Tovah ha'aretz m'od m'od

Leaving Jerusalem

2011-06-07T22:38:00.000+03:00

I wrote this while flying from Israel to New York a few weeks ago. It will most likely be my last post on this blog, which I started in order to reflect on my own experiences living in Jerusalem for two years, and to share them with all of you. Chag Shavuot Sameach!

May 20, 2011

El Al #1, TLV-JFK

Somewhere over Newfoundland…

For the past year and a half, I have had the blessing of learning gemara with my dear chevruta, Sarah W. We started together as chumash chevrutas during our first semester at Pardes, and then began learning gemara during second semester, and continued studying together once a week this past year. This is dedicated to all of the Torah learning, laughs, and David Berman muffins when they were much needed that we shared together.

This year we have been studying Masechet Shabbat. At our final meeting as chevruta (for now), we studied a sugya, Shabbat 119a, that brought aggadot (stories) about how different rabbis celebrated Shabbat. It continued by bringing many of the well-known midrashim that are often heard and shared about Shabbat in lots of different settings. (For example, the story that two angels, a good angel and a bad angel, accompany a person home from services on Friday night to see if his house is cheerfully ready for Shabbat or not – if it is, the good angel says “May it be this way every week,” and the bad angel has to say “amen,” and vice versa).

The piece that has stuck with me all week – we studied on Sunday, 5 days before I left Israel, immediately after my final Shabbat in Jerusalem – asks how people merit or earn their riches.

רבי מר' ישמעאל ברבי יוסי עשירים שבא"י במה הן זוכין א"ל בשביל שמעשרין שנאמר (דברים יד) עשר תעשר עשר בשביל שתתעשר שבבבל במה הן זוכין א"ל בשביל שמכבדין את התורה ושבשאר ארצות במה הן זוכין א"ל בשביל שמכבדין את השבת

Rabbi asked R. Ishmael son of R. Jose: The wealthy in Eretz Yisrael, how do they merit wealth? --Because they give tithes, he replied, as it is written, "עשר תעשר" - give tithes so that you may become wealthy.

(an agricultural mitzvah that can only be fulfilled in the Land of Israel)

Those in Babylon, how do they merit riches? --Because they honor the Torah.

(Babylon was the site of a great deal of Torah learning starting in the 5^th century CE, where most of the material of the Babylonian Talmud was produced).

And those in other countries, how do they merit riches? Because they honor Shabbat.

Sarah and I, while discussing this sugya, talked about why it was these particular mitzvot, in these particular places, that make a person merit riches. In the case of Shabbat, Sarah pointed out, it is a very hard mitzvah to keep fully (whatever fully might mean for you) outside of Israel. In Israel, it IS Shabbat from Friday night-Saturday. It is impossible to forget about it, especially in Jerusalem, and for me, it was very easy to cultivate a Shabbat culture for myself in Jerusalem. I didn’t have to think about whether or not to drive or take public transportation, I just walked everywhere. No plans were made for Shabbat, and no one expected me to want to go out to dinner, go shopping, see a movie, etc. the air of Shabbat permeates everything.

One of the hardest moments for me this past week was when I ran a final errand on Thursday afternoon, and the cashier said, “Shabbat shalom,” as I walked out of the store. That’s how much Shabbat permeates Israeli consciousness, that we start greeting each other with Shabbat Shalom on Thursday or even earlier. But this time, I wouldn’t be in Israel to experience that all-encompassing Shabbat atmosphere of Jerusalem that I’ve grown to love so much these past two years.

I will miss that feeling. It will be hard to cultivate a Shabbat-centered week in the US, even though I will be spending the summer with my family, where Shabbat dinner is always of the utmost importance, and even though I am continuing my rabbinical studies, and will be immersed in Jewish communities, most likely for the rest of my life. But outside of Israel, no matter one’s intentions, other distractions slip in during those 25 hours. The mail comes; the farmer’s market is only open on Saturdays.

Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, is a place that inspires and challenges me religiously and spiritually. That may be the best way to sum up these past two years – everything I did was part of that: my beit midrash learning at Pardes, my academic studies at HUC, my involvement with Encounter, simply living in the crazy, throbbing, vibrant city of Jerusalem, where everyone seems to be wrestling with God and with their religious community every minute of every day. That in-your-face struggle won’t be there anymore, to inspire me to continue to commit myself to growing spiritually and to striving to be a better Jew and a better person.

About a year ago, I sat in an apartment of another chevruta, Ilan, singing songs at a seudah shlishit as Shabbat departed. One of the songs we sang was the familiar phrase, “לכול מקום שאני הולך, אני הולך, אני הולך לירושלים. לכול מקום שאני כהולך, אני הולך לציון" L’chol makom she’ani holech, ani holech l’Yrushalayim. L’chol makom she’ani holech, ani holech l’Zion.” Everywhere I go, I go towards Jerusalem. Everywhere I go, I go towards Zion. I decided that Shabbat afternoon, that before I left Israel “for good,” that I was going to have my own version of those words engraved on a ring. My version reads "לכול מקום שאני הולכת, אני הולכת לירושלים של מעלה l’chol makom she’ani holechet, ani holechet l’Yrushalayim shel ma’alah.” Everywhere I go, I go towards Y’rushalayim shel ma’alah – the heavenly Jerusalem. There is a teaching that there are two Jerusalems – shel matah (below, or earthly), and shel ma’alah (upper, or heavenly). There is the real, on the ground Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that sometimes smells like pee and has lots of traffic and suddenly gets quiet on Friday afternoon, and the heavenly Jerusalem we all hold in our hearts, the Jerusalem of our religious imagination and our highest aspirations for her. Jerusalem as-it-is and Jerusalem as-it-should-be.

Wearing these words on my finger reminds me of that constant struggle and growth in Jerusalem, that I take it with me as I sit on this El Al plane, soon to disembark in cloudy and rainy New York, to jump into celebrating my brother’s college graduation (I’m so proud of you kiddo!) I don’t need to leave that behind. I can continue to grow, to continue to try and be the best person, and the best Jew I can be, to continue to work for not only Jerusalem as it should be, but for the world as it should be.

For Zion's Sake I Will Not Be Silent

2011-05-04T18:50:00.001+03:00

Please check out the blog post I wrote for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America in response to the recent articles (here, and here) by Daniel Gordis about rabbinical students and Israel.

And in other, related news, today I bought this poster at the Israel Museum. Better watch what pictures of it get posted on Facebook...wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong message!

One of the stories Gordis brings in his first article describes a rabbinical student celebrating his birthday at a bar in Ramallah, with a backdrop of "...posters (which they either did or didn’t understand) extolling violence against the Jewish state on the wall behind the." The poster I bought is an example of how quickly and easily things can be taken out of context - it says in big bold letters, "Come to Palestine!" Yet, it is a poster from before Israel achieved statehood, encouraging travel in the Holy Land. Similar posters have also ironically popped up in a friend's apartment in Bethlehem, aware of its original purpose, yet repurposing it nonetheless. Context, people, context.

Yom Hashoah 5771

2011-05-02T20:32:00.000+03:00

Today, Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day, I sat in a class at HUC on the difficult theologies that the Holocaust raises. What was God's role in the Shoah - a perpetrator or a bystander? Does the Shoah require a theological response?

How do I think about this today, on this particular Yom Hashoah? Last night on TV, I watched the state ceremony at Yad Vashem commemorating the day, remembering the 6 million deaths at the hands of the Nazis. I read an article about whether or not we should draw the Shoah’s lessons out to universal values of eliminating all intolerance. And this morning, I woke up to the news that the U.S. military had killed Osama bin Laden, that Americans were rejoicing in the streets, singing and chanting USA, USA. My first thought: the midrash from Masechet Megillah, that tells us that the angels wanted to sing as the Egyptians drowned in the Sea of Reeds. "In that hour, the ministering angels wished to utter songs of praise before the Holy One, Blessed be God, but God rebuked them, saying: My handiwork, the Egyptians, is drowning in the sea, and you rejoice?!" We are all בני אלוהים bnei Elohim, children of God, we are all בצלם אלוהים btzelem Elohim, in the image of God, both good and evil. Hitler. Bin Laden. How can we rejoice at more death? Yes, maybe it is good, maybe it is necessary. Perhaps just as the destruction of Pharaoh’s army at ים סוף Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds, was. But celebration and rejoicing? A verse from Proverbs: בנפל אויבך אל תשמח, ובכשלו אל יגל לבך Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles (Proverbs 24:17). My friend Evelyn posted on Facebook that she had seen the same images in the days and weeks after 9-11: images of celebration coming out of the Middle East, and America railed in outrage that this was the response of the Arab world.

Yet we also pray, I pray, every day in the Amidah for the eradication of evil in the world:

וכל אויבי עמך מהרה יכרתו והזדים מהרה תעקר ותשבר ותמגר ותכניע במהרה בימינו. ברוך אתה יי שובר אויבים ומכניע זדים.

"...May all Your people's enemies swiftly be cut down. May You swiftly uproot, crush, cast down and humble the arrogant swiftly in our days. Blessed are You, Lord, who destroys enemies and humbles the arrogant. (translation from the Koren Siddur)

Progressive liturgies have adapted the traditional text of this blessing of the Amidah, to reflect the desire to eliminate evilness and badness, rather than evil people.

ולרשעה אל תהי תקווה והתועים אליך ישובו, ומלכות זדון מהרה תשבר. ברוך אתה יי, שובר רשע מן הארץ

"And for wickedness, let there be no hope, and may all the errant return to You, and may the realm of wickedness be shattered. Blessed are You, Adonai, whose will it is that the wicked vanish from the earth." (text and translation from Mishkan T'filah)

Either way – we should rejoice and be grateful when our prayers are fulfilled, no?

As I rapidly clicked through the pictures on the front page of the New York Times this morning, pictures of the crowds in New York and Washington, pictures of President Obama giving his speech, older pictures of bin Laden, and then, unexpectedly…a photo from 10 years ago, of the smoke pouring out of the Twin Towers. And I remembered the fear, and the sadness of that day, and the atmosphere of that Rosh Hashanah.

Today the HUC community stood in silence with the rest of Israel at 10:00am, and remembered the 6 million. Yet there are still questions of how we observe, how we remember – do we focus on the 6 million killed? Do we seek revenge and vengeance against the perpetrators? Do we find רמזים remezim, hints, of those oppressors from 70 years ago in the world around us, as Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres did last night in their speeches at Yad Vashem? Several years ago, in a Hebrew class at Brandeis, we watched a music video in the days leading up to Yom Hashoah. Miri ben Ari and Subliminal angrily sing the words, at the end of the song:

אם יש חיים אחרי המוות, אנחנו נחכה להם שמה
“Im yesh hayyim acharei ha’mavet, n’chakeh lahem shamah.” If there is life after death, we will be waiting for them there.

So how do we respond in the face of tragedy, the tragedies that are inflicted by humanity on ourselves? Do we call for vengeance? How do we find justice amidst this? How do we react when there is justice, yet not peace? President Obama’s speech last night, with its focus on those who were lost on 9-11, and those who have served in the ten long years since then, instead of focusing on triumphalism, reminds me of what today, in the cycle of Jewish time, is truly about. זכרונם לברכה Zichronam livracha – may the memories of all those who have died because of the evil present in our still-broken world be for a blessing.

Airplanes, Taxis, Buses, Boats, Trains...and a Ferris Wheel?!

2011-04-22T16:00:00.000+03:00

Lida, Belarus, 2nd night of Pesach:

What does the salt water represent? Jewish tears.
What does maror represent? Jewish pain all through history.

These simple answers, given by Lena, a 16-year old with an incredible voice, were not mere parroting of history lessons. The history of Jewish tears and pain is real and current in Belarus, even for a teenaged girl. But just like the story of Exodus, in its retelling at our Pesach seder, the bitterness and tears turn to freedom, redemption, and joy by the end of our story.

Over the course of 4 days, I traveled to Minsk, Grodno, and Lida, leading seders in Progressive communities under the auspices of the FSU Pesach Project, a partnership between HUC and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. My partner Rayna and I sang and danced to Yiddish songs (including a Yiddish rendition of Dayenu!) with the elderly Jews of Grodno, had a surprise motorboat ride in a lake in Lida with Igor, and watched a cantorial festival, featuring costumes slightly reminiscent of the Sound of Music. We spent hours talking with our translator, Ilona, about growing up Jewish in Belarus, paying for school, boyfriends, languages, our own hopes for the future.

By far the most powerful day was the time we spent in Lida. After arriving by bus from Grodno and eating lunch, we met Igor, a community member, for a tour of the city and its Jewish sites. We stood in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Igor gestured around us, saying, "This used to be a Jewish cemetery." Were it not for the memorial by the Jewish community, no one would know. We drove a little bit out of the city proper, to a monument on the side of a road, across from a forest. This monument, Igor told us, marked the spot where all of Lida's Jewish children were killed on the day the Nazis liquidated its ghetto in the spring of 1942. Their parents were marched into the forest across the way.

Here, we didn't need a monument to see what had happened. Mounds of earth rose unnaturally from the ground in a forest clearing, now covered in grass and wildflowers. These were the mass graves, memorialized by a Soviet-era plaque to Lida's citizens, no mention of the reason they were killed - their Jewishness.

At seder, we pair the salt water of Jewish tears with karpas, the greenery symbolizing springtime, rebirth, and renewal. The seder was our karpas. We walked into the room, bustling with preparations. Lena sang the 4 Questions beautifully. We sang, ate, prayed, told stories, and asked questions. We applauded the children's choir, recently returned from a choral competition in MInsk. They proudly sang for their parents and community, without any hesitation or embarrassment. The children of Lida needed no prodding to make the connection between the ancient story of יציאת מצריים, the Exodus from Egypt, and our people's more recent history. In organizing, we speak of the story of self, the story of us, the story of now - how does my story relate to the story of my community, to my people, to what is happening in my world? The stories of our people's pain are the story of self for so many people.

Speaking of the story of us, after spending Pesach in Belarus I have a much deeper and more complex understanding of Jewish peoplehood. It means something different outside of Israel - I appreciate the presence of other Jews more. At seder on Monday night in Grodno, we were singing Oseh Shalom, and the words ועל כל ישראל, and on all Israel, made me tear up. I was so struck by feeling part of a collective with people who I had known for barely two hours - we had nothing in common, nothing bringing us to that little room together, save for our Jewishness and the commitment to tell the story of the Exodus.

I've noticed that when I see Jews outside of Israel, like the black hat, tzittzit twirling boys who were on all of our flights, I feel a warmth and kinship towards them that I don't feel in Israel when I see haredim (even though those boys would only speak to Ricky). Only in Belarus would the 2 rabbis of Minsk, Chabad and Progressive, stand next to each other at the airport while picking up their students, coming from Israel to lead seder.

As much as I loved the experience of leading seders with the welcoming communities in Belarus, of course I missed celebrating Pesach at home with my family. The traditions, the jokes, the days that Mom spends preparing food (especially matzah ball soup, which was missing from all of the seders!)...I shared this with Ilona, and she responded, "You're lucky. I've never done a seder Pesach with my family."

In b.Pesachim 116a, it says, "The haggadah started in disgrace and ended in praise." The praise here is not only for the Religious Union for Progressive Judaism in Belarus and the communities there, but for God. In the traditional text of the 2nd blessing of the Amidah, the גבורות, it says, ברוך אתה ה' מחיה המיתים - Blessed is God, who gives life to the dead. The revival and rebirth of Judaism in Belarus, the move from children's graves to children's choirs, is a vibrant example of the potential for rebirth and renewal in our broken world.

(And that Ferris wheel? We rode one in Minsk. It was awesome.)

From Israel to...Belarus?!

2011-02-08T15:26:00.000+02:00

Last year, I got to celebrate Pesach in Jerusalem, with all of its benefits - only one seder, kosher restaurants open (Italian on Pesach?! potato gnocchi!), picnics in the glorious Jerusalem spring weather...

