For Zion's Sake I Will Not Be Silent

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Seeing is Believing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West Bank Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View West Bank Story in a larger map

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

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

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.

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

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.

Which side are you on?

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.