Journaling in Jerusalem

These Last Few Days

2009-06-30T20:52:00.002+03:00

I've been having a terrific time taking in my last few Jerusalem experiences before I leave. On Saturday night I spent the night with my friends Corinna and Debbie, playing games and chatting. In the morning I went home and went for a run around Gan Sacher where summer camps have begun to hang out - girls in long skirts and long sleeve button up tops racing down the hills under the blazing sun. After packing and cleaning for a while, I went with Debbie to the Old City to do some souvenir shopping. Debbie drives a hard bargain, so we went from store to store as shop owners flirted with us and offered us a "good price" - we each even came away with free cheap-o bracelets: "Lovely ladies, I give you for free. Come see my store I give you good price." We later met Corinna and the rest of the gang to go out for their final dinner at a nice place in East Jerusalem. I had what must have been the world's largest Fattoush. I walked back with everyone to the University and took a bus home from there, trying to put off the goodbyes until the last possible moment. I feel like I missed the opportunity to get to know these terrific people - by the time I was really spending a lot of time with them, the semester was already almost finished. I do hope I'll keep in touch with them though, and I really do expect that I'll run into them again.
Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning. I dusted the apartment from head to toe, cleaned out the cabinets, swept and mopped the floor, and put all of my belongings into suitcases. I invited Amy, Karen, and Michael over for dinner, feeding them leftovers from Friday night's feast, and it was nice to have company for a little while after rather a lonesome day.
Today, for most of the day, I pretended to be a tourist. At 8am I walked to the shuk - nothing was open but the candy store, so I bought marzipan challahs to bring home as gifts (they are super funny!) I then stopped by the preschool to wish the kids goodbye one las time. The Gan Dror kids took turns giving me blessings: "May you go in peace and return in peace" "May you be healthy." "May you not be sick." "May you have fun." "May you not eat too much ice cream." Then they performed some of their end of the year songs for me - I think if they took the performance on tour it would be a pretty major hit.
I went for a walk to the Yemin Moshe area, then accross the street and up some stairs to the Old City. I decided to see some sites I'd never quite made it to: I began with the Tower of David Museum, which gives an overview of the history of Jerusalem from the first mention of the city in cunieform script to its reunification in '67. It was helpful to have this very basic overview, I feel like all my ducks are a bit more in a row than they were before, and it helped to clarify why and how there are so many layers of history and cultures in this one space. It was a little bit basic, but that's kind of what I was going for. Afterwards I bought myself a two liter bottle of water, as it was very hot and sunny, and I decided to walk the ramparts of the Old City. The man who sold me the ticket asked me to sit with him and drink coffee, took my hand and told me I was very nice... I suppose these are some of the side effects of playing tourist by oneself.
The ramparts walk was very nice - the views were terrific - both of inside and of outside the city, and I took about a million pictures. the walk ended at the Kotel, and since I was already there, I went in, prayed a bit of Mincha, and wrote a note to G-d saying thanks for a terrific year. I left via the Jewish Quarter, and bought myself a ticket to the Burnt House Museum. A few minutes later, I was inside the museum, in which screens and TV's hang over the ruins of a house from the 2nd Temple Period. The visitors sit in rows facing the screens and watch a somewhat hokey though at times actually quite emotional film about the destruction of the 2nd Temple and the seige of Jerusalem. From there I went to the Museum on the Seam to see their latest exhibit "Adam Adama" (Human Land) about the destructive way that humans interact with nature. The art was very interesting, though they ran out of guides in English and I had to read one in Hebrew, so my comprehension was somewhat limited. It was a combination of sculpture, video installments, photography, and painting. One photo showed the old city in the background with heaps of garbage in the foreground, one was a computer demo about how to create convincing artificial nature for movies because real nature is too unreliable, one was a beautiful hill with all of these roads and walls cutting accross it. Eventually I left the museum and walked up to Hebrew University because I had one more form to turn in in order to be able to receive a transcript later - it's a long walk and it was hot - by the time I reached the top my 2 liters of water were gone. I took the bus back to the Yemin Moshe area and walked home from there. As you can imagine, I am quite tired - though I am ready for another day of tourism tomorrow. I leave Jerusalem at 5:30 AM Thursday morning!

Click here to see some quite nice pictures of Jerusalem.

Final Shabbat

2009-06-27T18:11:00.004+03:00

Well, I've completed all of my coursework for the semester, taken my last exam, and I only have a few days left to explore Jerusalem, gather my belongings, and fly to the other Promised Land - the "goldine medina."
In the meantime, it was with bittersweet feelings that I approached this Shabbat, wanting it to be perfect and memorable, but knowing that some of the most beautiful Shabbats of the year were already behind me. Sometimes I find self-reflexivity to be an emotionally painful task - being so aware of the last-ness of the Shabbat, I tried so hard to impress upon myself every detail of it, but knowing that the details fade quickly and that by the end of the day the sharpness of the image of its beginning will already have begun to wane in my mind's eye. It is with this in mind that I write of my final Jerusalem Shabbat, trying to preserve the important bits for just a while longer.
A friend of mine, Rebecca, had made plans with me for Friday to cook together and invite friends to my apartment. What started as a small gathering grew into the largest assembly of assorted individuals I've hosted in our apartment - the 15 bodies took up every seat that could possibly have been squished into the living room.
Knowing that we were expecting the large crowd, I began preparing for their visit as soon as I arrived home from my Hebrew exam. I started with a frenzy of cleaning - sweeping, scrubbing, putting-away, and interspersed these activities with putting sliced, spiced beets in the oven and braiding the challah. My friends Corrinna and Andrew arrived early to drop off a watermelon at the apartment and I enlisted their help in cleaning off plastic chairs, chopping vegetables, and even washing dishes. You know you have good friends when they'll do your dishes for you!
While we were cooking I received a phone call from my friend and neighbor Amy, telling me that at the corner between our apartment buildings, where an organization often leaves used books for passers-by to browse and take, there were stacks and stacks of Yiddish books. Corrinna and I left Andrew to watch after the challah in the oven and we ran down to the book drop-off area. Corinna picked up a copy of Ethan Frome in Hebrew, among other gems, and I found an astonishing wealth of Yiddish texts to choose from. I may not be able to carry all of the books that I took back to the US, but for now I have several Yiddish journals dating from 1943 to 1961, most of them issues of Yiddishe Kultur or Di Tzukunft (the Future) as well as a 1938 copy of David Pinsky's travelogue of a trip to Israel from the summer of 1932 to the sumer of 1936, published in Warsaw, a 1966 copy of Nachum Sutzkever's Personalities and Folk, published in Jerusalem, a 1996 copy of "Human Salad" by Joseph Hayblum, which was published in Israel with the assistance of the Mutlicultural Program of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada, and a 1986 printing of "Tear and Smile" a collection of poetry and songs by David Shav-Artza, published in Israel. I'm very excited about all of this, though it would take me forever to read even one of these books.
By the time Rebecca arrived at 3:30 pm, two veggie dishes were complete, the challah was in the oven, and the apartment was on the verge of cleanliness. Then the real work began. On a 98 degree afternoon, we kept the oven and stovetop going for hours, our hands never free from work and our feet aching from it. We made guacamole with sliced vegetables, mujedra, oven-roasted potatoes, lentil soup, chocolate cake, apple appricot tart, cole slaw, and more. We rearranged the furniture into a 15-person circle, put out the Shabbat candles and wine, and waited for the guests to arrive.
The dinner was definitely a success - there was plenty of food and a lot of conversation. The guests were an interesting mix between those traveling to Jerusalem for the summer, or just for a quick vacation, and those who are here for a year or more, some older and some younger, some Jewish and some not, and I was surprised how willing people were to get to know new people. I was very sorry, though, to say goodbye to Paola at the end of the night, as I don't think we'll see each other again before we leave. I am so grateful to have had her friendship this year, and I do hope that one day I'll go to Italy to visit her!
The last remaining guests helped me clean a bit, though there's still some cleaning work to do, and pretty late at night. I woke up and dressed for services at Har El. It was a small congregation - a bar mitzvah with a tremendous voice read from the Torah, and I was given an aliyah during which Rabbi Ada blessed me and wished me a safe journey and that I should consider Har El my home in Israel.
In the afternoon, Atar Katz (my neighbor) took me on a tiyyul around Jerusalem, to catch some sights I had not yet seen. He was born in Jerusalem and has lived here is whole life, and his mind is filled with stories of Jerusalem's history. As we drived around the city he told me story after story (this was my real Hebrew final exam!) of ancient history, the building of the state, of the people and events that happened in this city with its layers and layers of pasts and cultures. We drove up to Mt. Scopus, driving on the road where the 1948 Mt. Scopus bus attack occurred, and stopped at an overlook to see East Jerusalem and the desert beyond, reaching toward the Dead Sea. Mr. Katz gave me a geography lesson, using the knuckles of his hand to represent the grooves of the valleys and mountains of Jerusalem. According to Mr. Katz, Mt. Scopus gets its name because it was the mountain from which the priests used to watch the sky to determine if the stars were out and the holiday had begun, lighting a bonfire that would signal to other watchmen to light their bonfires on other mountains so the word could travel that it was time for the holdiay to begin. We then drove to the Mt. of Olives, where 150,000 Jewish bodies lie in graves, awaiting the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the Jews. Ancient and modern tombstones alike form the necropolis. Mr. Katz told me a story that when the Messiah comes, there will be two bridges from the Mt. of Olives to the Temple Mount - one made out of iron and the other out of paper. Those who lack faith will take the safer-looking iron bridge, and it will break and they will fall, returning to death. The faithful will take the paper bridge, which will lead them to the Temple Mount. Mr. Katz pointed out to me the Seven Arches Hotel (formerly the Intercontinental Hotel) which, he says, we can see from our balcony. The hotel was constructed during Jordanian rule over East Jerusalem along a road that he built in violation of the 1949 Armistice agreement accross the cemetary, destroying thousands of graves, some dating back to the First Temple period.
We drove down to the bottom of the Mt. of Olives (the Kidron Valley) to see Absolom's Pillar, traditionally believed to be the tomb of Absalom, son of King David. It's archetectural style shows Greek influence, and it is now believed that it may have been the tomb of Temple priest Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist.
We drove past the Dung Gate and through the city to Talpiyot, a neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem. Mr. Katz pointed out Machane Allenby, the former British army camp, and told me stories of the British conquest of Jerusalem. He also showed me the former home of the British High Commissioner to Jerusalem, now the headquarters of the UN in Jerusalem.
Mr. Katz and I walked through a park to see the remains of a Herodian aqueduct, where a hole showing the ancient ducts is situated on a mosaic map showing its ancient route.
It was a whirlwind tour of about two and a half hours, after which I took a long nap, and woke in time to write this post before going to play some board games with friends who leave Jerusalem tomorrow, heading home to the US.

Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance March

2009-06-25T20:19:00.005+03:00

This afternoon I attended the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance March. I walked down King George Road alone, headed toward the park, and was surprised to find that accompanying me on the sidewalk were at least seven reporters, all heading toward the march. On the way we encountered a small Haredi counter-protest, which was in a visible location, but was pretty quiet.
At the front gates of Liberty Bell Park a variegated crowd of women holding babies, men in short skirts, students with matching t-shirts, older couples, and even a few tourists stood in slow-moving security lines. The police officers made separate lines for men and women, which caused no small amount of protest: "What is this, Mea Shearim?" "But I don't know which one I am!" "How could you do this here?"
At the other end of the security, which was the most strenuous security I've experienced here - thorough searches of bodies and bags - I entered a park that was full of people - something like 2000 people were reported to have attended the parade. Merchants selling pins, flags, and scarves with rainbows and stars of David were scattered throughout an excited crowd. I ran into several people I know - a preschool teacher, my language partner, a friend who goes to RRC, and some friends of friends that I know from assorted places. It was fun to bump into people - I didn't expect to see anyone I knew!
Before the parade began one of the organizers silenced the drums for a moment to say that he was very proud of the march and that we shouldn't be bothered or afraid by anyone who protests us, but should just walk from one park to the other peacefully and proudly.
And then the march began. It was short and strangely solemn. Though in the beginning groups were chanting slogans like "We won't go back in the closet. We won't live without equality" (It rhymes in Hebrew), or "Gays and Lesbians want to Live/Be/Exist in Jerusalem" or "We demand rights and equality. In the workplace - rights and equality! In our studies - rights and equality! In our families - rights and equality!" etc. but as the march proceeded, a quiet settled in. We encountered only one protester, with a preposterous sign saying "Homosexuals Spread AIDS" - I think the police had cleared out most of the people from the roads. The security was tight all along the route and in both parks.

At Independence Park there was a short conference and a drag show, in addition to vendors selling beer, clothes, movies, and memorabilia, but I think the highlight for me was listening to the speeches of the current and past presidents of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, the head of the transgender organization, and others. They spoke of Jerusalem as the "city of freedom," talked candidly about the many challenges they face, and celebrated the vast strides that have been made in the past few years, as demostrated by the peacefulness of the parade itself.
There has been an annual gay pride prade in Tel Aviv since the 1998 (there was one yesterday) and it is a huge event with something like 100,000 people. The annual parade in Jerusalem began in 2002, and is often met with severe violence from the religious community - in 2005 a participator was stabbed to death at the Jerusalem gay pride parade, and in 2006 the parade was cancelled, ostensibly because of the second Lebonese war, but many claim it was also because of protests from the religious community. Tensions around the 2006 parade were particularly high, sparking riots in religious communities including burning dumpsters, throwing stones and dirty diapers, and a 'beast parade' in which Haredim marched goats and donkeys along the parade route a few days before the parade was scheduled. When the Jerusalem Open House announced that it planned to reschedule the march, they did so planning for worst-case scenarios of violence and murder, but the rescheduled march was conducted peacefully. Since then, the parade has met with little protest.

Preschool Goodbye (Part 2)

2009-06-25T11:06:00.001+03:00

I said goodbye to the older class today - it was a little anticlimactic as the teachers didn't remember that it was my last day...

Anyway, some pics from Gan Dror: here.

Preschool Goodbye (Part 1)

2009-06-23T12:14:00.003+03:00

I said goodbye today to the kids of Gan Pashosh. The teachers made a presentation to the kids, telling them that I had come all the way from America and was going home for a few days. They asked the kids, "So tell us about Jessica. What did she do here?" "she played with us." "she was our friend." "she was even your friend (to the teacher)" and then all the kids said thank you, gave me hugs and kisses, and the teachers gave me a present: a t-shirt that says 'bazooka bubble gum' in Hebrew and a booklet with drawings that all the Gan Pashosh kids made for me.

As it was the last day, I finally brought the camera and took some pictures of me and the kids outside in the playground - enjoy!

a brief summary of activities

2009-06-23T06:50:00.002+03:00

It's been a while since my last post so I decided to update you on some of my activities in my last few weeks in Jerusalem.

First of all, some of you may have been reading that tensions between secular and Orthodox Jerusalemites have been running high recently because of a debate over a parking lot. Early in the month, the Jerusalem municipality announced that they would keep a parking lot open on Shabbat to alleviate the parking shortage for tourists wanting to go to the Old City. The lot would be manned by non-Jews to avoid breaking halacha in keeping the lot open. On June 6 (a Saturday), thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews from the neighborhood of Mea Shearim held a violent demonstration against the opening of the parking lot, which they feel is a desecration of the holy day. They threw rocks and dirty diapers at policemen and set fire to dumpsters in order to protest the opening of a municipally-owned parking lot in Safra square, near the Old City, on Shabbat. Officers on mounted horses pushed the protestors from the parking lot back toward their neighborhood in a tussle that lasted the whole day. Police did not make any arrests on Shabbat itself, but after 8:30 pm they arrested several protestors. The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, promised not to open the parking lot for two weeks, folliwng the recommendation of police, in order that some solution could be reached. Many secular Jerusalemites see Barkat as caving in to the ultra-Orthodox population by listening to the radical and extralegal voices of a belligerant minority. On June 13, hundreds of secular protestors gathered at the city hall in order to protest Barkat's decision to keep the parking lot closed while he negotiates with Orthodox leaders. I haven't read of any compromise being reached yet, so I imagine that this weekend might see a resurgence of protests. While I haven't seen or participated in the protests, they are certainly in the air here in J-lem!

Things are winding down for me - I have only a few more days of class and a few more assignments to complete, and then I'll be flying out of Tel Aviv in about a week!

Last Tuesday I had the Katzes (the neighbors) over for dinner. They gave me a parting gift - a necklace that their daughter (who makes silver jewlery) made - it's a small magen David with a purple gem at its center, and they wrote me a short poem wishing me well, which they read to me proudly. After they left I pulled out my Hebrew English dictionary to be sure I'd understood it completely. The Katzes are warm and patient people and I am continually surprised by their willingness to talk to me even though my Hebrew is far from fluent. We talked about religion, about education, and about History. They told me stories about their pet turtle and their family. It was very pleasant.