Instead of this year in Jerusalem though, I'm heading to the cities of Grodno and Lida in Belarus, to lead seders and teach in the Progressive Jewish communities there. Along with 15 of my HUC classmates, we are traveling to communities throughout the Former Soviet Union, as part of the FSU Pesach Project.

Some fun facts:

-There are only SIX Progressive rabbis in the Former Soviet Union!
-Belarus is best known for being a Soviet time capsule.
-The springtime temperature in Lida hovers around a balmy 10 degrees Celsius!
-Grodno is the birthplace of famed Jewish Mafia member Meyer Lansky.
-About 8 years ago, the Jewish community in Belarus constructed a Holocaust memorial to honor the Lida residents who were victims of the Nazis.
-The capital of Belarus is Minsk!

For more information about the project, click here.

I'm fundraising $2,500 towards this trip - any help you can give would be appreciated! Go to this website, and be sure to designate your donation to the FSU Pesach Project and to me, Miriam Farber!

And for your viewing enjoyment...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiQa1jKXRJE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgIrr5V1KDM&NR=1

Overheard at מסרד הפנים - the Ministry of the Interior

2010-12-26T16:38:00.000+02:00

(standing in line in a tiny corridor not wide enough for 2 people)
young Haredi man: Is this where you come to make a visa appointment?
older Haredi man: Yes.
young Haredi man: If it's just appointments, why is it taking so long?
older Haredi man: You come here, you come to Africa.

(The Ministry of the Interior is notorious for being the worst of the worst of Israeli bureaucracy and chaos.)

Overheard at HUC

2010-12-25T21:54:00.000+02:00

At Shabbat services, December 25, 2010

small tourist child: When are we going to the church?!

Love Christmas-Shabbos in Jerusalem!

לכל עיר יש שם - Every city has a name...

2010-12-13T20:08:00.000+02:00

Many places here in Israel have multiple names. There is a well-known poem by the Israeli poet, Zelda, describing how each person has many names: "Everyone has a name, given to him by God and given to him by his parents." (A complete translation by Marcia Falk can be found here.) In Israel, cities, neighborhoods, geographical landmarks, all have multiple names, often in Hebrew and in Arabic. Last month, I had the opportunity to visit one such place, to see separately each side of the neighborhood according to its name: Silwan/Ir David, the City of David.

Silwan/Ir David is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem just south of the eastern part of the Old City, just abutting the Old City walls. Currently, it is primarily a poor Palestinian neighborhood, although in the late 19th century it served as a neighborhood for Yemenite Jews arriving in the Land of Israel, who were not welcomed by their Ashkenazi counterparts within the Jewish quarter of the Old City. In recent years, there has been an increasing Jewish presence in Silwan, not only residential, but archaeological, educational, and with regards to tourism, through the archaeological site Ir David, claimed to be the location of King David's city and palace.

I visited Silwan with Encounter, as part of an East Jerusalem seminar day through Encounter's Leadership Seminar. We met with a baller young woman, Muna, who works at a community center in Silwan, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center. I knew very little about the area beforehand, other than that it had been the site of recent conflict, and learned from Muna that in fact, it would have been pretty unsafe for me to walk around Silwan on my own. The youth of Silwan see anyone who is not like them (i.e., not Palestinian - whether Israeli, Jewish, tourist, international aid activist, etc.) as "Yahud" - Jew, and therefore settler, the enemy. They haven't had the opportunity to experience anything else. A few statistics (from Muna's powerpoint presentation): Silwan has 55,000 residents, 50% of whom are under the age of 18 - and 75% of those under 18 are living under the poverty line.

A flag in the office of Wadi Hilweh Info Center

As is the story in so many slums in so many cities around the world, part of what is happening in Silwan/Ir David is that the municipality of Jerusalem wants to turn the neighborhood into green space, displacing the residents who live there, with no plan in place to compensate or relocate them. In my mind, this is not unique to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, but shows how class and urban politics play into this issue.

We heard about the work that Muna's organization does - gives children musical instrument lessons, usually only available to the children of wealthy Palestinian families, a children's drama group, Hebrew and English tutoring - and then took a walk around the city. Muna commented that visitors and tourists to the Ir David archaeological site turn immediately into its entrance and walk through the park, without any awareness that they are in the midst of a Palestinian neighborhood. We walked past that entrance, and kept going down the hill, past the heavily barricaded homes of Jewish settlers, decorated with defiant Israeli flags, seeing the poverty of this small neighborhood.

a mosque in Silwan, in close proximity to the exit from Hezekiah's Tunnel, part of the Ir David site

Exactly one week later, I visited the Ir David archaeological site with my biblical history class from HUC. We walked straight into the entrance of the park, without looking at the Palestinian neighborhood outside. My teacher, David Ilan, in his introduction to the site, made sure that we all knew that we were in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood - but that was because of his guiding and teaching, not part of the official presentation that Israeli students, soldiers, and tourists receive when they visit this site. David was also highly critical, on an academic level, of the archaeological claims that were made, that the structures found at that site are the remains of King David's palace. The ruins can be dated to a large span of years, without conclusive evidence that they are specifically from the time of King David, yet there has been a lot of hype, attention, and funding as a result of these claims.

What was perhaps the most disturbing moment of the day was the moment when we turned into Ir David, leaving Silwan behind, and I suddenly realized that I had been there three years ago, when I was working for NFTY in Israel. I hadn't made that connection the week before, because the Silwan I visited bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Ir David I had visited in 2007. But Ir David is lush and green, there is piped in harp music (possibly recorded by King David himself?!?!). As one of the other speakers we met during our Encounter East Jerusalem seminar said, "It's like religious Disney World." The noise, the dust, the traffic of Silwan was non-existent, even though it was a few dozen feet away.

At one point in our tour of Ir David, we stopped, and David started a discussion about the modern political context surrounding this site. This discussion led to another conversation among my classmates about whether or not the modern context surrounding an ancient site has a place in our learning about that site. For me, bli safek, without a doubt, it is impossible to only view the ancient sites that surround me here and to ignore what surrounds them. In this place, in this city, like nowhere else that I have been in the world, the ancient impacts those living, working, loving, fighting there today, and the modern informs how we view and understand the ancient.

a view of Palestinian homes from within Ir David

One source of information about Silwan/Ir David is a recent 60 Minutes story about it, found here.

Overheard at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station

2010-12-06T22:48:00.000+02:00

Two American seminary girls, just after getting off the bus from Eilat to Jerusalem:
girl 1: "It's just like when you go to Florida for winter break..."
girl 2: "And you get off the plane in the northeast and you have to put all your clothes back on!"
girl 1: "jinx!"

It's finally winter in Jerusalem!

First D'var Torah...as a rabbinical student!

2010-11-25T16:58:00.000+02:00

This is the d'var Torah I gave at HUC services this morning. It's on this week's Torah portion, Vayeshev, focusing on Genesis 38. It was really special to be able to give the d'var Torah while my parents and brother were here too!

We hear of a woman in this week’s parasha, Vayeshev. She leads to the death of not one, but TWO husbands. She is tricky and deceitful. She is a prostitute and a whore, so much so that she even seduces her own father-in-law.

Or do we? Let’s rewind. We hear of a woman in this week’s parasha, a widow, abandoned by her husband’s family. She is resourceful, modest, and brave. She is the progenitor of the Davidic line, mother of kings and saviors.

These women are one and the same – Tamar – whose experiences take up an entire chapter in the middle of the Joseph narrative. Tamar is married to Judah’s oldest son, who dies leaving her childless, and she is given to the next son to fulfill the practice of levirate marriage. This son ALSO dies, and hoping to save his youngest son’s life, Judah sends Tamar back to her father’s house. Tamar, knowing that it is her right to be married and have children, dresses up like a prostitute, sits on the road where Judah is traveling, sleeps with him, and becomes pregnant. Judah hears that his daughter-in-law has gotten pregnant by sleeping around, and calls for her to be burned. Tamar reveals the pledge Judah had given her – his personal staff, seal, and cord – saying the owner of these is the father, modestly giving Judah the chance to admit his wrongdoing rather than calling him out on it herself. Judah admits that he is wrong, and that Tamar is right. She gives birth to twins, Peretz and Zerach, and later, at the end of the Book of Ruth, it becomes clear that Tamar’s actions give rise to none other than the line of King David himself.

So which is she? Is Tamar morally compromised or rightfully strategic and resourceful? The detail that seems the most problematic and “yuck-inducing” to modern readers, that Tamar slept with her own father-in-law, is explained by Hizkuni, a 13^th century French commentator. He clarifies that although we are familiar with levirate marriage, yibum, as taking place between a woman and the brother of her deceased husband, in the time before matan Torah, yibum could happen with any male relative, including the father-in-law. Not only was this was widely accepted in biblical society, it was also fully legal, and therefore not morally problematic. So according to Hizkuni, Tamar was not behaving like a harlot, she was using the only legal road available to her to have children.

In fact, the strongest evidence for Tamar’s heroism and moral rightness lies in Judah’s response to her when she reveals his staff, seal, and cord: “Vayomer tzadkah mimeni – She is more in the right than I.” The word that Judah uses, tzadkah, doesn’t just mean that Tamar is correct in this situation. From the root צדק, for justice. Tamar had an injustice done to her when she was not given to Judah’s third son as she should have been. Although Tamar is coming from one of the most marginalized and powerless positions in biblical society – a childless widow who has been exiled from her in-laws’ home – she does not passively accept this injustice. Instead, Tamar acts strategically with the few resources she has – knowledge of Judah’s travel plans, a few carefully placed scarves, and her body, to bring about the result that she justly deserved. As it turns out, this bold act not only turned out well for Tamar, that she would have children and a secure place in her in-laws’ home, but her bravery led to the line of David, to the eventual Messiah for the entire Jewish people!

If Tamar’s future Messianic offspring and Judah’s words were not enough, the Torah grants Tamar an entire chapter in the midst of Genesis to let her voice be heard! The Torah itself validates Tamar’s moral rightness by giving her the space to be heard in such detail, much more than many other biblical women get. Every Shabbat, we sing the words of Psalm 92: צדיק כתמר יפרח Tzadik k'tamar yifrach– the righteous will bloom like a date-palm. Or, the righteous, k’tamar, like Tamar, will bloom.

Even though to this day, people regularly think of Tamar as being no more than a prostitute, Tamar is revealed instead to be not only active and resourceful in protecting her own future, but right, צדקה tzadkah, in ensuring the future of the Jewish people. Sometimes we need to take a second look at a narrative that we’ve heard over and over again, in order to understand what it’s really about. Too often we’re quick to accept a popular narrative about our tradition or the world around us, particularly now during our time in Israel. Instead, perhaps we should to look below the surface, to think critically about each narrative that we hear and see. Without looking past our initial feelings of disgust for Tamar’s actions, we would not be able to see her for the proactive individual that she really is, an individual who acts to secure not just her own destiny, but that of the Jewish people as well.

If I can't go apple picking this fall...

2010-10-11T20:04:00.000+02:00

A few memories:

February 2001: I am barely 14, and traveling Israel with my grandparents and their synagogue not so many months before the 2nd Intifada breaks out. We are driving in our tour bus to Jericho, and while we are stopped (because of traffic? a stop light? a check point?), I see Palestinian soldiers? policemen? (it's doubtful that I even knew who they were at the time). They are wearing militaristic uniforms, they are marching, they are holding guns. I snap a quick photo through the bus window, and one of the policemen/soldiers sees me. He angrily shakes his finger, "NO!" I am scared, in my rational 8th grade mind, that somehow this is going to have serious consequences for our entire tour group, and I don't say a word to anyone.

Spring 2003: I eat up the stories that I learn on EIE about the Israeli military. They are my heroes. I wear the dogtags of missing soldiers around my neck. I spend 5 days in Gadna, the Israeli Defence Forces' high school pre-army program. I (briefly) consider making aliyah and enlisting in the IDF. And plus...the soldiers are SO hot.

August 2009: I step out of the Central Bus Station, back in Jerusalem for the first time in two years. There are soldiers everywhere, and for the first time, I realize that they are young, and almost look as if they are dressed in costumes. My heart aches for them, for the world in which these young people are carrying guns, while my brother, their peer, is pursuing his dreams at college.

