walking in Jerusalem

Number our Days

2006-05-28T03:16:00.001-07:00

Today is the 45th day of the Omer - six weeks and three days into the Omer. It is also Rosh Chodesh Sivan, four short days away from Shavuot. The Omer is a period that heightens our consciousness about living on two planes - in the physical world of daily time which is filled with demands of deadlines and routines, and in the metaphysical world of sacred timelessness where each year we count up from the Exodus from Egypt to the Revelation at Sinai. This year, my concsiousness of the Omer is all the more intense because as I've been counting up towards Shavuot, I've also been counting down towards my imminent and inevitable departure back to the U.S. on Saturday night at the end of this week. This is my last Sunday in Israel, my last week, time to wrap up, pack up and return to old ryhthms and schedules. Time to leave one part of my family and reunite with another.

I arrived during Hanukkah the week of Parshat Miketz - the 3rd to last parsha in the Book of Bereshit. I'm leaving just as we begin Beha'alotecha, the third parasha in the Book of Numbers. During my 23 weeks, here, I experienced two complete Books of the Torah and an equal part of two others. Yet, the symmetry is off because here in Israel we only celebrate one day of Shavuot (Friday), while the holiday is two days in the Diaspora. So, this coming Shabbat in the Diaspora (or at least the Orthodox and Conservative worlds), the Torah reading is for Shavuot and not the weekly parasha. This means the Jewish world is out of sync for six weeks until we join up again at Parshat Balak. And that's an accurate reflection of how I'm feeling right now - out of sync - not sure of whether I'm coming home or leaving home.

My time here has been filled with gifts and the satisfaction of doing good work. I have savored rich conversations with many colleagues in an assortment of cafes and other meeting spots. I've forged new professional relationships and strengthened old ones. I've begun new projects and continued to work on some ongoing ones. I've taught in two languages to four different groups of people - Russian-speakers, Israelis, British, and Americans. I've given presentations at three different universities (London, Jerusalem and Haifa) outside of my own. I've had the delightful company of my daughter on a regular basis. Billy was here for almost 9 weeks in two separate visits. My parents came for 3 weeks, Nate for 10 days. Throughout, friends have been generous in welcoming me in their homes and sharing their Shabbat and holiday tables. I've been to the symphony twice, to the theatre twice, and to five movies. I've eaten in each of my favorite restaurants at least twice, and have had four different groups of students over for dinner at different points along the semester. I've hiked in the Galilee, the Negev, and the hills of Jerusalem. I've been to services in 13 different prayer communities - 7 in Jerusalem, 3 elsewhere in Israel, 1 in Istanbul, 1 in London, and 1 in Kiev. I've grappled with the politics and tried to understand the contours of this many-sided social, religious, and historical puzzle. I've been touched in the deepest recesses of my being by so many encounters with people, places, memories, and moments. I've been angry and frustrated, joyful and charmed by this place that is so very real and so very complex - where even the mundane is remarkable just because the ordinary is so extraordinary here. In some ways I've stepped outside of myself to try to understand or at least accept what's different. But in most ways, I have felt myself totally and completely whole.

There were things I had hoped to do while here that I didn't get to - learning some Russian, finding a regular place to study, joining a gym, going to the beach, but all in all, I feel I numbered my days well, making each one count and as the Psalmist says, searching for that heart of wisdom.

Boundaries and Border Crossings

2006-05-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

Around 3 am Monday morning I arrived back from 4.5 days in Kiev. I was there to teach at a seminar for about 35 Reform Jewish educators from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. Unlike my Project Kesher experiences where no one spoke English, here there were a few who had excellent English and even some with passable Hebrew so I could connect more directly with them without the need of a translator. Overall, these educators are new learners. Most are barely a step or two ahead of the students they teach. In some ways, their enthusaism and dedication compensate for their developing literacy, but I really was impressed with how challenging it is to provide them opportunities for Jewish learning and professional development. Nonetheless, with even the few resources they have, they are beginning to find their voice and develop a professional identity, largely through their contacts with us in the West. I had a powerful sense of the overlap of our worlds as I sat in a Soviet-style rest house/conference center and heard the kahal singing familiar American tunes while praying out of the Israeli Reform siddur. One educator told me how she had met an American rabbi who gave her a $150 piece of software and how guilty she felt for accepting such an expensive present. And I was particularly struck by the utter excitement of each community receiving a gift box filled with Jewish toys and games for their Sunday schools. These flotsam and jetsam of American Jewish family life become precious commodities here.

So, I was thinking alot about the permeability of boundaries already when I was asked to give the closing benediction/charge at our Founders' day ceremony back at HUC on Monday afternoon. This is an annual event that celebrates the founders of the Jerusalem campus through a bit of teaching and speechifying. My instructions from the Dean were to: "Start in Hebrew and then go to English. Do something that will give us a feeling of unity. And be brief!" My natural inclination in these instances is to go to the texts to find inspiration. The immediate and obvious choice was Psalm 122, one of the 15 "Songs of Ascent" that were part of the processionals in ancient days during the three pilgrimage festivals. The psalm is all about the power of Jerusalem in bringing us together. It begins "I rejoiced when they said to me, 'We are going up to the House of the Lord.'" The rejoicing part fits with how happy I felt (still feel) to have had this opportunity to sojourn in Jerusalem. The first part of the next phrase is what is on the electronic clock on the main road just as you enter the city: "Our feet stood inside your gates, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem build up, a city knit together, to which tribes would make pilgrimage"

The rabbinic commentators make much of this line as well - both for the fact that Jerusalem is repeated twice and for the phrase "a city knit together," perfect for our theme of unity. My favorite midrash on this is that God says "I will not enter into heavenly Jerusalem until I can enter the earthly Jerusalem, for it is said, Until the holy one is built in your midst, I will not enter the city (Hosea 11:9)." So that gave us a context for thinking about the work we need to do to make the earthly Jerusalem a city worthy of God's presence. The midrash closes with the statement that "Jerusalem is a city which makes all Israel into a fellowship." And that allowed me to talk about the fact that as Jews, we share much in common no matter on what side of the ocean we chose to make our home.

That was the gist of what I planned to say when I jotted down some notes an hour or so before the program began. But, when I got to the podium, I decided to begin with a personal story. When Hannah and I came back from Istanbul last February, the clerk at Passport control asked me a question I have never been asked before in all of my 35 years of coming to Israel. "Are you a citizen?" he said. "No." I replied. "But you have an identity number," he said. I told him I had been a temporary resident here more than 30 years ago, but was not a citizen. "You still have an id number. If you ever decide to make aliyah, that will be your number." And he proceeded to write the number down in my passport above the stamp.

Since that trip, I have left and returned to Israel twice - first to London and then again to Kiev. Both times now, the security checkers and passport control people ask me if I have an Israeli passport. It does feel somehow that they are sending me a message.

I began with that story to talk about how connected I feel to this place and how I hope that our American students began at least to understand how powerful that connection can be. I asked them to look for the small signs that connect past to present, make the ordinary sacred here and the sacred sometimes ordinary. And, I asked them to make connections not just to the space, but the people within it.

Just as I was about to go to bed that night, I got a frantic call from Hannah who was due to return home from playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Copenhagen. She was at the gate and being barred from boarding the plane because the clerk said she had neither a valid visa to Israel (since when do US citizens need a visa to Israel?) nor proof of a return ticket from Israel to the US. The clerk wouldn't budge and Hannah ended up spending an extra night and paying another $200 to get out of Copenhagen (once we faxed the airline proof of her return ticket) - not the most horrible place to be a temporary refugee, but a strange and unsettling experience, nonetheless.

All kinds of messages about boundaries and belonging are embedded in these tales. Who am I? Where do I belong? How much of oneself can cross a "border", how much stays behind? What's the difference between nationality and citizenship? How much is imposed on us by outside forces that dictate what passport we hold and where we can or cannot go? And how much is imposed on us by our own histories, families, and lines of connection that bound and bind us as well?

Memorial Road

2006-05-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

It has been a difficult stretch. Last Shabbat, I learned of the death of a much respected friend, colleague, and teacher from home, Bob Cohen. Two weeks earlier, another friend, Bonnie Silverman succumbed to her five year battle with ovarian cancer. Also in the past few weeks, three friends lost a parent, and four others are coping with parents who seem to be coming to the end of their time. It has been hard to be away while all of this is taking place in my community. In fact, for a short while last Shabbat, I thought about getting on a plane so I could be in Hartford for Bob’s funeral. Work obligations aside, I think the fact that we marked the Israeli national holidays of Yom Hazikaron and Independence Day this week, made the decision to remain the right thing to do.

Yom Hazikaron began on Monday evening, but we started earlier at HUC with a joint service between the American and Israeli students. Early on, the student rabbi asked us to reflect on whether any of the blessings had any special significance to us at this point in our communal calendar. I didn’t get past the blessing "sh'asani Yisrael", thanking God for making me a Jew. That was where I stayed for the rest of the service. First, I thought about how at home and how complete I feel here, warts and all, and how I can’t understand myself as a Jew without wrestling with this all the dimensions of this place – land, people, Torah, and State. And then I thought about the power of history and the pull of memory and how that is a force that both binds us together as a people, but sometimes can be abused and distorted in a way that is altogether unhealthy both for us and for others. And finally, I thought about the absences – how this place has drawn and repelled my own loved ones, and the price we have had to pay as a people to hold on here and try to build a society worthy of blessing.