On Friday night I went to Kabbalat Shabbat services with my friend Amy in a little one-room prayer space near Betzalel Road. A sheet hanging in the center of the room served as a mechitza, and though the space was evenly divided between men and women, it was a small and crowded space nonetheless. The leader was modest, offering only a few words of reflection before diving headlong into prayer. His voice was smooth and soft but he prayed with intensity, banging his fists on the table and rocking back and forth, facing the ark. The prayer moved fluidly from one tune to another, slow and fast, sad and happy, and in the womens section, pressed against one another, we rocked back and forth, closed our eyes, tapped our feet, at one point we put down our prayerbooks and danced. Something about the closeness of the situation, the familiarity of the words, the evocative tunes, the modest leader, the noise level of the music such that you could stop hearing yourself sing and become one piece of a larger organ... it was all very moving. As we walked home to Amy's apartment for dinner, we asked ourselves how that energy could be brought to liberal congregations in the US - it isn't an easy question.

On Saturday morning I headed to the beach in Tel Aviv with a group of friends from the University. In Tel Aviv the stores are open, the beach is full of loungers, and everyone is scantily clad and darkly tanned. Though we were stung by jellyfish when bathing in the warm water, we had a terrific time basking in the 90 degree weather, with plenty of sunscreen of course.

Otherwise I've been working on papers, reading books (I just finished The Rise of David Levinsky, which was terrific) and winding down. Today is my last day in Gan Pashosh (the younger class) and Thursday will be my last day in Gan Dror (the older class). On Friday I'm having a lot of folks over for dinner, and on Saturday I have an aliyah at Har El. In the afternoon on Saturday the Katzes are taking me on a small tiyyul, about which I am very excited.

The other thing I am very much looking forward to is the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance march on Thursday - I can't wait to go and I'll be sure to take pictures! The assembly meets at 4pm at Liberty Bell park, the march starts at 5pm, and ends with a rally at the park at 6pm. In the past these parades have met with a lot of opposition, and I am so thrilled that one of my last experiences here will be to walk alongside the brave men and women who proudly maintain gay identities under what I can only assume are very difficult circumstances.

Book Recommendation

2009-06-15T18:26:00.003+03:00

I think my favorite experience in the world (OK, one of my favorites) is reading an academic text that is so captivating that I can't put it down. With fiction this isn't so rare, I get caught up in the story and lose sense of time and place, but with an academic text, even a good one, I usually need a cup of coffee and a lot of breaks in order to get through the reading. I just read Call it English by Hannah Wirth-Nesher. I have wanted to read it for a long time and when I saw it on the New Acquisitions shelf of the Rothberg library, I couldn't resist. I knew it would be interesting, but I was surprised that I found myself staying up late and waking up early just to read one more page... I finished it this morning before school, with the kind of adrenaline rush of coming to a fitting and satisfying conclusion mixed with the disappointment that the book had ended - and that I would have to return it to the library. For anyone interested in Jewish American Literature, this is a must-read. It's a sweeping but detail-driven study in the multiple ways that Yiddish and Hebrew enter Jewish American fiction written in English, and how immigrant-spoken (accented) English is represented in this fiction - not only in terms of the mechanics of it but also the meanings behind it; the wordplay, the alienation, the opportunity, the limitations. It focuses on the complicated relationship that Jewish American literature has to English, Hebrew, and Yiddish, and the multilingual nature of the literature, even as fluency in Yiddish and Hebrew fade among American Jews, and it explores the translation of Jewish concepts and languages to a non-Jewish audience, as well as to a Jewish audience alienated from knowledge of older Jewish traditions and languages. It is beautifully written, deeply insightful, risk-taking, ground-breaking, broad-ranging... OK, it's just really, really good.

A Movie, A Book, A Play

2009-06-14T21:55:00.004+03:00

This morning I attended a terrific literature class in which we watched a film by Amir Goren called "66 Was a Good Year for Tourism" and discussed snippets from a novel by Yitzchak Goren that tells a counternarrative to Israeli European-ness by portraying the lives of a family of Sephardic Jews one summer in Alexandria as remembered by a man who now lives in Israel. Our conversation centered around building identity in multiple places, the meaning of nostalgia, and as per the theme of the course itself, on masculinity as defined by these texts. Anyway, I very much enjoyed the Goren texts and encourage you to check them out if you have a chance.
I skipped the rest of my classes because my friend Nicole and her amiable husband Joe were in town and wanted to meet me for lunch. Together with Nicole and Joe I enjoyed the pleasant if a bit overwhelming summer sun as we strolled to the shuk to buy bread, hummus, vegetables, and halva, and then went back to my apartment to eat our plentiful lunch. It was such a pleasure to see both of them, and I am very much looking forward to spending time with them in New York. It's very exciting to feel that good friendships can be picked up again after so long - the conversation came easily and comfortably, and I think we all had a lovely time.
After an afternoon of Hebrew homework (most of it should have been completed long ago, but I keep putting it off), and reading a book I'm very much enjoying, I went to see a performance of the drama club at Har El synagogue. As I suspected, the performance reminded me a bit of the plays that my grandfather used to participate in with his retirement community, only this was in a less comfortable performance space, was ostensibly a more serious play, and was of course in a language that I don't know very well...
The play was called Dreyfus, by Jean-Claude Grumber. I think it was originally written in French and then translted into Hebrew, but as the characters are in 1930's Vilna I suppose they are meant to be speaking in Hebrew (and the non-Jews in Polish?) so language was a bit confusing.
The premise of the show is that a group of amateur actors in Vilna stage a play about Dreyfus, and the actors don't find the theme relevant to their own situation. It is a comedy, in part, as they perform poorly and a frustrated director corrects their follies, but it is also a tragedy as the actors do not heed the warning inherrent in the Dreyfus story, claiming that nothing of the sort could happen in Poland. They stress the differences between Eastern and Western Jews, don't relate to the notion of Zionism, etc. In the end, two anti-Semitic non-Jews enter the playhouse and start harassing an actor, threatening to cut of his beard, etc. The actors gather their courage and, brandishing fake swords from their costumes, they get rid of the agressors. Ultimately, though, they don dark coats, carry suitcases, the lights grow dim, and serious faced they stand together while the sound of a train echoes in the performance space.
I don't know what I think of this play. It was replete with silly and hysterical women, and with notions of Polish Jews being naive and comic. At one point an actor suggests that the Dreyfus play would be better with some catchy music, and she starts humming "If I Were a Rich Man" a gross anachronism and a symbol for the way that Jews today resort to pop culture to invoke a sense of history... But on the other hand, it was a play that mixed the seriousness of the history (if mitigated by the anti-Semites speaking Hebrew and not acting very violently) with the humanity and humor of everyday life in what is perhaps a more genuine representation of the past than one that looks at the whole long history of East European Jewry as inevitably and bleakly leading to destruction, a sad and downtrodden people without resilience of spirit or the will to creat and enjoy beauty and life.
I slipped out of the synagogue as fast as could be possible when most people in the sanctuary were walking very slowly with canes and we were all heading to the same exit. When I got to my apartment I knocked on the neighbors' door to invite them to have dinner with me Tuesday night - I keep meaning to do something with them before I leave but forgetting, so I'm very proud of myself for setting a date. They made me promise I wouldn't go to too much trouble to cook for them, so I'll have to think about what to make. Suggestions?

Abortion in Israel: Flexible Attitudes in a Pronatalist Environment

2009-06-12T11:18:00.001+03:00

I thought some of you might be interested in this paper I wrote for my Anthro/Sociology class...

Jessica Kirzner

Spring Semester, 2009

Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on Israeli Society(ies)

Abortion in Israel: Flexible Attitudes in a Pronatalist Environment

In Israeli society, motherhood is constructed as women’s central role, and parenthood is part and parcel of Jewish and Israeli collective identity and societal patterns. Women’s “national mission”[1] of mothering more than one child is built upon the religious commandment to “be fruitful and multiply”, fear of the loss of a child in war, as well a desire to enlarge the Jewish population in order to repair the demographic losses resultant from the Holocaust.[2] In addition, and perhaps most powerfully, national Zionist ideology encourages a high fertility rate in an effort to maintain a Jewish majority in a political situation of conflict and tension with neighboring populations with higher fertility rates, a situation referred to as the “demographic time bomb.”[3] In the context of these strong sociocultural attitudes in favor of high fertility, it is unsurprising that the fertility rate in Israel is higher than in other developed countries, with a Total Fertility Rate measured at 2.7 in 2000, in comparison with estimated Total Fertility Rates of 2.05 in the United States, 1.98 in France, and 1.31 in Italy in 2009.[4] To encourage this high fertility, the state has implemented strong pronatal incentives, including giving new mothers birth grants to cover the cost of childbirth, as well as a birth allowance to pay women for a short period following childbirth.[5] The government also funds expensive fertility treatments for both single and married women until two living babies are born.[6] The state not only shapes women’s reproductive decisions through these pronatalist incentives but also by “delegitimizing alternative life courses in which motherhood is not as prominent,” as women’s responsibilities as mothers are prioritized over their careers.[7] In light of this strong cultural and state-sponsored pronatalist stance, this paper seeks to explore the issue of elective abortion in Israel, seeking to understand the experience of the choice against motherhood in a climate that strongly encourages women to become mothers and to have multiple children. The paper will provide an overview of the practice of abortion in Israel and the religious and civil laws governing it, and will pose questions about what abortion means for Jewish women in Israel.

The Law Concerning Termination of Pregnancy which was adopted by the Knesset on January 31, 1977 legalizes abortion in a recognized medical institution if it fits one of five conditions: the woman is under legal marriage age (17) or over the age of 40; the pregnancy resulted from an illicit (rape, incest) or non-marital relationship; the fetus is likely to have a mental or physical defect; continuing the pregnancy may endanger the woman’s physical or mental health; or an abortion is needed because of family or social circumstances.[8] Although public opinion polls suggest that a majority of Israelis would support such a clause,[9] the final article allowing a pregnancy to be terminated for ‘social reasons’ was removed from the law in 1979, at the request of Agudat Israel, a small but powerful religious party, during coalition building for a new government.[10] The decision as to whether a woman is qualified for an abortion based on these standards is made by committees composed of two doctors and a social worker, established in authorized hospitals and clinics. In 1995, medical committees known as Abortion High Committees were established in Israel in order to consider specifically the issue of ‘late’ terminations, an issue most often involving selective abortions due to genetic defects.[11] These regulations on abortion establish a liberal or flexible view of abortion (legalizing the practice for a variety of reasons that in other Western countries might be quite controversial) that may seem contradictory to the traditional pronatalist stance of the state. Neverltheless, the attitude toward abortion remains conservative insofar as the power to decide a woman’s qualifications for abortion is in the hands of the (largely male) government-approved medical establishment, thus “subjecting individual choice to authoritative scrutiny and approval.”[12] As a result, illegal abortions are not uncommon – in fact, most women who are denied (or suspect that they may be denied) legal abortions in Israel do obtain illegal abortions.[13]

Although the majority of women who obtain abortions and the majority of medical professionals who perform them are secular, they, their society, and the laws of their country are strongly influenced by religious ideas which “function as moral-mental structures”[14] guiding their approach to the meaning of abortion. Thus, it is imperative to outline the attitude toward abortion in traditional Jewish law not only in order to understand the attitudes that religious Jews hold toward the issue, but also to understand the framework in which abortion is viewed throughout Israeli society. According to Jewish law, the fetus is considered an organic part of the mother, and is not considered a nefesh adam (human person) at any stage in the pregnancy, thus abortion is not considered murder.[15] Unlike in other Western countries, influenced by the Catholic notion that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception, traditional Jewish law legislates that life begins on the thirtieth day after the birth, when the baby has begun to exhibit the human characteristics that demonstrate that it was made in the image of G-d.[16] Abortion is not permitted without reason, as life is of supreme value, but in a case where the woman’s life is endangered by the pregnancy or childbirth the fetus can be considered an ‘aggressor’ which may be killed in defense of the mother – the mother’s life is more valuable than the potential life of the not-yet-human fetus.[17] Simply put, abortion is permitted if carrying the pregnancy to term could cause harm to the mother. The interpretation of the needs of the mother’s life in the halachic tradition have varied from a narrow interpretation that abortion is only permitted to physically save the mother to a broader interpretation wherein abortion is permitted if the birth would harm the woman’s psychological wellbeing, cause her shame, or harm the prospective wellbeing of the child.[18] Within these parameters, the debate over the fetus’s “right to life” which is so prominent in the abortion debate in other Western religious contexts, is irrelevant – the fetus’s right to be born is relative to the welfare of the mother.[19]

Instead, the debate centers around arguments concerning the “demographic time bomb” on the one hand, and social distress on the other.[20] The 1977 abortion law emerged from a context in which family size became a mark of low social status and of poverty: at that time 10% of all Jewish households reared close to half of Israel’s children, often under severe socioeconomic conditions.[21] Permitting abortion was seen as a way to relieve this social problem, though concerns were expressed that by encouraging a lower fertility rate in these families, abortion would make the threat of the “demographic time bomb” even greater.

In general, the Israeli abortion debate lacks a strong ideological component on either end of the spectrum, with more liberal segments sympathetic to the demographic argument and more conservative segments approving of abortion under specific, limited circumstances, such as if the potential mother’s life is at risk as a result of the pregnancy.[22] The strongest anti-abortion voice in Israel has been Efrat – the Right to Life Association for the Encouragement of Increase Birthrate among the Jewish People. When Efrat began in 1962, it was without the notion of “Right to Life” and stressed instead a concern about fertility imbalance between Jewish and non-Jewish communities (ie. the “demographic time bomb” argument). Although, through the influence of American immigrants, Efrat introduced the American “right-to-life” strategy in the 1980’s, their primary concern and argument remains demographic, as evidenced by their acceptance of embryopathic abortions, a position that conservative right-to-life organizations in other Western countries would be loathe to adopt.[23] Efrat posits itself as “the real pro-choice organization,” offering money to women so that they won’t terminate their pregnancies for financial reasons. The assumption here is that the “first choice” of most women is to have their babies, an assumption in line with the pronatalist environment of Israeli society.[24]

With a debate focused on demographic issues, the feminist perspective of the right of the woman to control her own body is not strongly represented in the Israeli debate. While in other contexts, “imposing an absolute maternity duty on a woman…was seen as denying her freewill and judgment in matters pertaining to her own life,” in Israel, feminist groups are loyal to Zionist ideals, and as such are followers of the demographic argument.[25] With the lack of feminist struggle in the debate, women’s bodies, even in the context of abortion, are controlled by the state and the medical establishment. Women who wish to exercise their right to an abortion are subjected to intrusive interrogations and “stigmatized as transgressors,” although gynecologists are generally cooperative with women’s choices and abortion committees are generally permissive.[26] Although since 1979 the clause permitting abortion in the case of pregnancy outside of marriage has been invoked in approximately half of all abortion requests, under the abortion law medical experts are called upon to determine a woman’s qualifications for the procedure, thus suggesting that “non-normative” sexual behavior is a kind of illness and giving abortion committees (largely male) moral and physical authority over women’s bodies.[27]

Abortion is widely available in Israel, statistics show that 95% of Israeli women have access to moderately priced abortion and that over 95% of the women who apply for legal abortion are given positive answers.[28] Nevertheless, rates of abortion are relatively low, with the average number of abortions for Israeli women at 0.6 compared to about 0.9 in the US and between 2 and 5 in Eastern Europe, rates that may be explained by the pronatalist atmosphere of Israeli society and by widespread and effective use of contraception.[29] These low and decreasing abortion rates have contributed to the lack of public conversation and debate about abortion.[30]

Because abortion is “silenced in both public and private realms,” women who have undergone the procedure report that they “hardly ever” discussed their pregnancy and its termination after they had undergone the abortion.[31] Many Israeli women who underwent an abortion felt that the institutional involvement in their abortion was justified because “a woman should feel social responsibility when children are concerned.”[32] They tended to see the abortion as a personal failure in responsible sexual behavior. As one Israeli informant of Larissa Remennick and Rosie Segal’s study expressed, “Intelligent women who take good care of themselves and have caring partners don’t get into this…”[33] The issue of non-vital abortion, particularly when pertaining to the clause that allows abortion as a result of out-of-wedlock conception, incest, or conception under illegal circumstances such as rape, is a taboo subject, and the women who undergo the procedure express feelings of guilt and self-accusation for their unwanted pregnancies. This guilt often stems from self-criticism for lack of use or misuse of contraception, rather than guilt regarding non-marital sex, or the choice to abort itself.[34]

Abortions are most often sought by secular, Ashkenazi, middle-class, educated women. While many secular women see a large number of children as a detriment to a good marriage, many religious women perceive a large number of children as an important factor in building a stable family.[35] There is a strong inverse association between religiosity and the acceptance and practice of abortion - religiosity is the single most significant determinant in the practice of abortion.[36] In the 1960’s and 1970’s, as the abortion law was being established, Jewish women of Afro-Asian descent were less likely to have access to family planning services and were also less likely to use abortion services than Ashkenazi or Israeli-born women, thus resulting in high fertility rates for these populations.[37] However, these immigrant groups experienced rapid fertility decline due to increases in the use of fertility control and integration into Ashkenazi social norms such that fertility differences between Ashkenazi and Mizrachi communities decreased in significance.[38] Nevertheless, the country of origin of the woman obtaining the abortion remains a strong factor deciding the practice of induced abortion.[39]

Studies show that Russian immigrants to Israel held a markedly different view of abortion than Israeli-born women. Abortion was very frequent in the USSR as a result of limited contraceptive means, an exaggerated perception of the dangers of modern contraception, underestimation of the dangers of abortion as performed in the USSR, and inadequacy of sexual education programs.[40] In the USSR, abortion had never been seen as an ethical, religious, or political issue, and was instead considered a routine procedure, the most readily available birth control method: Soviet women typically had as many as 35 lifetime abortions.[41] These patterns of attitudes toward and practice of abortion are a striking contrast those of Israel, in which abortion rates are reportedly among the lowest in the world (around 13 per 1000 women of reproductive age).[42] The rate of abortion in Soviet immigrants to Israel declined over time as they have become more accustomed to preferred Israeli contraceptive methods, but a difference remains.[43]

Differences in attitude toward abortion were reflected in Larissa Remennick and Rosie Segal’s study on Russian and Israeli-born women’s experiences of abortion in Israel. Because they regarded termination of marital pregnancy as normal ‘birth control,’ Russian women interviewed in this study negative about what they felt was unnecessary and intrusive bureaucratic involvement in their private decisions about fertility, unlike Israeli-born participants in the study.[44] They tended to see abortion as a misfortune, and to understand themselves as victims. As they were not socialized to see abortions as contrary to ‘responsible sexual conduct,’ they did not experience the same sense of personal failure that was reported from Israeli-born women, and did not express feelings of loss of self-esteem or dignity.[45] Nevertheless, they experienced discomfort as a result of the perceived disapproval of health and welfare workers toward Russian women obtaining abortions. Popular stereotypes of Russian women as sexually irresponsible made coping emotionally with the abortion process difficult for Russian women.[46] This indicates that although abortions were a normal and even a routine aspect of Russian society, Israeli attitudes toward abortion, motherhood, and sexuality influenced Russian women’s experiences about the procedure.