This past Friday: I am in a Palestinian-owned olive orchard in the northern part of the West Bank. A Jeep full of Israeli soldiers pulls up next to us. My stomach clenches; I am scared.

~~~~~~~~

To back up a little...this past Friday, I went with Rabbis for Human Rights to participate in the Palestinian olive harvest. For the past 15 years or so, this organization has been accompanying Palestinian farmers to their olive trees, in places where those olive trees butt up against Jewish settlements. The volunteers with Rabbis for Human Rights are an international presence, and are able to place calls to the police and to the army to report crimes committed by settlers that, in theory, are more likely to be answered than if the call were to be placed by the Palestinians themselves.

After waking up incredibly early (we met up at SIX IN THE MORNING!), we were dropped off in small groups near the trees we would be harvesting. We were warned that there had already been some trouble with settlers illegally trespassing through Palestinian fields, armed with photocopies of an IDF order saying that Palestinians have the right to harvest every olive off of every tree, and told to keep a low profile and not attract extra attention from the army. There's a map of the area where I was here.

Along with a classmate, a friend, and two others, we were matched up with Jamal and his family - his wife and five of his six children were out that day to pick olives, the first day of the season for them. Jamal spoke Hebrew, so we were able to talk about his family and who owned the trees and how the olives fit into the economy. Jamal's aunt owns the trees themselves, but doesn't work the land anymore, so she gets about 30% of the profits and Jamal's family takes the rest. They harvest the olives, press their own olive oil, and Jamal's wife brines olives (fun fact: olives are NOT edible straight off the tree) at home. Picking itself was lots of fun - it was good to be outside, especially now that the weather is significantly cooler here, to be physically active climbing on trees. The kids were cute and wanted to play. Many of the residents of the nearby Palestinian town of Awarta were out harvesting their olives that day, families riding by on donkeys or packed into cars, greeting each other and having fun. My suburban self was thrilled with a little glimpse of rural life.

And then the soldiers pulled up. It was a moment - to be fair, not the first time I have had this moment. It happens often when I am at Women of the Wall (which I missed by going to the olive harvest!) - when the Israeli army ceased to be the friendly presence I looked up to in middle school and high school, and became...the enemy. Even though that word still feels too strong to use. This area was closed to us, we were told in English. We needed to leave. "You, you're b'seder g'mur (totally OK)," the soldier explained in Hebrew to Jamal and his family. We called the RHR staff who were with us, much more well-versed in these matters. "They need a signed order to throw you out." Well, they had a piece of paper with a lot of Hebrew and a signature on it...and anyway, our transportation wasn't returning for another 2 hours! So we told them we were staying...To be honest, at this point, I am scared. I am not a law-breaking, let's get arrested for the sake of social change type of activist. I'm a community organizer, who likes to take it to the streets every now and then to spice things up. And where I come from, you don't defiantly ignore the Israeli army.

The soldiers kept driving by throughout the day, sometimes slowing down and looking at us, sometimes stopping the Jeep for several minutes. My classmate shared a cigarette with one soldier, he gave her a chocolate pudding in return. Why did they want us out of there so badly? To protect the Palestinians? To protect the settlers? Nope. Because it was Friday afternoon, and they wanted to go back to their base to nap, and they couldn't until after we left.

Lunchtime rolled around. Jamal's wife and older daughter had cooked lunch over a little camp stove - eggs, potatoes, hummus, pickles, laffa (big flat pita), all of it drenched in delicious olive oil. The olive oil, the pickles, and the laffa were ALL homemade, and delicious.

We picked some more olives, and soon it was time to leave, in order to return to Jerusalem before Shabbat. As we drove to pick up the other small group, the skies opened up and it POURED - for the first time! The first rain of the rainy season is something to be celebrated (and appreciated, especially after spending a day outside harvesting). When we reached the second (now soaking wet) group, we learned that a group of settlers had found some ladders in a Palestinian olive orchard, stolen them, and thrown them into an empty well.

How useful is this, accompanying Palestinians to do the olive harvest? Clearly, it doesn't create systemic change - it doesn't change army policies or settler behavior. The organization's been doing this, with many of the same families, towns, settlements, for 15 years! That aside, clearly, the olives need to be picked this year, even if the policies don't change this year, and if having another group present will help diffuse some of the tensions or provide witness to some of the stupid crap (stealing ladders, burning olive trees, trespassing through private property) that happens, then I am glad and honored to take part (especially if I get to eat such delicious food). Yet the question that I am still wondering about - is our presence just drawing more unnecessary and unwanted attention to the harvest, from both the army and the residents of the surrounding settlements?

Olive trees are such a potent symbol. They are one of the seven species of the Land of Israel (7 plants identified biblically as being native to the Land), and everyone, everywhere associates them with peace. And for these Palestinian farmers, they're also a livelihood. Going out and doing work like this, even though it is complicated, makes me feel like a more complete person, rather than just the part of me who sits in class. When I got back to Jerusalem that Friday afternoon (to see even more rain!), I felt that much more ready to celebrate Shabbat, although this was probably also because it was the first week in a month when there hadn't been any holidays.

Acharei haChagim

2010-10-04T22:00:00.000+02:00

There is a popular expression in Israel - אחרי החגים, acharei hachagim - after the holidays. Nothing productive happens during the fall chagim, no plans are made, everything is on pause. "Would love to get coffee with you - acharei hachagim." "I'll definitely write a blog post - acharei hachagim." The title of this blog post is not just a rather lame excuse for not having written since August, but it is a collection of reflections on my 2nd round of fall holidays in Israel.

Yom Kippur
Part of this was written for our "HaEmek D'var" processing groups at school. Over the course of Yom Kippur, actually all contained within the night of Kol Nidre, I had two starkly contrasting Jerusalem experiences. After Kol Nidre services at HUC, I was standing on the balcony of Beit Shmuel with two classmates, looking out over the night view of the Old City. Jerusalem is completely closed on Yom Kippur - no businesses are open, and the only motor traffic are police vehicles. From our view, just a few hundred feet from Jaffa Gate, the city was silent, beautiful, and perfect. It was a moment of incredible peace, undisturbed by the usual noises of traffic that permeate Jerusalem. At moments like these, not only is it easy to love Jerusalem, it is practically impossible not to.

After we tired of that view, Beni, Ricky, and I walked down to Emek Refaim, a street in southern Jerusalem filled with restaurants and shops. On Yom Kippur, of course, all of those were closed. As every synagogue and minyan finished its service, people from all over Jerusalem streamed to Emek Refaim to people watch and shmooze. In Israel, Yom Kippur is also known as Yom haOfanaim - Bicycle Day! With the streets empty of traffic, kids take the opportunity to take over the cities with their bikes. As we watched all of the diversity of am Yisrael walk by in their Yom Kippur whites and on their bicycles, tricycles, skateboards, and Razors, I commented that we had been looking at before was ירושלים של מעלה Yrushalayim shel ma'alah - the heavenly Jerusalem, and what we were looking at now was ירושלים של מטה Yrushalayim shel matah - the earthly Jerusalem. Wasn't this incredible? Isn't this, the community and the am, the people, what it's really about? Beni responded, "Yes, but today, Yom Kippur IS about Yrushalayim shel ma'alah." I'm not sure that we can ever remove Yrushalayim shel matah, the world-as-it-is, from the equation completely, even on Yom Kippur, yet that moment of looking out at the physical representation of Yrushalayim shel ma'alah was a clear reminder of what I want to strive for not only on Yom Kippur.

Simchat Torah
For the second year in a row, I went to Kol Haneshama, a Progressive congregation in Jerusalem, for hakafot (dancing with the Torah) on Erev Simchat Torah. As always, it was a lot of fun, good spirited, plenty of cute children waving the flags they had made in gan. Kol Haneshama has a beautiful custom as part of their Simchat Torah celebration. Generally, the 7 hakafot are loud, with fast circle dancing, singing at the top of your lungs, and getting sweaty and dehydrated. At Kol Haneshama, the first six are like this. For the final hakafah, everyone gets into one large circle in the courtyard outside the building. As the two Torah scrolls are passed around the circle, ensuring that each and every person there has the opportunity to hold a Torah scroll during the hakafot, the community sings slower songs, transitioning and slowing down from the ecstasy of hakafot 1-6. It is a beautiful tradition, because of it last year I started to feel a part of the community rather than an outsider watching others celebrate.

בין ישראל לעמים - Between Israel and the Nations

2010-08-08T18:20:00.000+03:00

Shalom from VERY hot Jerusalem! We've been suffering through a heat wave for the past week, which of course meant that the AC at HUC would break. I've been settling into the new routine of ulpan, homework, and living in Jerusalem from my new vantage point of Rehavia resident and HUC student. I also have a visitor this week, the one and only Mat Schutzer, who was such a great host when I visited him in Brussels at the beginning of the summer!

A story from our havdalah service last night. My HUC class has a lovely tradition of gathering about an hour before Shabbat ends in a park near school for singing and havdalah (the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat and the transition into the week). Yesterday, we went to a different park, with more foot traffic and people outside enjoying the slightly cooler weather as the sun went down. Anyone who has traveled with a group of NFTY teens knows the ability of guitars in public spaces to attract the attention of little kids. On this particular Saturday evening, the kids who gravitated to the eight or so guitars and our singing were a group of Arab kids and their grown-ups. (As a side note, one of my teachers at Pardes last year commented that Jerusalem's parks are one of the few public spaces where Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs have any interaction.) We widened our circle to include them. We sang the words of the final blessing and extinguished the havdalah candle:

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העולם המבדיל בין קודש לחול, בין אור לחושך, בין ישראל לעמים, בין יום השביעי לשישת ימי המעשה. ברוך אתה יי המבדיל בין קודש לחול.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who distinguishes between the holy and ordinary, between light and dark, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of work. Blessed are You, Adonai, who distinguishes between the holy and ordinary.

As we sang the words "between Israel and the nations," I thought about how our circle had expanded to include those of another עם, another people, one whom, particularly within Jerusalem, is often starkly juxtaposed to be against עם ישראל, similar to the other divisions praised in the separation blessing, between light/dark, holy time/work time. Was this a division I wanted to be praising God for? Especially at a moment when the division seemed to be blurry. Yet - perhaps that is what havdalah is about. We do havdalah at the liminal moment of twilight, between light and dark, at a moment when we are trying to hold on to the peaceful holiness of Shabbat for just a few moments longer, singing just one more round of lai-lai's, before succumbing to the routine of the week. Even though we are praising these differences, and the One who Distinguishes, with the havdalah liturgy, we are still reluctant to make the separation. Just as it is said that in עולם הבא, the World as It Should Be, it will be Shabbat all the time, may it also be that when that day comes, other differences will cease to be relevant.

And a little tidbit from ulpan (intensive Hebrew language class): טיפש-עשרי=tipesh-esrei=teenager. 14, 15, etc. are ארבע-עשרי, חמש-עשרי=arba'a-esrei, chamesh-esrei, and טיפש=tipesh=stupid.

Life's a Beach

2010-07-11T23:14:00.001+03:00

So as many of you know from my very public and detailed Facebook updates about my travels for the past month and a half, I am now back in Jerusalem after a lovely four weeks on the East Coast seeing lots of friends and family, and a fun week in Brussels visiting my friend Schutz from Brandeis. Orientation for HUC-JIR's Year in Israel program starts tomorrow evening, and I have been holding on to vacation like a kid in the last week of August - which of course meant a trip to the beach in Tel Aviv today.

Danny Sanderson - HaGalshan
יום בהיר של שמש
אין שום עננים
אני וכל החברה
אל הים נוסעים
לקחנו את האוטו
הבנות כבר שם

(It's a clear, sunny day/there are no clouds/me and all my peeps/are going to the beach/we take the car/the girls are already there)

This is often my inner soundtrack whenever I go to the beach in Israel - it's completely offbase for what the soundtrack actually is in Israel, but is completely the image I had of the beach as a kid at camp. Today, however, not only were "the girls already there," but there were ONLY girls (and women) there. I went with two Brandeis friends who are in Israel for the summer to the single sex beach in Tel Aviv. On Sundays/Tuesdays/Thursdays, it's only open to women, and on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, it's only open for men. I learned from one of my friends, who is here in Israel doing research for her dissertation on the Israeli municipal laws surrounding these beaches, that every city that has a beach, needs to have a sex separated area.

This particular beach was fascinating. It's surrounded by a high wall, although you approach it from the street above, so the wall seems kind of pointless. Except for the lack of men, the beach was not strikingly different from any of the beaches further south in Tel Aviv. I was most struck by the wide variety of beachwear - from itsy bitsy teeny tiny bikinis, to normal bikinis, bikini tops with shorts, one pieces, one pieces with white dresses over them (which once they are white, are pretty pointless as a modest cover-up), to women who were in the water in full-on street clothes. And with any of those combinations, there was a possibility of a head covering (some married Jewish women cover their hair, in a variety of ways, particularly within the Orthodox community).

This beach raises a lot of interesting questions for me - many of which we discussed while we lay out (probably with not quite enough sunscreen, at least on my end). Is there a straight line from separate sex beaches to separate sex bus lines (which have been a big issue in Israel and Jerusalem in the past year)? In my mind, I don't think so. I think these beaches enable those who act out values of modesty in their life with a particular set of actions to go to the beach, and swim, and get sunburnt. It's also very much a minority - it's a small beach, one which I didn't even know existed, nor did most of my non-Orthodox friends who I've talked to since. It's the kind of place that if you don't GO, you just not aware of it at all.

I think it's all interesting from the standpoint of creating women's only space within the public domain (although clearly 3 days a week, it is also men's only space, space that is already plentiful in Israel's plentiful domain). Being there reminded me of this article from The New York Times, about a women's only park in Afghanistan, particularly the description of how women take off their usual modest clothing once they are away from male gaze. This then leads me to the question of what specifically is driving the need for these beaches? Is it the desire to protect women from male gaze (and vice versa on men's days) to enable them to wear bathing suits? Or is it to create a space where people can go to the beach without being exposed to other people's perceived immodesty? One friend raised that this was just a nicer environment to bring your kids to splash around in the water.

I had a thought as I was wading into the (very warm!) Mediterranean for a swim, that with women's days and men's days, there really is no space for someone who doesn't fit into the gender binary, just as in a prayer space with a mechitza, or in a public space that only has male and female labeled bathrooms. But then I checked myself and remembered the miles of other beaches that don't use gender to separate either time or space.

I'd love to hear what any of you think about this - whether you've been in similar spaces, have thoughts about the genderedness or the religiosity of it...

Seeing is Believing

2010-05-28T09:55:00.000+03:00

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!!

2010-05-20T20:12:00.001+03:00

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

2010-05-17T11:14:00.000+03:00

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...

The Holidays Affectionately Known as "the Yoms"

2010-04-30T10:57:00.000+03:00

Pardes observed Yom HaZikaron by visiting Har Herzl, the military cemetery in Jerusalem. It was an intense experience, even though we went near the end of the day. Many of the families had visited the graves of their loved ones in the morning, and the detritus of these visits was visible all over the cemetery in the form of plastic wrappers from bouquets, empty water bottles, and yahrzeit candles burning next to the graves. In one of my classes when we went back to school after both holidays, Rav Levi shared the words of someone in his community who lost someone in one of Israel's wars: "We have the yahrzeit, that's when we mourn - Yom HaZikaron is when you mourn with us."

The transition to Yom Ha'atzmaut from the mourning of Yom HaZikaron was quick. I wasn't sure exactly what intention I wanted to take into Yom Ha'atzmaut with me. As my friend Alanna said, my lefty political values and my Zionism don't need to contradict each other. We went to a טקס(tekes=ceremony) sponsored by Yesh G'vul, designed to be an alternative to the state-sponsored ceremony at Har Herzl. It was definitely a snapshot of the Israeli left; there were more people than I expected to see, and a diverse group with respect to age - I even ran into an old friend, Idan, with whom I had worked 3 summers ago. I was disappointed by the ceremony itself. I thought it was boring and dry; I was looking to have my lefty neshama moved and stirred up by the hard work being done by the social change workers they chose to honor with beacon lighting.

The one moment that did give me some of those chills was when all of the children present were invited to come up and light the final beacon. I think, for me, that is the intention, the kavannah for Yom Ha'atzmaut: a lot of good has been done in this country in the past 62 years, along with a lot that should not be repeated in its next 62 years. But Israel and Israelis will keep working to build a just, peaceful, and safe society for the next generation of children to grow up in.

When we were talking about Yom Ha'atzmaut in class the next day, Rav Levi offered this perspective: that Yom Ha'atzmaut is a day to take a step back from working on the country's problems. We do that the other 364 days of the year, but Yom Ha'atzmaut is a day for being thankful (which is reflected in the religious celebrations of the holiday, where Hallel, joyful psalms, is added to the liturgy). This reminds me of Shabbat - the other 6 days we work towards the world-as-it-should-be, trying to fix the world's problems, but Shabbat is explicitly the day when we stop doing that and appreciate what we have.

