Taking it to the street

Last week, on Rosh Hodesh Adar (the first day of the Hebrew of Adar), I had multiple opportunities to get out of the beit midrash - where, contrary to what you might think from reading this blog, is where I spend most of my time.

That morning, along with several other Pardes students and other friends from around Jerusalem, I prayed with Women of the Wall. (see this post for more about WOW) It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm and sunny morning, a welcome change from the torrential rain of Rosh Hodesh Kislev. After, many friends, both in Israel and back home, asked how it was, and my immediate response was "uneventful." Considering that the first time I joined the Women of the Wall, Nofrat was arrested, anything else after that is relatively uneventful. In reality, there was a huge crowd of women (and a significant number of male allies) present to welcome in the joyful month of Adar with song, prayer, and dancing, and many on both sides of the mechitza who verbally and physically protested against our prayers.

There's a tradition that when Adar enters, joy increases, reflecting the joyousness of the Jewish community at having escaped genocide at the hands of Haman in the Purim story, and the general fun and craziness that accompanies the celebration of Purim today. That joy was definitely present that morning - with the warm (almost hot!) sun, we sang Purim songs "מישנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה - when Adar comes in, we increase in joy!" as we walked the Torah to Robinson's Arch, the archaeological site next to the Kotel that has been designated for egalitarian and women's prayer and Torah services. Despite the anger that I heard and saw at the Kotel - several ultra-Orthodox women literally pushed their way into our group to try and disrupt our davening, while a large group of haredi men, armed with a megaphone, bellowed "GEVALT" (like oy gevalt - Yiddish for things that are really bad), yelled that we weren't Jewish, and that there is one Torah and it cannot be changed - the predominant emotion among the women I prayed with on Rosh Hodesh was that of the joy that one could find in any synagogue in Jerusalem on the morning of Rosh Hodesh Adar.

The same day, Pardes as a community had a "Yom Iyun shel Chesed" (translation: Mitzvah Day), in memory of two former Pardes students who were killed in a terrorist attack at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the summer of 2002. That afternoon, I got on a bus with 50 other Pardes students, faculty, and their family members to go to a farm outside of Rehovot to pick produce for an organization called Leket. Leket, whose name comes from the commandment in the Torah to leave behind in your field the produce that falls or doesn't get picked in the harvest for the poor of the community to glean, is a food rescue organization that collects produce from farms and leftovers from parties, wedding halls, etc. We visited a farm that exists purely to provide fruits and vegetables for those lacking food security, and spent the hot afternoon picking oranges (and eating a couple). It was great to be able to be outside on such a beautiful day, and we picked 3 TONS of oranges, which were distributed into kids' lunches for school the next day.

One of the challenges I've had since even getting to Pardes was thinking about transitioning from working and acting in the world to sitting and learning, for its own sake, full-time. This was compounded when Rav Landes, the rosh yeshiva at Pardes (the #1 in charge), in talking about etiquette in the beit midrash to the whole community, included among his etiquette rules that not only should cell phones and email not be used in the beit midrash, but the news shouldn't be read also. For me, my study of Jewish text in the beit midrash is incomplete without that connection to the rest of the world. Yes, I am studying Torah for its own sake this year, but not with blinders on. Pardes does not constrain its activities to the beit midrash - Yom Iyyun shel Chesed, and our weekly volunteering (there are no classes on Tuesday afternoons, and most students volunteer at various non-profits in and around Jerusalem). Reflecting on my time so far in Jerusalem, particularly through talking with Rabbi Gold and Shir Tikva's 11th and 12th graders while they were here last week, I realized that I really haven't limited myself to my learning in the Pardes beit midrash. Through my volunteering (more on that in a future post), time with Women of the Wall, and involvement with Encounter, I've embraced a teaching that Rabbi Gold shared with me last year: "My Torah is walking - I'm following it to the public square."

In that spirit...

Pardes is doing a community learn-a-thon this week to raise money for Haiti relief through AJWS, American Jewish World Service. As a community, we are all doing extra learning, our teachers are donating their time to teach evening classes on social justice issues, and we are reaching out to our friends and families to donate money in support of us and this dire humanitarian crisis. You can donate here.

And for a laugh, check out this Youtube video (starring me!).

West Bank Story

A tale of two cities...Bethlehem and Efrat. Two weeks ago, I spent two days in Bethlehem with Encounter, an organization that brings Diaspora Jewish leaders to Bethlehem to hear and experience Palestinian narratives and life. The following Shabbat I spent in Efrat, at the home of one of my teachers from Pardes.

Encounter was a challenging and intense experience. One of the most powerful parts of the trip was listening to a panel of Palestinian women activists, sharing their own personal and professional narratives. One woman, Rula, shared how she, an East Jerusalem resident, gave birth to her son in East Jerusalem when her husband was living in Jordan. Because the father's identity was bureaucratically "unknown," Rula couldn't get a birth certificate or an Israeli ID for her son. If she traveled to Jordan to reunite her son with his father, he'd lose any chance to have documentation. As a result, the only solution was for Rula to divorce her husband, and she finally got papers for her son when he was 5. She said, "Ask any woman if she'd pick her husband and her son - her son! I don't want my son to be added to the refugee list."