I suppose my own personal and private sorrows spilled over into my feelings and connections to these somber days. Monday night, I went to a memorial service at Kol Haneshama, led by high school seniors in Noar Telem, the Reform movement’s youth group. Standing on the edge of graduation here has an altogether different meaning than it does for our carefree American kids.

Tuesday, the commemorations continued. I went to a ceremony at one of the oldest high schools in Jerusalem that was marking the memory of 138 of its students and teachers who had fallen as soldiers or as victims of terror since the founding of the State in 1948. The open courtyard was filled with students, parents, and alumni, well over 1,000 strong. The ceremony began at 11:00 am just as a two-minute siren blew throughout the country. One of the parents of a soldier killed in action recited Kaddish and then the ceremony continued with a recitation of the names interspersed with songs, and readings of poems, and letters written by those whom we were remembering.

Later that evening, I went to another ceremony – this one marking the transition from sorrow to celebration. We began in one room with a group sing-along (another Israeli cultural phenomenon) of mournful tunes. After dark, we moved into another room to daven ma'ariv and begin the celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut, complete with falafel and more singing, this time of a lighter and more hopeful tone.

The next day, I went with my friend Dennie to the Galilee for two exquisite days of hiking, reading, relaxing, and restoring the spirit. My kibbutz cousins Eitan and Shula live about 40 minutes from where we were, so I called them and they said let’s meet for lunch!! This began a wonderful afternoon that started in a restaurant in a gas station (delicious!) in an half Christian/half Muslim Arab village called Jish (or Gush Halav). Eitan is in charge of the water systems in the north and he seems to know just about every village and road in the region. After lunch, he took us to look at the three different churches in the village. We meandered through these steep and winding roads and came to a tiny little alley way that led to an ancient mausoleum that was discovered when someone started building a house on top of it!! Hardly on the tourist trail.

We continued our not-touristy tour out of Jish, heading towards a Druze village called Horfish, but soon turned off into a narrow lane that could have been easily overlooked. We drove a couple of kilometers through olive trees along this road, passing a few picnickers, stopping for a shepherd and his goats that were crossing the road, and eventually came to a stop at a memorial, far from any habitation. The site had large memorial stone and a plaque with a long list of names. In 1997, two army helicopters collided, one coming out of Lebanon, the other going in. It was the worst military accident in Israeli history and 73 soldiers were killed. One of them was a Druze from Horfish. For years, the Druze community in Horfish and their neighboring village of Beit Jahn tried to get permission to pave a road between the two villages to help them get to their fields, but were refused by the Israel Lands Authority. When one of their boys was killed in this crash, the community decided to erect a memorial stone. They chose not just to note his death, but to include all those who lost their lives in this tragedy. And that got them their road.

We will Remember

2006-04-28T02:26:00.000-07:00

With the end of the Pesach break followed quickly by Billy's departure back to the States, life shifted gears dramatically this week. For the most part, it was a week filled with work - teaching, grading papers, meetings, presentations, and general catch-up --certainly different from the social scene of the previous two weeks of friends, food, and fun. I also had to deal with a household plumbing emergency - a side of Israel that few tourists encounter. It was good that I hadn't yet returned the rental car because I had to drive around the Talpiot Industrial zone for about 45 minutes looking for a hardware store that stocked the part I needed! (The best part of that was the name of the store, once I finally found it, was Tubol, kind of a play on words on the biblical character, Tubal-cain, great-grandson of Adam and the inventor of metal work).

All of this was quite ordinary and routine, something of a rarity in this complicated place. But of course, this week we also commemorated Yom Hashoah, something far from ordinary and routine. Starting on Monday evening, the city shut down. Restaurants and movie theatres closed, virtually every school in the city had some kind of program, the radio stations' play lists became somber and subdued, and every tv channel had Holocaust related programming. The official State ceremony took place Monday night at Yad Va'Shem, the Holocaust Memorial site. Tuesday was a work day but of a different tenor. At HUC, we began the day with a joint service between the American and Israeli students. The sanctuary was darkened; an Israeli flag with black ribbons attached hung next to the ark. Six memorial candles were lit and a selection of extra readings and mournful tunes shaped the service. When that concluded, we gathered along with our colleagues from the World Union for Progressive Judaism in the main courtyard of the campus for a memorial ceremony that began promptly at 10:00 (events in Israel are rarely ever this prompt) when a siren went off throughout the country. This is a classic expression of Israeli national culture - everything stops for two minutes of national silence. People get out of their cars and stand at attention (not everyone these days, which is also a sign of the times. They don't keep driving, but I suppose staying in their car is a kind of silent protest that maybe we have taken this commemoration a bit too far...).

Our HUC/WUPJ ceremony began with a set of songs and readings (in Hebrew, English, and Russian) both classic and contemporary and concluded with the traditional El Malei Rachamim and Kaddish. The most moving part was the recitation of names. Here, everyone from the community - students, faculty, staff - who had a personal connection to loss in the Shoah was invited to come forward and recite their names. Well over 50 people lined up with Israelis outnumbering Americans 4 or 5 to 1. I was powerfully struck both by that skewed distribution and also by the fact that most of the Israelis reciting names had lists of whole families and they knew their home towns and full names, while the Americans mostly only listed one person or a family name without naming individuals. Within 3 years of the founding of the State, 1/4 of the Jewish population in Israel was made up of Holocaust survivors. The fact is that far fewer Americans were directly touched by this horror. Few of these American students know a Holocaust survivor or even a child of survivors. The Shoah is more a subject of study than it is a personal memory, even once or twice removed. For Israelis, collective memory is much more powerful because it is so personal.

Maybe some Israelis are tired of this national focus on Holocaust remembrance. I for one, am not ready to let it go. Yes, there are many more contemporary atrocities that warrant our attention and action. But, we still need a day to mourn our own loss, our own tragedy, our own rupture. It's part of the healing I think to keep remembering the pain.

Musings on Freedom

2006-04-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

We’re at the mid-point of Pesach. The week has been filled with all kinds of peaks and valleys and bizarro twists that make me laugh and also cry.

We celebrated the Seder with our kibbutz cousins from the north, plus the requisite extras – an American student studying at Hebrew University, and our West Hartford friends the Rosen-Browns’ daughter Elana. It was a bi-lingual delight, filled with rich musings on home and homelessness, on identity and politics, on breaking with tradition and reclaiming tradition anew. For the Israeli family (yes, that’s their name – when Eitan’s socialist parents came to Israel in the 1930s they cast off their galut name and reinvented themselves as true pioneers of the Yishuv. The irony is that Moshe, Eitan’s father, never became an Israeli citizen because of his communist proclivities) this was their first Seder “k’hilchato” – according to law and custom. Yet, both generations of parents and adult children, comfortably jumped into the flow – knowing most of the songs and engaging fully in the process. It didn’t hurt that I served hefty hors d’ouevres after Carpas to stave off hunger.

The next day was peaceful and calm. After shul, friends from Tel Aviv came up for lunch and we had a lovely afternoon stroll along the tayelet/promenade – a broad park that offers sweeping views of the city.

Friday morning, we set off to visit our friends Samar and Amin, who live in an East Jerusalem neighborhood called Bir Nabala (see my blog “Road Works” from 13 February 2006). Getting there two months ago was already a challenge – but that paled relative to the situation today. Since the elections, dramatic changes have begun to “transfer” Jerusalem’s Arab populations without physically moving them – just by moving the borders. The checkpoint that we crossed in February to get to Bir Nabala was still there, but the partially built wall that allowed us to drive up the unpaved avenue to get to their house was now virtually closed in. A small opening remained, but that was blocked by a small group of soldiers and a very large mass of barbed wire. The soldiers said we had to go to Kalandia – the main crossing point into Ramallah – a few more kilometers along the wall. So we called Amin and he said he’d meet us there in 15 minutes (even though he lives less than 5 minutes from the barbed and blocked gate). When he finally arrived at the check point, he led us through a long and twisted trail back to his home – a neighborhood where everyone is either an Israeli citizen or carries a Jerusalem identity card and where all of the cars have yellow Israeli license plates and not the Palestinian green. Yet, this neighborhood, and several others of the wrong kind of citizens, is now cut off from jobs and schools and community – ultimately to be ceded to a bankrupt, impoverished, and subjugated Palestine.

Well, Samar and Amin are the lucky ones in this strange drama. They are Israeli citizens and have the means to move. So, they are abandoning their lovely and spacious home in a building where two of Amin’s brothers also live, and moving later this week to a cramped apartment in Beit Safafa – once an Arab village, and now part of municipal Jerusalem, that at least for now, remains open to free entry and egress. They are refugees in their own land, citizens with few rights and broken hearts. Not the happy tale of freedom that we Jews savor at this time of year.