Zichronam Livracha - May their memories be for a blessing

2010-04-18T22:24:00.012+03:00

Much to write about. It's been awhile, and a lot has happened. This is a pretty heady time of year in Israel - Pesach is followed very rapidly by Yom Hashoah (remembering the Holocaust), and then a week later, Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and immediately after by Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day).

I don't have much to say about what Yom Hashoah was like, as I spent most of it home sick with strep throat. I can say, that it is true, I verified it, that there is nothing on TV in Israel on Yom Hashoah except for Holocaust movies.

Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks, started tonight. A siren sounded across the country at 8pm, marking the beginning of the day. In addition to the state ceremony held at the Kotel, neighborhoods and communities all over Jerusalem held their own local ceremonies. Lauren and I, along with her roommate, went to the community ceremony in Baka, the neighborhood where many of my friends live.

We arrived a little late, so we were standing in the back, near the entrance, which was heavily guarded by security and police. Towards the end of the ceremony, a little boy, probably about 3 or 4 years old, started crying - he couldn't find his parents. Watching the police and the security push aside their guns, kneel down, and take care of this little boy who couldn't find his parents, juxtaposed with the ceremony mourning all of the children of Israel who have died - 22,682 since 1860 - was striking and poignant. It reminded me of the Yehuda Amichai poem, which I may have quoted here before, "An Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion."

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both in their temporary failure.

These two holidays, so close together, with their drastic shift from the mourning of Yom HaZikaron to the celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, are very conducive to deep conversations about what Zionism is, what the State of Israel is and could be. Coming where they do in the cycle of my own time here, after I've been living in Jerusalem for a substantial amount of time, and am anticipating another year here, they raise questions of my own relationship to this place. We had a panel at Pardes today called "Keeping the Faith," with 3 Pardes alumni, who all made aliyah, and live very different lives in Israel, with very different outlooks. One speaker talked about how he is not an armchair Zionist, and by living in Israel and serving in the army, he engages in the dirty, practical work of Zionism. I also don't want to be an armchair Zionist, yet my understanding of what my role is in the dirty, practical work of Zionism doesn't equal aliyah and enlisting in the IDF. I'm still figuring out exactly what my role is, what my relationship is to this place.

Right now I'm listening to Galgalatz online (Israeli radio). On Yom HaZikaron, the radio stations all play sad music, transitioning to happier music as Yom Ha'atzmaut starts. Tomorrow, there is another siren in the morning, and in the afternoon, I'm going to the military cemetery, Har Herzl, with Pardes. Tomorrow night, I'm going to an "alternative beacon lighting ceremony, for a just, equitable, and deserving Israel," sponsored by Yesh G'vul. There will be much more to share and reflect on over the next 48 hours.

Zichronam livracha - may their memories, of all those who have died because of this conflict, seeking safe homes and freedom for future generations, on both sides, be for a blessing - and may that blessing be that soon the day will come when a parent's greatest fear is losing their child in a crowd, not sending him or her off to war.

A visit to the Museum on the Seam

2010-03-29T13:20:00.000+03:00

Last week, I went to the Museum on the Seam, an incredible socio-political contemporary art museum on the line (the seam) between West and East Jerusalem. It is definitely worth a visit whenever you are in Jerusalem. The current exhibit, HomeLessHome, showed different artists' understandings of what home is, and how home as a concept is impacted by governments and individuals. The museum does not only focus on how these issues play out locally (although the exhibit included work by Israeli and Palestinian artists from a variety of political perspectives, including the pain of the evacuation and destruction of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, and the pain caused by home demolitions in Palestinian villages).

One piece that I was particularly struck by, both by the artwork itself and the accompanying description and quote in the exhibit guide, was on the roof of the museum, from which one can see neighborhoods of both West and East Jerusalem, as well as the Old City. The sculpture, by the Israeli artist Philip Rantzer, had four iron cages placed inside each other. The artist shared an excerpt from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, that really struck me in this time right before Pesach:

It was during those long and lonely years that the hunger for the freedom of my own people became the hunger for the freedom for all people, white and black. I knew as well as I know anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

When I walked out of prison that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that now has been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

I hope everyone has a happy and meaningful holiday, to those who are celebrating! It is very exciting to be here, in Jerusalem, for Pesach, when a year ago I was saying "לשנה הבאה בירושלים - to next year in Jerusalem!" Chag Pesach sameach!

For lo, the winter has passed...

2010-03-23T17:10:00.000+02:00

As I write this, sitting on my mirpeset and overlooking the courtyard behind my apartment building, I can see my neighbors in the next building over, who have moved their Pesach cleaning outside - there seems to be an entire stove out there, being cleaned. Stores and restaurants all around Jerusalem have signs announcing whether or not they will be open during Pesach and I saw a poster last night informing me when I could take my kitchen utensils and pots to be immersed in boiling water to kasher them for Pesach - right in my neighborhood! In addition to the holiday preparations that are everywhere in Jerusalem this week, the trees are blooming, flowers are budding, and the entire city smells like a flower shop (also known as hell for those of us with seasonal allergies).

I spent last week on a Pardes tiyul to the Golan Heights, in the north of Israel. I'd been to the Golan before, but mostly for tourism and learning about the history of the area, rather than hiking. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Wildflowers were blooming, everything was GREEN (rare for this region of the world), and it was so fully and entirely spring. On the first two days of the tiyul, we hiked to waterfalls with deep pools - and I was even brave enough to jump into the freezing cold water on day 2. Hiking in Israel reminds me that no matter what, despite all the challenges of living in this country, all of the heavy, complicated stuff that I write about and think about, I love this land. I am so happy to be living here this year, to have the opportunity to stay for another year.

At Shabbat services on Friday night, at Nava Tehila, a Renewal community in Jerusalem, we sang parts of Song of Songs, traditionally read/sung around this time of year, usually at the Shabbat during Pesach:

כי הנה הסתיו עבר הגשם חלף הלך לו. הניצנים נראו בארץ עת הזמיר הגיע
For lo, the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on earth, the time of singing has come. (Song of Songs 2:11-12)

Singing these verses at Kabbalat Shabbat felt like such an apt description of the past week. I love that in Israel, the liturgical cycle reflects the natural rhythm of the world, rather than feeling totally incongruous.

Yesterday, I went to the doctor to get my medical forms for HUC filled out. Only in Israel would the doctor be more confused as to why I needed a physical to go to rabbinical school than with the entire concept of rabbinical school in the first place. On his shelf, next to the usual medical books, were books like "Medical Ethics and Halacha." Another one of those "only in Israel" moments...

את דתית? - Are you religious?

2010-03-14T12:52:00.001+02:00

Coming at you live from Aroma (Israel's #1 coffee chain) in Kanyon Hadar, the mall across the street from Pardes. I've designated 12pm-1pm on Sundays and Wednesdays as class-free, an hour off - which, as all of you camp people know, is for iced coffee and checking email.

Once a week, I volunteer in an absorption center for Ethiopian immigrants (olim) in Mevasseret Zion, a small city not so far from Jerusalem. The families live in the absorption center (mercaz klitah) for 2 years after arriving in Israel. Several Pardes students go every Tuesday afternoon and spend time with the families and the kids there. My family has 5 kids, 4 of whom live at home - Isubalo (11), Tadla (8), Haftamo (3), and an infant. The Ethiopian community in Israel has not been well-absorbed into Israeli society - even after leaving absorption centers, they still live in relatively close-knit and isolated communities. They are poor and the adults speak very little Hebrew. Upon arrival in Israel, the Ethiopians were forced to undergo conversion, because their halachic Jewish status was questioned. Conversion in Israel is controlled by the rabbanut, the state rabbinic authority (and is currently in the news a lot) - those who convert in Israel are required to maintain a certain level of Jewish observance. As a result, the kids in the Ethiopian community in Mevasseret attend religious schools.

This past Tuesday, we took our kids outside to play, to the delight of every other child in the neighborhood, who couldn't wait to play with our jump rope, climb on the human jungle gyms, and ask us a million questions about where we were from, what we were doing there, and if we were coming back next week. Shira (another Pardes student volunteering there) and I were sitting on the curb chatting, when three older girls, probably around 13 or so, walked up and started to ask us the same million questions. With one new question: את דתית? (Are you religious?) I was wearing a skirt, which probably prompted the question. It's a tricky question to answer here. The word "דתי" isn't just an adjective, but a label that corresponds most closely with modern Orthodox. Particularly for these kids in the absorption center, where B'nei Akiva, the religious Zionist youth movement, has a significant presence, "religious" has a very particular social meaning. The kids hadn't heard of Reform Judaism, despite the fact that there is a vibrant Progressive synagogue in Mevasseret Zion, that I visited a few weeks ago for Shabbat with Shir Tikva.

It's a common question, especially when I tell Israelis that I'm studying Talmud and Torah at Pardes. I've been asked it when sitting in a bar on a Friday night (not usually the favorite stomping ground of the religious). Adult Israelis (as opposed to teen girls in the absorption center) have usually at least HEARD of Reform Judaism (reformim as they're called here), but are less likely to have some knowledge of what it means when I say that I'm a Reform Jew.

Breaking down religious stereotypes since 1986...

Today is our last normal class day until after Pesach - tomorrow we have a day of classes about Pesach (including a showing of The Prince of Egypt!), and then it's vacation! Vacation plans include a trip to the Golan Heights with Pardes, a long weekend in Turkey with Benn, seder, visitors from Boston, and some traveling around Israel. It's definitely spring here in Jerusalem: trees are green and blooming, the weather is significantly warmer (already hit high 80s!), and it smells like flowers everywhere. When I tried to buy cake mix last week to bake a birthday cake for a friend, I failed at the first grocery store I went to - they had already cleared out the chametz from several of their aisles, replacing it with kosher for Passover cake mix - gross!

Haredim and Hamentaschen

2010-03-04T14:24:00.000+02:00

Haredim...
Last week, my friend and fellow Pardes student Dan and I joined a group of leaders and staff from the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors meeting to take a tour exploring ultra-Orthodox (haredi) life in Israel. The tour took us to a girls' school in the haredi Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula, a business employing primarily haredi women in Modi'in Illit, and an employment center in Beit Shemesh. I learned a lot more on the trip than I was expecting, especially since Dan and I had been told that our primary role in being there was to talk about the impact that MASA (a project of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government that is one of the key financial reasons that enables me to be in Israel now) has had on us. It was a great opportunity to see a slice of Israeli life that I don't come into much contact with in my life in the liberal, pluralistic community of South Jerusalem.

The haredi community is usually very separate from the rest of Israeli society (or the society of whatever country they are living in). They live in tight-knit communities, marry within their communities, and remain within the haredi world for employment, avoiding contact with the secular world. This can be seen even by looking at the itinerary for my day exploring the haredi world. Our first stop, Geula, is a Jerusalem neighborhood inhabited almost entirely by various sects of the haredi community. The second location, Modi'in Illit, is an entirely ultra-Orthodox city/settlement, on the other side of the Green Line. It has a population of 50,000, and is the fastest growing city and settlement in Israel.

The common thread among most of the places we visited was how haredim can participate in modern society while still remaining within the haredi community. In Modi'in Illit, we visited CityBook, a business that hires haredi women to do legal work that has been outsourced from an American real estate company. 10-15% of the work force is out on maternity leave at any given time, due to the emphasis on family and childbearing in the haredi community! I was really struck by how the company made both halachic (Jewish law) and cultural adjustments to their offices in order to be a viable employment option for these women. After consulting with rabbinic authorities, they put glass windows into all of the office doors, to enable a man and a woman to have a private business meeting without violating Jewish laws about men and women being alone. Culturally, they set aside a room in the offices for women to use when coming back from maternity leave for pumping breast milk, instead of using a closet or trying to find other private space like women in so many other offices have to do. That's not a legal adjustment, but it is acknowledging the cultural realities of the community. One of the women employees raised the point that haredi women have always entered the workforce; historically they were expected to be the family's primary breadwinners while the husbands studied fulltime in yeshivot. What's different now is that the community and businesses are approaching it on a more collective level, by placing offices and businesses in places that are physically the center of haredi life. The business even receives subsidies from the Israeli government, which wants to encourage employment of minorities, including the haredi and Arab sectors of the labor force.

In Beit Shemesh, we met with three soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces unit Nahal Haredi. The rabbi who founded it (originally from Boston!) wanted to address the rift between the secular and religious parts of Israeli society. One of the biggest points of contention is army service - most ultra-Orthodox men don't serve in the IDF, unlike the rest of their peers who serve in some way, either through enlisting in the IDF or doing national service (volunteering in some part of Israeli society). A popular bumper sticker in Israel, reflecting this tension, reads "גיוס לכולם - Enlistment for All." This special army combat unit was created to make a space for haredi young men to serve in the army without having to compromise their religious practices and cultural standards. The unit is 70% haredi and 30% national religious (modern Orthodoxy in the US) - but everyone is religious. One of the soldiers said, "This is not the place for non-religious guys looking to spend less time in the army." The soldiers do two years of combat service, and their third year in the army focuses on vocational training and completing their high school diplomas, so that post-army, the men who participate in this combat unit can enter the workforce. In Israel, it's very difficult to enter the labor force in a meaningful way if one hasn't served in the army, and for haredi men, they have not studied secular topics or gained any marketable skills other than learning gemara.

It struck me the extent to which Nahal Haredi has caused the IDF to change, rather than creating change within the haredi community itself. These are two social institutions in Israel that, at least at face value, are incompatible. The army adjusted to make space for the haredi world, rather than the haredi world adapting itself to the army. Although the unit has been around for 10 years, they still struggle to recruit young men to it. Those who come are often those who haven't succeeded in yeshiva, and like young people in any society who don't succeed on their expected path, are drawn to drugs, drinking, fighting, etc. (instead of addressing potential learning disabilities or different aptitudes that might lead to a young man not thriving in a yeshiva environment). Many of the soldiers are told by their families to not come home, and if they do, to not come home wearing their army uniforms. There is a lot of anger and embarrassment still within the haredi community to some of their sons participating in Israeli society in this very basic way.

The funniest moment of the day occurred as we were leaving lunch with the haredi soldiers. They are young men, look like any other young Israeli soldier - wearing small kippot, very clean-shaven, have the sleeves of their army uniforms rolled up as far as possible (it shows how macho you are, obviously. Only weaklings roll their sleeves down). I asked a question of the speakers and got a rushed answer because we needed to be leaving. As I was collecting my things, one of the soldiers came over to me and very eagerly said, "What was your question? I can answer it!" I was dressed my most modestly for the day - long denim skirt, carefully layered shirts, looking very much the part of a modest Orthodox young woman. I thought, "You don't want this, honey. I know it looks like you do, but you really don't...I'm going to be a Reform rabbi, I study gemara...really, really not your type!"

...and Hamentaschen!
Last weekend was Purim! In Jerusalem, this resulted in a four and a half day weekend! We had a half-day of school on Thursday due to the Fast of Esther, no school on Friday and Saturday as usual, Sunday off for Purim, and Monday off for Shushan Purim. Shushan Purim is celebrated in walled cities (such as Jerusalem), in recognition of the fact that the Jews of Shushan (the walled Persian city where much of the Purim story takes place) had an extra day to pursue and kill their enemies than Jews in the rest of Persia. Excellent. Sheryl and I went to the shuk on Thursday afternoon; I had to buy ingredients for the Shabbat lunch I was hosting as well as materials for mishloach manot (packages of food and treats sent to friends and neighbors on Purim). The candy store was PACKED with others looking for the same thing. The next day, on Friday, as I walked past the high school near my house, I saw a teenage girl run out of the Purim party/carnival to pick up some baked goods from a parent waiting in a car in the street. Her costume? Sexy Santa.