Although religiosity is the most significant indicator of the likelihood of a woman to pursue an abortion, in the case of the potential for health problems with the fetus, women of many different backgrounds, including religious, undergo abortions. Religious leaders approve of this practice, encouraging or permitting members of their community to undergo prenatal testing in order that they will be more comfortable with having children at an older age, when health risks for the fetus are higher.[47] Israel has among the highest rates in the world of termination of abortion due to genetic defects found in the fetus.[48] In 2003, 3,476 pregnancies were terminated for this reason– 17% of all abortions in Israel.[49] Elective genetic testing is more common among educated middle class Ashkenazi women, and is often refused among non-Ashkenazi women.[50] The costs of testing are also a limiting factor, making such tests less popular among women in lower social stratum.[51] Women who chose against testing do so for ethical or moral reasons, for the cost, or because of poor understanding of the meaning of the tests.[52] Women who do chose prenatal genetic diagnosis do so for a number of reasons including fear of having a sick or socially unaccepted child, concerns about lack of government and communal support for the raising of such a child, and apprehension regarding Ashkenazi genetic make-up due to high incidence of certain genetic disorders.[53]

Genetic testing has become socially constructed as part of “good motherhood,” insuring the health of the child, even before it is born.[54] This is an important point, as motherhood is so central to Israeli women’s identities and social roles. Genetic screening has become part of the normative behavior of expectant mothers, and compliance with this behavior is seen as indicating responsibility for the future of the child. Refusal to comply with this behavior may be labeled, conversely, as irresponsible.[55] Because Israeli culture is very informal, women who discuss their decisions not to partake in prenatal genetic testing face social disapproval expressed both tacitly and openly by their peers.[56]

Acceptance of prenatal genetic testing and selective abortion is made possible by the low tolerance of disability in Israeli Jewish culture, which results not only in families dreading the idea of having a child with special needs, but also with the low level of support given by the government to families with disabled children. In a society that does not provide adequate support for children with disabilities, parents fear that a child with disabilities will be too great a burden, emotionally and financially.[57] As, according to Jewish law and popular Israeli perception, a fetus is not yet a child, deciding to abort a child because of possible disability is not viewed as a discriminative practice, but instead as a way to insure a high quality of life for children born in Israel.[58] Willingness to abort a fetus because of a possible defect may also be explained by Jewish attitudes toward suffering. Unlike the Christian tradition, in which suffering is punishment for the original sin and dealing with suffering is seen as a challenge from G-d, the Jewish tradition does not glorify suffering and tries to prevent it.[59] In this context, there is no meaning behind the suffering of a child with a disability and its family, and prevention of the suffering (perceived as greater in Israel because of the low tolerance for disabilities) is merciful and responsible.

Genetic testing and selective abortion have become so much the norm in Israeli society that children born with disabilities or their parents are able to bring lawsuits to court on the assumption that, had they received accurate information, they would have aborted the fetus. “Wrongful birth” suits, in which parents sue genetic counselors or gynecologists, claiming that they would have terminated the pregnancy had they been properly informed of the fetus’s diagnosis, and “Wrongful life” suits, in which the infant sues the medical agent because of an incorrect diagnosis, claiming that had the parents been given accurate information the claimant never would have been born and would not have to suffer living with a disability or hereditary disease, have both been accepted in Israeli courts.[60] Israel’s permissive stance on abortions because of possible defects found in the fetus allows for the assertion that the parents, with the right information, would have aborted the child, thus making the “wrongful life” and “wrongful birth” arguments possible.[61] Yael Hashiloni-Dolev notes that while Israeli law does not acknowledge that a fetus has any rights to life, under Israeli law the fetus does have the retroactive right, determined in a “wrongful life” case, not to have been born handicapped.[62] The existence of these legal precedents may lead genetic counselors to encourage women to partake in genetic testing and to abort a fetus with a possible defect, for fear of a lawsuit should a child with a defect be born.[63]

The issue of abortion in Israel walks the tightrope between the state’s pronatal attitude, influenced by religious and political dimensions, and the nature of Israel as a modern, Western country wherein families adopt lifestyles that involve low fertility. The low abortion rates in Israel coupled by the lack of moral argument because of the fetus’s non-human status in Jewish law means that abortion is a low-profile issue in Israel, but it is nevertheless an important one. Bridging the gap between abortion as a choice against motherhood and the cultural celebration of the role of the mother stands the issue of prenatal genetic testing and selective abortion, wherein the choice not to carry a pregnancy to term is constructed as one align with the concept of “good motherhood.” In this case, the choice not to have a child, and thus not to become a mother, can itself, somewhat paradoxically, be an act of good motherhood. This changes the nature of motherhood in Israel - the mother is unsure if she will carry the fetus to term because of the possibility of selective abortion for genetic reasons, transforming a pregnancy into a tentative experience. The mother may feel that she cannot bond with the baby for fear that she will have to make the decision to abort it, and the lack of bonding leads to a further construct of the fetus as not-human, making an abortion more of a possibility.[64]

If the decision to abort a pregnancy can be constructed as “good motherhood,” this may have implications for women who lost their fetuses in a miscarriage or during the first 30 days of the baby’s life, when according to traditional Jewish law and to the law of the State of Israel, the baby was not yet a person.[65] Although pregnancy loss and death of a newborn may continue engender a feeling of failure to fulfill the social ideal and expectations of motherhood, perhaps a growing body of women who have chosen to abort their pregnancies in order to prevent the suffering of their children will lead to a new societal category of almost-mothers, a category that will give these women a place to speak and acknowledge their identity as “good mothers” even though they never had the experience of giving birth to a baby that survived to be acknowledged as a person in society.

Abortion in Israel, however, is not only a question of good motherhood, or ensuring that the potential mother has an opportunity to prevent the suffering of her potential child, but is more often a question of the potential suffering of the mother herself. The flexibility and conservatism of Israeli law and interpretations by individual abortion committees centers around the question of how much carrying the pregnancy to term could harm the mother physically, psychologically, or in terms of causing her shame (in the case of a pregnancy conceived outside of marriage). In a debate not centered on feminist ideals, the woman’s right to choose is not in question. It is the medical institutions and the government that set the framework for whether a pregnancy can be aborted, based on guidelines about how the pregnancy may harm the potential mother. These decisions include moral decisions about acceptable sexual behavior and construction of families, such that a pregnancy conceived out of wedlock is considered a great enough shame to merit abortion, and the idealization and elevation of motherhood such that the pregnancy of a healthy married woman legally must be brought to term, as it is inconceivable that such a pregnancy could harm the potential mother. An intrusive and paternalistic system controls the bodies of the women themselves, a practice to which Israel-born women seem not to object to but that Russian-born women who come from outside of Israeli societal norms find uncomfortable and unnecessary. Despite the intrusiveness of Israeli law regarding abortion, women who do obtain abortions are able to do so in an environment where their decisions are considered acceptable and the question of a fetus’s right to life is not present. In abortion for reasons other than the clause regarding possible defect in the fetus, the abortion does not occur in the context of “good motherhood” but it also does not occur in the context of murder or immorality. Rather, judgment is centered around questions of sexual responsibility, issues that are easier for women undergoing the abortion procedure to handle emotionally. Women undergoing the crisis of problematic pregnancy may be able to recover faster and more fully in Israel than in other Western countries with more conservative attitudes toward abortion.

The issue of abortion in Israel shows the convergence of conservatism and non-Christian perspectives that in other contexts might be considered liberal. A paternalistic and conservative attitude toward fertility does not prevent the legalization of abortion because of a conservative attitude toward religion – in this case a religion that is permissive and flexible on the issue of abortion. Women who undergo abortions in Israel do so in this framework in which the fetus is not considered fully human, but in which the decision to abort may be perceived as going against women’s “national mission” of motherhood. Thus, the issue of abortion in Israel involves a balance between the pronatalist attitude of the state and the flexible attitude toward abortion as professed in the official state religion and as adopted by a modern, Western, secular society.

Works Cited

Birenbaum-Carmeli, Daphna. (2003) “Reproductive policy in context: implications on women’s rights in Israel, 1945-2000” Policy Studies, 24:2, (101-113).

"Country Comparison: Total Fertility Rate." Central Intellegence Agency: The World Factbook. 12 June 2009 .

Davis, Dena S. (1992) “Abortion in Jewish Thought: A Study in Casuistry.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. LX(2), (313-324).

DellaPergola, Sergio. “Demography in Israel at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century.” Rebhun, Uzi and Chiam Isaac Waxman, ed. Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Patterns. Brandeis University: Hanover, 2004. (20-46)

Friedlander, Dov. (1973 “Family Planning in Israel: Irrationality and Ignorance.” Journal of Marriage and the Family (117- 123)

Gazit, Zohar. Guest Lecture. “Missing Motherhood: Reconstruction of Self-Identity Following Pregnancy Loss or the Death of a Newborn.” Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on Israeli Society(ies). Taught by Gad Yair. Rothberg International School, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. May 10, 2009.

Hashiloni-Dolev, Yael. (2006) “Between Mothers, Fetuses and Society: Reproductive Genetics in the Israeli-Jewish Context” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues - Number 12 (129-150).

Hashiloni-Dolev, Yael. A Life (Un)Worthy of Living: Reproductive Genetics in Israel and Germany. The Netherlands: Springer, 2007.

Landau, Ruth. (2003) “Religiosity, nationalism and human reproduction: the case of Israel”. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 23:12.

Levine, Noga Morag. (1994) “Abortion in Israel: Community, Rights, and the Context of Compromise.” Law & Social Inquiry, 19:2 (313-335).

Okun, Barbara S. (1997) “Innovation and Adaption in Fertility Transition: Jewish Immigrants to Israel from Muslim North Africa and the Middle East.” Population Studies, 51:3 (317-335)

Remennick, Larissa I. (2006) “The quest after the Perfect Baby: Why Do Israeli Women Seek Prenatal Genetic Testing?” Sociology of Health and Illness, 28/1 (21-53).

Remennick, Larissa I. and Hetsroni Amir. (2001) “Public Attitudes towards Abortion in Israel. A research note.” Social Science Quarterly. 13:2, (194-205).

Remennick, Larissa I. and Rosie Segal. (2001) “Socio-cultural context and women’s experiences of abortion: Israeli women and Russian immigrants compared.” Culture, Health & Sexuality, 3:1 (49-66).

Sabatello, Eitan F. (1995) “Continuity and Change in Reproductive and Abortion Patterns of Soviet Immigrants in Israel.” Social Science Medicine. 40:1 (117-124)

Toren, Nina. (2003). “Tradition and Transition: Family Change in Israel.” Gender Issues. (60-74)

Wilder, Esther I. (2000) “Socioeconomic and Cultural Determinants of Abortion Among Jewish Women in Israel.” European Journal of Population/Revue européenne de Démographie, 16:2 (133-162).

Yefat, Arlich. (2009) “For Many Years There Was Silence Around Religious Women who Chose to Abort Fetuses with Defects. Now they Finally Speak.” Makor Rishon. Accessed Online: http://www.kipa.co.il//community/show.asp?messageid=4908532. [Hebrew]

Yishai, Yael. (1993) “Public Ideas and Public Policy: Abortion Policies in Four Democracies,” Comparative Politics, 25 (207-228).

[1] Sered 22

[2] Birenbaum-Carmeli 102, Toren 64, Landau 74

[3] Yishai 217

[4] DellaPergola 33; Central Intellegence Agency: The World Factbook

[5] Sered 25

[6] Landau 71

[7] Birenbaum-Carmelli 110

[8] Wilder 137

[9][9][9] Wilder 137, citing public opinion polls published in Yishai Y. (1993) “The hidden agenda: Abortion politics in Israel.” Policy Studies Journal, 7 (270-289).

[10][10] Wilder 137

[11] Hashiloni-Dolev, A Life (Un) Worthy of Living 86

[12] Yishai 214

[13] Wilder 138

[14] Hashiloni-Dolev, A Life (Un) Worthy of Living101

[15] Davis 316

[16] Hashiloni-Dolev “Reproductive Genetics…” 136

[17] Hashiloni-Dolev “Reproductive Genetics…” 136

[18] Hashiloni-Dolev “Reproductive Genetics…”136, Davis 318

[19] Hashiloni-Dolev, A Life (Un) Worthy of Living 99

[20] Hashiloni-Dolev, A Life (Un) Worthy of Living 97

[21] Yishai 217

[22] Levine 322

[23] Levine 391, Hashiloni-Dolev, A Life (Un) Worthy of Living 98

[24] Friends of Efrat website: www.friendsofefrat.org

[25] Yishai 209. 223

[26] Birnbaum-Carmeli 106

[27] Sered 35

[28] Wilder 139 Remennick and Hetsroni 195

[29] Remennick and Hetrsoni 195-196, citing Sabatello, E. F. (1993) “The impact of induced abortion on fertility in Israel” Social Science and Medicine, 36, (703-707) and The Alan Guttmacher Institute (1999) “Sharing Responsibility: Women, society, and Abortion Worldwide”, NY, The Alan Guttmacher Institute. In Israel, in the 1950’s and 1960’s abortion was used as a standard method of limiting births. The decline in number of abortions is linked to the adoption of new contraceptive practices. (Wilder 140)

[30] Remennick and Hetsroni 195

[31] Remennick and Segal 56

[32] Remennick and Segal 57

[33] Remennick and Segal 60-61

[34] Remennick and Segal 62

[35] Landau 68

[36] Wilder 141, 155

[37] Friedlander 123

[38] Okun 333

[39] Wilder 154

[40] Sabatello 118

[41] Remennick and Segal 51

[42] Remennick and Segal 52 citing David, H. P. (1992) “Abortion in Europe, 1920-1991: a public health perspective. Studies in Family Planning, 23 (1-22); Sabatello, E. F. (1993) “The impact of induced abortion on fertility in Israel” Social Science and Medicine, 36, (703-707); and Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel (CBS) (1998) Demographic Characteristics of Applicant for Pregnancy Termination (Jerusalem: CBS)

[43] Sabatello 12

[44] Remennick and Segal 57, 62

[45] Remennick and Segal 60

[46] Remennick and Segal 60

[47] Yefat

[48] Yefat

[49] Hashiloni-Dolev “Between Mothers, Fetuses, and Society” 131

[50] Remennick 21

[51] Remennick 22

[52] Remennick 21

[53] Remennick 21, 26

[54] Remennick 21

[55] Remennick 26

[56] Remennic 46

[57] Remennick 26

[58] Hashiloni-Dolev “Between Mothers, Fetuses and Society” 130-131

[59] Hashiloni-Dolev A Life (Un)Worthy of Living 128

[60] Hashiloni-Dolev A Life (Un)Worthy of Living 119-120

[61] Remennick 123

[62] Hashiloni-Dolev A Life (Un)Worthy of Living 124

[63] Hashiloni-Dolev A Life (Un)Worthy of Living 124

[64] Remennick 22

[65] Gazit

Busy-ness

2009-06-10T01:01:00.003+03:00

These past Daniel-less weeks have been a whirlwind of activity - goodbye dinners, spending time with friends, writing papers, etc.
Tonight I said goodbye to some of our closest friends of our Year in Israel by going with to see a community theater production (in English) of Oklahoma. It was a pretty good show - the singing was terrific although the dancing left much to be desired. Ultimately I was left with a strong sense of pride for America, a kind of nostalgia for good-old-American patriotism as represented by Rogers and Hammerstein. Although the play did not end in the singing of Hatikvah, as did 1776 (see my post on the Zionistic ending to that play), the notes in the program answer the question "Why Oklahoma in Israel?" in an interesting way:

"It strikes me that makes the show particume that there are many similarities between the fledgling state (Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907) and our own country. Both reflect a microcosm of conflicting interests, loyalties, sectors, and traditions joining together to form a new polity. Bit it is another, subtler, common theme that makes the show particularly appropriate for the Israeli stage. Bridging the often conflcting interests of the formers and the cowmen is Oklahoma's peddler, Ali Hakim. Despite being labeled as a Syrian (in Lynn Riggs' play, Green Grow the Lilacs, which served as the basis for Oklahoma!) or Persian (as adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II), Hakim is ostensibly Jewish, as were most ofthe peddlers in the western territories at the time. In fact, the role was created by Joseph Buloff, a star of the Yiddish stage, and his Jewish inflection was the subject of considerable critical discusion at the time. Does that make Oklahoma! a Jewish play? Not really, but iot does reflect the overwhelming influence that Jewish immigrants and their descendants had on the American musical theater."