On the drive back to Jerusalem, the soldiers at the barbed wired crossing let us through for some unknown reason so we didn’t have to retrace our tracks to Ramallah, but getting back into the city was eventful nonetheless. A short while after we passed Hebrew University, the main road was blocked by police cars, so we had to take a winding detour to continue. Apparently, the blockage was due to rioting in Meah Shearim, one of the major ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of the city. Earlier that week, a young father from the community confessed to murdering his infant son. But, now the residents were rioting, accusing the State of blood libel in arresting this man. Here, we have an example of civil rights run amok.

Once we got through that tangle, we came upon throngs of buses and foot traffic around the Old City. At first, we were puzzled and couldn’t figure out the reason for the crowds. But then Billy remembered it was Good Friday – time for the Christians to assert their presence as well.

Well, Shabbat peace descended and had its salving effect, for the moment at least.

An amusingly bizarre coda to this strange week was our attendance at the Jerusalem Symphony last night. The program on this Easter Eve was Bach’s St. John’s Passion, played to a highly appreciative and almost entirely Jewish audience, including many kippah clad men – a bold assertion of our universalism in the concert hall, but hardly replicated on the streets.

Oh Jerusalem, beloved city, filled with irony, beauty, and pain.

"Song of the Valley"

2006-04-10T02:02:00.000-07:00

The lower Galilee and Jezreel Valley are the heartland of Zionist mythmaking. The first kibbutzim were founded here, where Socialist idealists from Eastern Europe came in the early part of the 20th century to drain the swamps by day and dance the hora by night, or so the story goes. They certainly did break with Jewish tradition and social conventions to create a new society, based on collective ownership of property and communal living. Today, most kibbutzim are radically different places than their founders imagined them to be. Few if any, rely on agriculture as their main source of income. Most have gone through at least some form of privatization where people choose their own professions, earn their own salaries and pay bills according to their patterns of consumption, just like us city-dwellers. Many kibbutzim have gone into the tourism business and provide guest houses and resort facilities. Many also rent housing to people who just want to live in a rural community and have no interest at all in being a member of a collective, no matter how loosely configured.

Even in the early days before Israel became a State, there were many who realized that this kind of intense communal living wasn't for them. The moshav emerged out of this impulse, as a kind of hybrid between complete sharing of resources and preserving personal autonomy. Nahalal, the first moshav, was founded in 1921, in the Jezreel Valley of course. Moshe Dayan's father was one of the original members. Nahalal features in one of my favorite songs "The Song of the Valley" of that period. It's a lyric paean to nature, to the pioneers, to the upbuilding of the land - all part of the grand myth that shaped Israeli identity for 3 generations or more:

"Rest has come to the weary and calm for the worker...Dew below and moon above, from Beit Alpha to Nahalal...Sleep, oh valley, glorious land. We shall watch over you." (It sounds much better in Hebrew...)

The land really is glorious, especially on a spring day when the hills are still green from the winter rains and blanketed with wild flowers. Quite a lot has changed since those first pioneers came with their vision, their dreams and their commitment to physcial labor and nation-building. Their old dreams may no longer fit with the times, but it still does seem to be a place where new ideas incubate and begin to flourish.

We spent last Shabbat on Nahalal where we attended services at Niggun Ha'lev. This community is just a few years old and grew out of the work of several educators from HaMidrasha, a program of Jewish studies for secular Israelis at Oranim College, just a few kilometers down the road from Nahalal. Niggun Ha'lev is a kind of havurah, not affiliated with a particular movement and intent on charting its own path. It's a multi-generational group with lots of kids, young and old. Most of the 60 or so members are former kibbutzniks, with a smattering of Americans added to the mix. These are people who grew up with a distrust, if not antipathy towards religious practice. Yet, the more they studied Judaism, the more they began to think and ultimately act on how to make Jewish expression a part of their lives.

The service at Niggun Ha'lev was lyrical and heartfelt. They have created their own kind of worhsip experience - classical liturgy interwoven with modern Hebrew poetry; a bit of Carlebach mixed with Israeli tunes; guitar and Torah study; a closing circle of community announcements instead of the traditional Friday night Amidah. It was a familiar and strange assortment that somehow came together into a warm and authentic whole.

The service takes place in the moshav's clubhouse whose walls are adorned with a ring of photographs from the founding days of the community. When I told my mother that we were going to Nahalal Shabbat services, she wrly commented: "Moshe Dayan must be turning in his grave". Indeed, I wondered how those founding fathers and mothers would look on at this new experiment. Though they themselves rejected the religion of their fathers for their own "religion" of Zionism, I'd like to think that they would approve of the creative and sincere efforts of this group to define a home for themselves within Jewish tradition - not as Orthodox returnees, but as Israeli Jews looking to build a new kind of community that makes room for Judaism in a way their ancestors could never have imagined.

Desperately Seeking Holiness

2006-04-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

The rhythms of life can be so odd. My quiet, sedentary, Jerualem-centered life of the past month came to an abrupt halt shortly after my last blog entry. First I was with a group of educators from the Former Soviet Union who came for a 5 day seminar. A day after they left, I flew to London for 3 days of teaching (and 2 days of playing). After a six week separation, Billy joined me and returned with me to Israel for another 3 weeks. My parents are in Israel too. They came just before the elections to vote and are staying through Pesach. Our friends the Stiers are in town, as is my close colleague Diane and her husband Jack. So we've had a nice round of dinners this week! And then of course, there's teaching and meetings, and writing and cleaning and cooking for Pesach to squeeze into all of that. All of a sudden, life got very full!!

Given that frenzied pace, rather than write a new entry, I'm posting an abbreviated version of the sermon I gave on Parshat Vayikra (the opening of the book of Leviticus) at a synagogue in London last Shabbat. This book transitions away from sacred space and time that are the focus of most of the last third of the Book of Exodus, and moves us to consider that crucial third ingredient - the holiness of the soul.

To my mind, there’s no better place on earth to experience the sanctity of time and space as in Jerusalem. The rhythm of the week begins with a mad intensity on Yom Rishon - Sunday (just try taking an inter-city bus first thing Sunday morning, packed with soldiers returning to base after a Shabbat at home). And then, it grinds to an almost complete stop on Friday afternoon. At candle-lighting time, a long, low whistle blows throughout the city as a not so subtle reminder that Shabbat has come. Not long after that, you begin to feel the zig zag flow of foot traffic through the neighborhoods of Jerusalem as people make their way to any one of the multitude of choices for Kabbalat Shabbat.

And then of course, there’s space – the vistas, the hills, the walls, the Golden dome, the graves – the heaviness of history is inescapable, but the stones bathed in the morning light can’t help but lift your spirits.As the poet Yehuda Amichai says: “The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams.” But, the poem continues by saying that it “is like air over industrial cities; it’s hard to breathe.”

What makes the air in Jerusalem hard to breathe is not the holiness of time and space. They are in abundance. What is far more ambiguous and complex is the holiness of the soul -- human interactions and behaviors that are endowed with dignity and purpose; Holiness is when people act out of balanced sense of din v’rachamim, justice and compassion – imitating those two qualities of God that we invoke on the High Holy days when we pray for our lives.

And that brings us to the Book of Leviticus, the book that lays out in obsessive and sometimes troublesome detail the code of holiness by which the Israelites are enjoined to live. But even before those details, we spend the opening chapters learning the laws of sacrifice and purification, the prerequisites to the sanctification of the soul. Most of the parshah focuses on the various kinds of offerings individuals and groups of people should sacrifice in the event that they sin. The system was quite egalitarian. Everyone is included from the high priest to the lowliest peasant. There’s even a sliding scale delineated so that if you can’t afford a large animal, you can offer a pigeon; if you didn’t have even the means for a pigeon, a simple meal offering would suffice. The text presumes we will sin and gives us an outlet for the expiation of that sin. Later in the book, we will learn the details of how to create a holy society, but first we learn the process for regaining a sense of closeness to God. Perhaps this is trying to teach us that the desire for the closeness forms the basis for our motivation to attain holiness – that before we can elevate our behavior, we must recognize our sin and undertake a ritual of absolution.That’s the plan at least as mapped out in an idealized, heavenly way.

How do we measure up in our earthly Jerusalem? Not so well, I’m afraid. Perhaps that’s why Amichai says the air is so hard to breathe.Here are a few of the issues that have been needling at me in recent weeks.

· The rash of corruption among government officials
· Ever-widening gap between rich and poor
· Miserable state of schools
· Increasing violence among the young
· Seemingly arbitrary “fences” in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that turn 5 minute drives into 45 minute ones and that’s when they are allowed to pass through. On other days, small school children must walk across the checkpoint alone in order to pick up a bus on the other side
· Lockdowns in the territories that cause massive shortages of bread and sugar and other staples of life
· Prohibiting an Israeli Arab author, traveling on behalf of the Israeli government, to wander freely in the airport while awaiting his flight
· A recent poll that said 68% of Israeli Jews wouldn’t want to live in the same building as an Arab
· The fact that Arabs make up 20% of Israeli citizenry but own only 3.5% of the land (within the pre-67 borders).