Although it rained all weekend (and the Dead Sea has risen 8 centimeters!), the rain stopped (some) in time for Shushan Purim. Sara G. and I went to hear the megillah read at Kol Haneshama (well, two chapters of it), and then ran through the pouring rain to Pardes to see (and act in!) the Purim shpiel. The next day, by some miracle of heaven, I woke up in time to go to a megillah reading organized by Women of the Wall at the Kotel. (See this interesting article from the Jerusalem Post about women's megillah readings.) After some much needed lunch and a nap, I went to a seudah (festive meal) at my teacher Meesh's house, along with most of the rest of Pardes. One of the things I love about the Pardes community is that our teachers do things like open up their homes to the entire student body for holidays, it was very sweet of Meesh, her husband, and her kids to host all of us.

Noam and I in our costumes (he's the Rambam!) at Kol Haneshama megillah reading - Terry told me it looked like I wasn't in costume, I had just walked into the wrong synagogue!

Women's megillah reading at the Kotel

Taking it to the street

2010-02-23T12:23:00.006+02:00

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

2010-02-19T11:41:00.000+02:00

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!

2010-02-01T21:09:00.007+02:00

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.

"Let the peoples tremble...let the earth quake"

2010-01-15T12:39:00.003+02:00

(Psalm 99:1)

This blog post was originally supposed to be about the drought here in Israel. The Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel declared yesterday, Thursday, a fast day. Rav Amar said, "Because of our sins the water situation is in a serious state. Our duty in this situation is to scrutinize and examine our actions and bring ourselves close to God with all our hearts. We must be repentant with broken hearts and anyone who is able should fast, if not a whole day, at least a half day." This is a tradition, that when winter hasn't been wet enough, the chief rabbi will call for the entire country to fast (which doesn't happen) in hopes of bringing the rain. I was going to write about communal responsibility taking care of our world, both spiritually and practically.

But then a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. If I were in the States this weekend, any synagogue that I might find myself in for Shabbat would be acknowledging the crisis and suffering, praying for the people of Haiti. In comparison with the tens of thousands dying under rubble, praying for rain, for this one teeny country, seems selfish and insignificant. No one is dying, today, because of the drought in Israel. Yet the drought is systemic, and absolutely affects people's lives and physical well-being. When I pray the words of the Gevurot, משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם - Who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall, my intention is not only towards Israel, but towards this whole, dry region. In the West Wing episode, "College Kids," President Bartlet shares his daughter Ellie's teacher's opinion on why there's always been conflict in the Middle East: "It's because it's incredibly hot and there's no water."

The tradition of declaring a communal fast day in times of drought in Eretz Yisrael is rooted in the assumption that the drought is because of our human failings, as individuals and as a community. The liturgy is not in ecological terms, although many interpret it as such, but in the language of sin and forgiveness. When this language is contrasted with Pat Robertson's words about how Haiti deserved this as punishment for a pact with the devil, I'm challenged by the theology inherent in these fast days, that droughts are a punishment to Israel because of sin, whether the sin of not keeping Shabbat, of sinat hinam (senseless hatred), or the treatment of the Other. But I do believe that how we act communally impacts the world. It's easy to think of examples for the drought, especially since it requires all of us to collectively reduce water usage through lifestyle changes. My friend Josh G-S saw a greater distinction between the fast day and Robertson's words than I did. He pointed out that the fast day comes from within the Jewish community, rather than from an external individual accusing an entire country of sin. We call on ourselves to take stock of our actions, through prayer and fasting.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes in his commentary to the prayer ברכת השנים (blessing the years, in the Amidah) in the Koren siddur, that, "Israel is a place that teaches its inhabitants the need for prayer." So is the world. Both of these natural events cause people of all faiths to cry out in prayer. In my siddur class this past semester, we talked about the power of prayer, and whether or not it has tangible impacts on the world. We talked about how our prayers can change us, by reminding us of our ideal selves and the world as we believe it should be, and through that, change the world.

Yesterday at Pardes we said tehillim, psalms, for both those suffering in Haiti and for ending the drought in Israel. Isaiah asks, "Is this the fast I desire?" Hopefully, the fast day, the psalms, the prayers for Haiti will lead to not only prayer and introspection, but real, world-changing action.

Blessed is God, Ruler of the Universe, whose power and might fill the world.

Bradley Burston's prayer for the people of Haiti

JRF's adaptation of Burston's prayer

Life's a Great Balancing Act

2010-01-06T22:58:00.004+02:00

At a night encampment on the way, the Lord encountered him and sought to kill him. So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, "You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!" And when God let him alone, she added, "A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision." ~Exodus 4:24-26

These verses, towards the end of this week's Torah portion, Sh'mot, have always seemed weird to me. They are out of place, a break in the narrative of Moses' first encounter with the Divine at the burning bush and his development as a leader.

In my chumash class at Pardes, we've been studying the book of Exodus all semester. More specifically, we've been studying Parshat Shmot all semester - we completed the first Torah portion of Exodus this week, just in time for it to be this week's portion. Studying it in this up-close, in-depth way gave me the chance to look at these verses on their own, rather than focusing on trying to place them within the narrative.

Rashi, the 12th century French commentator, in trying to understand why God is seeking to kill Moses, who has just been sent off to Egypt to free the Israelites, says that Moses didn't circumcise his son like he was supposed to, 8 days after his son's birth. However, he quotes Rabbi Yossi saying, "God forbid Moses was negligent! Moses said, 'I'll circumcise him and then I'll go out on a journey that's dangerous for the baby for the 3 days after his circumcision, instead I'll circumcise him and then stay put until he heals.'"

There's a conflict here between Moses' mission for the community and his responsibilities to his family and his son, a conflict that many people are personally familiar with. Moses' attempt to balance his communal and personal responsibilities almost led to his death! According to Rashi, these two are irreconcilable.

Ibn Ezra, a Spanish contemporary of Rashi, understands these odd verses by saying that circumcision can be postponed if the baby is ill or traveling, and that therefore Moses didn't circumcise his son on the 8th day so as not to delay in carrying out his mission from God. Ibn Ezra suggests that a messenger of God came to remind Moses to circumcise his child and then go on alone to Egypt, leaving the baby to recover with his mother at the night encampment. Ibn Ezra does not view the family's needs and the community's needs as completely in conflict, and finds a compromise allowing Moses to fulfill both, without neglecting his son or the Israelite people. This compromise requires the support of a third individual, Moses' wife Tzipporah, but with her help, he's able to find some balance in his life and his work.

Definitely not Chinese food and movies

2009-12-28T19:12:00.001+02:00

Jewish holidays in Israel are always special. There's something about celebrating a holiday that is usually a minority holiday, but to do it surrounded by others who are also celebrating. Chanukah in Jerusalem was no exception. Pardes was on vacation for the week, and I stayed in Jerusalem, taking the opportunity to wander around the city (and eat LOTS of sufganiyot). One night I went with some other friends from school to see the hanukkiyah lighting at the Kotel. Chanukah means rededication in Hebrew, referring to the rededication of the Temple after the Greeks trashed it and used it for idolatry. Despite my conflicted feelings about the Kotel, it was exciting to celebrate Chanukah there, where it actually happened. After, we wandered through the Jewish Quarter of the Old City to see the hanukkiyot, which are often displayed in windows or even outside of homes in the twisting alleys of the Rova, in fulfillment of the mitzvah of publicizing the Chanukah miracle. The atmosphere was something akin to going to the neighborhood with the best Christmas lights and decoration. There were tour guides leading secular Israeli families through the neighborhood, explaining the customs.

The hanukkiyah at the Kotel on the 6th night of Chanukah

lots of hanukkiyot in the Old City

Even so, I was missing Christmas, and there was always the reminder in the back of my head that Chanukah was not the only winter holiday being celebrated here. There were small reminders - plastic Christmas trees on sale at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, a story on Israeli radio during evening hour about Jews writing Christmas songs. So on Thursday afternoon, following the theme of celebrating winter holidays where they actually happened, I traveled with (a very large group of Jews) to Bethlehem for Christmas. Sara's roommate Katie was playing clarinet at a mass at the Lutheran Christmas Church. The mass was mostly in English, with a good chunk of Arabic, including a children's choir singing in Arabic. The mass was really beautiful, and felt universal and familiar even though it wasn't my prayers, my music, or even entirely in my language. One part of the service in particular really spoke to me, the "prayers of intercession." The prayers were read in 8 different languages, and were incredibly universal (except for the Jesus references).

(English)

Almighty God, long ago you made this holy night shine with the brightness of your true light. We thank you for gathering us in this holy city of Bethlehem. We pray now for deepened faith. We pray for Peace and Justice for God's people in every place. By your Holy Spirit, lead us beyond the manger to serve as your peacemakers in this land and throughout the world.

(Arabic)

For all those in Palestine and Israel - those who have been here for generations, those who have more recently arrived and those who are visiting as pilgrims. Open hearts and minds to see your grace that brings hope, healing, and opportunity to all people.

(Burmese)

For all those who are imprisoned - by walls, wars, and public policies that humiliate and discourage. We pray for those enduring a long wait for freedom. Especially we remember those you will not forget - political prisoners and refugees.

(English)

For all those who live in abundance - that they might know the joy of simplicity and sharing. Grant us peace that only you can give. Give us what we need - despite what we think we want.

(German)

We pray for the leaders in government, especially those who serve in Palestine and Israel. Inspire them to uphold the truth, lift the yoke of oppression, and work for justice for all your people. Grant dignity to all women and men, boys and girls.

(Finnish)

We pray for those whose voices are stilled - victims of violence, neglect or abuse. Bring hope to those torn from their homes and land. Give voice so all people of the world can hear, care and advocate for those who are suffering.

(Swedish)

For the newborn, the elderly, the sick, and all who depend on the care of others - especially those whose names we lift in the silence...That they may find places of nurture, and be comforted by the birth of the Christ child.

(Japanese)

For all those who look to this holy but troubled land, grant the full revelation of Jesus, our Savior, who brings hope and salvation, and makes us one.

Trusting in your mercy, O Saving God, we commend to you all for whom we pray, through the one born among us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

the inside of Lutheran Christmas Church

singing Silent Night with candles

After the service, we walked to dinner, detouring through the craziness that was Manger Square. Bethlehem was (not surprisingly) CROWDED. Tons of traffic, tons of people, tons of PA security. At first I was uncomfortable with the amount of armed security (they were very present and visible), but it was really the same amount that there would be for any large public event of that scale in Jerusalem. Even so, this region of the world really likes its guns and military.

Manger Square

Dinner was salatim and pita - definitely not traditional Christmas dinner, for neither the Jews nor the Christians in our group. But it was definitely delicious, and around 10pm, the lights of the restaurant dimmed, and SANTA CAME! It was interesting to see that Santa is the same in Bethlehem, despite the fact that his suit is definitely not meant for the Middle East in December (today's high was 74 degrees...).

It's really easy to get caught up in Jerusalem's challenges as a Jewish city, what that means, how it plays out, how the city can be home to a plurality of Jews. But this city, and this land, is holy and special to those of many different religions.

Everybody loves babies...

2009-12-21T23:05:00.003+02:00

Everybody loves babies in Jerusalem. They're everywhere. Two stories from my trip home tonight:

I was in line to pay at the Superpharm (like CVS) at the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem. The woman in front of me got a call that her prescription was ready at the other counter, said something quickly to me in Hebrew and left. I wasn't really paying attention, and figured she was just telling me she was still in line, and had left her cart...until I looked down and saw that it wasn't her shopping cart, it was her baby's stroller. With the baby inside. Anywhere else, this would be a reason to be concerned for the baby's safety. In Jerusalem, I cooed at a strange woman's child for 5 minutes, until she came back and went on with her day.

On the bus back home from the CBS, there was a group of guys, I'd estimate in their late teens. These boys were interested in coming across as tough - hats on backwards, low pants, wearing tank top undershirts with unzipped jackets over them. You know the look. A young mother came on the bus with her baby boy, and these teens started smiling at and making faces at the little baby. No embarrassment to be caught being so unabashedly into babies in front of their friends, the boys kept on smiling at and playing with the baby for the duration of the bus ride.

הגיע זמן לקחת אחריות - The Time Has Arrived to Take Responsibility

2009-12-14T19:19:00.000+02:00

I went on two tiyulim (trips) the week before last that revealed two very different slices of life in Israel and the territories, slices of life that are hard to catch glimpses of.

South Tel Aviv

On Thursday, I traveled to Tel Aviv with the social justice track, to learn about the issues surrounding migrant workers, refugees, and the sex trade in Tel Aviv and in Israel. Our guide, John Mark, a Pardes alum and a lawyer who used to work for the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, led us around the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the Central Bus Station, a bus station that I have traveled in and out of several times without being aware of the multitude of populations that live around it, beyond a basic knowledge that it is not a neighborhood to be in alone late at night. We walked through the bus station itself, and noted the businesses run by and catering to various segments of the immigrant community - the Hebrew disappeared, travel agencies to homelands in Asia and Africa proliferated, as did grocery stores selling the junk foods of someone else's home. John Mark told us the complicated history of African refugees in Israel - many of whom have not received refugee status.

We walked down a street that John Mark described as the social center for the Tel Aviv immigrant community. I had seen it from the other end, the end right next to the bus station, many times, but had never walked down it. We visited a cafe owned by a Sudanese refugee, and heard another refugee from the Sudan, Ismail, tell his story. Ismail owns a small electronics shop in that same commercial area. He fled from the Sudan to Egypt with his family, but Egypt gives no rights to refugees - they cannot work or educate their children. He and his family illegally crossed the border to Israel in the middle of night. Ismail told us that when Israeli soldiers found him and his family, it was the first time he had an encounter with soldiers or police in which he was not kicked or slapped before questioning even started. The soldiers gave his kids water to drink, brought the whole family to the military base, where the kids were fed and received medical check-ups. For me, hearing this story was a confirmation of the image of the Israeli military that I had heard about growing up, an image that is continually challenged today.

Ismail's electronics shop in South Tel Aviv

Two summers ago, the summer of 2007, the Darfur refugee issue received a great deal of attention from the Israeli media. Ismail told about being at a protest at the Rose Garden, by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), for the Darfur refugees, a protest that I was at also, with my fellow madrichot from NFTY in Israel (Sara G., Jillian S., and Anna K.!). Seeing how our paths crossed, unknowingly, was powerful. There were other challenges along the way, but Ismail and his family now live in Tel Aviv. When we asked how his kids had adjusted to Israeli life and speaking Hebrew, Ismail told us, with a huge smile, that they come home from school singing Chanukah songs.

"The time has come to take responsibility" - Jerusalem rally for Darfur refugees, June 2007

John Mark raised the question of responsibility and community. Who is responsible for the world's refugees, those who would die if they returned home? To what extent is Israel responsible for them, as a country that has long valued bringing Jewish refugees to safety? John Mark said he, as an Israeli and Tel Aviv resident, feels that Ismail and his family are more in John Mark's community, non-Jews who live in Tel Aviv, than us Pardes students, foreigners, although Jewish, who are here for a year.

We studied a Talmud text in class, from Masechet Nedarim 80b-81a:

One ruling of R' Yosi contradicts another of his: With respect to a well belonging to townspeople, when it is a question of their own lives or the lives of others, their own lives take precedence; their cattle or the cattle of others, their cattle take precedence over those of others; their laundry or that of others, their laundry takes precedence over that of others. But if the choice lies between the lives of others and their own laundry, the lives of the others take precedence over their own laundry. R' Yosi ruled: Their laundry takes precedence over the lives of strangers...

This text and the challenges of welcoming in new populations to any community raise hard questions about how we allocate resources. In the world-as-it-is, it isn't as easy as simply saying, "Once everyone has a base level of needs filled, then we will provide for other needs (like our laundry)." But it's never that clear-cut in reality, as proven by the fact that R' Yosi himself cannot even come up with a conclusive position on it.

Hebron

The next day, I traveled to Hebron with Shovrim Shtika-Breaking the Silence, an organization that leads tours, primarily for Israelis, to the occupied territories to see the impact that maintaining a military presence in the West Bank has on the soldiers who serve there, the people who live there, and Israeli society as a whole.

