Seeing is Believing

Yesterday was the last day of classes at Pardes - bittersweet, for sure. Now, everyone's caught up in the whirlwind of packing up and saying goodbye. But amidst all that hullabaloo, here's some Torah from my last gemara class.*

"If, in the land that Adonai your God is assigning to you to possess, someone slain is found lying in the open, the identity of the slayer not being known, your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns..." (Deut. 21:1-2)

Deuteronomy 21 goes on to describe the ritual that the leaders of the city closest to the corpse need to do. The description ends with this declaration: "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, O Adonai, Your people Israel whom you redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel." And they will be absolved of blood guilt. (21:7-8)

The mishnah (Bavli Sotah, 45b) goes on to say:
לא בא לידינו ופטרנוהו, לא ראינוהו והנחנוהו
It didn't come to our hands - and we are exempt, we did not see it - and it rests/it's ok with us. (loosely, not such a great translation)

The gemara (Masechet Sotah 46b) asks the question - how is it that this corpse got there in the first place? There are 2 points of view, one placing the fault on the legal and security system, the other, taking a more systemic perspective, says that it's our responsibility for not ensuring this person's basic needs - or else why would s/he have been wandering around outside the walls of the city alone in the first place? They go one step further, saying exactly what those basic needs are - מזון, food, and לויה, companionship.

This verb "to see לראות," which comes up in the Torah verse, in the Mishna, and again in the gemara, drew my attention. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes about another use of it: "I was young and now am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. נער הייתי וגם זקנתי ולא ראיתי צדיק נעזב וזרעו מבקש לחם" (Psalms 37:25) This verse is at the end of Birkat haMazon, and is deeply troubling, because at surface value, it is blatantly untrue. Can we really say that everyone who is hungry is hungry because they haven't been righteous? Sacks writes that he learned that we can understand the word "see - ראיתי" like it used in the Book of Esther, where Esther cries out to the king, "How can I bear to see the disaster which will befall my people! And how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred!" (Esther 8:6) Sacks writes, "'To see' here means 'to stand still and watch.' The verse [from Psalms] should thus be translated, 'I was young and now am old, but I never merely stood still and watched while the righteous was forsaken or his children begged for bread." (Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, p. 58)

This idea of seeing, and of seeing what isn't always obvious or easy - the dead body outside the city walls and hunger in our texts, and many of the things here in Israel I've written about on this blog since August - has been a central part of my focus this year. I started this blog saying I intended to see what kind of land this was. For me, that's included going to the West Bank and learning how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impacts real people, engaging with some of Israeli society's most challenging issues through Pardes' social justice track, and not being oblivious to the position of liberal Judaism in Israeli society. Last summer, I was sitting with one of my rabbis, Rabbi Lehmann, and I said that I couldn't imagine living in Jerusalem and not dealing with these issues (in that conversation, speaking specifically about Israeli-Palestinian issues, but I think it applies to all of these). Rabbi Lehmann replied, "You're right, I don't think you could live in Jerusalem and ignore them, but plenty of other people do so very easily." It's too easy to ignore, and to not see, or to see and simply stand by...

When I was in Israel summer 2007 as a counselor for a NFTY in Israel trip, we brought our participants to Jerusalem on their 2nd or 3rd day in Israel. We had them put on blindfolds on the bus as we drove into the city and to the Tayelet, where there is a beautiful overlook of the Old City. When we arrived, we led them off the bus towards the overlook, and I talked to them about the summer and their time in Israel being an opportunity for פוקח עורים - opening their eyes to all that Israel had to offer. For me, it's about balancing both of these - taking in the wonders of Israel and the sights, smells, sounds of this country, but also seeing what lies beneath the surface.

So as I close out this year, prepare for a month's vacation in the States and to transition into my second year studying here in Israel, I'm thinking about how to continue holding that balance. Shabbat shalom!

*Let's be honest, it's really a procrastination technique so I don't have to pack.

49 Days of the Omer, 2 Tablets, 613 Commandments...Shavuot Tally!!

3...cups of NesCafe
3...Tikkun Leil Shavuot(s) attended (all night study session...and if you can tell me how to make that plural, you get a prize)
1...Brandeis NEJS professor
10.6km...walked around Jerusalem over the course of the evening
2...renditions of Debbie Friedman's 613 Commandments
7...constipated men of the Bible (that we could remember)
8 hours...slept after staying up all night

Shavuot in Jerusalem is a special experience. There's a tradition of staying up learning all night in anticipation of receiving the Torah, a tradition that it seems the entire city takes part in. As I walked from place to place throughout the night, I saw others doing the same, filling streets that are usually silent and empty at 2 AM with bustling social chatter.