I’m not a political analyst and I am well aware that there are serious, substantive, and enduring concerns about security that drive many of these behaviors, benign and deliberate. But, nonetheless, the overriding sense I get is that we are cultivating an atmosphere of racism and hatred.

There are many small gestures to break this cycle within Israel and I am encouraged by some of the initiatives I’ve heard about in the last few weeks, and I am especially encouraged to hear that many of the mainstream North American Jewish communal agencies are also beginning to recognize and lend financial support to efforts to create a more just society for all of Israel’s citizens. But, still the impact of these activities is still tiny against the much stronger tide of opposition and apathy (evidenced just recently by the pathetically low voter turnout for the elections especially among the young). Israelis are rightly tired of fighting an endless battle to assure their security and rightness of place. But, I worry deeply about the inability to see the face of the other; to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of innocent people are denied basic civil rights; and that most of us don’t really care.

In ancient times, sacrifice was the tangible act of contrition – The system was designed for everyone because everyone sins. But, the first step, before making the sacrifice was to accept our guilt.

This is not easy to say. Our cause is just. We deserve to live in dignity and safety; to preserve the integrity of the Jewish state and help it to flourish. But we cannot and must not let our own right to live in peace and security, allow us to act in ways that deny the right of others to live in human dignity. And as we stand on this first Shabbat of Nisan, the month when we celebrate our freedom from bondage and mark the beginnings of the Jewish people, can we truly revel in our own freedoms while we bear the responsibility of denying that freedom to others? Can we fully relish the holiness of time and space without a willingness to share a bit of it with others? Serving our own interests alone are not enough to create a just and merciful society. We need to act with holy intentions towards each other and even towards our enemies. And we cannot achieve this without deep sacrifice. This requires offering up that part of us that demonizes and discredits any point of view other than our own, that puts blinders on the suffering, hopelessness, and fear of those we oppress. Only when we fully commit to this process can we hope to draw close to God and that’s the essence of holiness.

Only in Jerusalem

2006-03-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't been out of the city in almost 3 weeks. The farthest I've gone is to Hebrew University, about 30 minutes by bus. I like the bus, even when there are 2 or 3 security guards riding the route with you when there were none the day before (it's probably best not to read too much into that....) The bus is a window into the diversity of life here, filled people of all ages and faces. But, most of the time, I walk, which means my world is pretty much delimited by a two-square mile area. I confess that there have been times when I feel a little bit closed-in, but for the most part, it is a thoroughly enjoyable two square miles. I guess there really is something about the air of Jerusalem. Maybe it's what Yehuda Amichai means when he writes that the "air of Jerusalem is filled with prayers and dreams". Indeed, it is a distinctive and captivating place, and of course the crossroads of the Jewish world.

Here's just a taste of what I mean:

Only in Jerusalem...

...can you run into someone you haven't seen in almost twenty years and immediately pick up where you left off
...can you pay your utility bills at the post office (well that's true for all of Israel)
...can you see all (well, at least a lot) of the scholars you read in books schmoozing in a coffee shop on a Friday morning... and related to that...
...can you find more Jewish educators per square meter than anywhere else in the world (it does make for great conversation!!)
...can you be in a meeting with 8 native English speakers and 3 native Hebrew speakers and hold the conversation entirely in Hebrew (bad grammar and all); but on the other hand...
...can you hear more English than Hebrew on the streets...and related to that..
...can you hear four different languages being spoken within two blocks (Russian, French, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Arabic - take your pick!)
...can you daven out of a Sephardic prayer book to uber-Ashkenazi Carlebach tunes (in a shul where 95% of the people are American - and most of them went to Brandeis at some time or another or so it seems!)
...can you go to a Parshat Hashavuah lecture in a museum with 400 other people (and know that there are at least 10 other sessions like this going on in different places throughout the week)
...can you find the most delicious whole wheat hallah at at least three different bakeries in the same neighborhood (not to mention all the kosher take-out)
...can you hear a loud whistle throughout the city to announce the time Shabbat comes in
...can you go to four or five different shuls and run into someone you know at each

It's a small world, often quirky, sometimes mystifying, but it sure does feel like home. (But don't worry about me catching the "Jerusalem syndrome". I'm going to Tel Aviv tomorrow!)

An Upside Down World

2006-03-14T22:27:00.000-08:00

Purim was celebrated on Monday night and Tuesday this week in just about every place in the world, except Jerusalem. A kind of parenthetical remark in chapter 9 of the Megillah sets the ruling that Jews who live in walled cities should mark their celebration on what is called Shushan Purim, since the Jews of Shushan, the Persian capital were busy wreaking havoc and mayhem for two days and not just one. Because of this, they didn't get to feast and make merry until the 15th of Adar, a day later than the rest of the Jewish world. Thus, life imitates sacred art and we Jerusalemites remain off-schedule.

This translates into a kind of endless Purim! The kids had just a half day of school on Sunday and those few hours were devoted entirely to costume parades and parties that later spilled onto the streets. I went downtown on some errands and witnessed a delightful assortment of creative costumes on the mostly teen-age crowd. It seemed the only people not in costume were the tourists (and they were in abundance as well). Monday was a regular class day at HUC, but we ended the day with a pre-Purim party and shpiel (no Megillah reading of course) where the emcee of the evening made a lot of fun of his Texas roots, claiming Moshe was a redneck cowboy through and through (he did conduct the most massive roundup in human history after all....).

Purim is one of the only Jewish holidays that has few prohibitions against work, travel, and other profane activities so the feeling on the streets was totally open and carefree. Except of course, at the entry ways to the major shopping streets and restaurants that were clogged with soldiers and security personnel keeping guard. Because, Purim also brings back memories of Baruch Goldstein and his perverse and evil massacre of 29 innocent Muslims worshipping during Ramadan at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron in 1994. Tragically, this is a far less frivolous example of life imitating sacred history. Since then, the revenge cycle kicked in and Purim has more than once been targeted as a date for Palestinian terrorism. Violence was not far away this year as well. Though the streets of Jerusalem remained thankfully serene, just a few kilometers away, the Israeli army undertook a 10 hour siege of a Palestinian jail in Jericho to arrest the six militants believed to have been involved in the 2001 murder of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

But, back in Israel, we went on with our revelry. I went to a delightful "Greek chorus" approach to the Megillah reading, with a choir of four chanting the narration and a variety of other actors chanting the characters in the story. My friend Peretz, one of the nicest people in the world, gave the evil Haman the Aggagite, a Snidely Whiplash kind of characterization. The king was appropriately besotted; Esther was appropriately fair, and the eunuchs were in appropriately high voice. Later, we headed over to another shul for a wacky musical shpiel whose main character was a wandering Jew looking for meaning in Jerusalem and beyond.

The Shabbat preceding Purim is called Shabbat Zachor (the sabbath of memory) because we read the biblical account of Amalek who attacked the weakest stragglers among the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. We are ironically enjoined to remember to utterly blot out the memory of Amalek because of the evil he did to the Jews. Haman of course, descends from Amalek and, over our history Amalek has become the archetype of evil against the Jews.

So it was jarring to say the least when I heard that Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, invoked Amalek's name in some political mudslinging. He managed to include almost all of his opponents in his disgusting slur, claiming each letter in Amalek's name stood for one of the enemies of the Jews. So, we have the 'ayin' for Avodah (Labor), the 'mem' for Meretz, the 'lamed' for Likud, and the 'kuf' for Kadima. A tidy but oh so insidious association.

One of the messages of Purim is about how we cope in an upside-down world. The holiday is designed as a kind of "over the top" experience to remind us that life after all, hangs in the balance and the unexpected awaits us at every turn. The contrasts in Jerusalem this week between politics and parties, between revelry and reality, and between farce and fear certainly added an extra measure of understanding to just how delicate that balance can be.

'Tis the Season

2006-03-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

Today at school, the students are engaged in a mock election, complete with what hopefully will be heated debates from the various parties vying for power. Different groups have been scurrying around these last few days trying to learn more about the political party which they have been assigned to represent. I see the flotsam and jetsom of their efforts strewn about the printer in the computer lab in the library where most of the research is taking place. One of my most powerful childhood memories is doing something very similar to this at Camp Ramah when I was about 12 years old. At the time of course, we were all loyal labor Zionists - it was only a matter of whether we were for Mapai, the mainstream labor party, or Mapam, the more radical Shomer Ha'tzair faction. Today's political landscape is a little more complex; and even though on the surface this may seem like a somewhat childish activity for graduate students, it can be quite a meaningful learning experience.