Hebron is a twisted place. Currently, the city is divided in two parts, H1 and H2. H1 is entirely Palestinian, and under the control of the Palestinian Authority. H2 is home to 800 Jewish settlers, about 20,000 Palestinians, and 500 Israeli soldiers. H2, where we toured, is a ghost town. Streets are empty of cars and people, formerly bustling open air markets are boarded up and deserted. In order to maintain total separation between the Jewish and Palestinian populations, reducing friction, many of the streets in H2 are closed to Palestinian pedestrian traffic, and even more are closed to Palestinian cars. There are families that cannot leave their homes, because their front doors open up on to streets that they are not permitted to walk on. Everywhere we traveled, we were accompanied by a heavy police escort...to protect us from settler violence and harassment. Many of Shovrim Shtika's tours end with a visit to Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, but the police decided we couldn't go, because they could not guarantee our safety from settler reactions.

an empty, deserted street, formerly a bustling commercial area

our police escort

There is graffiti all over Hebron - racist, hateful graffiti towards Palestinians, and images of Stars of David, Am Yisrael Chai. The latter are images and phrases that I consider mine, and I am not OK with what is being done in my name, using my symbolism.

graffiti on the wall between H1 and H2

I know people who have served in Hebron, are currently serving there, and will serve there in the future. This isn't something distant that effects other people, but has a real impact, not just on Israeli society at the macro level, but on real individuals in my life.

Friday morning, before leaving to meet the rest of the group, I read this editorial in Ha'aretz, "I Have No Brother." Yossi Sarid disowns the settlers as his brothers, writing:

"When I see a Jew running over a wounded Arab terrorist again and again, I am absolutely certain that any connection between us is coincidental, happenstance, and that I'm obligated to sever it completely...What do I have to do with these people? Brothers we are not, but rather strangers in the night."

Michael, our tour guide, offered a different perspective. He said that since, at the moment, Hebron is indeed part of Israel, he, as an Israeli, feels a responsibility for what is happening there. Saying "those Jews/Israelis are different from me" does not remove the responsibility. The part of that editorial that struck me the most was this: I immediately look at myself to make sure that they are not me.

ירושלים גם שלי: Jerusalem is mine too

2009-12-06T23:31:00.001+02:00

This is a summary of a story I shared at Pardes' community lunch last week, for a project called "Take 5," where students share stories and reflections. The story was in response to the question, "Share a meaningful Jerusalem moment."

I usually don't like protests and marches. They're fun...but what's the point? What changes? So I was somewhat surprised to find myself eagerly anticipating last Saturday night's march to free Jerusalem. The march was in response to a number of incidents in Jerusalem over the past several months, showing the haredim's (ultra-Orthodox) increasing political power in this city, including the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel, violent Haredi protests against parking lots and factories open on Shabbat, and haredim moving into previously secular neighborhoods.

I am a liberal Jew, a Reform Jew, and for the past few weeks had felt incredibly lonely and disconnected from that in this city. Saturday's night march shifted that for me. When we arrived at Kikar Paris, where the march was due to start from, there was a crowd of about 100 people milling about, including many members of the Pardes community, holding signs that said "Jerusalem is also mine" and "The Kotel for everyone." That crowd of 100 grew to 400 before we started walking towards the center of the city, and by the time we reached Kikar Zion, our destination, the media estimated over 2000 people were marching. Children, teens, students, adults...totally secular, men and women wearing kippot, people who clearly had come straight from their Shabbat plans...Israeli, American, British, and more...

That Saturday night, I no longer felt alone. It's unclear (highly doubtful) that the protest will have any impact whatsoever on the power dynamics in Jerusalem, but it had a huge internal effect on me, reminding me that there are Jews of all varieties who share a vision of a Jerusalem that is truly a city for all Jews, secular, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and everything else in between.

The evening didn't end with the conclusion of the rally. Several of us wandered up Ben Yehuda, observing the usual mishmash found there motzei Shabbat (after Shabbat, Saturday night). We came upon a group of Moshiach dancers, ultra Orthodox men dancing and singing to music from a speaker system. In our high spirits after the march, we decided to join in their dancing, with a mixed dancing circle - separate from the ultra Orthodox men, but next to them. They almost immediately shut off the music to prevent us from dancing more, but rather than leaving, we stayed as they did the ritual of Kiddush Levana - several of our group, including 2 liberal rabbis, male and female, joined with these ultra-Orthodox men as they said the set of prayers. A moment that could have been incredibly tense was instead a moment of hope and optimism for the type of Jerusalem we had envisioned earlier, one in which we all respect each other's ways of practicing Judaism, even if we don't agree with it. The tension was definitely still there, but was tempered by the beauty and holiness of the moment.

My friend Noam Sienna's story of the evening

Ha'aretz article about the protest

Jerusalem Post article about the protest

Here is a wall at which to weep, Part II: Bethlehem

2009-11-24T00:18:00.000+02:00

graffiti on the security wall next to Bethlehem
Bethlehem is less than 5 miles from my apartment. When I went there this weekend, I was not there on an organized trip, but for some tourism and to visit my friend Sara, who is living and volunteering in Bethlehem this year.

I traveled with my friends Naomi and Amy, starting with taking an Arab bus from Derech Hevron, a few blocks from my apartment (where I usually take buses headed in the other directions, towards the center of Jerusalem). Our first stop in Bethlehem was the Church of the Nativity. While I was there, taking in the art, the quiet, and watching the other tourists around me, it struck me how places that are holy, no matter which religion they are holy to, have a shared aura about them. It was incredibly easy to be peaceful and reflective there, even though it is by no means my holy site. The Christian tourists had a respect and an awe for being present at Jesus' birthplace, and were able to fulfill their own religious needs without pushing or shoving other people. Unlike some other holy spaces I know... In this week's Torah portion, Vayetzei, Jacob wakes up from a dream and says, "אכן יש יי במקום הזה ואנוכי לא ידעתי - Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know!" (Genesis 28:16) This occurs in the middle of nowhere, in a pile of rocks that Jacob is misfortunate enough to have to sleep on. If Jacob can find God there, surely it's possible to experience the Divine Presence in any place that people have treated as holy for generations.

On Saturday morning, we walked along the separation wall by Bethlehem. The wall is covered with graffiti, some of which deeply resonated with me, and some of which deeply angered me. It encapsulates the diversity of viewpoints found there - on either side of the wall, there is not one, single, unified opinion, but a full spectrum of opinions and beliefs regarding this incredibly complex situation.

I was struck by the ease of crossing between two very different worlds, and the deep contrasts between them. When I got off the bus on Saturday in Jerusalem, all of a sudden I was back in Shabbat world, watching Jews head to Shabbat lunch, when 10 short minutes before I had been surrounded by Christians and Muslims going about an ordinary day. Because I hold an American passport, I have the privilege and ability to go places that Israelis cannot (into the Palestinian territories), and places that aren't accessible to Palestinians. Bethlehem mentally feels very far, especially from Pardes. As the week started and friends at school asked me what I did for Shabbat, there was a double-take when I said I spent part of it in Bethlehem. Bethlehem seems so FAR! Even though it is actually very close, the putting up of a wall and establishing check points (both actual and metaphoric), distances the place and its people from my daily reality.

Here is a wall at which to weep, Part I: The Kotel

2009-11-21T18:54:00.007+02:00

8th grade: On my first trip to Israel, with my grandparents' synagogue, we visited the Kotel on Shabbat. I started to write a note to stick in between the stones, and a security guard came over and told me to stop writing.

11th grade: When I was in Israel for a semester in high school on EIE (Eisendrath International Exchange), we went to the Kotel for our first Shabbat in Israel. I wore a kippah, even though my classmates and teacher told me it wasn't a good idea. I looked through the bookshelves in the women's section for a prayerbook that was "mine," and another woman handed me an Artscroll siddur.

On subsequent trips to the Kotel - the Western Wall, the remains of the 2nd Temple closest to its holiest spot, the Holy of Holies - I felt bored, squished, frustrated, and unspiritual (for an example, read my post after being at the Kotel in September.) For years I had heard of the prayer group Women of the Wall, a women's group that prays on the women's side of the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the Hebrew month). They have a long and contentious history, with Supreme Court battles, discrimination, and harassment, but I was excited to finally have the opportunity to join them in prayer and pray at the Kotel in a way that felt authentic to who am I as a Jew.

This past Wednesday, Rosh Hodesh Kislev, I woke up early and shared cabs with some other students from Pardes to the Kotel, where we joined with Women of the Wall and a group of women from Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in NYC. My friends and fellow students Lauren and Evelyn led services. For the first time ever, I wore a tallit at the Kotel. I was scared; I had heard many stories about rocks, heckling from men and women who were offended by what they saw as a desecration of their holy site, even physical assaults, but I felt safe surrounded by this community of women. Singing Hallel, songs of praise, out loud at the Kotel was incredibly powerful. One line in particular resonated with me: לא המתים יהללו יה, ולא כל ירדי דומה, ואנחנו נברך יה מעתה ועד עולם. הללויה The dead will not praise Yah, nor can those who go down into silence. But WE shall praise Yah, now and forever. Halleluyah! (Psalm 115: 17-18) I felt like I was really, genuinely praying at the Kotel, for the first time in a very long time.

At this point in the service, the group (according to the veteran members) is usually receiving taunts, yells, thrown rocks, and anger from those at the Kotel who believe that this type of prayer - women praying together, out loud, with tallitot and kippot - is a desecration to Judaism and the holiness of the Kotel. But except for one woman who motioned "shh!" as she left the women's section, there had been no reaction from the others around us. The group decided to read Torah at the Kotel, instead of relocating elsewhere like they usually do.

We rolled the Torah to the reading for Rosh Hodesh, and then rolled it back up and started the Torah service, led by a young Israeli medical student, Nofrat Frenkel. At this point, the commotion started. Men came over and asked Nofrat why she was wearing a tallit, and demanded that she put the Torah away and that we leave. To which Nofrat responded, "Because it's a mitzvah, where is yours?" The police came over and started to lead Nofrat away, still holding the sefer Torah and wearing her tallit. The image of a uniformed police officer pulling away a person wearing a tallit and holding a Torah was awful, and reminded me of stories of the Former Soviet Union, of Jews arrested for practicing their religion publicly. Anat Hoffman, the chair of Women of the Wall and the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, called for all of us women, about 40, to follow the Torah wherever it went.

Nofrat and Anat standing up to the men who insisted we leave the Kotel

And so we followed Nofrat and the Torah, to a police station next to the Kotel. We stood outside where she was detained and sang. Dozens of women, young and old, Israeli, American, British, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox...We sang eitz hayyim hi la'machazikim bah (it is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it), pitchu li sha'arei tzedek avovam ode yah, zeh hasha'ar l'Adonai tzadikot yavo'u bo (open for me the gates of righteousness and I will enter to praise God, this is the gate of God, the righteous will enter in it). We learned later that Nofrat could hear our singing.

Anat asked us to decide if we would stay and follow the Torah wherever it went that day. I had no question in my mind about whether or not I would miss class to stay. I was there, and not leaving. At some point that morning, I had become a part of this community, rather than just a visitor. We learned that Nofrat was no longer simply detained, but had been arrested, for wearing a tallit - the first time in Israel's history this had happened. The police moved Nofrat to the police compound by Jaffa Gate, and we followed. It was incredible to watch Anat throughout all of this, keeping the group together while simultaneously mobilizing a media response and finding a criminal lawyer.

The group of Pardes students, both while we were waiting and singing, and in the hours that followed, talked about whether we were using prayer as a means to achieve a political end. Yes, I was absolutely there to pray, to pray with a community of women in a place that Judaism has attached a great deal of value to. But I was also there because I believe that the Kotel is holy to all Jews, not only the ultra-Orthodox who control it, and because I believe that all Jews should be able to pray there in a way that is authentic to them, and Women of the Wall is striving to bring that about. Saul Alinsky writes in Rules for Radicals that the real question is not "Does the End justify the Means?" but "Does this particular end justify this particular means?" Prayer is the tool, prayer is also the goal.

And then Nofrat came out...still wearing her tallit, still holding the sefer Torah. We sang more, joyfully now, and surrounded her. She is still facing criminal charges, and there are concerns that a criminal record will harm her future career prospects as a doctor.

Throughout the course of the morning and the hours that followed, I was scared, angry, nauseus, sad, proud, and pretty much every other emotion possible. But it was an incredibly powerful experience, with an amazing group of women. It felt so RIGHT to be there.

To read some of the news coverage about it:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129200.html

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258489193200&pagename=JPArticle/ShowFull

http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/119148/

Beyond Pita and Falafel: Sustainable Eating in Israel

2009-11-18T14:15:00.001+02:00

(Originally posted at RACblog)

A few months before I left to spend this year studying in Jerusalem at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, I brainstormed a list of all the things I was looking forward to enjoying once I arrived in Israel…most of which was food. Falafel, shwarma, shoko b’sakit (chocolate milk in a bag), chocolate bars filled with pop rocks, the fruits and vegetables of Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s open-air market. So much of what I love about Israel is connected to its foods.

In the almost three months since I’ve been living in Jerusalem, the ways I connect to Eretz Yisrael through eating its food have moved beyond junk food and street food, to incorporating my Jewish social justice values in the way I cook and eat in Israel, through a CSA share (community-supported agriculture) and the Tav Chevrati.

When my roommate Sarah first suggested signing up for a CSA, I thought it sounded like a great idea for my health and lifestyle, but did not immediately connect it to my social justice practice. A CSA in Israel works similarly to one in North America, with one crucial difference: in Israel, the growing season never ends! We receive a delivery of organic vegetables every week, year round. My roommates and I signed up with Chubeza, an organic farm located outside of Modi’in, and come home every Wednesday night to a large box of vegetables on our doorstep. Every week my box includes tomatoes and cucumbers (necessary for Israeli salad!), and a variety of other vegetables: eggplant, corn, scallions, winter squash, radishes, beets, sweet potatoes, herbs…

My CSA is a weekly, tangible example of the bounty of Israel, described in Deuteronomy: “For Adonai your God is bringing you into a good land…a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land where you may eat bread without scarceness, where you will lack nothing…” (Deut. 8:7-9)

Being a part of a CSA in Israel is important to me because it means that I eat locally and sustainably. I can walk into any supermarket here and find many of the same brands that I purchase in the United States, but I know where my vegetables are coming from – they aren’t coming from thousands of miles away, and they are grown on a farm within Israel’s borders. Every day, when I pack lunch and cook dinner, I automatically act out my values regarding the food I put into my body and the ways I spend my money when I am living in Israel.

Of course, even on a student budget, I don’t eat every meal at home. When I go out to dinner, for coffee, or for ice cream, I look for the Tav Chevrati, the social seal, an initiative of the Jerusalem-based non-profit organization Bema’aglei Tzedek, Circles of Justice. The Tav Chevrati, the “Tav” for short, indicates that the food establishment respects the legally-mandated rights of its employees and is accessible to people with disabilities. Workers must receive minimum wage, be paid on time and overtime, and be treated within the minimum of Israeli labor law. The business must grant access and service to people with disabilities. I personally struggle with the idea of rewarding businesses for doing what is required of them legally, yet if the government is not stepping into to enforce the minimum legal requirement, the only reason business owners will uphold these laws is if they have an economic interest in doing so – if they know they will gain customers (including Israeli citizens and short-term and long-term foreign visitors) by having the Tav. It is not about kashrut. The list of businesses with the Tav includes both kosher and non-kosher restaurants. The Tav is about the just treatment of human beings and reaching towards a vision of an ideal Israeli society. The reason I support businesses with the Tav is because I believe in the dignity of each and every person, whether they work in a restaurant as a waiter or a dishwasher, or want to be able to eat in the same restaurants I have access to as an able-bodied person.

Furthermore, this is about power; power that is made up of organized people and organized money. In order for the Tav Chevrati to be successful in creating a more just Israeli society, one that I am proud to participate in and support, many, many people need to intentionally support the establishments that do have the Tav Chevrati, and tell those businesses that they are there because of their commitment to social justice. Eating justly does not need to be contained to my kitchen; it is a practice I can continue when I am out exploring Israel and Jerusalem. It is not something we need to leave in the United States either. If you are coming to Israel, on your own or with a synagogue trip, seek out restaurants with the Tav Chevrati (see the English list here) and encourage your traveling companions to do the same.

Both my CSA and my support of the Tav Chevrati are ways that I live my life in Israel justly. My time here in Jerusalem is not only about my own learning, but is an opportunity for me to have a daily, tangible impact on Israeli society.

"Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees."*

2009-11-13T13:08:00.006+02:00