I'm not sure that the most important point is that the 'Jewish' peddler represents Jewish influence on the American stage, as the character, a hypersexualized, irresponsible, money/business focused outsider is a conglomeration of negative stereotypes, likeable though he may be as a comic character. His Jewish character, not unlike the women who are treated as objects to be bought and sold, won and owned, are the creations of the 1943 American imagination of Jews, and performing the play in Israel, with Jews performing all of the roles and sitting in the audience, truly changes the meaning of the play and places Jews as the insiders, the active characters, and the athletic, macho heroes - truly a feit suiting the Zionist spirit.

As today was my last day of Yiddish class, and as we've been reading some poetry in class lately, I decided to end this post by translating a Manni Leib poem for you:

To the Non-Jewish Poet

An heir of Shakespeare, of shepherds and knights,
So good and fine for you, non-Jewish poet!
The earth is yours, where your uncle pig trots:
She gives him feed and gives your muse sustenance.

You sit like a bird on your branch and twitter,
And all the wild space answers you:
From you see the satieatedness, the breadth of the cities,
The complete serenity of satiated spirits.

And here am I, unwanted, a poet of the Jews,
Growing with weeds upon not-our world
Of grandfathers - tired wanderers with dusty beards -

That nourish themselves from books and markets;
And melodically I sing in a strange world the tears
Of wandering in a desert under foreign stars.

And one more for good measure (sorry about my poor translation skills, but at least this gives you the rough idea, though you are missing the patterns of the sounds). Here is one by David Hofstein:

In a Winter Evening

In a winder evening in Russian fields...
Where can one be lonlier, where can one be lonlier?

An old horse, a creaking sled,
A snowcovered dirt road - and I am in the middle

Behind, in the only corner of the paleness,
Smouldering stripes of sun's light still extinguish themselves sadly.

Ahead, a white desert spreads out
And far ahead a few houses are scattered -

There sleeps a hamlet, sunk down in the snow...
A few paths lead to the Jewish home.

A house, like all the others, but with larger windows,
And among the children there I am the oldest.

And narrow is my little world, and small is my circle:
Once in two weeks I go from the hamlet to the village.

And longing in silence for fields an for the vast wideness,
For many roads and paths, covered by snowdrifts...

And I cary in my heart the hidden pain
Of seeds that wait and wait to be sewn...

In winter evenings in Russian fields...
Where can one be lonlier, where can one be lonlier?...

Civil Defense Drill

2009-06-02T12:05:00.003+03:00

This week, Israel is conducting it's largest ever civil defense drill (read about it here). Today at 11:00 a siren went off in the city and we led the preschool students into the synagogue's bomb shelter. All the while teacher made dark and nervous jokes about how long it was taking, and then assured one another that the exercise was unrealistic as it didn't occur under the pressure of a real crisis. In the bomb shelter, teachers passed out pretzels and sang songs with the kids for ten minutes, along with the Rabbi and Cantor and the synagogue's president, who happened to be in the building at the time of the drill. Although a teacher asked me afterward if I had been scared during the drill, it hadn't occurred to me to be scared as it all seemed very similar to the fire drills conducted in the US - getting in lines and following teachers to safety. The real question, I suppose, is whether the bomb shelter is really safe in the event of a nuclear attack, and would the students be able to get there fast enough?

Shavuot, Part II

2009-05-30T12:40:00.003+03:00

I'm told that Shavuot is not a widely-celebrated holiday outside of Jerusalem. Last time I was in Israel, I was in a small town called Ben-Ayish, where Shavuot as known as a day off from school during which kids squirted water guns and threw water balloons. I did see one water gun fight in Gan Sacher over the two-day Shavuot break, but this seemed a pretty marginal aspect of the holiday in Jerusalem.
Shavuot is characterized by a number of pieces that are kind of hard to put together into one big picture.

1) The agricultural aspect: In Israel, the harvest began with barley in Passover and ended with wheat, on Shavuot- thus Shavuot celebrates the wheat harvest. In the days of the Temple, people would bring loaves of bread to be sacrificed in celebration of the harvest. The agricultural aspect seems to get much more emphasis here than in the US - I saw at least three preschool presentations about grinding wheat into flour and baking bread, and all the signs for Shavuot sales at the clothing stores have pictures of wheat stalks on them.

2) the food aspect: It is traditional to eat dairy on Shavuot. The explanation I've heard for this is that because Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah, it was the first time that the Israelites had heard the laws of kashrut and they did not yet have the proper equiptment and knowledge to slaughter meat properly, so they ate milk. Whatever the reason, it's a great holiday to be a vegetarian, but a lousy one for vegans. Traditional foods include cheesecake, blintzes, etc. Cheese itself is less popular. According to the Shavuot Nextbook podcast I listened to, Jews weren't big cheese consumers because most cheeses are made with rennet, an enzyme found in calves' stomachs. There are kosher cheeses, and I'm sure some people do eat cheese on Shavuot, but some of these softer cheese/milk products are more popular.

3) the giving of the Torah: As with many Jewish holidays, the agricultural and theological/historical/Biblical understandings are paired. Therefore, not only does the counting of the omer represent anticipating the wheat harvest, but it also anticipates the giving/receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

4) reading the book of Ruth: It is traditional to read the Book of Ruth on the morning of Shavuot, as it takes place during the barley and wheat harvests and tells of a woman who, like the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai, accepts the Jewish tradition. The book of Ruth is the paradigm for conversion into Judaism, and as David was Ruth's descendant and the Messiah will be David's son, we can see how fully integrated Ruth was the Jewish tradition, despite having been born as a Moabite. The book of Ruth is also a favorite among feminists, as it portrays strong and revered women who have agency over their own lives.

5) all night Torah study: It is traditional among Askenazi communities to study Torah all night on Shavuot - the study can be of any holy book. In Jerusalem, it is traditional to finish the studying by walking to the Western Wall to perform the morning service there.

6) greenery - It is traditional to decorate homes and synagogues with greenery on Shavuot, because Mt. Sinai is said to have blossomed when G-d gave the Torah to the Israelites.

6) confirmation - in the US, progressive synagogues often hold their confirmation ceremonies on Shavuot, a ceremony to acknowledge the completion of post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah studying. As it falls at the end of the school year and is connected to a theme of receiving and accepting the Jewish tradition, confirmation fits nicely into the holiday.

My Shavuot experience began with services at Har El, which was actually quite crowded (I was surprised!) with an upbeat crowd. The cantor donned his special tall high-Reform black hat and performed a combinatin of traditional tunes and contemporary compositions. We read the first chapter of the book of Ruth, the rest was to be read at morning services. After the service, I went to the potluck at Har El, which was filled with fruit salads, egg and cheese dishes, and breads. My friends Rebecca and Aya joined me at the potluck and we chatted with congregants a bit before heading in to the lecture given by Rabbi Ada.

Rabbi Ada's lecture was about the coming of the Messiah. She explained what some Rabbinic sources have to say about questions of when and how the Messiah will come, what the Messiah will look like and do, what the world will be in the Messianic era. All of this was done with a sense of humor but also with a sense of hopefulness and faith, a balance between a liberal and modern perspective and a respect for and sharing in the hope of a perfect world to come. Rabbi Ada is terrific and I was proud that I understood almost all that she said.

Afterwards, Rebecca, Aya, and I went to HUC to do some more studying. HUC was all lit up, the fountain was running, and many classes were set up around the courtyard, in Hebrew, and one in English. We, along with several HUC students, attended a talk about the idea of chosen-ness and uniqueness in Judaism, followed by a presentation by Rabbi/Prof Michael Marmur in which we examined one verse and used it as a way to understand what it means to be a stranger or an outsider, and the value and difficulty this perspective presents.

We ended at about 3:00 in the morning, and while I could have waited and walked to the Western Wall at 4:00, I was too tired by that time and I went home to bed.

Shavuot, and Goodbye to Daniel

2009-05-25T21:47:00.006+03:00

I played hookey from school today so that I could spend the day with Daniel before he flew out this evening, homebound.
We spent a lazy morning reading and doing crossword puzzles before we headed out to the preschool's Rosh Chodesh ceremony. The preschool celebrates Rosh Chodesh with parents/congregation members every month, but this is the first time I've made it to the celebration. In honor of Shavuot, which is later this week, the cantor dressed as the high priest of the Temple, and the kids, all dressed in white, brought fruits to be sacrificed. The Rabbi opened the ark and showed the kids all of the Torah scrolls, and gave them an opportunity to touch the Torah crown. Then, there was a skit about grinding wheat to make flour and bread, followed by some singing, dancing, and shofar blowing. It was adorable, and we were also struck by the kind of knowledge it gave the kids - in a Reform setting, they had access, at a preschool age, to the Hebrew calendar, to Jewish history and holidays, in a pretty detailed fashion. It seemed particularly meaningful to be doing this in Jerusalem, especially as it was Daniel's last day here.
We went next to the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, which we've been planning to visit all year. The museum covers Islamic art from the 7th century through the Ottoman Empire, and we enjoyed peeking around at the ceramics, tiles, and jewlery. We particularly enjoyed the exhibition on contemporary Arabic art in Israel - it was a small installation, but for us it was the highlite.
We strolled through the German colony and stopped in the Rose garden to sit on a park bench and chat before having ice cream on Emek Rafaim Street. We took a brief trip to the Malcha mall for a last-minute purchase before coming home for a game of scrabble.
We ended the day with a fancy dinner at Al Dente, an Italian place that many HUC students have been raving about all year. While there, we struck up a conversation witha family who is on a two week trip to Israel from New Mexico. Daniel used his Jerusalem expertise to recommend places they should visit while here - a final act as a Jerusalem resident welcoming others to his city. We arrived home with just enough time for Daniel to pack the last few items and make his final trip down our tiny old fashioned elevator to wait for the sherut that would carry him away.
It seems lonely in the apartment now, but I already have plenty of plans for the week, and plenty of work to do for school, so I don't think I'll even have time to feel sorry for myself. I am very much looking forward to Shavuot (which you are bound to hear about soon!) and to the next month-or-so that I have left to explore Jerusalem!

(see pictures here)

Jerusalem Day/Student Day

2009-05-21T11:39:00.003+03:00

Today is Yom Yerushalayim, a national holiday commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City in 1967. It officially became a national holiday in 1998, though it had been celebrated since 1968. Mostly it's commemorated by state ceremonies, assemblies and activities in school, etc.

As it turns out, today is also Yom HaStudentim (Day of the Student), the Israeli version of spring break. Apparently, Yom HaStudentim is not the same day in every city, but in Jerusalem it is always on Yom Yerushalayim. I don't have school today, which is a plus, but on the other hand there was an all-night concert (about 8pm until 6am) in a park near our apartment and we couldn't get to sleep all night, so I guess that's the minus...

We commemorated Yom Yerushalayim in the preschol this morning during our daily circle time. Mazal, one of the teachers, talked about her memories from before Jerusalem was unified, when Israelis couldn't access the Old City or Mt. Scopus. Then, she said, there was a big war and the wall between East and West Jerusalem came down and everyone was happy. She asked the students to name some big Jerusalem institutions that they are proud of -the Knesset, the Western Wall, the Biblical Zoo (that one was a big hit - lots of kids stood up and screamed "I've been to the zoo!") But most of the kids she called on wanted to answer the question "What is in Jerusalem" with "my house." or "grandma and grandpa's house." At some point during the conversation, Mazal started listing museums in Jerusalem and asking me if I'd been to them. "Jessica is visiting us from America," she told the kids, "so she hasn't been to a lot of places here before. She really should go see the museums. What else should she see?" "My house! You should come to my house, Jessica!" "My granparents' house!" (I don't think they really understood what she was going for). Anyway, we learned a bit about Jerusalem, and then we did some Jerusalem dances.

(I should mention that while the Jerusalem education was going on, I was sitting next to a little boy who just moved here from the US. He didn't understand any of the Hebrew, and he kept leaning over to whisper to me about dinosaurs. So as my attention drifted between him and the rest of the class, what I heard was something like, "And then the giant T-rex stands on its legs like a person and...we have hospitals in Jerusalem - how many of you were born in Haddassah on Mt Scopus? When I was a little girl we couldn't go to Mt. Scopus...he runs really fast because he's a dinosaur, but I can run faster." The kid from America has a little sister in the other class, and the other day I gave myself a headache by playing with an English-speaking 3 year old, two Hebrew-speaking 2 year olds, and a Hebrew-speaking 4 year old who is much more able to have a mature conversation - I kept speaking the wrong language to the wrong kid...it was a mess!)

As we were going down to the playground, Mazal said to me, "I can't believe I forgot to talk about how there are churches and mosques in Jerusalem. I was going to talk about how in Jerusalem the three religions live together, but I forgot all about that."

Preschool Notes

2009-05-14T11:07:00.003+03:00

Preschool yoga is about the cutest activity that I've ever witnessed. It involves a teacher telling a story and along the way having kids act the story out through poses (ie. "And then she met a dog" - and then everyone has to go into the 'downward facing dog' pose) At the end of this week's story a boy and a girl decide to become friends, and the kids took turns holding hands in partners and skipping around the room.
As we descended from the upstairs classroom into the sandy outdoor play area, Sasha said to me, "no one wants to play with me!" so I said, "what do you mean no one wants to play with you! I want to play with you!" and we spent a half our baking sand cakes of every possible variety: honey, poppyseed, chocolate, banana chocolate chip, carrot, and cheese.
Eventually I said to her, "I have to leave soon." "Where are you going?" she asked. "I have to go to class soon - you know my Hebrew isn't very good so I have to go to class so I can learn to speak Hebrew better." And she said to me, "When I go to school I'm going to have to learn to speak English better. I already know a few words, but only a few." She proceeded to list the words she knows: 'okay' and 'no'. I asked her if she knew how to say 'yes' in Hebrew, but she had already forgotten. Now I don't feel so badly about my Hebrew language skills.

Lag B'Omer

2009-05-11T21:57:00.007+03:00

Tonight is the beginning of Lag B'omer, a holiday I've never celebrated before and I hardly ever noticed was a part of the Jewish calendar. But it is apparently a pretty big deal here. I asked a lot of Israelis at school today what they do for Lag B'omer, and the answers all were the same: set things on fire. Yes, Lag B'omer is the holiday for bonfires, for wrapping potatoes and onions into the fire and then eating them cooked and whole. It used to be the holiday for singing Israeli songs, but now it is more often the holiday for marshmallows (a concept brought over from the US) and barbecues. I suppose it might also be thought of as the start of summer.
Daniel and I stopped by the Har El bonfire to eat an onion, visit with some preschoolers, and see what it was all about. It was really fun - some singing, some eating, some chatting, some Israeli dancing. On the way home from school today I saw a giant fire in an Israeli neighborhood and it looked pretty dangerous to me, but the Har El one seemed relatively reasonable.
Since I'm talking about Lag B'omer, let me give you a little information abou the holiday, as my guess is that you also don't know too much about it:
In Leviticus 23:15-16 we are told to count seven complete weeks from the day after Passover and ending with the festival of Shavuot on the 50th day of the "counting of the Omer" The counting of the omer is to keep track of the time between the wheat and barley harvests in Israel, and also the time between the Exodus from Egypt and receiving the Torah. Lag B'Omer is the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer. According to Talmudic tradition, during the days of Rabbi Akiva 24,000 students of his died during a plague, which supposedly ended on the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer - so one explanation for Lag B'Omer is that it celebrates the cessation of the plague. Lag B'omer is also supposedly the yartzheit, or anniversary of the death, of Rabbi Yonatan Bar Yochai, a student of Rabbi Akiva's who survived the plague. According to tradition, Bar Yochai revealed the secrets of the Kabalah on the day of his death, and so Lag B'omer is a celebration of the Kabalah. (thanks, wikipedia!)
During the counting of the Omer, many life-affirming activities such as shaving, getting married, and having sex, are forbidden, but on Lag B'omer they are permitted, so it is a big celebratory holiday. It is also a custom for many Jews to make a pilgramage to Mt. Meron to the tomb of Rabbi Yonatan Bar Zochai. Also, many Orthodox Jews perform the first hair cut of their 3-year-old boys on Lag B'Omer. You can read here about celebrations at Mt. Meron. Thousands of Orthodox Jews head to Mt. Moriah, and thousands of secular Jews light their own bonfires all over the country. You can read here about environmentalists who are upset about all the fumes.

