Yehudit Sidikman
Posted on | November 5, 2008 | No Comments
Founder and Senior Instructor at El HaLev martial arts center
I don’t care where you come from. Female? You have the right to stand up for yourself and to know that if he gets upset and starts getting violent, you will be able to hurt him. You hope you don’t have to but if you know you have the tools to fight back, you’ll take the chance to say, “Don’t talk to me like that.” Self-defense martial arts are equalizing. And we work with women from all different populations, with no politics.
No politics?
One of our classes was for girls to learn what to do if someone tries to attack you with a knife. Well, one girl has to be taught how to use the knife, even though they are play knives. How would an attacker attack so the other girl can learn how to defend? Then they switch. Fine.
Some of the girls were from the right-wing settler community and others were Palestinians from Bethlehem. There was real anger. “How can you teach them how to use a knife?” A settler girl was ready to leave. We had to say, “This is not about political violence, this is about being attacked in your neighborhood, being mugged, raped at knifepoint. Every woman has the right to feel safe.”
I want a world where just as a majority of women get their driver’s license, every women has an education, learns the Heimlich maneuver, and takes a self-defense class.
You live next to the Wall. Is the Wall about safety?
I’m not going to answer that because that’s politics. Do I like the Wall? No. But I’m not going into that—it’s not what I do. I know what I have energy for and what I don’t have energy for.
I was with a Palestinian, and we were saying it’s like they’re playing darts. Where are they going to put the Wall? Throw a few darts. “Let’s put it here, here, and here.” He said, “I want to be on your side.” Is he the only one? No. Ask a hundred people about anything, you get two hundred opinions, and it’s not just Jewish. It’s the Middle East, you can’t get anybody to agree on anything.
When I can’t communicate with someone, I’m scared of them. I need to look at how they are saying what they are saying and how they are behaving, and say, “They’re not trying to get away with something. We both want our kids to grow up safe, have a good education, and have opportunities. We have common goals.” Let the politicians go screw up someplace else.
When did you come to Israel?
When I turned 20. I fell in love with Israel as a child. I was very lucky as a child to have a Jewish education. I always knew I wanted to be part of the Jewish experience in Israel. I fell in love with the idea as a teenager when we came here with our families to celebrate the bar and bat mitzvahs with the group of kids that I grew up with, and when I came back again as an exchange student in high school. The pull was so strong, I dropped out of college to emigrate and settle here.
Does today’s Israel fulfill your dream?
Israel is a complex creation. It has its own challenges, but so does Brooklyn or any other place in the world. In Israel, I have had the fortune of surrounding myself with very loving supportive, people whether they are Jewish, or Muslim, or Christian. I have many Muslim friends with whom I share respect and caring. Those relationships have supported my faith that tolerance, respect, and living together is something that’s achievable.
My personal vision is that there are enough resources in this area for all the people of the area to live together peacefully. I don’t believe in the politicians. I’m invested in cultivating tolerance, understanding, and respect on a very small level—between myself, my neighbor, and the people around me.
Give us an example of cultivating these interpersonal bonds.
When times were better, I used to take my kids down to an Arab village behind our community to bring home the realization that there are different people living in the holy land. We’d bring ice pops and play with the kids, even though they didn’t speak the same language. We also had different peace groups that came at different times, and we would walk between the two communities on Shabbat.
At El Halev, we have a very low tolerance for politics. When we opened our first office we had a little sign on the door in Hebrew, English, and Arabic that said: “See this garbage can here? Leave your politics here.” Leave it here, come in to train and learn that we have something in common.
The thing we have in common is that women are abused in every community. It doesn’t matter whether they are rich or poor, black, white, green, purple, or polka dotted, women need to come together to learn how to empower themselves and stand up for our rights to respect and a quality existence.
What personal experiences led you to this quiet but powerful revolution? How does this shape the work you do at El Halev?
I was totally in love with the person that I was with for six years. Of course, those years are from when I was 12 to 18, so legally, that’s considered rape. I didn’t realize this until my oldest daughter turned 12 years old. Only then I was then able to understand why it was rape.
I was already involved in Judo by then. These experiences allowed me to understand how vulnerable I was, and how my childhood was taken from me because I didn’t know to draw the line. I didn’t have the power to make the right choices.
At El Halev, we work with kids and with girls at a very young age. At the moment, we have over 60 girls in a three-week martial arts camp. We’re giving them a taste of all the self-defense styles so they can make a choice about what is best for them. And apart from that, all the instructors are women who are role models for tolerance and respect.
Yehudit, what’s your personal definition of courage?
My personal definition of courage is to take the gifts that I have been given, or that any person has been given, and use them 100% so that you can make change and not to back away from the work that needs to be done. It’s to actualize the gifts that you have and to fix the things that scare you.
Sidikman combines her respect of others and commitment to empowering women with her black belt to teach self-defense to Israeli and Palestinian women—including members of Peace X Peace. She is the founder and senior instructor of El HaLev-Israel Women’s Martial Arts Federation, which, she says, leaves politics at the door. Sidikman emigrated from the United States as a young adult. She lives in Efrat.