Sheerin, who currently works for the UN in Darfur, offered one of the hardest to hear stories, simply because of the hopelessness that she voiced. She told of how her niece asked her, "Why are they doing to us?" Sheerin said, "10 years ago, I would have thought carefully about how to answer...now, I just say they hate us." She doesn't think non-violent activism will work, and is frustrated without any answers, solutions, or ways to move forward. She chose to leave her home village outside of Bethlehem, and was faced with a choice between San Francisco and Darfur. She chose Darfur, because she wanted to see what it felt like to be an outsider to a conflict. Sheerin described how here (in Israel/the Palestinian territories), she's the weakest - she is black (relative to those who are in power) and Palestinian. In Darfur, it's the opposite. She has power, she is white (relative to those who are the victims of the genocide in Darfur), she is Arab and Muslim, she works for the UN. In Darfur, it's hard for her to be associated with Arabs, and connected with those who are committing genocide and human rights abuses. It was very hard for me to hear what she said about not wanting to be Israeli and have oppression done in her name. It raises deep questions for me about what is done in my name, for my sake, that I may or may not agree with. I believe in a Zionist ideal, a Jewish state that lives up to the highest prophetic values of Judaism with respect for the dignity of every human being, and there are so many examples that I see here, day after day, not only with respect to the Palestinian territories, that aren't living up to that expectation.

The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture... -Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel

My home stay, with an older Muslim couple in Beit Sahour, a city just east of Bethlehem, presented a much more optimistic perspective. Atala, who teaches Islam in a Christian school, where his students are both boys and girls, Muslims and Christians, believes that religion can bring us together. We all pray to the same Divine power, we all pray for peace every day. His and his wife Jamila's hospitality was lovely - even though we were full from dinner when we arrived, they made delicious tea, we ate fruit and candy next to their fireplace, and then in the morning, I ate so much bread, eggs, tomatoes, and salads that I wasn't even hungry when it was lunch time.

On Friday, we heard a panel of non-violence activists. One shared a story of driving through a checkpoint, and the soldier asked him something along the lines of "How do you deal with it? Isn't life awful for you?" He responded, to an Israeli soldier who grew up in a settlement outside of Hebron, "How do YOU stand it? Standing outside, in the rain, on a cold winter day?" And the soldier cried, because the Palestinians whose papers he checked all day long had never recognized his pain and asked about him.

The stories and realities that I heard were painful, inspiring, depressing. Sometimes they conflicted with the stories and realities that I have learned over the years. The takeaway message, as I discussed with Rabbi Neal Gold last night (Shir Tikva's 11th and 12th graders are in Israel for the week, it's been great to see and spend time with them. Looking forward to Shabbat with the group!) is: it's complicated, and anyone who thinks it isn't is missing something.

Shabbat in Efrat, after spending 2 days in Bethlehem seeing how West Bank settlements and their growth are having serious consequences for Palestinian life, was challenging. My friend and fellow Pardes student Amy and I went to our teacher Hindy's house in the north of Efrat, a neighborhood called Zayit. From the windows of the synagogue where we went to services, we could see Jerusalem...and Bethlehem. Hindy are her husband are liberal, West Wing-lovers, but it was impossible for me to forget that I was in Efrat, in a settlement in the West Bank. This is a small country, and everything is very close, yet very removed. Efrat and Bethlehem are totally different worlds. Not everyone moves there for deep, ideological reasons - Hindy and Mark moved there because they needed more space than they could afford in Jerusalem, where housing costs are skyrocketing. But the political still comes out, in the form of self-interest: as we left shul on Saturday, Hindy and Mark grumbled about the overcrowding in their synagogue, and as we walked home, pointed out the site that their new synagogue will be built on...but can't be built yet, along with a lot of other planned construction, because of the settlement freeze. this contrasted sharply with my visit the week before to the Hope Flowers School in al-Khader, a village next to Bethlehem, which is in the path of Efrat's future growth, and could face serious problems with access if Efrat continues to grow north. The view outside of one of the windows in Hindy's apartment faces an Arab village, so close that we could clearly hear every word echoing from the minaret throughout the day.

View West Bank Story in a larger map

Our Shabbat overall was lovely - I had a great time with Hindy, her husband, and her cute kids (even though they didn't like me very much), and Amy and I went for a walk in the unseasonably warm February weather on Shabbat afternoon. All of these stories are part of the narrative of this confusing place, even when they conflict with each other.

לשנה הבאה בירושלים - To Next Year in Jerusalem!

First off, an exciting announcement! Yesterday I interviewed for the rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I felt great about the interview itself, and left expecting to receive a letter in the mail in about 2 weeks (although let's be honest, with Doar Yisrael, it would've been more than that). Much to my surprise, I got a call around 10:15 last night, informing me of my acceptance! Here's to another year in Jerusalem (and of this blog!), and the next step on this wonderful, holy journey. The amount of love and support from my friends, family, teachers, and mentors over the past several months through the application process has been incredible, thanks to all of you for teaching, challenging, loving, and holding me.

Me, post-interview, outside the HUC Jerusalem campus (photo courtesy Benn Waters)

"In order to love Jerusalem, you need to leave it."

These wise words from another friend studying in Jerusalem sent me off to the desert again over our semester break a few weeks ago, this time to Kibbutz Ketura, a pluralistic kibbutz (communal living arrangement, historically socialist, much less so now in most cases) in the Arava Valley. I spent the first few days spending time with family, both those living on kibbutz and the Jerusalem family down visiting for the weekend. While I was there, we were blessed with a huge rainstorm - rain? in the desert? The anticipation around the kibbutz the day before was like in the Northeast the day before a huge blizzard (in fact, the kids even had a rain day from school on Monday!) I saw flowing rivers, waterfalls, and even had the chance to add some new words to my Hebrew vocabulary: a מפל (mapal) is a waterfall and a שיטפון (shitafon) is a flash flood. It rained all over the country that week, leading to the excellent news that Yam Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) has risen almost a meter in the past two months. My cousin Shimon, a guide on the kibbutz, said he saw waterfalls flowing that he had never seen before, and that it was more rain than the kibbutz had seen in over a decade.