You can check out some pictures of our Lag B'Omer experience here.

Papal Visit

2009-05-11T19:22:00.003+03:00

So, Pope Benedict is in Jerusalem. If I didn't know this from the news, I could have heard it from classmates who live right next to where his helicopter landed and could have taken his picture (and perhaps did) quite easily.
All day people were talking about it. Mostly about pain-in-the-butt road closings, but also about their discomfort with the Pope, who was a member of the Hitler Youth. I also heard some people who are upset because the Pope is visiting ALL of Jerusalem, and yet there aren't Israeli flags in the East Jerusalem side, although the West Jerusalem side has been peppered with them for the occasion. I've heard some people who are happy about it because it's an honor that the Pope is coming, but frankly, that attitude seems pretty few and far between. The most frequent response is, "I hope that he leaves soon." (again, mostly with regard to traffic considerations).
Today I was taking the bus home and the bus came to a closed major road. He was going to go a different route and many people were upset because where he was going was nowhere near where we needed to be. So he let us off somewhere in the middle of the road in what we learned quickly was a closed area - we couldn't get anywhere because it was all blocked off by police and we thought we would have to be there for two hours, listening to the "He rose again" celebrants with their big Jesus poster sing "G-d loves us" songs. Fortunately, one student finally convinced the policemen to let us through the barriers so we could go home, about a half hour after the bus dropped us off. We walked through a Hassidic neighborhood, most of us not knowing exactly where we were, until we came to the emptied streets of the center city, and arrived home, safe and sound.

If you want to read about the Pope's visit, allow me to recommend:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3713684,00.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084728.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084699.html
http://forward.com/articles/105885/
http://forward.com/articles/105729/
http://israelity.com/2009/05/11/a-police-escort-in-israel-for-the-pope/

Preschool Quote of the Day

2009-05-07T10:47:00.002+03:00

Alon: "Hey Amir, get this! I have a machine in my head. When I eat food the food mixes around in my belly and then it goes up in my head to the machine and the machine makes my thoughts. I have a machine in my head. Do you want to feel it? Go ahead, touch my head. I have a machine in my head."

the Yakin family's home

2009-05-06T08:38:00.002+03:00

Last night, Daniel and I visited a Har El couple in their beautiful old home. As we got to the corner where they told us they lived we asked a few people for directions. "Who are you here to see?" they asked, and when we said, "The Yakin Family" they grinned with recognition and were eager to help us find the door to their apartment - we don't know if everyone knows everyone in this particular neighborhood, but it seemed to us that the Yakins are particularly well known and well loved.
Abraham and Hannah Yakin live in their home near the shuk that Avraham's grandfather built 130 years ago. Hannah made aliyah from Holland in the 50's and the couple met while studying art at Bezalel. They are both prolific artists, they both paint and Hannah does wood-cuts and Avraham works with etching. Their home is bursting at the seam with beautiful works they have created - ketubot, illuminated scrolls of Esther and Ruth, masks, series about music, motherhood, animals on Noah's ark. They have eight children, all grown now, and they raised them in a home of art, music, and learning. When they were younger they displayed their work in a gallery near HUC, and gave art lessons to adults and children. They are such a warm and interesting couple and they encouraged us to come visit again and promised that next time they would take us into their studio and show us how etching is done. Their work is really beautiful - you can read wikipedia entries about them here and here, and see their work here.

Encounter Pictures

2009-05-04T20:33:00.002+03:00

You can view the pictures from our trip here. I would advise you to read the blog post as you look at the pictures, as this will help inform what you are seeing.

Encounter Trip

2009-05-04T08:21:00.003+03:00

This past Thursday and Friday, Daniel and I took part in a program through encounter, an organization that brings Diaspora Jewish leaders to meet with and learn from Palestinians. Amidst a group of about 40 rabbinical and cantorial students and students engaged in other forms of Jewish learning, we traveled to Bethlehem (which is located in the West Bank, about 15 minutes from Jerusalem) to listen to speakers, visit sites, and meet Palestinians. Our trip leaders emphasized that the purpose of the trip was not to provide a neutral perspective but to allow us to hear these perspectives, which may not be easy to access from within Israel, and to have this experience. They also emphasized that what we saw was just a small percentage of what there is to see in the West Bank – we went to no refugee camps and heard from no militants, for instance. Nevertheless, the trip was extremely educational. I have not yet had time to fully process everything we saw and experienced, and in fact we have a concluding meeting tomorrow night to help us think about how to process these things, but I wanted to share with you some of what we saw and heard. Please bear in mind that much of what I am writing will be from the notes of the presentations themselves, which were not meant to be neutral presentations and may contain opinions with which I or you disagree (though there will be much in this account that I think we can all agree on, too). I have not double-checked the facts that were presented to me yet, and I am presenting it all as it was told, to the best of my ability. Among the valuable experiences that I won’t have time to write about was the opportunity to meet students from many different areas of American Jewish leadership, an opportunity that would have been valuable even without the rest of the trip but which was made additionally powerful because of the circumstances.

The trip began as we drove past the Green line and into the West Bank, to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the West Bank with a population of about 50,000 people. It is in the District of Bethlehem, which includes Beit Jallah, Beit Sachor, and surrounding villages (a population of 170,000). Since 1995 Bethlehem has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority. The main source of income is tourism, both because it is the birthplace of Jesus and because it is the location of Rachel’s tomb. The population is majority Muslim, but it also is home to one of the largest Palestinian Christian communities.

Our first stop was the Hope Flowers School, a private school devoted to the teaching of peace, democracy, and justice. Ghada Issa, the co-director of the school, spoke to us of the school’s history and it’s current situation. Daniel and I had med Ghada Issa before, on our IEA encounter, which we blogged about earlier this year. Ghada’s father, Hussein Issa, founded the school. He was born in 1947. In the 1948 war his family lost their land and property and were evacuated to a refugee camp where they lived in a tent. During this time, Hussein’s mother passed away and he became an orphan. Hussein eventually went to university and became a social worker, and in 1984 he started a small kindergarten because he believed in change through education with peace and democracy as its theme. This, according to Ghada, was quite new for Palestinians. Hussein adopted the notion that conflict cannot be stopped if the education focuses on retaliation, and he wanted to take the kids out of the circle of violence. He began with 22 children in a rented garage, but this expanded rapidly. In 1989 he turned the kindergarten into an elementary school. His project was unpopular among many, and in the early years fanatics burned the school’s busses and accused Hussein of being a collaborator with the Israelis, which was considered a terrible charge. Teaching with the aim of coexistence was seen as compromising the ideals of retaliation and return to the land of Palestine. Nowadays the school has gained acceptance in the community and the minister of education accepts and honors the school. The students are Muslim and Christian boys and girls aged 4-13 (grades K-7; they are adding a grade 8 next year). For every program they first train teachers and parents before they begin working with kids, so that the kids will have a home environment that supports the work they are doing in school. Some of their specialized programs deal with trauma and learning disabilities, as well as with interfaith exchange and Hebrew language learning. Students are from the city and greater area of Bethlehem. They follow the same curriculum and textbooks as other Palestinian schools, but at areas that emphasize retaliation teachers are encouraged to step out of the textbook and create other learning experiences. In addition to the regular curriculum, the school hosts extracurricular activities such as drama and theater, and exchanges with Israeli schools. Their interfaith programs are both Muslim-Christian and Palestinian-Jewish. They also sponsor two summer camps, one in the UK and one in the US, that bring Israeli, Palestinian and US/UK students together to build friendships in more neutral territory. They host international volunteers to work at the school and bring new perspectives.

Ghada told us that it is very hard to do this work: “We really suffer to implement the programs that we have, especially after the second intifada.” 60% of the kids in the school are from refugee camps surrounding Bethlehem, and do not have a comfortable home life. The school is located in “area C” in a buffer zone next to new expansions of the Jewish settlement of Efrat, the Israeli security/separation barrier (the infamous wall/fence), and next to a military guard tower. The Israeli government has threatened to demolish part of the school three times and the school had to summon international support – the demolition has been put on hold but not cancelled. Because they are in Area C, they don’t have a license to build and the land is controlled by Israelis, which explains the demolition threats. In 2000-2002 the road to the school was blockaded. Many people intervened to help with this including the US consulate, and the blockages were removed, though the road remains in poor shape. The Israeli military presence in Bethlehem continues to be disruptive to the lives and education of the kids in the school. Kids have been traumatized when their homes were searched at night by the Israeli military. Ghada also described an episode during which students were outside in the school’s yard and when a soldier in a sniper tower started shooting in their direction – presumably at a target nearby and not at the school itself. Although no one was injured during this incident, it took a long time for the school community to recover from it. Economic deterioration after the second intifada led to increased unemployment because parents who had previously worked in Israel could no longer cross the border between the West Bank and Israel. The parents stopped being able to pay tuition and the school suffered. Yet, during the second intifada 56% of the schools students suffered from malnutrition, so the school had to provide additional services and with the help of external grants they were able to provide hot meals for their students. Before the second intifada tuition was enough to pay the operational costs of the school but now the school needs additional funding in order to function. Also after the second intifada the number of exchanges went down due to travel restrictions – the best bet is to find a neutral location, such as in Britain, the US, or Germany, where students from Bethlehem and Israel can meet. The actual cost of each student is $880 a year, but students pay $250 a year in tuition, which includes textbooks, uniforms, and transportation. Public schools (those run by the PA and those run by the UN) are free, but the quality of education is poor and there can be as many as 60 kids in one classroom. The Hope Flowers School has a good relationship with other public schools – the ministry of education gave Hope Flowers a contract to implement a learning needs program in 90 public schools in the West Bank. Graduates of the school come back to the school for extracurricular activities, to use the computer lab and to go to summer camp. They can use any Hope Flowers facilities for free, and in this way the school stays connected to their alumni. There are currently 350 students enrolled in the school – before the second intifada they had 600 students and immediately after the intifada the enrollment was at 200.

After the presentation, we had an opportunity to meet some of the kids, and to color with them. Daniel and I sat with some chipper little girls (about 8 or 9 years old) who asked us to do their portraits (which we did rather unsuccessfully) and practiced their English on us. We didn’t have very long with them, but it was nice to have an opportunity to meet them regardless.

We then went back on the bus to go on a tour of Bethlehem, led by Sami Awad, the director of the Holy Land Trust, an organization devoted to nonviolent activism. Sami wove his personal narrative together with information about Bethlehem and the Separation Barrier. Sami’s father’s family became refugees in 1948 from Musrara, Jerusalem. His grandfather was killed while raising a white flag over homes to indicate that civilians were living on the site of the conflict, and although he was killed his raising the flag allowed his family to be saved. All families in Musrara were evicted during the war. Sami said that before 1948 there was peace between Jews and non-Jews living in that area – when his father was a child he had Jewish friends. Sami’s father and his family grew up in orphan homes and he was separated from his mother and siblings. Despite all this, Sami’s grandmother was devoted to the idea of reconciliation. Sami’s mother was from a Christian family in the Gaza strip. There are now 2,500 Christians living in Gaza. His mother’s family’s apartment building was bombed in the recent conflict and the family was able to escape five minutes before their apartment was shelled. Sami himself was born in the US in Kansas city, where his father was teaching. The family returned to Bethlehem when Sami was 6 months old because his father was offered a position as the principal of an orphan school in Bethlehem. Sami grew up in Beit Jala, where his daily experience included Israeli soldiers and settlers with guns. He was afraid of these people who mistreated Palestinians and he grew up in hatred and in fear, although he was also influenced by his grandmother, who continued to hold to her values of peace and reconciliation. He had to learn how to balance these conflicting feelings. Sami’s uncle, Mubarak Awad founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence after studying the work of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. During a time when the PLO leadership was located outside of Israel his work was accepted y some but rejected by many others. Through his uncle’s work, Sami began to learn how to deal with anger without resorting to violence. In 1987 during the first intifada, Sami’s uncle employed nonviolent strategies – boycotts, protests, civil unrest. In 1988 Sami’s uncle was arrested by Israel and was put on trial. He was deported from the country and is allowed to come back once a year to visit family. He is considered threatening because of the power of his nonviolent tactics. Sami began to study nonviolence in earnest after his uncle’s deportation. He went to Kansas University and majored in political science, and he earned a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies from American University. While in Washington, DC he worked with his uncle at his organization, Nonviolence International http://nonviolenceinternational.net/, located in DC. After Sami completed his education, he returned to Bethlehem to found the Holy Land Trust. The Holy Land Trust was founded during the Oslo Peace Process, which was a time of a lot of home for the end of the conflict, but Sami felt that the process wasn’t helping the Palestinian people, especially because of the nature of settlement. The premise of a two-state solution was undermined as the Israeli government built settlements and moved settlers in order to complicate negotiations. There were 200,000 settlers in the West Bank in 1993 and 420,000 in 1999, and there are now over 500,000 settlers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Of these, only East Jerusalem is officially Israeli territory. Sami believes that Palestinians have been marginalized in the peace process.

Sami began by talking about the refugee camps in the Bethlehem area. The camps were established after the 1948 war and they began as tent dwellings because the people assumed they would return to their homes inside of Israel. The refugees were from the southwest coast and middle areas of Israel, between the West Bank and Gaza. There are 3 refugee camps in the Bethlehem area – the largest holds about 15,000 people, and the smallest holds 1000, which is the smallest refugee camp in the PA. If residents can afford it, they are allowed to move out of the camps. The UN provides food and education. People stay in the caps for symbolic reasons –they don’t consider themselves residents of Bethlehem but wish to return inside of Israel and being on a refugee camp means that the issue remains on the table – this is especially true for the older generation who lived through the 1948 war. People also stay in the refugee camps because there is a lot of poverty there and with the poor education they receive it is hard for them to find jobs that will allow them to be in the financial position to leave the camps. Nevertheless, refugees in the Bethlehem area live a better life than those in Lebanon, where job restrictions include a list of 40 jobs they can’t have . Unless another solution is provided for them, residents of refugee camps feel that the only answer for them is to return to their pre-1948 homes. At one time there was a 20 meter fence around the camp with only three ways for pedestrians to go in and out because after the first intifada there was a lot of stone throwing and gunfire on the main road. In 1993 with the Oslo Peace process, the PA gained control of the area and the fence was taken down, in part to discourage Israeli traffic through Bethlehem. According to Sami, the borders of Bethlehem have been redrawn since the 1990’s and they now confine Palestinians to residential areas so that the Israelis can build more and so that the fewest number of non-Jews as possible are left within the Jerusalem district. He told us that in 1997 Israeli bulldozers started uprooting trees in a forest they had prior declared a nature reserve in order that Palestinians would not build there. Bethlehem is surrounded by Jewish settlements and confined by walls and fences that prevent farmers from going to their fields, and people from accessing their property. The barrier consists of concrete walls in residential areas and fences monitored by watch towers in open areas. In 2002 there was shelling and shooting between Bethlehem/Beit Jallah and Gilo. Militants (Christian and Muslim) came to Beit Jalah to participate in the fighting, and many buildings were shelled by the Israeli tanks and destroyed.

Sami assured us that the nonviolent movement is growing, albeit modestly, among Palestinians. Supporters of nonviolence confront militants aggressively, asking what violence has achieved for the Palestinians – ethics aside. Engaging in violence has not been for liberation or freedom but for retaliation and revenge. They are training militants in nonviolence so that they will begin to see its value as a strategy.

We went to see the separation barrier. In Bethlehem, the barrier takes the form of a tall concrete wall. We visited the part of the wall that separates Bethlehem from the religious site of Rachel’s tomb which has a mosque and a synagogue, but from which the Muslim community is now separated. Sami said that the separation wall means that for the first time in history Jerusalem and Bethlehem are separated from each other. This is a problem for the church, so a gat was built so that once a year, on Easter, the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church can make his annual pilgrimage on the historic route. The gage is also used for the Israeli military.

We made our way slowly around the wall, looking at graffiti – some of it quite artistic, and some of it more sloppy. I noticed several crossed-out stars of David, but much of the graffiti was not anti-Semitic in nature. Many of the slogans were written in English and they read “when oppression is law resistance is duty” “darkness cannot drive out darkness hate cannot drive out hate” “justice is a collective effort not a gift” “might is not right” “Is it nothing to you all you who pass by?” “Israeli idiots I do not want to feel hate what are you doing to me?” “warning: our dreams blast through this apartheid wall” “Where is the USA’s professed democracy now?” as well as pictures of cats, camels, faces, and even menus of nearby restaurants. One particularly clever quote read “I want my ball back. Thanks” (I suppose someone was playing a particularly impressive game of baseball and hit the ball way out of the court…)

One of the most striking things about the wall is that it cuts very closely to the residential areas – perhaps this is for security, or perhaps it is to take land, depending on who you ask. The wall weaves around the homes. One home we passed is surrounded by the wall on three sides. The residents are not allowed to open the shades on their upper floor windows and may not go on their own roof without special permission from the Israeli government. The house is located on what was once a main street with markets, restaurants, commerce, and tourism. There are stores and homes on the other side of the wall and the Palestinians who own them cannot access them. Sami told us about the economic impact of the wall – it has resulted in the loss of agricultural land that is now being taken by settlements, a loss of tourism, and a loss of movement of people and products between Gaza and the West Bank.