At home early in the evening, I was studying from a book of contemporary Israeli women's midrash called Dirshuni. The midrash I was reading told a story of a young woman sitting in services while the 10 Commandments were being read from the Torah. As she heard the commandment of Shabbat, "Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work - you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements," (Exodus 20:8-10) and the commandment "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's" (Exodus 20:14), the young woman's thought was "And the woman, what about her? Isn't she commanded in the holiness of Shabbat? Isn't she commanded to not envy the husband of her neighbor?" In the woman's anger and fear, the midrash describes as being gathered up in God's palm, where she confronts God with her questions. God answers her, describing how Moses, prior to receiving the Torah, was commanded to separate from all women, including his wife Tziporah. Because Moses wasn't mixed up with the rest of creation, including his own wife, prior to writing down all the Torah, it was just inconceivable to him that anyone other than men would be held responsible for keeping Shabbat, or that a woman could have the inclination to envy her neighbor. God implies that God's intention in giving the commandments was for men AND women, but Moses, who could only understand out of his own experience, missed that. The midrash ends saying, "Every beit midrash in which there is no woman, no complete words of Torah will go out from it." We need to include all perspectives in our learning, not just our own, otherwise our Torah isn't complete.

The first tikkun leil I went to was at Pardes; I heard Judy Klitsner, a Pardes faculty member in Bible who I haven't had the chance to learn with because she has been promoting her new book this year. She taught about the patriarchs of the Torah turning to non-Jewish mentors (Abraham to Malchi-tzedek, and Moses to Yitro his father-in-law). Then I went to Yedidya, a nearby synagogue, where I heard Jonathan Sarna speak on Judaism in post-revolutionary America. Judaism adopted the values around it, of democracy, republicanism, and a rejection of central authority. The Jewish community could no longer rely on the rabbi's authority to enforce communal norms regarding intermarriage, among other things. . As Judaism entered the free market, "it had to become compelling and interesting, it couldn't rely on being coercive." Sarna's thesis reminded me of the midrash describing the moment of revelation, in which God literally holds Mount Sinai over Am Yisrael, threatening to kill the entire community if they do not accept the Torah. This coercive, do-or-be-punished model of Jewish life no longer worked in the New World.

After Sarna's talk, I walked 45 minutes across the city to Tchernichovsky Street, where some of my friends were holding their own tikkun leil, independent of any of the formal institutions of learning that fill this city. I think this really reflected the spirit of Shavuot, and in particular the spirit of Shavuot in Jerusalem. Anyone can walk into any synagogue, beit midrash, or lecture hall to participate in the learning happening. You don't need to have a particular amount of Jewish learning or be a major donor (Major Donor!) in order to access the learning and teaching. And anyone can teach, not only the big names who are advertised on posters all over the city in the week prior to the holiday. And as a Jewish people, we need to be aware of the diversity of experience among us, the myriad of ways that we live in the world and experience revelation. We can't rely on just one understanding of the tradition, held by those in traditional roles of rabbinic and social authority.

As morning approached, we went to meet up with those heading to Robinson's Arch, sometimes referred to as the "Kotel Masorti" (referring to the Masorti, Israeli Conservative, movement). Robinson's Arch, in the archaeological excavations next to the Western Wall plaza, is the space dedicated for egalitarian prayer, where Women of the Wall holds its Torah services, and where boys and girls can both become b'nai mitzvah. Praying Shacharit at sunrise, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, surrounded by a liberal, egalitarian community was one of the more powerful prayer experiences I've had this year. When we first got there and started to get ready to daven, we were unsure if it was even light enough to put on our tallitot - and I was praying with my beautiful new tallit that I got when my mom was here a few weeks ago, so this was very important! Gradually it got lighter, and the only noise heard, other than our own prayers and the faint mumble of prayer from the Kotel, was that of birds chirping and greeting the day. The tallitot around me, of both men and women, flapped in the early morning wind. We loudly and jubilantly sang the words of hallel...and then walked home and I slept from 7:30am until 3:00pm.

Sweet as honey, sweet as honey, sweet as honey on my tongue!

*Points to anyone who read closely enough to find the How I Met Your Mother reference.

Nesher adventures

On a recent sherut (shared shuttle) trip to the airport, I had one of those classic, only-in-Israel moments. Usually, a sherut trip from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion airport is at least a 2-hour ordeal, as the shuttle drives through every Jerusalem neighborhood you never knew existed, picking up one passenger at a time, and loading up the van with their screaming babies and giant suitcases filled with presents for the family back in the states, before hurtling at breakneck speeds to the airport - all this for the low price of 50 shekel!

Instead, I was the first pick-up at 6:45, and after just 2 more stops, I arrived at Ben Gurion in less than 2 hours. At our 3rd and last stop, we picked up...wait for it...an seven person Irish-American band from Alabama and ALL of their instruments. As Naomi said in response to the text message describing the absurdity of this, "What on earth were they doing in Israel?!" The previous weekend, a well-known folk music festival, Jacob's Ladder, had taken place in the north of Israel, and they had been in the country, their first visit, to perform. And they LOVED the country, their Israeli host Menachem, and the handful of Hebrew words they spoke in their Southern accents.

Of course, the only-in-Israelness of this isn't complete yet. Right after we drove through the security checkpoint at the entrance to Ben Gurion, the driver's phone rings. He answers it on speaker phone, and the caller is looking for the ish b'mishkafayim - the gentleman in the glasses. My first thought was that for some reason, airport security was looking for him, but it turned out that it was the band's Israeli host, Menachem, calling to say goodbye to his guests. Only in Israel is it normal for someone to call the cell phone of a shuttle driver to talk to a passenger.

Of course, on my return trip from the airport, the sherut driver got out to take a piss behind the van. Only in Israel...