Life's a Beach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nesher adventures

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

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

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

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

The Holidays Affectionately Known as "the Yoms"

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

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

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!