did not remember, understandably.  Nor did she remember me, at all.   But regarding the word rejectionist, she now said that Israeli rejectionism was just as big a problem as Palestinian rejectionism. 

So, this word began as a self-identification of a Palestinian faction that could not include Israel in its vision of the future -- and then the word had migrated in its usage to apply as well to Israelis who could not envision co-existence with Palestine or the Palestinians.  To me, this is a clarifying vocabulary word.  But I’ve leaped way ahead in the chronology of my interactions with Marcia Freedman, of blessed memory.     

To return to the Bay Area, and the 1980’s, Marcia had spotty attendance at the feminist anti-nuclear group (F.A.N.G.) where I met her.  But she did go to a demonstration that F.A.N.G. went to as a group.  We marched through downtown San Francisco, passed the banks that financed nuclear weapons development, shouting slogans at them, then on to a park where we settled on the grass and listened to a series of speakers.  At some point, I wandered over to the tabling area with its displays of literature, bumper stickers, tee-shirts, regalia, and some refreshments.   

The N.O.W. women had a table, and they were packing up.  I told them what group I was with and asked if I could buy a jug of their apple juice, of which they had several, still unopened.  Today, the prices of everything are much higher, but for five dollars, they sold me a gallon jug and a dozen paper cups, which I brought back to the F.A.N.G. group and began distributing.    

At once, Marcia exclaimed, “That’s brilliant!”  I felt duly complimented, and also impressed by how articulate she was, and gracious.  The word brilliant is not usually applied in instances such as getting refreshments.  Diana Russell also complimented me and asked, as if with earnest surprise, “Where did you get this?” 

That was a moment in which I was appreciated at F.A.N.G.  But there were several moments in which I was at odds with the group, at our meetings, in discussions.   One time I brought to the F.A.N.G. meeting a piece of Christian evangelist literature that quoted the Book of Revelation that a future nuclear war was the will of God unfolding.  This piece of literature had been affixed to the handle of my door.  I had never lived in a place where so much evangelizing went on.  And the content of it was extremely appalling to me, especially this nuclear prophesy business, which often featured Israel and the Jews as central elements.   

I wanted the F.A.N.G. group to address this in some oppositional way.  That they didn’t may have been partially due to a fault in my strategy.  I know I did not have a good pedagogy in introducing this.  In any case, I was appalled, and they were not.   They were courteous to me but said clearly, they wanted their focus to be elsewhere.  I hung in with the group, though, even though there was this point of conflict.   

Marcia had only been to an occasional meeting of this group, where she seemed quiet, a listener.  Then I’d heard that she’d dropped out altogether.  I took the initiative of calling her up and asking her why she’d dropped out.  She answered me in a general way. 

“I was disappointed,” she said.  She had “hoped the group could be more,” and it hadn’t lived up to her expectations.   

I asked her pointedly, I guess, to be more specific, and she said, “Now you know I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”            

  That was her assertion for privacy?  She didn’t want to go into detail about why she had dropped out, clearly.   And of course, she does not have to stay in a group that didn’t meet her expectations.  Of course, she does not owe me an in-depth explanation.   

I got off the phone and was somewhat fascinated by her assertion and the quickness of her assertion.  In retrospect, if I would have shared some of my disappointment in that group, even though I was still in it, maybe she would have shared more of hers.   

I interacted with her one more time before I left the Bay Area, and that was at the Berkeley Community Swap Meet, where I was a frequent vendor.  She came by my booth one day.  I had a big spread, half used books, and half anything and everything, all on tables and on a tarp.   We greeted each other and she looked over my stuff, slowly looking with her eyes, not picking up anything.  Then she noticed something worth talking about, something conversationable, is what I think.   

I had a Hoehner flutophone, an old plastic but deluxe plastic musical instrument, shaped like a small clarinet, with several fingering holes on top, and one hole on the bottom.    

Marcia said, “I remember those!”  She told me, when she was a kid in school, that was how they learned music.  She went into a little detail.  We had no such thing when I was in school. This comparing may have been when I learned she was ten years older than I.   

She also noticed my dog, K.C., who was allowed to be at the Berkeley swap meet, unlike at the Alameda swap meet.  K.C. was very well behaved and congenial.  Marcia asked me how old she was, and maybe another question.  Then our conversation was finished, and she continued walking along. 

A half hour later, a woman browsing through my stuff, showed an interest in the flutophone, picking it up and examining it.  She asked if she could play it, and I said yes, of course.  But just as she was about to put the end piece into her mouth, a cockroach jumped out.  The woman instantly jumped back and was obviously horrified.  I was horrified, too, and additionally, embarrassed.  This was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me at the swap meet. 

When I thought about it, I speculated how the cockroach could have gotten into my stuff. There were no cockroaches in my home, and none I had ever seen in my storage space.  But my overriding thought was relief that Marcia had not picked up the plastic instrument and the cockroach had not jumped out at her.  Bad enough a stranger had gotten the brunt of it.  Marcia had made a good impression on me in community, and I would not have wanted to make a grossly bad one on her.