Sami told us that many Palestinains continue to believe that they way to end the conflict is through violent resistence, and they honor peple who were killed by celebrating them as martyrs. Sami feels that “It is up to us to do the things that do not allow the Israeli government to justify why they need to build the wall [ie. stop violence so that security won’t be a concern] Nonviolence is not just an answer for me, it is the answer.” Sami feels that the Israeli community will be able to defeat the extremist views in their own society if the Palestinians do the same. Thus, Sami’s nonviolent resistance is not only for the Palestinian community but for the sake of Israelis as well. He wants Palestinians to remove themselves from a pattern of blaming and complaining and victimization and to get our of their homes and emngage in actions with the intention of healing. He acknowledges that trauma also exists s within the Israeli Jewish community. The Palestinians feel that they are the victims and want pity from the world for it, but Sami feels that Israelis have a rhetoric of fear because of the Holocaust and that both groups are victims and should stop seeking pity and start seeking healing for themselves and for each other.

After lunch and mincha services, we heard from George Saadah, Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem, principal of the Greek Shepherd’s School and member of the Bereaved Families Forum and from Salah Ajarma, the Directorof the Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp.

Salah Ajarma is a Palestinian refugee from the village of Ajur and has lived his entire life in Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. When he was 14 years old, Salah was arrested by the Israeli authorities for the first time and spent two years in Israeli jail. Afterwards, Salah helped establish the Palestinian Students Union in the Bethlehem area and across the West Bank. He graduated from the Future College in Ramallah in 1992 with advanced degrees in journalism and media, and has extensive media and journalism experience with organizations throughout the West Bank. From 1995 to 1998, Salah was the Manager of the Palestinian Prisoners Society for the West Bank. He was also in the Fateh Youth Organization, and represented it internationally on several occasions. While working as a freelance journalist in 2002, Sallah sought refuge with other civilians in the Church of the Nativity and for the following 40 days he was one of the 220 people inside the Church during the “Seige of the Nativity.” He is now the Director of the Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp.

The Aida Refugee camp holds people from 27 villages, more than 2000 children and more than six million Palestinians live in refugee camps. The Lajee Center is devoted to changing life in refugee camps and focuses on what is needed for the next generation. The camp is crowded and there are two schools with 900 students in the girl school and 700 students in the boy school and not enough room for all of them. The community center organizes art and music activities, picnics, libraries, computers, dance ,etc. Many children otherwise wouldn’t have opportunities for organized recreation. The organization was begun in 2000 and more than a hundred international volunteers have come to work in the center since them, some of whom have been American Jews. Last year the center hosted four American Jews and it was the first time that kids in the camp had met Jews who weren’t soldiers, “They taught the kids that there were good people who are Jewish.” After the second intifada, people in the camps felt less safe because soldiers come into the camp and the camp is surrounded by a wall. The soldiers search the camps from house to house. 27 people were killed by soldiers in the camp. The camp is a closed military area. Salah feels that he wants to empower young people in the camp to decide about their own future. They believe in Palestinian rights, International rights, and human rights: “Justice is for everyone and there is no peace without justice.” Salah described an incident during which there was a shooting in the camp. For two hours the kids were hiding, and two children were injured in the street. He also told of a time when a woman knew that her house was going to be searched and as she went to open the door to her home the soldiers bombed the door down and she was injured. Her children asked the soldier to help the mother because she is not a terrorist and they told the children that because she had five children who could grow up to be a terrorist, the woman was a threat. So, the children want to have a good future but under the occupation it is difficult. It’s been quiet since 2002, and no Israeli soldier has been injured n the camp, but more than 2000 Palestinians have been in Israeli jail since 2002 and many have been killed. Salah said, “We don’t feel that the Israeli government wants peace between us, but when you build people it is between the people and not the governments.” And so he continues to believe that peace is possible.

Salah also spoke a bit about his experiences in an Israeli jail. He said it is hard to be active and develop communities when so many young people are sent to jail. Someetimes when they stay in jail they develop relationships with soldiers and talk about peace, and sometimes the jail can be like a university and people learn a lot there. Nevertheless jail is a big problem and the number of young people who are sent to jail is an indicator that Israelis aren’t serious about peace.

Salah criticized Israel saying that all funding in Israel is for security for the Israelis without caring about the Palestinians. The PA are like guards for the Israelis and also don’t care about the Palestinians. People are frustrated with both governments.

Salah said that he would accept a one state solution because he does not beliee that a two state solution is the answer any longer. He said that he knows that people can live together – for instance there are people of many different backgrounds living in New York City and they do so peacefully. The problem has to do with land and settlement. In Haifa people of different backgrounds live together. According to Salah the people who make the problems are the Israeli leadership. A one state solution could solve all of the problems – the Palestinians could return to their original homes if they want to, the settlers can stay where they are, and everyone can learn to live together. He gave an example of the kind of social injustice that is commonplace in his life – water restrictions are severe in Bethlehem – people get water once a week in the summer and it is expensive. It is much less expensive for the settlers, who have constant access to water.

Salah addressed the question of the media, saying that the Israelis are very rich and can play with the media so that it supports their views. Palestinians are afraid to talk to the media because they might be put on an Israeli security list and be forbidden from visiting Jerusalem. This seemed an interesting perspective as many Israelis feel that the media is slanted in the opposite direction.

George Saadah, the Deputy Mayor of Bethelehem, began by telling us about his responsibilities as Deputy Mayor – he manages city infrastructure, buildings, roads, and is currently preparing for the Pope’s visit in May. He was born in Bethlehem as were generations of his family before him. Because Bethlehem is the Christian capital of the world, 60 cities have adopted t as a twin city. Its economic income si from tourism, industry (esp textiles) and limestone (“Jerusalem stone”). George told us that since 2000 the political improvements that began with the Oslo accords stopped. George has also been the principal of the Greek Shepherd’s School for ten years and encourages students to talk about achieving justice through democracy, human rights, and dialogue with others.

George was born during the Jordanian occupation in Bethlehem and grew up there. He graduated from USC-LA as an aerospace engineed and came back to Bethlehem in 1984 but couldn’t find work in his field of study although he had experience working for the USAF and NASA. He worked with heating and air conditioning before becoming a computer teacher, and then a principal. He was married in 1996 and had two daughters. In 2003 he was driving with his wife and two daughters, when he saw three army vehicles parked by the road, but didn’t see any soldiers, so he kept driving. As he was driving, the soldiers shot more than 300 bullets at his car. He was shot with nine bullets, one of his daughters, Marianne, was shot in the knee, and the other, Christine, was killed. She was the 404^th child that was killed that year. The army blocked the area and prevented the Palestinain ambulance from coming. Magen David Adom came ten minutes later. He later learned that the Israeli forces had been ambushing three suspects and George’s family had simply been caught in the fire. Shortly after the event, the Bereaved Families Forum called George and asked him to meet with them. Eventually he agreed and met them at a restaurant. They were a group of Israeli Jews and Palestinians who had lost their children in the conflict. They shared their stories and they continue to share their grief together and come to terms with it and work to live together under justice. George described the Bereaved Families Forum as a group of people who support one another because they feel grief together, “We know what’s ruined our lives…we reach a point where we are forgiving.”

George feels adamantly that the wall won’t bring security for Israel or stop any action against Israel. The solution is to have peace, which means ending the occupation in order to build a secure future for everyone. It’s no good to build a wall and be surrounded by enemies – better to build bridges and be surrounded by friends because walls won’t bring security, peace will. Building a wall means that Palestinians are all in a prison – an open prison from which they can’t leave without a permit. George feels that the solution is in the hands of the Israeli government. They have the power to make a secure state for Jews by making friends instead of enemies. They are strong and have an army and planes and Palestine doesn’t have this. The Palestinians will recognize Israel if Israel will give them a state. The Palestinians would agree on many things but Israel keeps putting up obstacles because they want the whole area – a two stat solution is the only solution and not following it only hurts Israelis too. When asked if he would agree with a one state solution, George said, “We don’t mind to have one state. We don’t mind to have two states. We want a solution.”

George agreed with Salah with regard to the media – “The media outside is controlled by Israel and biased toward Israel because it is Western.” When an Israeli is killed it is all over the news, but not so for the Palestinians. Lately the media, with internet technologies, ahs begun receiving these materials and it is getting better. Many people are learning what is happening here and changing heir ideas. Bt before it as impossible to criticize Israel in the Western media.

After we heard from George and Salah, we went into small groups to process together what we had heard. Many people were struck by the conflicting narratives and oppositeness and similarity of the Israeli and Palestinian narratives of victimization and a sense that everyone is against them. Many of us were also struck by the wall and its effect on the society.

In our small groups we were joined by some Palestinians for a poetry workshop where we wrote in our respective languages poems that were about our homes and wove them together. This activity was a bit too much like middle school for me, but I think some groups felt more positively about it.

We went to dinner with all of the host families at a restaurant decorated like a tent. We sat with our host family, whose names were something like Rudaya, Jerais, and Yusra, as well as Rudaya’s sister and her husband, and a few other students. The family was warm and eager to talk with us. The dinner ended with dancing and drumming, all together. Two two-year old Palestinian kids were dancing together and it was adorable.

Then we left the group to go with our host family for the night – our host family is Palestinian Christian and stems from Beit Sachor (next to Bethlehem) where they still live. Daniel and I climbed in to the back of their beat-up old car while they sat in the front with Yusra on their lap. There were no seatbelts. We drove a short distance to Rudaya’s family’s home in Beit Sachor so that we could spend the evening with her parents. When we arrived we were greeted by Rudaya’s youngest sister, who is 22, and invited into the beautiful home. The kitchen was huge and the living room expansive with two sets of couches for greeting guests. Rudaya gave us a tour of some of the pictures on the wall – the walls were covered with beautiful portraits of family weddings, baptisms, and other events. On one wall there was a picture of Rudaya’s grandfather, father, and a cousin who fell in the 1967 war, fighting on the Jordanian side. In addition to the beautiful portraits, there were many pieces of artwork, including carpentry work that Rudaya’s father did himself, a beautiful chandelier, and a giant metal picture of Jesus which lit up when switched on. Jerais also works with wood – he makes olive wood handicrafts which are sold to tourists – so it is a little funny that we met two carpenters in Bethlehem of all places. Rudaya is a primary school English teacher. As we were in the home, we met first Rudaya’s father, who was already dressed in his silk patterned pajamas, her sister and brother, another brother and his wife and three children, and her mother – it was a family reunion involving a lot of hugging and affection, tea, coffee, and sunflower seeds, and conversation. One family member spoke Hebrew and several others knew English, so Nessa, Shelley, (the girls from our group who were staying with Rudaya’s sister) Daniel and I, spoke in some mixture of Hebrew and English as jokes in Arabic flew over our heads and danced around the room. They asked us about life in America as a Jew, and we talked about American movies, and about living in Bethlehem. They talked about travel restrictions and how difficult it is to get into Jerusalem from here, about a Syrian-Jewish friend who lives in Jerusalem that they seem very proud to be close to, as well as about their work and everyday lives. When we asked Rudaya’s father about the oud that was sitting next to the couch, he took it out for us and played exquisitely. Finally, late at night, we left Rudaya’s parents’ home and went to her home, which was also spacious and beautiful, and covered with portraits on the walls. It was immaculately clean, too. We sat and talked for a short while before going to bed. In the morning we woke up to eggs, pita, spreads, and date-filled cake for breakfast, and Jerais drove us back to the hotel where we were to meet our group, with many encouragements that we should come back again to visit and that we were welcome in their home.

At the hotel some participants had already gathered earlier to pray shacharit. We joined them in a conference room where we took a little time to share our experiences from our home stay. Daniel and I said a few words about the fun we had at Rudaya’s parents’ house, and others told similar stories. It seems that the general sense of these stories was that the families we stayed with were nice, they were open and modern and well-off, but they also faced hardships in living in the West Bank – restriction of movement, confiscation of property, military presence, etc. One family told a story of a teenage boy who was shot in the leg by a soldier who thought his car was suspicious. The ambulance took a long time to come, and the boy told a participant of our program that he believes it took such a long time because the soldiers wanted him to die. Whether that was the case or not, I think it is pretty remarkable that someone who believes the Israelis want him to die is willing to open his home to Jewish Americans. Though one Encounter participant heard from her host family, “I don’t hate Jews, I hate Israelis.” It seemed to me though that most of the host families, who host Encounter students several times a year, do it because they have a desire to tell their stories, because they think meeting us is a step toward peace, and because they believe in encountering people who have access to institutions that can implement change. Having met with them, perhaps our responsibility to work toward change is made more concrete.

Our next presentation was of a political nature. We heard from Hamed Qawasmeh from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Before I begin relating the information we heard from him, I would like to note that his was the presentation with which most participants felt most uncomfortable, and the views I am about to relate do not represent my own views on the situation. His presentation focused on the situation in the West Bank. In 2007, the Palestinian Territories had a poverty rate of 57.2% (45% in the West Bank and 79.4% in Gaza) In 2001 the rate was 35.5%. In 2008 22.6% of people in the Palestinian Territories were unemployed (19% in the West Bank and 29.8% in Gaza. The West Bank has a population of 2,444,500, while the 149 Israeli settlers bring the Israeli population of the West Bank to 450,000. The West Bank is 5,600 square kilometers. (for more statistics you can go here, here, or here or from a Palestinian perspective look here)

There are many impediments to movement for residents of the West Bank. They include checkpoints, trenches dug into road (especially around Jericho), road gates and road blocks, earth mounds (sand and rocks in the road, mostly near Hebron), and road barriers. Today there are 630 total closures, in 2005 there were 376. There has been a 59% increase in closures since the Access Monitoring Agreement was signed, and a massive increase in settlement since the Annapolis Conference . With regard to the barrier, Hamed believes that Palestinians oppose the route of the barrier more than the barrier itself. About 35,000 Palestinians will be caught on the “wrong side” of the barrier – the barrier goes into the West Bank to capture Israeli settlements on the Israeli side of the barrier and in so leaves many West Bank residents on the Israel side of the barrier. Hamed projects that soon a series of tunnels will separate Palestinian movement from Israeli movement, further entrenching and institutionalizing the limited movement of Palestinians. He believes that the fragmentation for the West Bank due to closures, nature reserves, settlements, Israeli military areas, and the separation barrier are decreasing the tenability of a viable two state solution. All of these measures are becoming institutionalized and as time goes by and things continue to change toward more settlement and restrictions, Hamed believes that these measures are getting close to being irreversible. Nevertheless, there is a sense that pulling out settlements could cause the same security problems that it did a few years ago with Gaza.

One point Hamed emphasized was that any two-state solution would have to give the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians. It is the bread basket of the West Bank and a central part of a viable Palestinian state, but much of it is currently a military closed area.

According to the UN, all settlements are illegal, as they constitute the transfer of a population by an occupier into an occupied land, which is illegal according to the Genevas convention – what’s debatable here is the status of “occupation” and whether it applies in this case. Hamed made it very clear that the UN does not seek to be a neutral force in this issue. They consider Israel to be an occupier during an occupation that is becoming increasingly permanent, and the UN is here to protect the rights of the occupied. Hamed cited UN Resolutions 338, 242, and 194 to support this statement.

Hamed’s presentation involved a lot of maps layering different statistics with regard to barriers to movement and to population and settlements. You can get a taste of it here.

After we heard this presentation, we took a bus to the Tent of Nations, an organization that hopes to be a meeting ground for people of different backgrounds and perspectives. It is located in Area C, near the Palestinian Village of Nahaleen and surrounded by three Israeli settlements. Daher Nassar purchased the land in 1924 and he planted, cultivated and produced olives, grapes, and figs. His family lived in caves. Daher had ten children. 30 years ago Daher passed away and the family continued living here and opened the place for anyone to come, meet, and be in nature. In 1991 the land was under the threat of confiscation and even now it is being considered by the Supreme Court. They have documents from the Ottoman, English, and Jordanian periods illustrating their ownership of the land. They have experienced some difficulties from road blocks which make it hard to transport goods, and they also don’t have permits to allow them to have electricity or running water – instead they collect rainwater in cisterns and have electricity for two hours a day from a generator. They don’t have permits for new buildings, and if they do not cultivate the land it will become state property. Ten years ago they established the Tent of Nations to build bridges between people. International and local visitors come to the Tent of Nations and they include long term and short term volunteers, groups of students who stay on camp grounds, summer camps for Muslims and Christians, and local and international exchange programs. There is a women’s program that serves the Nahaleen community – women can come for free education. Nahaleen is very conservative and women are taken out of school at a young age, so the Tent of Nations opened the center for women to take English, computers, and health education as well as to socialize and to make and sell handicrafts. The family that owns the Tent of Nations is Christian and their relationship to women is more western/liberal than that of the residents of Nahaleen. The women’s program began four years ago and in the beginning men in Nahaleen were very opposed to this but after a year the community began to support it and now even the men are calling to register their wives to come to classes – which is bittersweet because the program has more support from the community but the men aren’t allowing women to take the initiative to choose to come to the classes or not on their own will. As we were taking a tour of the Tent of Nations, we were told that a long time ago settlers from the Israeli settlement of Newe Daniel came to the Tent of Nations and uprooted trees and destroyed water cisterns. A British Jewish organization sent volunteers to replant the trees. More recently, the Tent of Nations has had good relations with Newe Daniel and have developed a friendship with a couple who lives there and hope that the couple will be their advocates in Newe Daniel. In addition to the peace work that happens at the Tent of Nations it is also an organic self-sufficient, environmentally conscious working farm that gets revenue from selling is agricultural products. After the separation barrier is complete the Tent of Nations will be cut off from Bethlehem (which is 10 minutes away) and it would take more than three hours to get there. This will make it hard to bring goods, machines, etc. and to find markets for the produce of the farm. They are trying to find international markets for their products, and next year some friends in Germany are donating windmills and solar panels to help the farm with more electricity. In the meantime, the settlements that surround the farm are growing and seem to be aimed at connecting together and perhaps eventually taking over the land where the Tent of Nations is now located.