The timing for this virtual activity lines up quite nicely with real-time, where we stand just under 3 weeks away from election day. Last night, I watched TV for the first time in weeks because there was one hour dedicated to the innauguration of the campaign commercials. Up until now, campaigning has taken place on the streets - through banners and billboards, but not in the media. Only in these last few weeks, will we see and hear political advertising that goes beyond a slogan plastered on a wall or the side of a bus. The program was a full 60 minutes of 30-60 second spots for the various parties - Kadima, Labor, Likud, Meretz, Shas, Hetz (the new Shinui), and on and on. The ads showed us real people talking about concerns like a minimum wage, education, the environment, secure borders; they showed us historic footage like the rescue at Entebbe and Bibi at the UN. One of Kadima's ads was this hagiographic salute to Ariel Sharon that seemed better suited to his funeral than to the campaign (though maybe there isn't so much difference between the two). There was surprisingly little mudslinging in the ads. Likud got in a few sharp barbs at Kadima; Hetz harped on the disproportionate burden the secular public bears because the Ultra-Orthodox refuse to work. But, for the most part, the ads tried to animate the issues each party is already known to represent. Labor - social welfare and economic parity; Likud - security; Kadima - Sharon's path to unilateral withdrawal.

Every night from here to election day, there will be a few ads - but nothing again like this full 60 minute press. While, I'm sure people take notice of these ads and maybe they even influence a few votes, but the fact they are so compressed and so tame, suggests that maybe voters make their decisions through more substantive means - they read the papers, talk to their friends, listen to the candidates and their supporters. There's a lot at stake here - far more than a 60 second clip or a pithy campaign slogan can represent. I certainly hope they choose carefully.

"It's a Phenomenon, not a Party"

2006-03-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a parlor meeting to learn more about Amir Peretz, the Labor party candidate for Prime Minister. It’s not that I’m such an avid follower of politics or that I’m particularly aligned to the present-day reality of the Labor party (though in my heart of hearts I suppose I still do resonate to their Labor Zionist vision). I went because of my deep respect and fondness for the speaker, Lova Eliav. Lova is something of an Israeli icon. He’s had at least 4 different careers and has made a profound impact on the country through each. He was the State of Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, served in umpteen Knessets and held various ministerial portfolios. After the Six Day War, he had a major falling out with Golda and went into political exile. But, that didn’t stop him from dreaming and doing. Like Ben Gurion, Lova’s passion is the Negev. As a city planner, he designed and developed Arad, Sederot, and several other desert communities. But, perhaps he is most proud of Nitzana, an educational village he founded in 1986 on the Egyptian border. Nitzana has just a handful of permanent residents who are the staff for the various programs. There’s a youth aliyah program that serves mainly Ethiopian and Russian teens these days. There’s a kind of nature’s classroom program that brings over 10,000 students a year for a week in the desert. Now a solar park to showcase the sun’s potential as an energy source is emerging from design stage to reality. And before the Second Intifada, there was a peace program that brought together Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli youth for dialogue and connection. Lova sees this as a temporary hiatus and fully envisions the resumption of this program as well. Indeed, seeking peace and learning to love the desert are at the heart of Nitzana’s mission and also Lova’s vision of what it means to be a Zionist.

Last year, Lova realized that things were running rather smoothly at Nitzana and found he had a bit of time on his hands (keep in mind that he’s 84). So he decided to start volunteering in an after-school program in one of Tel Aviv’s poorest neighborhoods – a place that’s home for the neediest and most neglected where a hot meal is a seldom thing and literacy even rarer. So Lova goes in and tells the children stories. His own story, which of course is a big part of the story of this place.

Lova became Peretz’s mentor when they met years ago in Sederot. So when Peretz called asking for help on the campaign, Lova dropped everything and is now working night and day on his behalf.

Lova truly believes in Amir Peretz’s ability to lead the country, to work for peace and to make Israel a more just and equitable society for all its citizens. His remarks last night were impassioned, articulate, and personal. He repeatedly called Kadima “a phenomenon, not a party”, based around a single individual (now lying comatose…) and projecting that it will fall apart after one round. That drew a few chuckles and seemed to resonate quite well for most of the 30 or so people in the room.

The Q & A after Lova’s formal remarks was fascinating to me. People asked about Peretz’s leadership ability, his economic program, his stance on environmental issues. Generic political issues of interest to a liberal upper middle class audience. No one asked about Hamas and the Palestinians, about the crisis in education, about some of the deplorable injustices in Israeli society, about the Jewish character of the Jewish state, questions that to me are front and center. On leaving, I noted this observation to our host and he said, “Well, when you say you are a peace party and a social justice party, people understand what that’s about and you don’t need to be explain.” I’m not so sure. The hour was late and my ride was waiting, so I could go no further with the conversation, but I do wonder….

Jewish Peoplehood Redux: aka A Turkish Delight

2006-02-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

Coming home to Israel took on an added dimension this week after Hannah and I spent a long weekend in Istanbul. We had a lovely time, doing the requisite tourist things - what Hannah described as a kind of ancient theme park where you had to do all the important "rides" in order to have the full experience. But, we also set aside one day to try to get a sense of Jewish Istanbul. Before going, I wrote to the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey to arrange permission to visit key Jewish sites. After we sent our passport and hotel information , they sent back an itinerary with a series of appointments including the synagogue closest to where we were staying so we could go to services on Shabbat. Our first stop that Friday morning was at the Ahrida Synagogue, originally built in the 15th century. It was rather off the beaten tourist path so we took a taxi and arrived early. The gate was locked up tight so we wandered around the neighborhood until the chill got the better of us and we took refuge in a local bakery where we had tea and cake and watched the local traffic. At the appointed hour we returned to the synagogue and were met by two dour looking hosts who unlocked the gate and led us into an inner courtyard and then the synagogue itself. They spoke neither English nor Hebrew so we had no shared language which probably accounted for their surliness. They gave us a little card with a brief explanation and a few pictures and wouldn't let us take photos ourselves. They also pointed out the tzedakah box as we prepared to leave, so of course we added a few coins. When we got back onto the street we asked how to get to our next stop and they just pointed down the road and said taxi. Not the warmest reception. But, luckily a cab happened by and got us close to our next destination which was the Jewish museum. As we were struggling over the map trying to figure out where exactly to go, we heard Hebrew so I turned around and asked them if they were going to the museum as well. Indeed they were, so we made a little procession around the corner and through the security gate to the museum which is housed in a converted synagogue. Our reception there was much warmer and we actually had a guide who told us a bit of history about the site and the community. She knew what the present Jewish population is (about 22, 000) but couldn't say what it had been pre-48. The day before we met a sweet Jewish merchant in the Grand Bazaar who sold us a few t-shirts and said that today there about 15 Jewish shops in the Bazaar though once there were over 100! I bought a CD of Turkish Zemirot at the museum store after I heard that one of the cuts was my favorite version of Ein Keloheinu - a bit of making the strange familiar.

Our next stop was the Ashkenazi synagogue built around 1900 where we were joined by a French couple and their daughter. Again, aside from my fractured French, our common language was Hebrew. We didn't have to go through a metal detector at this site but the heavy metal doors felt like we were entering a prison. The most notable feature of this synagogue was its prominent Jewish exterior. The other buildings we visited that day had few if any Jewish symbols on the outside yet this building was obviously a synagogue that could have been anywhere in Europe or the States. Our guide had enough English to cover the key aspects of the building and its members, including of course the tzedakah box at the end. On our way out, the French family said they had come to Istanbul for a bar mitzvah celebration and that we should come as well! It was quite a lovely moment of connection.

Our new friends couldn't go with us to our next stop because they didn't have an appointment and when we arrived, we understood why they didn't just try to tag along. This was Neve Shalom, the central synagogue of Istanbul. Here security was tighter than El Al. They even took our passports after we were screened and cleared for entry. Perhaps it's not too surprising as 20 years ago over 20 congregants were killed in a bombing on a Shabbat morning. The synagogue has been beautifully restored (and curiously did not have the typical Sephardic-style central bimah) except for a memorial wall that commemorates their tragedy. Preparations were underway for a bar mitzvah the next day and the sanctuary was being festooned with flowers. Our presence was acknowledged not so much by language, but when one of the workers gave us a couple of flowers. It was really lovely.

Our final stop on our Jewish tour of Istanbul was later that evening when we went to B'nai Avraham for services. This was a simple shul, near the train station about a 20 minute walk from our hotel. The congregants included about 16 middle-aged and elderly men and six women all of whom were tourists. There wasn't really a mehitza - just a row of chairs at the back of the sanctuary where it seemed most appropriate for us to sit. The shamash was warm and welcoming and in Hebrew explained a bit about the service and asked us not to cross our legs! Two young women came in late, wearing blue jeans. They seemed to be struggling to find their place in the siddur so I went over to help them in Hebrew of course. Even with the Sephardic nusach, the service felt just right, especially when I realized I knew the tune they were singing to Yigdal, the closing prayer. After services we chatted a bit with the two jean-clad women who were new olim from South America on vacation like us. We made kiddush and enjoyed a bit of wine and cake together with the Turks.