I just got back from 3 glorious days spent hiking in the Negev with Pardes. It was incredible to be out of Jerusalem, and spending 6+ hours a day outside and hiking in the desert. It's both physically and spiritually refreshing. Our guide, Dan, encouraged us to take moments of silence throughout our hiking, rather than continuing the same conversations we have in Jerusalem. It led to lots of deep breaths and personal spiritual reflection, at the same time as I was pushing my body physically in ways that it's not used to. Unlike up north, where we saw many other hikers and their garbage, over the course of the 3 days, we only saw two other hikers, and very little signs of others. I'm always struck by the diversity of the desert - once you are in it, it seems like it goes on, unchanging, forever, but every day we hiked through vastly different terrain.

On the first day, we hiked through Nahal Mishmar - a nahal is a riverbed, in this case, a dried up one. The picture above is looking back through the nahal, and the picture below was when we were standing on the ridge above the nahal. The Dead Sea is in the background.

On the second day, we saw a machtesh, a geological formation, looking something like a crater, that occurs only 5 times in the world - three are in the Negev, and two are in the Sinai desert. The picture below is of Machtesh Katan (little machtesh) - not so little!

A desert is defined by receiving less than 200mm of rain a year, on average. We were hiking in the EXTREME desert, which receives less than 70mm of rain/year, on average. Dan told us that humans have yet to find an environment on earth so extreme that no life can survive there. Even in this most extreme of environments, we saw snails, animal poop, plants, trees, bushes...there are snails that can survive for over 800 days on 1 drop of water!

A tree in the desert!

On the morning of our last day in the desert, we woke up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise over the Edom Mountains in Jordan. My friend Sheryl and I almost didn't make it due to a malfunctioning alarm clock, but we woke up in time, and it was well worth it!

When I was in the desert, everything seems incredibly simple. There is nothing manmade to be seen, literally just land and sky. I felt very far removed from the complications of life in Israel - the politics, the opinions, the debates. It feels as if nothing else matters - power is irrelevant, because there is just land and sky and creation. Yet even in the desert, one is never too far from these challenges. Dan started many of his talks with, "Not to talk about politics, but..." There are debates about water, borders, archaeology, ecology, resource allocation, nuclear power.

Roommates in the desert

*From Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, my favorite desert book. When we got back to where we were staying each night, our hosts had delicious sweet, juicy dates awaiting us. So good!

a little bit of Torah

2009-10-22T19:44:00.003+02:00

I learned this this past week in my Rambam class with Rabbi Levi Cooper:

In Rambam's (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon) Mishneh Torah, he talks about the idea of kiddush hashem, the sanctification of God's name. The first few chapters on this topic focus on what kiddush hashem was at Rambam's time (12th century), martyrdom for being Jewish, and lays out rules and guidelines for what the circumstances are for an act to be kiddush hashem. Basically, when someone gives a person a choice "do this or I will kill you," there are guidelines for when you should do the "this" or be killed (kiddush hashem). One of these conditions (if several other conditions have already been established) is:

ואם אנסו להעבירו בעשרה מישראל - יהרג ואל יעבר -הלכת יסודי התורה, פ"ה, ה"ב

If he is forcing one to transgress in front of 10 people from Israel - he should be killed and not transgress (Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 5:2)

The relevant part, in mine (and my teacher's) mind, is the fact that kiddush hashem is a public act. And not just a public act in front of whomever happens to be around, but in front of one's own community, in front of other Jews. Rambam specifically says "10 from Israel," not saying a minyan (in Rambam's mind, a quorom of 10 Jewish adult men) - an understanding of what is legally required for prayer. This isn't legal, it is not halacha (Jewish law). By making this a public act, in front of a person's community, Rambam is saying that what matters isn't God's presence or the individual's relationship with God, but rather the individual's relationship with their community. What is relevant is not what you do in your heart, but how you represent yourself to your community.

From an organizing perspective, this makes a lot of sense to me - we get public commitments from our targets, we strive to bring politics back to the public realm where they belong, rather than in the back room. We value transparency. An elected official can easily not follow through on something that he says privately to his friend, but this is much more difficult when that commitment is made in front of 2000 people and the media.

Another element is that this kiddush hashem is done specifically in front of your own community. When we do work to bring the world-as-it-should-be, but completely separate it from our communities, or are not public about it, it makes it a lot harder for others to join in that work.

To open this up for comments (which are ALWAYS welcome) - what are your thoughts on this? For what actions is this relevant for you? Does it only matter when we do things in public, or even more specifically, in front of our communities?

to the North, back to Jerusalem, and north again...and then back home to Jerusalem

2009-10-15T21:02:00.008+02:00

It's been awhile since the last time I wrote. There's a phrase in Israel, "acharei chagim". Everything happens after the holidays. Now that the holidays are over - since last I wrote, we celebrated Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah - and I've gotten back into the routine of being in school from 8:30-5, things are a little less crazy. It very much still feels like summer here (will be in the 90s over the weekend!), but there have been a few rain showers - the weather is definitely messing with my internal clock; it hasn't really clicked that it's halfway through October already.

Pomegranates and Mangos and Wineries, oh my!

I had a whole week and a half off from school - the longest time I've had off (or taken off) since just after graduation. For the first part, before Sukkot started, I traveled up north to the Galil with Naomi, Laura, Lauren, and Evelyn. We rented a car, stayed on a beautiful moshav near the Sea of Galilee, ate delicious food, sang songs by candlelight on our porch at night, and went hiking in a river. The moshav had an incredible view of the Galil, and there were some of the best, juiciest, locally-grown mangos I've ever had. The son of the hostel owner, Dan, had shown us the hiking trail, and said we could call if we had any problems. After hiking through the river for 4 hours (a hike we had been told would take 2 hours), we're pretty much done with the wading/swimming. We give Dan a call, and instead of giving us directions back to our car, comes and picks us up in his dusty pick-up truck (complete with 2 Thai workers in the back), and brings us freshly picked pomegranates. As we bump through his pomegranate, mango, and lichee fields, Dan shares with us his view of Israeli society - "the problem with Israel isn't the Arabs, it's the Israelis." This conversation was sparked by the overflowing dumpsters and polluted campsites that we saw, remnants of the 2 previous holiday weekends. It's so easy to here to get completely bogged down with trying to comprehend/solve/deal with/challenge status quo around Israeli-Palestinian issues and to forget that this country, like any other, has a plethora of other socio-economic challenges. After our pick-up truck ride with Dan, we piled back into our acceleration-challenged (great for the mountains up north, really) rental car and went to the Golan Winery, for a classy wine tasting in our damp and dirty hiking clothes.

the view of the Kinneret from Moshav Almagor

It was incredibly refreshing to be out of Jerusalem for 3 days. As we were sitting in traffic in the city on the first day, trying to get out, we all just wanted to be out of the city already. It's a great city, and I am loving living here, but I never really understood when friends who had lived in Jerusalem told me that it is an intense city, and it is hard to live in. It's not always tangible, and I didn't notice it on previous trips when I was visiting...but it was great to be up north, out of the Anglo-bubble of South Jerusalem (where I live and go to school), and breathe some fresh air and speak some Hebrew. And it was also great to come back, and to come home to Jerusalem, and to come home to my apartment after being away for the first time since I moved in.

V'samachta b'chagecha - and you will rejoice in your holiday!

Sukkot in Jerusalem was pretty special. Before we left to go up north, Evelyn, Lauren and I ventured to the shuk arba'ah minim, the 4 species market, to buy our lulavs and our etrogs for the holiday. We built a sukkah on our porch - very cozy, Esti and I had a super cute movie night in it one night over vacation. There were sukkot ALL OVER the city - every restaurant, many homes and apartments - for more about Sukkot in Israel that feels very similar to my experience, read this post from 10 Minutes of Torah. My class had a bagel brunch in the sukkah on Pardes' roof during vacation, and Evelyn gave a d'var Torah that really resonated. A lot of the time we talk about going into the sukkah, this temporary, unstable structure outside of our homes, as a time that reminds us of our vulnerability. In times like these, surrounded by the impact of the economic crisis hurting ourselves, our families, and our communities, we already feel pretty vulnerable. There's another interpretation (and I apologize for not knowing where Evelyn found it), that the sukkah, with its 2-3 walls is like a hug. Hugs are comforting, and remind us that there is hope and support in the world, but they do not make everything better, just the confidence that one day, they will be better.

the sukkah at 2/10 Shneur Peleg!

Haifa, Haifa, Ir im Tachtit, Haifa, Haifa, ir amiti...

Haifa Haifa, a city with a subway, Haifa Haifa, a real city! (~David Broza)

Towards the end of vacation I spent a few days in Haifa with Orly. There are street festivals everywhere in Israel during Sukkot, and we went to a pretty loud one (with some delicious fried street food), and then wandered up towards the Haifa International Film Festival, where there was yet another street fair. We did lots of very touristy things, including the clandestine immigration museum (MUCH more fun than anticipated, especially when reading the particularly awful English exhibit explanations) and took a cable car up the mountain, just for the fun of it. I also got to see Joan and Joyce from Shir Tikva, who were in Haifa for the film festival!

Orly and I at the clandestine immigration and naval museum

the view of the Mediterranean from the cable car

V'samachta b'chagecha II

Friday night was yet another holiday, Simchat Torah. I went to Kol Haneshama, or as I like to call it, everybody's favorite Progressive Anglo synagogue in South Jerusalem. It was awesome. Lots of energy and spirit and dancing, ran into lots of people I know who I hadn't yet had the chance to see here. For the last hakafah, they did this beautiful custom I had never seen before - we all formed one circle, outside in the courtyard (rather than the small circles and dancing that had been happening up until then), and the Torah scrolls made the hakafah, went around the circle, instead of us. It was really nice to end on a quiet and reflective note, instead of dancing like crazy right up until the end. The next morning I went to another set of hakafot at Kedem, an egalitarian minyan with lots of Anglo students, and the last hakafah was for all those in the room working for peace. Most of the room hesitated, very few people immediately identified themselves as being peaceworkers. It's hard, especially since it is a primarily student community - I study fulltime now, I'm not directly working for the world-as-it-should-be, and it is a struggle I wrestle with every day, along with many of my friends and classmates.

Garbage garbage garbage!

On Sunday the Pardes social justice track traveled to Har Hiriya, a giant landfill outside of Tel Aviv, in the (slow) process of being converted to a giant park and environmental education center. It's literally a mountain (har=mountain) of trash that was built up from the 1950s until about 10 years ago. It's still used as a transfer station for trash - a lot of trash. We went the day after Sukkot ended, and the amount of debris (especially plant material) from the holiday was ridiculous, as was the amount of recyclable materials. The whole scene was very Wall-E-esque (a great movie, one that I first watched all the way through with Hilary A. Spear) - trash being compacted into bricks, trucks pushing through and sorting it. It was fascinating to be at this garbage dump, to see a side of Israel that I've definitely seen, that tourists don't see, and probably many residents don't see it either (definitely not a side of the US that I've seen).

garbage trucks from Tel Aviv and its surroundings dumping the day's trash

Bashanah ha'ba'ah neishev al hamirpeset...

2009-09-27T10:57:00.002+02:00

Next year we will sit on the balcony...

There's been lots of good times on the mirpesot (balconies) of Jerusalem this weekend. On Thursday night, and continued on Shabbat afternoon, a group of us shared stories and wine on my friend Evelyn's lovely mirpeset. It was beautiful, and exactly the kind of evenings I was looking forward to having this year. It was really powerful to here the stories of what brought all of us here, to Pardes and to Jerusalem, this year, and what we're looking for out of our time here. Last night we watched the sun set and the stars come out from Evelyn's mirpeset, and it was awesome to see all of Jerusalem laid out before us at night. We did havdalah outside after, and listened to the sounds of families starting to build their sukkot around us.

On Friday night, the egalitarian minyan had Shabbat services and a potluck dinner at my friend Sheryl's, also on her mirpeset. The view was incredible, and it was really awesome to be praying and singing and celebrating Shabbat while seeing the whole city and being outside under the sky. As we were waiting for everyone to gather for dinner, we started singing to the melody of Bashanah Haba'ah. Od tireh, od tireh, kamah tov yih'yeh bashanah bashanah haba'ah. You will still see, you will still see, how good it will be, next year. It felt very right for right before Yom Kippur, on a weekend when we spent so much time sitting on balconies expressing our personal hopes for the coming year.

Israel turned its clocks back last night, ending Daylight Savings Time - just in time for fasting on Yom Kippur. Of course, it doesn't make the fast any shorter, it just means that it will end earlier in the day on Monday, around 6pm. The West Bank changed their clocks about a month ago - just in time for Ramadan. Love it that we all equally manipulate time and nature to serve our religious needs. There's an interesting article on Ha'aretz about how it came about that Daylight Savings Time ends so early, about a month before the US and Europe.

G'mar chatimah tovah and an easy and meaningful fast to all those who are fasting!

Which side are you on?

2009-09-20T23:25:00.002+03:00

Shana tova! Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem was wonderful - lots of food (to all of you who said everyone gains weight in Israel, you were right), services at no less than 4 different communities, and a little bit of rain (early in the year for Jerusalem).

My friend Sara, with whom I was a madricha (counselor) 2 summers ago for NFTY in Israel and is now living in Bethlehem and volunteering with an organization that does recreational activities for Palestinian youth, was with us for the holiday. She can walk to the checkpoint from her apartment in Bethlehem, and once through the checkpoint, it is a less than 10 minute bus ride to our neighborhood. Sara was telling me about how Bethlehem residents used to just walk over a hill and be in Jerusalem. On Friday night, Sara and I went to my cousins' for dinner. One of my cousins, on hearing where Sara was living, said, "We used to just walk over to Bethlehem to do our shopping. Just over the hill." It's poetic/tragic that both sides can have the same shared narrative and collective memory without even realizing it, yet each view it as uniquely theirs.

As Sara and I were walking to services this morning, we passed countless synagogues and minyanim on our way to our destination. There are so many prayer communities in this city, in this neighborhood particularly. I could hear it as I was walking on the street over the holiday, different prayers and singing rising through the windows of every community center and synagogue. People pray much louder here than they do in America. Not just the Jews...I wonder what it was like in the Old City today, with both Rosh Hashanah and Eid happening simultaneously. I could hear shofar all over the city today, even as I was getting ready this morning with my bedroom window open. In America, we pray behind thick walls and surround them with classrooms and social halls and offices and parking lots. It's much harder to get close to other people's prayers, to hear them. Even when a synagogue and a mosque are right across the street from each other.

Our apartment may be on the other side of the Green Line. For more on how we figured this out, see Naomi's excellent blog post about it. It's frustrating and angering that I moved into an apartment in some ambiguous no man's land between Jerusalem proper and the Green Line (see Naomi's for the detailed historical/geographical explanation of our neighborhood) without knowing. Shouldn't there be a sign or something? There is definitely no green line painted down the middle of Rehov Beitar. B'kitzur (in short), Jerusalem is a complicated place with lots of ambiguities.

הכול הפוך פה - Everything is Upside Down Here: the view from an Israeli street fair

2009-09-16T21:24:00.001+03:00

On Monday night, Naomi and I wandered down to the "Shanaba'ah" street festival on Emek Refaim to meet up with some other friends from Pardes (really, the entire Pardes student body). It was a huge street festival, celebrating Rosh Hashanah this coming weekend. A picture's worth a thousand words (shout-out to Mat, who asked for pictures! Now stop reading my blog and go do your 1L reading), especially when it comes to the absurdity of Israeli street fairs...

As we wandered down Emek Refaim, we heard some music coming out of the courtyard next to the building where the minyan Shira Chadasha meets. Katie, Matan, and I peeked into check it out, saw a couple people playing guitar on stage with a sound system, and almost turned back out to the street...and then realized that it was Shira B'tzibur (singing in community), which Sarah K. had told me I absolutely had to check out while I was in Israel. The words to Israeli folk songs (by artists like David Broza, Shalom Hanoch, Haholonot Ha'gvohim, Arik Einstein, Yonatan Gefen) were projected on a powerpoint for everyone to follow along.

The entire event was made slightly more absurd because it seems that the staging area for the whole street festival and all of the street performers was somewhere behind the stage where Shira B'tzibur was happening. As we were singing, street performers of all varieties wandered in and out, down the aisle through the audience and back to the street, including a marching band (who knew there were marching bands in Israel?) that came in and out several times. Each time, the Sousaphone and trumpet players stopped to accompany the guitar and bass players on stage. Bizarre, but great.

Shana tova u'metukah l'kulam - a good and sweet New Year to all!

How do you say AGITATION b'Ivrit?

2009-09-13T22:31:00.005+03:00