After lunch at the Tent of Nations, we went home to Jerusalem via check point 300, the check point specifically designated for Palestinians. Palestinians may not drive their own vehicles through the checkpoint, so they take taxis to the check point, walk through, and take taxis on the other side. The check point feels like a international border crossing – it is a large structure with metal fixtures outlining where we should stand in line, put our bags through x-rays, etc. We came at a time when it wasn’t very busy but we’ve heard that there can be tremendously long lines to get through. As we were going through security the soldiers gave us a hard time, telling us that we shouldn’t have gone to Bethlehem because it is dangerous.

We returned to Jerusalem and debriefed a little – we also had a Sunday night closing session in which we took some time to process what we’d seen and heard and talked about possible next steps. What’s striking to me about all of this is that it is really around the corner from where I live – it took almost no time to get back from the check point to Independence Park in Jerusalem. There’s a lot I don’t know about all of this and I definitely need to learn more (and will accept book recommendations!), and I recognize that what we saw was only a very small part of all that there is to see, but I am very glad to have gone on the trip.

Pictures to follow

Yom Ha'Atzmaut

2009-04-29T21:43:00.004+03:00

We have just finished commemorating what many consider the high holidays of the secular Israeli calendar - Yom HaShoah is the remembrance day for victims of the Holocaust, Yom HaZikaron is the remembrance day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror, and the day after Yom HaZikaron, Israelis celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, Independance Day.
Our commemoration of Yom HaZikaron/Yom HaAtzmaut began the day before the holidays, when we attended a dress rehearsal for the national event to commemorate the ending of Yom Hazikaron and the beginning of Yom HaAtzmaut. It was a huge affair - we arrived at Mt. Herzl hours in advance to take our seats amidst an excited crowd. Much of the ceremony consisted of soldiers marching impressively carrying various flags, as well as a long torch-lighting ceremony in which people from different sectors of Israeli society lit torches to represent the 12 tribes of Israel, and a host of dancers. We took many pictures and have posted them online - please take a look! (Incidentally, the other photos in the album are from a game-show themed event that Daniel planned for HUC)
I spent the morning of Yom HaZikaron with the preschool, and aside from the kids standing still when a siren sounded through the city to signal a moment of silence, the atmosphere was celebratory in preparation for Independance Day - the kids left the preschool early so they could nap well in order to stay up to see the fireworks. My favorite conversation of the morning linked the celebration of Israel's independance with a discussion of how independant the preschoolers are becoming - some can even go to the bathroom by themselves!
We spent the afternoon at an orientation for the Encounter program we're attending tomorrow and Friday - you'll for sure be reading about this in a few days, but suffice it to say, for now, that we will be participating in a program in which we will have an opportunity to hear Palestinian perspectives on Israeli politics and on peace.
In the evening, beginning around 9pm, we heard the fireworks and scuttled out of our apartment. Walking toward the noise and music, we ran into a woman that we know from the Israeli Reform congregation we frequent, and we spoke to her about Independance Day and how it was different in her childhood, when Jerusalem was a small town and you could see the fireworks from anywhere. She was very eager to tell us about different options for the evening, from singing Israeli songs in a small group to dancing in the streets with a hipper crowd.
As we approached the corner of King George and Ben Yehuda we stumbled upon streets blocked off and filled bustling throngs of celebrants, music blasting, kids blowing horns and squirting silly string, vendors selling candied apples, ice cream, and corn on the cob. The festival atmosphere stretched on for whole city blocks, and we wandered around, snapping pictures, eating dessert, and watching fireworks. Eventually we met up with some HUC friends and made our way to the town hall, where we watched and tried to participate in a massive Israeli dancing event - you'll definately want to check out the video we posted on our photo webpage - it was quite a thing.
Today we went to the park for a picnic, having been told that a barbecue in the park is the Independance Day thing to do. While waiting for our friends to arrive, we watched military planes fly overhead, displaying their prowess. People here pack elaborate picnics, kind of like tailgating parties in the US, and it was fun to fit in. We had our own feast, as Paola (my Italian friend from Hebrew U) baked a pie that was to die for! We had a lovely afternoon under the very hot sun.
I don't have anything profound to say about the experience, I just wanted to give you a taste of what we've been doing over the past few busy days. Happy Independance Day!

It's Coming Up on Independance Day

2009-04-23T11:14:00.003+03:00

I don't have a lot of time because I have to run to class, but before I forget to write about it I wanted to share some moments from a preschool celebration for Independance Day. It began with coloring in blue and white, with stickers and stars (and, like always, I ended up drawing mermaids for Nadav, who is "The Little Mermaid" obsessed). During the circle time, the teacher had six students form a circle in the center of the room. She gave three of them white crepe paper and three blue crepe paper, and had them hand each other the crepe paper to form a Magen David, which they placed in the center of the room. Then, the teacher played a song for the kids which works kind of like BINGO. The lyrics are "My land of Israel is beautiful and blossoming. Who built it and who planted it? All of us together. I built a house, and I planted a tree, and I layed a road, and I built a bridge, and I wrote a song for the land of Israel" adding one thing at a time. While we sang the song, we placed toy houses, roads, trees, bridges, and books around the rim of the star. It was all very festive, and presented the holidy of Yom HaAtzmaut as one of great pride and achievement.
By way of contrast, (and again this has to be brief because I'm off to class in a minute) yesterday I asked a friend if she wanted to go to a picnic for Yom HaAtzmaut. She said she had to think about it - she studies Arabic and Hebrew, has many Palestinian friends, and is generally left wing in politics. She told me that she feels caught between two cultures with regard to how to spend the 'holiday.' She said that many people she knows will spend it mourning, but she does not want to do that, however she doesn't exactly want to celebrate either. She says it is the holiday to celebrate the beginning of the State of Israel, which is something to celebrate, but this event resulted in many casualties, Palestinian refugees being displaced out of Israel, continued disparities in distribution of wealth and resources, etc. Somehow, it had not occured to me that I shouldn't put aside my ambivalence about Israeli policies and history in order to celebrate a festive day - As in America, where I'm willing to see fireworks and be proud of the USA on July 4 though American independance was founded on ideas such as slavery and taking away land and livelihood from native peoples. Surely there's enough to be proud of in Israel that I can celebrate it for one day without concentrating on its (large) flaws. Or maybe it's just because I'm lazy and like to celebrate that I feel this way. I'd love to hear your thoughts about national/nationalistic holidays and the value of celebrating them - does celebrating your country (or another) somehoe invalidate or weaken your critique of it?

I found an interesting article (and another) from a few years ago that is relevant to this question, I think. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And now I'd better go as I'm going to be late for Hebrew!

The FSU Pesach Project in brief.

2009-04-22T09:03:00.004+03:00

.פרוייקט פסח ב-ברה''ם לעבר, בקיצור

This year, Jessica and I spent much of Passover in Russia on HUC's FSU Pesach Project. We had an amazing time and learned a tremendous amount. Below is a summary of our trip that catches the essence of the experience. If you'd like more detail about any part of the trip, you can definitely find it in Jessica's more extensive account of our trip. Also, don't forget to check out our pictures!

*

Every year, HUC sends a delegations of students to countries in the Former Soviet Union to help facilitate progressive Jewish communities’ Passover celebrations and to learn about Jewish life in the FSU. This year, my girlfriend Jessica and I—with the support of almost 70 contributors—were blessed with the opportunity to travel to Russia to participate in this unforgettable program. For six very full days we visited sites and communities in Moscow and Lipetsk, and the experience we gained in that short week will stay with us for many Passovers to come.

We arrived in Russia on Tuesday and met our amazing translator, Emma, without whom we most certainly would have been hopelessly lost during the course of the trip. We struggled through the traffic of Moscow (home to 15 million people), checked into our hotel, visited the community center for progressive Judaism in Moscow, taught a short lesson on new rituals in the Passover seder, ate dinner with one of the two regional progressive rabbis based in Moscow, and walked down historic Old Arbat Street (where I tasted some absolutely luxurious hot chocolate) … and this first day was a simple one!

We spent the first part of Wednesday at the Machon, which is based in the Jewish cultural center we had visited the day before. The Machon is a Jewish education program that students attend half-time for one or two years in order to be trained as para-rabbinic Jewish leaders in their communities. The students we met were between the ages of 18 and 30, and a number of them came from fine arts backgrounds. After joining them and the community’s cantor for Shacharit services, Jessica and I facilitated an in-depth text study of Ha Lachma Anya, a text found toward the beginning of the Passover Hagaddah. Aside from our brief half-hour lesson the day before, this was our first significant experience communicating with a group of people via translator, and we found the process both difficult and rewarding. Of course, we weren’t able to communicate all of our thoughts as clearly as we would have liked, but on the other hand, we were forced to boil our points down to the most important principles.

At the end of the text study, the students had time to ask us any questions that were on their mind. We were fascinated to be asked questions like, “How do American Jews relate to the Holocaust?” and “Is there anti-Semitism in the United States?” We learned almost as much about Russian perspectives on American Judaism as they learned about us.

After peeling some quail eggs with community members in the upstairs kitchen, Jessica, Emma, and I headed to our first seder with the Jewish English-speaking Ex-Pats (JEEPS). Hosted in a posh apartment in central Moscow, guests at this seder included a collection of businessmen, academics, and Israeli government officials drawn together by a savvy and well-connected hostess. Since many of the guests were stuck in traffic, Jessica and I conversed with these guests for a while on topics such as Russian Jewry, Yiddish literature, and our professional goals. The seder was led by the head of Oxford University’s Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Jessica and I contributed only slightly. The main value of our presence was to help forge a connection between the indigenous Moscow liberal community and JEEPS, who could serve as a significant resource for the struggling organization.

We had to leave the seder early to catch our train to Lipetsk, a city described to us as “just outside Moscow.” We boarded the train, stored our luggage, and settled in to sleep on our ten-hour train ride. The train cabin was tiny, but the ride was pleasant. When we arrived in Lipetsk, we were greeted by four smiling and enthusiastic members of Chesed Yonah, the fifteen-year-old progressive Jewish community in this city of 500,000.

As we drove down Lenin Road (passing Soviet Road and Revolution Road), we were informed that, while there was an effort to restore streets in Moscow back to their pre-Soviet Union names, no such initiative was being undertaken here. After checking into our hotel, showering, and eating breakfast, two English speaking young women joined us for a tour of Lipetsk. We walked down wide streets, past ornate and Spartan buildings, and stopped at not a few monuments. Peter the Great founded the city in 1703, and an enormous statue of him sits near a central park where old men often gather to play Chess. An iron factory dominates the local economy, which, as in many places, is currently depressed.

We visited the new Chabad synagogue, the Lipetsk Historical Museum, and sat down to our first kosher-for-Passover lunch (which, more often than not, was a simple salad). After some final seder preparations, we took a taxi to The Cave, a restaurant that members of Chesed Yonah rent four times a year for their major Jewish celebrations. When we got to the restaurant and saw the DJ setting up his equipment, we knew this wouldn’t be an ordinary seder.

The community members that we met were extremely welcoming and friendly. They were excited to see us, and the youth group was particularly eager to spend time with us. As guests arrived, we were discussing with Emma whether we should assume that people will go ahead and eat during the “seder” portion of the night or whether we should start our presentation by telling them that it’s okay to eat rather than have to wait the entire time for the dinner. However, when Olga, the head of the community introduced us, she enforced under no uncertain terms that no one was to take an unauthorized bite until the proper time arrived. Emma also seemed to be of this opinion, and Jessica and I concluded that this must be a local (if not Russian) standard of politeness (similar to America).

The seder was very well-received, and Emma’s translation enabled us to connect with the Russian-speaking crowd. We tried to shake things up in the interest of keeping people engaged: We washed our hands without water, we encouraged each table to ask a fifth question of what had changed in their lives since last year, and we acted out the Exodus story. This last part was very fun, as almost every one of the forty or so guests participated enthusiastically. After the meal (for which a sampling of delicious vegetarian dishes had been prepared specially for Jessica and me), we didn’t proceed with the rest of the seder despite multiple indications from the community that a full seder would be expected. The local custom seems to expect all of the “seder” to take place before the meal – the period after the meal is reserved for music and dancing! So, for the first time in our lives, Jessica and I partied on Passover as if we were at a Bat Mitzvah or wedding reception. We had tremendous fun dancing with our English-speaking guides, with youth group members, and with newly-introduced adults of the community. This was a tremendous opportunity to really fit in to the community across the language barrier and was certainly one of the highlights of the trip for us.

The following day, Friday, was also an amazing opportunity to engage with and learn about the Lipetsk Jewish community. Jessica and I spent the morning planning out a Kabbalat Shabbat service, and in the afternoon, the leader of the youth group, Matvei, met us for another tour of Lipetsk. Matvei, a chef who does computer work in his spare time, took us to one of his favorite restaurants where Jessica and I ordered off the “fast menu,” intended for Russian Orthodox Christians observing the Lenten vegetarian fast prior to Easter. (We were interested to learn that the Russian words for “Easter” and “Passover” are the same; thus, to be clear, Jews speak of their holiday as the “Jewish Easter.”)

Matvei talked with us at length about the Lipetsk Jewish community and about his personal views and beliefs. We learned that many of the Lipetsk Jews are very ignorant about Jewish history and religion. As Jewish communal practice was forbidden under Soviet rule, no customs or traditions have been maintained over the years, so Jewish life is only struggling to re-awaken after a decades-long period of slumber.

Despite being located in a small city in Russia, Matvei (as is common among Russian Jews) feels very connected to Jews around the world as many Jews leave Russia for other places. Friends and family stay in touch, so despite the incredibly long distances, Jewish relationships are maintained worldwide. Matvei himself has no plans to leave Lipetsk; he is rare in his commitment to Jewish education in his home town. Matvei represents a small but proud group of Jews in Lipetsk who are invested in progressive Jewish community.

Matvei told us that the Chabad synagogue was established within the last five years and, as is common throughout Russian and other FSU communities, is attempting to secure its role as the center of Jewish life. Although Chesed Yonah is ten years older than the Chabad congregation, the Chabad rabbi is recognized by the government as the leader of the Jewish community, and the significant financial resources of Chabad pose a major threat to the downsizing progressive community. This trend is particularly troublesome as this particular rabbi is strongly opposed intermarriage despite an 80% intermarriage rate in Lipetsk and has offended numerous Jews in the area with his harsh, alienating language.

We were to learn later that relations are extremely strained in Lipetsk and Moscow (though not in every FSU community) between the liberal and Chabad communities. Active liberal Jews in Moscow and Lipetsk resent Chabad’s use of money to attract participants and are especially proud of their pluralistic and progressive values in the face of Chabad’s exclusiveness. Olga, the head of Chesed Yonah, struggles to keep peace in what could become a fractured community despite her own disappointment in Chabad, and Matvei co-programs with the Chabad synagogue’s youth without knowing or caring whether their rabbi approves of their work.

The most impressive of these programs is a recent encounter between Jewish, Armenian, and Azerbaijani youth in Lipetsk. These ethnic minorities share many common experiences in Lipetsk, and the encounter program won a government sponsorship for its creativity and effectiveness. More inter-communal programming is underway, and the Jewish youth are excited to meet and exchange stories with other non-Russians.

After our lunch, Matvei took us to the small Chesed Yonah office, where we met with five members of the youth group. These particularly active members were chosen to represent the youth group, and their stories were amazing. Three of them had found out only in the past few years that they were Jewish – many parents feel it’s best for their children not to inform them of their heritage. Even Olga, easily in her forties or fifties, had only learned that she was Jewish fifteen years ago and decided to start the Jewish community so that other Jews could meet one another. Only one 17-year-old had been actively involved in Judaism since her childhood, and she told us that she didn’t even know if she was “really” Jewish (re-emphasizing to Jessica and me the strongly ethnic definition of Jewishness in Russia).