Thomas Friedman tells us that our world today is flat through technology and other forces of globalization. But I think the Jewish community has always had elements of flatness. Well
before the 1st Zionist Congress, Jews around the globe built and preserved strong bonds of connection through shared experiences of ritual, worship, study, and language. We use different tunes, we have variations in our prayers and practices, but basically more of who were are binds us together than keeps us apart. And it is when we share a language, which is more often Hebrew than any other, that allows us to forge these ties. So, our day of exploration took in not just history and architecture, but a bit of local color and a lot of chance encounters that while brief and fleeting, reminded us of the rich a wonderful Jewish family to which we belong.

Comings and Goings

2006-02-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Life follows many different rhythms here. First, time is structured differently with the week beginning in full force on Sunday and slowly winding down on Friday and coming to a peaceful halt on Shabbat. People eat dinner later and have meetings later in the evening as well. I can’t remember the last time I went out to meet with someone on a work night at 9:30 but it’s not at all unusual here. Then, there’s the delightful exchange of my “normal” three-hour commute into and out of New York each week for a 20 minute daily walk to school.

But I guess I haven’t lost those commuter habits. Yesterday, I had a morning meeting in Haifa. I think I was one of 4 civilians on an early morning bus that was otherwise filled with soldiers returning to base after Shabbat at home. Despite their uniforms and weapons, they really did look like children – indeed, they are the age of mine so it’s no wonder I was so struck by their youth. The oddest sight perhaps, was a young soldier with braces on his teeth carrying an automatic rifle.

The bus sped up the new Yitzhak Rabin highway, more often just called Road 6 – that travels along the invisible Green line that defines Israel’s pre-1967 borders. It’s a superhighway that could be anywhere except for jolting glimpses of the separation wall that cuts through the landscape. But it was fast! We avoided all the Tel Aviv traffic and made it to Haifa in under 2 hours.

After my meetings, I got on another bus to head to Tel Aviv to see family friends the Sowalsky’s who are here visiting for the week. This late afternoon bus was almost empty but equally speedy. We made it to Tel Aviv in just about 45 minutes! We had a feast at a Yemenite restaurant and then it was time to head back to Jerusalem. I walked to the Central bus station and then decided to take a shared taxi instead of a bus (all of 3 shekels more expensive in price). And that ride flew! I think we made it from Tel Aviv to downtown Jerusalem in less than 40 minutes.

So all told, my various forms of public transportation into and out of the three major cities of Israel in one day it added up to about a one-way Hartford to New York trip!

There was an article in the paper the other day that estimated somewhere between 10-30% of American immigrants are now commuting back to the US for work. This means people get on an airplane on Sunday, fly to the US, spend the week at work and fly back to Israel for Shabbat. That's a lot of coming and going!! The article didn't offer a number of these regular commuters, but it seems that a whole sub-set of Israeli culture is all about these coming and going. It's embedded in the social and intellectual fabric of life. For instance, Friday night I had dinner with friends who had 2 other guests – one who was here for a week, another for a semester like me. Saturday night, a colleague of mine left for a 9-day work trip to Australia; another was on his way back from the States and another friend just got back from Hong Kong. Tonight, I’m going to visit with a colleague who is here from New York. And later this week, Hannah and I are going to Istanbul for the weekend. The speed of travel, the (relative) ease of internet communication, the intricate web of connections between colleagues and friends throughout Israel and abroad, are all part of what makes life here so vibrant and dynamic. I guess all this means that while I am savoring my daily walk, I'm a commuter at heart because it is through all these comings and goings that we continue to learn, be challenged, and grow.

Road Works

2006-02-13T05:35:00.000-08:00

My daily walk to work has gotten rather tricky lately. Derech Beit Lechem is a relatively narrow street that for much of the day has the traffic volume better suited to a more substantive thoroughfare. One one side of the street, they are digging a trench to lay pipe or cable of some sort. There's a fence that protects you from falling into the trench and allows you to proceed on a narrowed portion of the sidewalk, until of course you walk almost a full block and come to a big hole in the ground where the fence blocks your way. Then you have to back-track and ask the 3 policemen who saw you go into the dead end why they didn't mention that you couldn't pass through. After they shrug their shoulders, you cross over to the other side of the street, except there you find them digging up the sidewalk to repave it. So you continue to zig zag, dodging cars and bulldozers trying to turn around in the middle of the street without anyone signalling (remember those 3 policemen not doing anything....). That works pretty well until you come to a place where there is no sidewalk at all and you have to walk in the street.

It's really only a minor and somewhat amusing nuisance and I know there is light at the end of the maze because there is actually a stretch of sidewalk that is already newly paved. After tramping through the mud, stones and dust, it's an absolute delight to find that bit of smooth ground. For thousands of fellow Jerusalemites, however, there is no end is site for the traffic hazards that they face daily. For these Jerusalemites are Arabs and they live in the "wrong" side of town.

The other evening, we went to visit our friends Samar and Amin, who live in Bir Nabala, just about half way between the center of the city and Ramallah (all of 12 or 15 kilometers). The neighborhood is inside of the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, but you have to pass through a military checkpoint to get there. The road out of the city center is brand new, including a amazing tunnel that allows you to by-pass the Old City and speed your way up to Mount Scopus and the Hebrew University. Once past the university, the road turns almost into a super highway with turnoffs to the Jewish settlements of Pisgat Ze'ev and Neve Yaakov. But as soon as you get to the check point, you enter the Third World. Here, roads are more pot-hole than pavement and sidewalks are non-existant, paved or otherwise. We breezed through the checkpoint, seeing long lines of cars, taxis, and mini-transports waiting to get cleared to go to the other side. Many of these cars had yellow Israeli license plates; others had the Palestinian green. Amin told us we wouldn't be able to find the house on our own, so we were to wait for him at the intersection just beyond the checkpoint. Here, there was no rhyme or reason to the flow of traffic and not even a pretense of police officers to direct the chaotic dance of traffic or prevent the metaphoric going up a blind alley. To our right, the road continued north, but was bi-sected by a giant concrete wall - evidence of a stalled partition plan to bi-sect the village - with half remaining in municipal Jerusalem and the other half being ceded to Palestine. No matter that the wall would divide families and make what could and should be a simple commute into a daily hell.

Samar was born in Haifa and is both an Israeli and American citizen. Amin is a Jerusalemite who lost his citizenship when he went away to college in May, 1967 just before the outbreak of the Six Day War. Eventually, he became an economist and taught at a university in London for many years. He returned to Jerusalem in 1994 after the Oslo Peace Accords, to help build an economic infrastructure for the PA. He remains a temporary resident in his home town because Israel does not grant him the right to return, even though he is married to an Israeli. Needless to say, life is rather uncertain and complex these days.

Nonetheless, we had a lovely evening in their gracious home, talking a bit of politics and more about multiple and blurred identities. It's not any easy choice they are making to stay. They are highly educated and talented people who have the privilege of holding Western passports; yet they choose to remain in this strange and difficult land. They too, are pioneers of a sort, working to create new traffic patterns and smooth lanes for safe passage - a future of possibility rather than one of despair. They deserve our respect, our friendship, and our support.

Family Matters

2006-02-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

On Friday morning, we drove up to Beit Heirut (about 10 miles north of Netanya) for the unveiling of cousin Shmuel’s tombstone. Almost everyone there was a primary relative – Shmuel’s three sons and their wives, each of their three children and most of their spouses. Seeing the grave marker – Shmuel, son of Elihayu, gave me a powerful sense of the chain of generations – of connection and detachment at the same time. Eli was one of my grandfather’s brothers. Shmuel and my dad are first cousins. I guess that makes me second cousins with Shmuel’s sons, and our children are third cousins, hardly relations at all. I was struck by how closely this personal family history mirrors the distancing of relations between American and Israeli Jews. We aren’t as close anymore because we really aren’t as close. You have to go back into old and faded photo albums to find the intimacy of extended family.

But we made the effort. After the unveiling, Hannah, Billy, and I went back to Shmuel and Shifra’s house where the family regrouped for a short while. Shifra is suffering from dementia and came in and out of awareness during our visit. But she was completely focused when the new baby arrived (see my Simcha not Shiva entry from a month ago). After a couple of minutes on her lap, the baby started to fuss. Papa Ro’i wanted to take him from Shifra, but she refused. She started waving her arm very gently over the baby, back and forth, back and forth, and somehow the power of that energy did the trick and he settled back into peaceful slumber.

Soon after that, we went over to Avraham and Tirza for lunch. The table was set for six, but we kept having to expand it as first the new parents and then one of the cousins and her husband dropped by. But the cousins didn’t eat because they had been to visit grandma before coming and had been overfed there. How many 30-somethings go to visit their grandma’s for weekend lunches in America I wonder? Not among our scattered clans.

On the drive back up to Jerusalem, we listened to the weekend radio show – “sof shavuah raguah” – calm or relaxing weekend (no small matter in this frenetic place). The DJ banter had a different tone than other days – even with the traffic report came with words of connection – “Hevre (friends) be careful out there” came the gentle admonishment. He signed off at the end of his program, by saying after a long hard week, it will be nice to enjoy the calm and Mom’s home cooking. That's what this country does - Shabbat shalom means going home to family, to a table laden with treats where there is always enough for whoever happens to drop by.