One of the classes I'm taking is a social justice track, which in addition to class 2 days a week includes guest speakers, tiyulum (trips), and coordinating the volunteering for Pardes students. Today we had a guest speaker, Rabbi Levi Lauer. It was INCREDIBLY agitational, a real shofar blast and wake up call, apropos to this week leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Levi is the director of Atzum (http://atzum.org), an Israeli non-profit organization working with the families of terror victims, Righteous Gentiles, and against human sex trafficking in Israel, and he was also the dean of Pardes for several years.

Major points of what he said that really resonated with me, that I’m still mulling over:

The search for meaning is more of a Jewish value than comfort – this is incredibly counter-cultural in Western culture
We exist only as we exist in relationship with the Other (Levinas)
Never look into the eyes of another human being unless you’re prepared to take full responsibility for them (Peter Singer)
B’tzelem elohim nivra adam – not “human was created in the image of God,” but “for the sake of God’s image you were created”
It is theologically obscene to think that God cares if you turn on the lights on Shabbat but not if you care about Rwanda (for example)
You need to have courage to fail – justice is brought into the world when we take on things, b’chol l’vav’cha, b’chol naf’sh’cha, b’chol m’odecha (with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your m'od - loosely translated as all of your all), that are TOO BIG and fail – but in the failing, we put justice into the hands of those who didn’t have it before
God is relational: if God addresses you, it is an invitation to DEBATE, not to assent
Hineni = here I am, ready for existential debate
one of the best parts of Jewish culture is debate, one of the worst is the notion that words will suffice
the real (dangerous) power of words is that they are so powerful that they dull you to the pain and the bodies in the street
Tanach (from Genesis to Deuteronomy to Chronicles) is the story of God’s withdrawal from the world in order to make room for human agency
There is no personal salvation in Judaism – why it’s so hard to be a Jew – it’s all collective – my salvation is bound up with my next door neighbor…there is either interdependence or stagnation
Chevruta can be an internalization of the idea that we are created to be in relationship
move Torah and learning to the street – live it, study Torah in order to make the world a better place
before praying the Amidah, Rabbi Lauer asks himself, “did I do anything in the past 24 hours that merits asking God for ANYTHING?”
that you’ll never do well enough is not an excuse to not do better – all or nothing will always lead to nothing

All of these points were incredibly agitational and he was a very charismatic speaker. But what happens tomorrow? My class was very shook up and agitated for the rest of the afternoon…but what is different now that we’ve heard this? I've heard Ruth Messinger speak on several occasions, and she always agitates me - but my behavior never changes the next day. One classmate asked if I still wanted to be a rabbi after hearing that, and my answer was emphatically yes. I deeply feel that by being a rabbi in a congregation, helping that community be in relationship with the Other and act on their values, through which we search for meaning in our collective Jewish life, then more justice is brought into the world.

The question I’m wrestling with now, in this week prior to the High Holidays, is how my study of Torah this year, Torah study that is purely for the sake of learning, can make the world a better place. How do I live my life (because this isn’t a year off from my life), no matter what I am primarily engaged in (learning, grad school, working, etc.) in a way that brings justice to the world?

Ultimately, much of what Rabbi Lauer said today is that it is more important to walk the walk than only talk the talk. 6-7 years from now, I don’t want to stand on a bimah on Rosh Hashanah and talk the talk. How will I walk the walk in this coming year? How will I be in relationship with the Other? How will I bring my Torah learning, that I am loving so much, to the street and live it?

(Shout-out to Christopher, who asked about classes and if I'd be writing about them in the blog! Best chevru-team ever!)

You saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you...

2009-09-09T21:30:00.002+03:00

This is the story of my new Israeli best friend, Batsheva.

Banking (really, anything bureaucratic in Israel) is known to be a horrendous experience, particularly for Americans who are used to polite customer service and an orderly, patient line. Today was the day to venture into this particular part of Israeli society, to open a checking account, and I was dreading it. I was all ready to have an incredibly stressful experience, fighting through opening my account in Hebrew, with a grumpy Israeli bank teller.

Enter my new best friend Batsheva. Batsheva made sure that Naomi and I understood that there was a 13 NIS monthly fee for the account, and that was a lot for the little bit of money we'd be depositing each month. We assured her that we had done our research and wanted this bank (הבינלאומי, the First International Bank of Israel) - the real reason being that this particular bank has less involvement/investments/profit from the territories than other major Israeli banks. But Batsheva wasn't my new best friend at that point in the conversation, so we didn't share that reason.

Batsheva also invited us for Rosh Hashanah, and told us all about her daughter who spent the past year in Los Angeles with the Jewish Agency, and was taken in by families for every Shabbat and chag. And after patiently going over every form, and explaining everything, Batsheva gave us her direct line phone number, saying, "Call for me anything, not just banking - anything!"

When Batsheva handed Naomi a thick Hebrew packet with all the details of the bank account, we snickered at the thought that we'd be able to read it or understand. Batsheva, seeing our snickering, said, "It's ok, I don't understand anything in it either, and I've been doing it for 10 years. I've even signed the forms myself!" Reassuring, Batsheva, really...

No one is a stranger in Israel. An often transactional interaction with a bank teller has the potential to become a dinner invitation, another mother looking for more young people away from their families to take care of. Israeli society doesn't seem to have the gray area of polite acquaintances - you're either being screamed at, or you're family. Or sometimes both.

Y lloro, y lloro v'boche el hakirot...

2009-09-06T21:13:00.003+03:00

Much to update about! In this blog post: visit to the Kotel and the Old City, 1st Shabbat in Jerusalem, classes, and exploring Jerusalem.

Boche el hakirot

The title of the blog post is a lyric from a David Broza song: "And crying, and crying, and crying to the walls." (in Spanish and Hebrew) We went to the Old City, specifically to the Kotel, on Thursday night for a mini-tiyul (trip). It was my first time in the Old City and the center of the city since I got here, and it's good to start getting my Jerusalem geography back. The Kotel is a weird place. On the one hand, especially at night, it is beautiful and I love people-watching there, seeing the diversity of the Jewish community walking by. On Thursday night, it being the middle of Ramadan, the prayers from "next door" were loud and clear, and I thought, beautiful. To my ears the Ramadan prayers sounded like crying, as one of our teachers was reminding us that the Kotel is sometimes called the Wailing Wall.

We looked at some verses from the Tanach about Jerusalem, including: "You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain, the place You made to dwell in, O God, The sanctuary, O God, which Your hands established." (Exodus 15:17) I read the verses as a meeting place for all different cultures, a sanctuary built by God's own hands. That sounds like Jerusalem-as-it-should-be to me, a Jerusalem that I got a tiny glimpse of, as we stood in the Kotel plaza and listened to the Muslim community's Ramadan prayers.

The beggars at the Kotel, at least on the women's side, really really drive me crazy. I wish they didn't. They are humans - do I need to acknowledge them as human, if they don't acknowledge me as more than a walking American ATM? Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz writes about her resistance to giving to a particular homeless person outside her New York apartment, because the recipient's actual need is so much greater than her ability to give. Maybe I'm disturbed by the beggars because I feel like they are reducing my experience at the Kotel down to a contractual relationship - you give to me - when I'm trying to be in a place of covenantal relationship with Makom (a word for both place and God)? Which brings me to - is there a way in which the giving of tzedakah can be more than contractual? I have lots of tzedakah that people back in the States sent me to Israel with, I don't want to give it to women at the Kotel so that they will leave me alone.

There is a new pedestrian mall (since the last time I was in Israel in 2007) between the center of the city and the Old City, the Mamila Mall. It is disgustingly opulent, full of American stores - North Face, the Croc Store, The Gap, H. Stern, it goes on and on. The opulence of Mamila really stood in contrast with the poverty of the Old City, and really didn't feel to me like it fit in with Jerusalem at all. Jerusalem's not that chic!

Shabbat Shalom...

This past Shabbat was absolutely beautiful. It's very uncomplicated here to be immersed and observe Shabbat. But not perfect...I went to Kehilat Kol Haneshama (a Progressive synagogue) for kabbalat Shabbat (where I felt absolutely 100% comfortable wearing my kippah), but walking home alone, I didn't feel comfortable leaving it on (although I know other women who do). We hosted dinner in our apartment - lovely company, delicious food - and then on Shabbat morning I walked to services with Naomi, walking down Derech Beit Lechem, which may be my new favorite street. It's beautiful - lots of little alleyways, and old houses with flowers. I'm starting to get my bearings here, and it feels more like home. One of my goals for Jerusalem has always been to know it well enough to feel at home here, to know my way around, to have places that are "my" places. It's also really nice to be in Machane Yehuda on Friday morning, or walk into services and know people. Which happens often in Jerusalem, but still, it makes it feel more homey.

There was a Pardes picnic in the park for lunch, followed by a fantastic 2-hour long nap, and seudah shlishit with my roommates and some guests. I loved the singing we did in the park and at seudah shlishit, but I miss singing with JOI at retreats for hours out of Rise Up Singing, or camp-style song sessions. As lovely as the singing was, it didn't wholly feel like mine. But of course, at JOI, I missed singing more Hebrew songs. I want (and need) to figure out how to create a Shabbat that feels uniquely mine, not just the default of the people around me at any given time.

Back to school, back to school

Classes are challenging, and intense, and hard, and wonderful. So far I'm taking chumash (Torah, focusing on the book of Exodus), Talmud (right now focusing on sections having to do with Yom Kippur), women and mitzvot, social justice (as part of a social justice track), and intro to Rambam. It's an intense schedule, and there's still one more class period we haven't even had yet (but I will probably be taking siddur), but I love the learning I'm doing. Women and mitzvot and social justice in particular today were almost antagonistic, but in a great, debate-filled, exciting way.

Exploring Jerusalem

I've been reading Amos Oz's memoir about his childhood in Jerusalem, A Tale of Love and Darkness, a book that's been on my reading list for awhile, but I was saving for a trip to Israel. Neal Gold suggested waiting even longer, until after I'd been living in Jerusalem, and knew the city well enough to recognize streets and places. The part I read on Friday night describes the walk Amos takes with his parents on Shabbat afternoon to visit his uncle in Talpiyot: "Shortly before four we would finally turn left off Derech Hevron and enter the suburb of Talpiyot...we turned right into Kore Hadorot Street as far as the pine wood, then left, and there we were outside Uncle's house." Derech Hevron is a few blocks from my apartment, and I cross it to get basically anywhere I go, so I was wondering where Kore Hadorot was. And then, as we were walking home from the picnic on Shabbat afternoon (just around the same time as in the book!), I saw a sign for Kore Hadorot Street, just a couple blocks down the hill from my apartment, I walk past it at least twice a day.

All in all, my first week in Jerusalem has been fun, exciting, and challenging. I've realized it could be very easy (too easy) to walk to school in the morning and go home at night, without exploring Jerusalem and Israel further, or even hearing and using my Hebrew. A challenge to continue to explore...

First Day of School...

2009-09-01T22:52:00.002+03:00

...for me and all the children of Israel. As my roommates (Sarah and Naomi) and I walked to class this morning, every 5-year old in our neighborhood (which is a lot, because we live in a family neighborhood) was being walked to their first day of school by their entire family, shiny new backpacks and all. The first day of school was great, although overwhelming and exhausting - lots of people in not so much space, plus a long, long day, with new faces and new information.

Rabbi Landes, the rosh yeshiva of Pardes, taught a shiur to the whole school this morning. The piece from Talmud Yevamot that he taught opens with R. Hiyya and R. Shimon b. Rabbi arguing about which direction one should direct their eyes when praying - down to the Temple below, or up towards the heavens above. R. Ishmael bar R. Yosi comes in and says that his father's answer to this question was, "A man who offers up his prayers must direct his eyes to the Sanctuary below and his heart towards the heavens above."

The teaching off of it that I really liked was how these 2 directions represent the constraints of community and history (if you direct your eyes towards the Temple, which could alternately be interpreted as towards the community itself) and towards heaven is bringing your own self to Judaism. Both of these aspects - the community and the self - are needed for Jewish life, and they balance each other out. It reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote at the end of yesterday's post: "remember, you did not go empty-handed."

After a looong day of classes, the roommates and I braved the adventure known as an Israeli grocery store. Incredibly overstimulating, especially when faced with the task of stocking a pretty much empty pantry and refrigerator. It was crazier than MarketBasket, which I didn't know was possible. I'm pretty sure the people around us in line to pay just left their carts at the register and went on to continue shopping, then came back and nudged back into line. It was really sweet to come home (home!) to our apartment, unload the groceries, and cook dinner.

Tomorrow - first day of chumash and Talmud!

Shalom Y'rushalayim!

2009-08-30T18:26:00.002+03:00

I'm now safely in Israel, at my cousins' house in Talpiyot, and excited to move into my new apartment tomorrow! Here's some writing I did over the past couple of days that I'm just having the chance to post now....

El Al flight 2, about an hour and a half til landing...
This all seems surreal still. Am I really landing in Tel Aviv to begin this next great adventure? And also like deja vu...the EIE group I'm flying with is exactly the same as my own - almost 7 years ago! They sat in a circle at the gate playing Dispatch and Oasis on guitar, attracting a group of adorable toddlers. A woman came up to me and was shocked to find out the teens had just met each other.

I read my plane letters as soon as we were off the ground. Special shout-outs to Mom and Matt Lowe for making me cry and laugh with their letters, respectively!

On the list of ridiculous, "only in Israel" (or en route to Israel) moments: as my checked bags are being screened, the baggage handler turns to ask me a question, and instead says, "Hey! I know you!" Hey what's up Evyatar, fomer Eisner staff member?

On the way to Jerusalem...
On the bus from Haifa, going "up to" Jerusalem. The Mediterranean is beautifully blue to the right, and to the left are fields and mountains. It's Sunday morning, most of the other pasengers are soldiers returning to their bases. One of them, a boy, looked so young. It strikes me taht today my brother is celebrating his 20th birthday, and his biggest responsibility is doing well in schoo.

The reality of this adventure is starting to hit me. This isn't a vacation or a trip - this is life. I had a bit of a panic realizing that my entire life ispacked up unto 3 suitcases and a backpack. If everything goes as planned...this is home for the next 2 years - that's longe rthan Somerville was home. This crazy, twisted, exciting country is my home, at least for now.

As the plane was landing, last week, when it was at the point when you hold your breath waiting for the wheels to tuoch down, the passenger next to me murmured, "come on..." That impatience of just waiting to be back. I realized that as we took off from JFK, I strained my neck for last glimpses of New York - not America. But when we were descending....it was Israel I was looking at, the whole country....holding my breath, waiting for that moment when the wheels touch and everyone claps.

Haifa and Tel Aviv were fun - lots of Hebrew around me, which helped get my ear back. We went to a festival on Friday afternoon (Hebrew word of the day: פסטיבל festiVAL - shockingly, it means...festival) called קלבתשבת Kalabat Shabbat, a play on Kabbalat Shabbat. The band that sings L'olam b'ikvot hashemesh (for Eisner folks - swim, swim, back, back, to present, to present!) performed. We went out in Haifa on Friday night with some of Orly's friends. It's hard explaining to Israelis what I'm doing here and what Pardes is...something like a yeshiva? One guy asked if I was religious, and I pointed out that I was sitting in a bar on Friday night - at the same time, I'm not sure I want to be sitting in a bar on Friday night.

Listening to the Israeli circus playlist - shoutout to LPG!

I finished the Maya Angelou memoir I was reading: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. My favorite line in the book: "Be careful, sweet lady. You went to Africa to get something, but remember you did not go empty-handed. Don't lose what you had to get something which just may not work."

There might be giants!

2009-08-19T18:28:00.001+03:00

Welcome to the blog! I leave for Israel, to spend a year (and hopefully 2 years) studying, this year at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, in exactly one week. I am busy, excited, overwhelmed, and impatient to get to Israel - but there's a long (color-coded) to-do list and lots of goodbyes beforehand.

The title for the blog comes from Parshat Sh'lach L'cha, in which Moses, under God's command, sends 12 scouts into Canaan to...

...see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns in which they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land. (Numbers 13:18-20)

What kind of land will I find? What are the fruits I will bring back? Will the people and communities be open, welcoming, nurturing, and challenging? Will the learning be the learning I am craving? Will the hummus be delicious? (I think that answer is an unequivocal yes.)

When I first studied this Torah portion, the summer I was a Machon (counselor-in-training) at Eisner, we framed the Shabbat service we led on the Shabbat before we became bunk counselors around the idea of "there might be giants!" The scouts don't know what challenges await them in the Land of Canaan, but are terrified at the strength and power of its giant inhabitants. Yet Caleb and Joshua describe the land as "tovah ha'aretz m'od m'od - an exceedingly good land." They are confident that the Israelites have the power, creativity, and resources to make a good life for themselves in this exceedingly good land.

There will for sure be challenges, maybe in the form of giants, in the months ahead (there are already some...like how to pack my life into 2 duffel bags, and see my brother and sister for too short a time between their return from camp and my flight next Wednesday), but there will also be an exceedingly good land, flowing with milk and honey and filled with fruit, to explore.