Before we left, Hannah and one of the cousins exchanged email and phone numbers, so you never know – maybe one thin thread of connection will weave itself into a stronger bond.

Signs and Wonders

2006-02-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

You can tell a lot about the mood around the country by the signs that are plastered on buses and fences at major intersections. Last week, we took a 3.5 day trip to Tel Aviv and the North and we saw an abundant array of signage. The day we left on our meanderings was the day that Amona, the illegal West Bank settlement was slated for destruction. At the time of our departure, we didn’t yet know of the rioting, but we knew that there would be a lot of opposition. Not all of the protestors were at the site though. The gateway in and out of Jerusalem was teeming with middle and high school age kids holding up hand-painted cardboard signs calling for a civil war and other anti-government sentiments. Watching the violent scenes on the TV news for days afterwards, certainly confirms warranted fears that the Settlers will not quietly give up on their claims of rightness, no matter how far public opinion and governmental policy may go against them.

The winds of change blow from a different direction in Tel Aviv. Here we saw lots of political signs for Labor and for Meretz, the parties on the left. Polling in recent weeks show the far-left Meretz gaining 3 or 4 Kenesset seats at the most, but you can’t blame the poor showing on lack of advertising. One of their many banners offered a statement with a double meaning. It said: “Disengaged? Vote for Meretz.” You can read the message as saying the voter is alienated and disconnected from the political mainstream and should therefore vote for Meretz; the other way to read it would be to ascribe the question of disengagement to the process of withdrawal from the territories. The motto for the Labor party, which is running almost entirely on platform of social reform, is “Because the time has come,” referring both to Amir Peretz, the first Moroccan-born candidate for Prime Minister and to the deteriorating social welfare system that is creating a huge gap between rich and poor, hammering away at educational quality, increasing domestic violence and causing a host of other ills for the most vulnerable groups in society.

There were plenty of Labor and Meretz posters on our drive up North as well and they were joined by a new message from Likud, playing up to their traditional reputation as tough security-enforcers, saying “Bibi is strong against Hamas”. Curiously, few signs are anywhere for Kadima, Sharon’s breakaway party now led by Ehud Olmert. Even without a slogan however, they seem to be doing just fine in the polls with a projected win of 44 Kenesset seats come election day.

Another social commentary was visible in a series of signs strung along a wall on our way back into Jerusalem last night. These alternated between saying “Millions of immigrants want civil marriage” or “Millions of youth want civil marriage.” Legally, marriages can still only be performed by sanctioned Orthodox rabbis. However, reports are that close to 30% of all marriages taking place in Israel today are not being performed through the official Rabbinate. Couples are choosing a wide range of options instead, including ceremonies officiated at by Reform and Conservative rabbis, “Israeli” ceremonies, and other forms rooted in Eastern or new age spiritual practices. Some go abroad for a civil ceremony; others don’t bother with the legal sanction; they just find someone who will help them design a ceremony that best meets their desires.

So much for the signs, now here’s the wonder. Our last stop on our trip around Israel was a Shabbat overnight with my cousins at Kibbutz Amir, one of the most beautiful spots on earth, at the northernmost tip of Israel. Shula is a practitioner of alternative healing and in recent years has begun to study Judaism seriously for the first time. She told us a story about Michal, one of her clients. Michal was blind since early childhood, but recently had been cured by a treatment consisting of a special powder made from roasting and pulverizing eight black scorpions (no lie). The woman who offered this prescription said she came from a long line of healers and in fact could trace her roots back to Solomon Alkabetz, the 16th century Kabbalist and composer of the Shabbat evening hymn “Lecha Dodi.” How’s that for the power of mystical prayer!!

Shopping Spree

2006-01-31T11:23:00.000-08:00

Most days, my walking route is the same as I fall into my routine. But, I try also to explore some of the countless detours, nooks and crannies, both on literal pathways and travel through time and space. The other night for instance, we ate in a trendy and tiny little bistro called “Tzachaku” which sounds like a play on words with the expression “tzach ha’kol” (all in all, or total). The food was delicious of course, but the location was even more noteworthy. First you go into Machane Yehuda, the open market just above downtown. By 7:00 pm, the time we got there, only a handful of vendors were still pitching their wares. Most had closed up or were in the process of loading their unsold goods onto carts and trucks and sweeping up. We walked up the dark and empty lanes until we got to a side street where there was a sign (in Hebrew only) pointing to the Shuk Iraqi. We followed that down a short hill until we got to a little alley of smoke-filled backgammon salons that ended at a stone staircase. Up the stairs to a market square that I now want to go back and visit during the daytime. The only sign of life in that little square was the bistro and that was abuzz. Friends said “only Israelis know about this place,” but we heard English at 2 of the 5 tables that were filled that night.

During a break between meetings and teaching today, I went out on a little shopping expedition. First, I stopped at a little grocery around the corner from school and then I bought a hat. Last Friday, I indulged a bit more and bought a pair of earrings. The purchases are fairly unremarkable, but not the names of the stores. My little market is called Siman Tov – literally meaning “A good sign” but more familiar to many ears as the refrain we sing to express our joy at a simcha – a wedding, bar or bat mitzvah, birthday aliyah. The hat store isn’t quite like a hat store in America, as its principle inventory is designed to serve Orthodox women looking to beautify their practice of covering their heads. That store’s name is Rachel Emeinu (Rachel, our mother), after the biblical Rachel who is held up as a model of beauty, femininity, and motherhood. Right across the street is an accessories store called Argaman, a royal purple that is one of the materials used in constructing the Mishkan in the Book of Exodus. And the jewelry store where I bought the earrings? Of course, that’s called Hoshen after the be-jeweled breast-plate worn by Aaron, the high priest also described in the Book of Exodus. So, even retail establishments make a little bit of midrash on the streets of Jerusalem. You just have to keep your eyes open to see!

It's the little things

2006-01-26T06:52:00.000-08:00

Classes began this week and I settled into something of a routine. I worked – prepared my classes, taught, wrote emails, had meetings, worked on projects; and I nested – bought plants for the balcony, went grocery shopping, made dinner, did the laundry, invited friends for Shabbat. Billy played poker one night. The next night, we had a goodbye dinner for Nate and sent him off on his 40 hour journey to New Zealand. And the night after that, we went to the symphony. Normal life almost overshadowed the fact of being here. There were moments when I didn’t even think about the fact that I was in Jerusalem. The rhythm of time almost overtook the reality of space. But, not really….

Space and place are so much a part of what it means to be here. There are the landmarks of Har Zion on one side of the city and Har Herzl on the other. These two mountains are bookends to the Jewish narrative – the site of the ancient Temple on one and the seat of government of the modern State of Israel on the other. There are the sweeping views of the Old City walls and the Dome of the Rock. There’s the windmill of Yemin Moshe, Machane Yehuda, the open air market, and Ben Yehuda street, the heart of commercial Jerusalem which is teeming with tourists these days. These are the sites that shape experiences and memories for visitors. They are the places that I return to again and again when I visit as well. But, they recede a bit into the background as I go about my routine.

This is not to say that life here is just like anywhere else. Quite the contrary! But, it’s not the grand scale that focuses my attention to the differences, but rather the little things. It’s the competing sound of church bells and the call of the Muezzin in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. It’s the vendor with a tray of sesame rolls waiting outside of the concert hall to sell his late night snacks. It’s the electronic sign at the entry to the city that quotes verses from Psalms on weekdays and switches on Friday to give you the candle lighting time for Shabbat. It’s the fact that it takes 14 phone calls and more than a week to get a toilet seat fixed. It's the notice you find in your mailbox with a free offer to have your mezzuzahs checked to make sure they are still kosher! It’s the toy-sized parking spaces at the market that are somehow miraculously just big enough. It’s the taxi driver who calls his mother on the phone while taking you where you need to go. It’s the memorial plaque on the wall of a building about six blocks from my house that marks the site of a bus bombing on February 22, 2004 and memorializes eight innocent victims who were murdered there that day. This too, is the stuff of daily life – far from normal, far from routine, filled with beauty and frustration, heartbreak and hope.

Jewish Peoplehood Day

2006-01-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

It was quite a social Shabbat this past week! In the morning, I went to shul at Shira Hadasha - a liberal Modern Orthodox synagogue, with a side-by-side translucent-curtain mechitza that is drawn open for the Torah service and d'var Torah. Women lead certain portions of the service as well; they have aliyot and chant from the Torah. The davenning is robust, fluid, and all-encompassing. And I even know a couple of the regulars so it's quite a comfortable place for me. There are probably seats for 400 or so and usally it's standing room only and overflowing by the end of the service. On any given Shabbat, they get at least 2-4 groups of short-term American visitors, plus an assortment of individual longer-term sojourners like myself. I sat next to a group of women on a United Jewish Communties (Federation) Mission. Two rows ahead of me were a group of congregational school principals. Two rows ahead of them was a colleague named Esti who works for NACIE (the North American Coalition for Israel Engagement). After services I asked Esti if this was her regular shul and she said "Oh no! I wouldn't daven here and my husband especially wouldn't daven here." Kol Isha (women's voices) is too much of a barrier. But Esti continued, "I realized though, that this is an amazing Jewish peoplehood experience. It's a synagogue where so many different kinds of Jews can feel comfortable." Indeed, as we came into the sunny courtyard for kiddush, I saw her point as I looked around and noticed Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews, English-speakers and native Israelis all together.

Of course, it's not a 360 degree experience of Jewish peoplehood. We were all Ashkenazi shul goers and with a much higher proportion of "anglos" than are in the general Israeli population. But, even so, collectively we represented a lovely mix of people who might not ordinarily come together to worship.

The peoplehood theme continued to expand throughout the day. We had lunch with old friends - secular Israelis who dabble in Eastern spiritual practices but know more about Jewish history, Jewish thought, and Jewish culture than just about anyone we know. After they left to go home for their Shabbos nap (yes, even so-called secular Jews hold that practice sacred), we had more visitors from another end of the world- my friend and colleague Diane from California and her daughter Jordie, who is a first year rabbinical student at HUC. And, then that evening, we went to Gilo to visit Olga and Effie. Olga, immigrated from Latvia in 1986 and is a violinist with the Jerusalem symphony. Effie is a Sabra who grew up Modern Orthodox and became secular after the army. All in all, rather a broad cross-section of the crazy quilt that makes up the Jewish people.

Tiny Bubbles Everywhere

2006-01-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I've blown bubbles, but one of the tricks I remember trying to accomplish was to join two bubbles together without popping either one. I thought it was really cool to watch two bubbles come together and float away.... Maybe it took some skill to accomplish, but it more likely has more to do with how permeable is the skin of the bubble. Too thick and they'll repel each other; too thin and they'll either merge or pop! Its an apt metaphor for life in Israel. Maybe we all live in bubbles regardless of where we call home. Bubbles are safe spaces that create community through shared values, beliefs, and experiences. Israel though, seems to have more than its fair share of bubbles that repel rather than unite. Maybe the most obvious are the temporary bubbles of short-term tourists who bond through their experiences on and off the bus. There are the bubbles of longer term students who come to learn for a time, either at University or one of the myriad programs of Jewish study created for English-speakers. These groups stick together and rarely encounter real Israelis doing real things. But, there are also plenty of bubbles within Israeli society itself. Olim, immigrants from different communities who cluster together - Russian-speakers, Ethiopians, Moroccans, Anglos. And of course, there are the political, economic, and religious bubbles that separate and at times, divide Israeli society.

Yesterday was the formal opening of the HUC semester and we marked it by a day-long colloquium on Jewish identity. One of the morning speakers was Bambi Sheleg, a columnist for the daily newspaper Maariv and editor of "Eretz Acheret" (Another (or) a Different Land), a magazine published six times a year that explores all sides Israeli society. Bambi was born in South America, made aliyah as an adolescent, grew up and still remains rooted in the world of Modern Orthodoxy. Earlier in her career, she edited a children's magazine and a journal of the Settler movement in the territories. As she said, "Until Rabin's assassination, I remained in the bubble of my own community." But after this tragic event, she realized that in order to survive and thrive, Israelis needed to learn to talk with, listen to, and understand each other. That's what drove her to create Eretz Acheret as a forum for exploring and maybe even delicately uniting some of those bubbles. It's a literary forum, not a political one, but I'm an academic and therefore deeply believe that it is in the world of ideas where the process of change begins

So far in the few weeks I have been here, I've heard many people say: "After Rabin's assassination something changed. I thought differently. I felt differently. I acted differently." I don't remember people making this connection so frequently before this time, just a few months more than a decade after his murder. Maybe it takes a decade to develop an historical consciousness, to recognize how profound a single event can be in transforming a society. We are far, far, far away from real transformation, but I do seem tiny little glimmers of opening up, of realizing that the skin of our bubbles are too thick, too opaque, too impermeable. We haven't yet figured out how to join them together, but I think there are more and more people - educators, writers, social commentators, and even politicians and religious leaders who are trying to figure out the magic formula for binding the bubbles together in a way that each maintains its integrity, but they share the journey nonetheless.

Simcha not Shiva

2006-01-14T21:15:00.000-08:00

Israel is a series of stunning contrasts, some obvious, others to be sought out. Even the winter weather can turn from a driving rain to blue skies in a matter of kilometers and minutes. There are the apparent distinctions between old and new, sacred and profane, religious and "secular", Arab and Jew. Delve a little deeper into Israeli society and you immediately see stark and sometimes painful contrasts between the vision and reality, the ideals upon which the State was built and the daily realities of political, social, economic, and religious life.

But, every now and then, these contrasts converge and those are the moments that give me faith - both on a small and personal level, and on a more cosmic level as well. Take this past week, for instance. In our cycle of Torah readings, we were up to Parshat Va'yechi, the last parashah in the book of Genesis. Va'yechi means "and he lived". The opening line of the pasha reads "And Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt..." Here, this reference to life is really a lead-in to death. Indeed, almost the entire parasha centers on Jacob's deathbed as he bestows personalized blessings on each of his sons and his two grandsons by Joseph.

Even though the Bible states that Jacob dies "and is gathered unto his people", there's a midrash that recounts a conversation between two rabbis, one of whom claims that Jacob still lives. It's not clear whether this claim is meant this literally or figuratively. That's left to us to ponder.

Well, I think I got the answer to that question pretty clearly this past week. Last Thursday morning, my father's cousin Shmuel died. Shmuel (born Seymour) made aliyah from Brooklyn in 1948 with his wife Shifra (born Shirley) and two young sons. They settled on a Moshav (collective village) a bit north of Netanya, had a third son, raised turkeys, made life. He lived to 88 - a good stretch, that perhaps could have gone on a bit more. Burials in Israel take place quickly. He died that morning and was buried later that day. On Friday, Shmuel's first great grandson had his brit milah. I found out about both of these life cycle events at the same time. When I called my cousin Avraham (Shmuel's eldest and the proud grandpa) I said we would come to the shiva. He said, "Don't be ridiculous, come to the simcha instead." So, on Friday morning, I drove to Tel Aviv, picked up Hannah in the pouring rain, and continued on north a bit to Ramat Hasharon, where the brit was taking place. While Shmuel's other two sons did not attend, their families came in force. It was a gathering of the Grant clan in Israel - remote cousins from a branch of the same family tree. Rathering than circling a death bed, we surrounded a baby boy, newly entered into the covenant. We bestowed blessings of health and good deeds on the baby and in return, we received comfort and blessings for life as well. Indeed heaven touched earth as we honored Shmuel's passing, and at the same time, celebrated his continuing presence among us through this new life, filled with possibility and hope for bringing some of those contrasts a little closer together.

Moving In

2006-01-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Though I've been here two weeks already, I guess today officially begins my sojourn in Jerusalem as I moved into my apartment this morning. These first two weeks were spent with 14 MA students in Jewish Education from HUC in New York. Our trip was a remarkable journey - nourishing mind, body, and soul through a wide range of intellectual, emotional, and physical experiences. We explored many stories of this land that cut across time and space, vision and reality, heaven and earth, and about the widest range of people you could ever imagine. One of our central themes was coexistence and this played out in many different encounters with Arabs and Jews. We met with pacifist Muslims in Haifa and spent a morning organizing games for about 30 Arab and Jewish kids at a community center in a mixed neighborhood in Haifa. We spent time in Yafo at Sadaka-Reut, the organization where Hannah is working for the year. And we had a powerful tour at the Museum on the Seam, a museum that uses art to help people explore issues of peace and conflict on a site that was once a military outpost right on the 1948-1967 border between West and East Jerusalem We also met many different Israelis who are working in all kinds of creative ways to explore what it means to be a Jew. We worshipped at Reform, Conservative, Orthodox synagogues over two Shabbatot. (I even davenned Musaf at the Conservative congregation in Haifa on Shabbat morning). We studied text at Beit Shearim (where Rabbi Judah the Prince, redactor of the Mishna is buried) and in the middle of the Negev after a two and a half hour hike! And magically, everyone got along. Simply put, it was great!!

So now, the non-tourist part begins. I spent most of the day getting settled in my new home, orienting myself to the neighborhood, meeting some of the local merchants, finding the hardware store, and even getting my hair cut. Ordinary things of life that few tourists experience. Some time ago, Queens College sociologist Samuel Heilman wrote a beautiful book called "A Walker in Jerusalem" reflecting on one of his extended sojourns in this city. I always think of that book when I'm here because it is indeed a walking city. You can cross over the sacred into the profane in the blink of an eye and in about 30 minutes you can traverse 4,000 years of history in this place. On a very mundane level, my commute to school is about a 20 minute walk. Right at the corner is the "best green grocer in town" and a wonderful little hole in the wall deli with a delicious array of prepared (Kosher of course!) foods. Given my normal 3 hour commute to New York city, I am indeed delighted to be a walker and I hope to share some of my journeys with you on this blog in this sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes exquisite, always complex, and always surprising place we call the Jewish homeland.