The members of the youth group appreciate meeting people like them and building a community with them. As many youth leave Lipetsk because of the hard economy, a number of these teenagers plan to move to Israel, and all of them want at least to visit. Their primary community activity is learning Hebrew from Olga (who studied for a year at Hebrew University) so that they can have some basic communication skills in Israel, and even the adults often take Hebrew lessons to affirm their Jewish identity. Although the community is small, the members love to see one another, and they were extremely welcoming to Jessica, Emma, and me.

After our Kabbalat Shabbat service, which consisted only of prayers transliterated into Russian and a brief d’var Torah which Emma translated for me, we joined about twenty adult members of the community for Shabbat dinner. We talked about our Shabbat observance and theirs, the tense relationship with Chabad, Yiddish, and music. We sang some songs, including one written by Olga, and I was asked a couple rabbinical questions. I was taken off guard when a woman told me that her grandfather was killed in the Holocaust—she doesn’t know when—and wanted to know when she should commemorate his Yarzeit. Should she pick a date or say Kaddish every week? I told her that she could do either but that formally remembering his death every week might be too painful. I also told her she could commemorate his death on Yom Hashoah. I learned when I returned to Israel that there’s a traditional day in the Jewish calendar for just this occasion, but I don’t know how meaningful following that tradition would have been for this woman, anyway. I was also asked about preparations for a brit milah ceremony, about which I know nothing, and I tried to answer to the best of my knowledge. Now I understand what Dean Marmur told us about rabbis sometimes having to seem that they know more than they actually do!

We had to leave Shabbat dinner in order to catch another overnight train back to Moscow, and I was sad to go. The community told Jessica and me that our visit was very special to them and that we had made an impact on their Jewish identities. Olga informed us that next time we visit, we won’t be guests – we’ll be family. And I think she meant it. I’ve never felt so warmly embraced by a community, and it was honestly difficult for me to leave them. They were an extraordinary group of people in circumstances so alien to my own experience, and I’m blessed to have met them.

Back in Moscow, we attended the Jewish community center’s Shabbat morning service (which we were excited to be able to navigate and participate in without a translator) and hung out in the center for a couple hours. We conversed with some members of their youth movement, ate matzah with chocolate spread, and eventually went to the State Historical Museum in Red Square. Although we couldn’t read any of the information at the museum, we were amazed (continually) by how much Emma, an 18-year-old with a passion for history, was able to tell us.

On Saturday evening, we met the Moscow youth movement at a coffee shop and chatted with them. We had a lot of fun, though we also had moments of cultural exchange about how Jewish life in Moscow differed from life in the States. Again, relations with Chabad came up, as did the strong connection that many Russian Jewish youth feel with their national history despite the hardships faced by Jews under Soviet rule. We joined the youth movement for its monthly Havdalah program, in which they visit a site significant to Moscow Jewish history and have Havdalah nearby. We visited the former headquarters of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, which raised money to fight against Nazi Germany and received official government support. In 1948, the Soviet government shut down the organization and within a few years had executed most of its leadership.

After hearing this sobering story, we walked across the street to a park with a huge statue of Friedrich Engels and celebrated Havdalah there. Jessica and I learned a new custom of dipping your little fingers into the wine and touching them to your temples, lips, and heart for wisdom, bright speech, and love. We spent the evening at the apartment of one of Emma’s friends and returned to our hotel.

Sunday, our last full day in Moscow, was a busy day of touring. We went shopping in an outdoor market full of traditional Russian products and souvenirs, and there we met up with the other HUC pair that had returned from Siberia to spend their last free day with us in the capital. We traveled to one of the two Chabad synagogues in Moscow and received an impromptu tour in Hebrew by an Israeli Chabadnik, who in Russian told our translators that Chabad would pay them to bring their friends to the synagogue. (Our translators were naturally very upset by this affront.) We saw the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, ate lunch, and toured around the Kremlin for several hours. Far, far too quickly the day came to an end, and we enjoyed one final dinner in Russia before returning to our hotel. Early Monday morning, we were accompanied to the airport by one of our translators and made our way back to Israel for the last two days of Passover.

Jessica and I found our time spent in Russia to be extremely meaningful. We were welcomed into foreign Jewish communities because of our Jewish heritage and our commitment to its enriched future. We observed a Russian Passover, celebrated a Russian Shabbat, explored Russian Jewish history, and glimpsed its future. And, of course, we learned a tremendous amount of Russian history and culture and made a great new friend of our translator Emma. In the end, we believe that we probably gained more from our experience than we were able to teach, and we feel lucky to have had this unique opportunity.

We intend to stay connected to some of the people we met in Russia, and we hope that our careers as Jewish professionals give us more occasions to engage with FSU Jewish communities. Certainly, our future seders will remind us of the times we spent in Russia as the story of the Festival of our Freedom is enacted ba-yamim ha-hem, ba-z’man ha-zeh – in those days and in our own time.

Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel.

2009-04-21T18:55:00.006+03:00

.יום הזכרון לשואה ולגבורה בארץ

Last night and today were Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day). In Israel, this day is called "Memorial Day for Holocaust and Heroism" or Yom Hazikaron l'Shoah ul'gvurah. The commemoration day was inaugurated in 1951 in Israel, and it took decades for widespread Diaspora communities to regularly honor the day. Originally (and until about 20 years ago), this day focused much more on the "Heroism" than the "Holocaust" in Israel. The Jewish resistance fighters (partisans) were the center of attention, and for decades, they were featured prominently in Yom Hashoah ceremonies. Only in recent years (as partisan fighters have died and Israeli society has changed) have Israelis come to associate more with the victims of the Holocaust. Over the last 24 hours, the Yom Hashoah Jessica and I have experienced have been focused on the victims of Nazi aggression and the role that Israel has to play in the story.

Every year, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, puts on a ceremony for Yom Hashoah that is televised throughout the country (and almost universally watched among Jewish families). HUC was fortunate to receive tickets, so Jessica and I were able to attend the event in person.

We arrived two hours early, expecting large crowds and wanting good seats. We were very impressed with the ease with which we made it through the numerous security checks and to our seats. One of my classmates remarked today how meaningful it was that, for once, Israelis weren't being pushy. People seemed more patient last night, more sensitive.

The ceremony itself was very interesting, especially as this was an avowedly secular, state-sponsored commemoration. The army featured prominently, placed sequentially beside two statues in the Warsaw Ghetto Courtyard of Yad Vashem, thus effectively displaying a progression of "Jews on the Marching to their Deaths" to "Partisan Fighters" to "Soldiers of Israel Defending the People of Israel." Throughout the ceremony, this was the message: The Holocaust was a planned tragedy, and Israel was the closest thing to a "happy ending" that the Jews could hope for. Moreover, there are still people today who would plan a Holocaust against the Jews, and the State of Israel is the only thing that can prevent that.

This was the message that struck me the most. Both Israel's President (Shimon Peres) and its Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) included a healthy dose of politics in their speeches. Each of them condemned the World Conference against Racism, which is being boycotted by 10 nations (the US, Israel, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, and New Zealand) because of its heavy anti-Zionist message. They also cited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran as a critical threat against the Jewish people and called on the world to discredit him. (The same night, Ahmadinejad gave a speech at this conference so anti-Israel and anti-Jewish that at least 30 nations' representatives walked out.) Of course, they spoke about the tragedy of the Holocaust with force, condemning "Nazi Germans and their helpers" for the crimes they committed against the Jewish people. But the message rang loud and clear: the State of Israel is the only entity that exists to protect Jews against the possibility of another Holocaust.

In addition to these speeches, the former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, Meir Lau, gave a moving account of his own experience during the Holocaust, and a letter written by a child killed during the war was recited by an FSU-born Israeli actress. The singer Achinoam Nini (known outside of Israel as Noa) performed several pieces, as did an Israeli girls' choir (all of whom sang beautifully). The chief cantor of the Army sang a version of El Malei Rachamim (traditionally a prayer of comfort but used here as a dirge of mourning), the current Chief Sephardi Rabbi read a Psalm, and the current Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi led the Mourner's Kaddish.

The most powerful part of the ceremony for me (perhaps because it is most similar to what I'm used to) was the lighting of the six torches. Each torch was lit by a survivor (or two, in the case of the pair of twins) whose story was narrated and displayed via video. Many of the stories were of children separated from parents, forced to live in a ghetto or concentration camp, or of children who managed to escape the worst by virtue of Righteous Gentiles or partisan fighters. Each of the six stories was very Zionist, describing an early and ardent commitment to the Land of Israel that was able to be fulfilled. Although the Zionist component stood out, the rest of the story narration was similar to other Yom Hashoah events I've attended.

I'm not surprised that this event was so Zionist. After all, we were in Israel! Perhaps what was most interesting, then, was the negotiation between religious and secular. Of the 80 minute ceremony, probably 15 or 20 minutes was "religious." During those times (as at others), the soldiers stood at attention - and just before the Kaddish was recited, a large number of men in the crowd (including myself) produced and put on a kippah. Of course, only Orthodoxy was represented, but the Kaddish was led with men and women sitting next to each other, and there wasn't a stir when Noa and the choir sang. (Generally, ultra-Orthodox people consider it against Jewish law for men to hear women sing.) There weren't very many ultra-Orthodox people in the crowd, but the Chief Rabbis were both present and "well-behaved." The State respected them and vice versa.

However, the political speeches were definitely a new component for me. I knew to expect them, so I wasn't caught off guard, but before this year, I would never expect Yom Hashoah to be so political. A couple years ago at UVA, the Darfur Week of Conscience ended on Yom Hashoah, and Hillel worked with STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) to plan a week of programming together. Yom Hashoah itself, though, was (as I recall) reserved for commemoration of the Holocaust. The political message was implicit but not mentioned during Yom Hashoah itself. This event at Yad Vashem was different.

I'm not criticizing, though. This is how they do it publicly in Israel. Anyway, I'm not sure I'd get much out of an official religious ceremony because it would by definition have to be Orthodox. What we experienced last night was engaging, interesting, and very moving for a lot of students. I myself was in a fairly analytical state of mind, so I wasn't emotionally taken by the ceremony, but I understand that it was very powerful.

This morning, HUC sponsored its own Yom Hashoah commemorations, which were fairly different from Yad Vashem's. Our service this morning included what one would expect in a morning service, though we sang less than usual and included readings about the Holocaust. After a half-hour break, we were encouraged to stand in front of HUC for the 10:00 siren, which I'd heard about before coming to Israel.

On Yom Hashoah, at 10:00 in the morning, sirens sound throughout the country with the tacit understanding that people will stop what they are doing for two minutes. In my imagination, the country stopped entirely for this time period, but of course, the reality never lives up to the ideal. At 10:00, as expected, the sirens went off, and the cars stopped in the streets and their drivers got out. One driver honked his horn, though after about 30 seconds, he too decided to stand in the street and pay his respects. Three construction workers across the street were, like us, watching the stopped traffic, though other (presumably Arab) construction workers continued to use their buzz saw inside the building. A driver took advantage of the slowed traffic to pass the stopped cars. For the most part, the area around me became still, but of course, it wasn't as dramatic as I had expected.

Back in the courtyard of HUC was our own Yom Hashoah ceremony. This was more familiar to me with poems, music and song, personal stories, prayers, and a name-reading at the end. There were certainly similarities to the Yad Vashem ceremony (HUC's was designed by Israeli as well as American students), but the Zionist factor was significantly reduced. The ceremony was well planned and powerful, but again, I found myself being too analytical to get carried away. Don't get me wrong - of course I teared up a couple times. But I'm usually much more moved by Yom Hashoah than I was this year.

For the past several years, I've been intimately involved with Hillel's planning of Yom Hashoah's commemoration. I've picked up Holocaust survivors from their hotel, read names of victims at 2:00 in the morning, and helped plan the Week of Conscience mentioned above. Each of these experiences (and more) have been very moving and meaningful to me. But I realize now that very few people (and Jessica is one of them) experienced Yom Hashoah at UVA in this way. Most of the people read names for 15 or 20 minutes and possibly came to an event or the survivor's presentation. This year, I spent about 4 hours directly engaged with Holocaust commemoration (which would usually be considered a lot), but it seemed less powerful to me than before.

One thing I learn from this is that it can be hard to reach someone who didn't participate in the planning of an event. You do what you can do, but the "audience" has to bring itself to the table in order to be affected. I wasn't entirely present, so I didn't get all I could out of Yom Hashoah this year. I will keep this in mind not only for my own commemoration of similar events in the future but also when I'm planning such events.

In conclusion, the past 24 hours have been special, unique, and impactful - but I've learned more about Israel than about the Holocaust. I think that's okay - it is what it is, after all. And yet I find myself wishing for greater eloquence about the depth of the day. Perhaps next year, when I'm not in Jerusalem anymore.

Let me conclude with a poem that I did find moving that was included in HUC's memorial service this morning.

Yizkor by Abba Kovner, translated by Jules Harlow

We shall remember our brothers and sisters,
The city houses and the country houses,
The shtetl streets rushing like rivers
And the lonely inn on the country road --
The aged man and the features of his face,
The mother in her kerchief,
The young girl with her braids,
The child,
The people Israel in thousands of communities
Among all the human families,
The entire assembly of Jews
Brought down to slaughter on the soil of Europe
By the Nazi destroyer,
The man who suddenty screamed
And while screaming died,
The woman, clutching her infant to her breast,
Whose arms gave out,
The infant groping for his mother's nipple
Finding it blue and cold.

The feet,
The feet that sought refuge,
Though flight was no longer possible,
And those who made their hands into a fist,
The fist that gripped the iron,
The iron that became the weapon of vision,
Of despair, and of rebellion,
And those, the pure of heart,
Those whose eyes were opened,
Those who risked their lives,
Though they lacked the power to triumph.
We shall remember the day,
The day in its brightness, the sun that rose
Over the bloody conflagration,
The lofty silent heavens.
We shall remember the mounds of dust
Beneath the gardens in bloom.
The living shall remember their dead
For they are forever before us.
Look! Their eyes dart round and about,
Allowing us no peace, no peace,
Until our lives become worthy of their memory.

Back from Russia

2009-04-16T14:20:00.002+03:00

This past week, Daniel and I participated in the FSU-Pesach Project. We were among 16 HUC students sent throughout Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine to celebrate Passover seders with Jewish communities. Daniel and I traveled to Moscow and Lipetsk in Russia. We attended one Passover seder and led another, taught two classes for a Jewish leadership training institute, led kabbalat Shabbat services and havdalah, met with two youth groups, and still had plenty of time for sight-seeing. We met some incredible people and made connections we hope we’ll continue to foster. The trip was a terrific opportunity to learn what progressive Jewish life looks like outside of the mainstream communities of the US and Israel, and to offer our knowledge and energy to communities that need support and encouragement. Thank you to everyone who supported us in this endeavor.

If you would like to see pictures, click here.

If you would like to read about the trip in greater detail, below I have typed out the journal that I kept while in Russia. You can also see each entry as its own page:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6

Enjoy.

FSU Journal Day 1

2009-04-16T14:13:00.001+03:00

Day 1

Well, after months of fundraising, planning, and worrying that we weren’t prepared enough, here we are in Moscow on the FSU Pesach Project! Ultimately we sent 16 people (8 pairs) to cities across the Ukraine, Russia, and Belorus to celebrate Passover seders with Jewish communities, providing their energy, knowledge, and enthusiasm to these communities that find themselves on the ‘fringes’ of the Jewish world both geographically and in terms of resources.

Today was a whirlwind of activity and I am writing in the hopes that I’ll be able to hang on to the memories long enough to share them with everyone at home. I hope to write here about what we see, do, and learn. I also plan on supplementing the journal when I get back with facts that I may not have had a chance to write down during the trip. If you are reading this journal, please know that in the course of this journal I will be giving you information about history, culture, etc. that I don’t know much about and haven’t spent a lot of time researching in a reliable way. While I’m trying to give you the best information I can, if you want to know more or in a more confirmed way, you should look elsewhere. Also please feel free to correct me if I’ve mis-stated something. I will be making heavy use of unreliable sources such as Wikipedia in order to inform this journal, for which I apologize. My reasons for writing the journal are (a) in order that I will remember the trip and to have a chance to organize my thoughts about the trip (b) to share the trip with friends and family and (c) as a resource in case I need to write about the trip in the future.

We left our Jerusalem apartment at 3:00 Am to take a sheirut to the airport. We were joined by two of Daniel’s classmates, David and Jordan, who would be with us for our first and last days in Moscow but would otherwise spend their trip visiting two cities in the Urals and on the edge of Siberia. We arrived at the airport, checked in, boarded the plane, and were on our way. The plane ride was uncomfortable but it was mercifully short (about five hours) and at 10:50 local time we landed in Moscow. We were met at the arrivals area by three young women holding signs with our names on them. They smilingly introduced themselves to us – Anya, the translator for David and Jordan, Emma, our translator, and Katya, the director of the office of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Moscow.

Emma directed us to a car where we would be driven to our hotel. We and she were both shy as we packed into the car and sat in traffic for several hours. We asked a few questions and she explained a bit about Moscow’s geography and answered some questions about herself, but mostly we were quiet. Emma is 18 years old and a first-year college student in a military school studying translation – English and Spanish, and she hopes eventually also Hebrew. She lives in an apartment in Moscow with her parents and she has two older step-sisters, neither of whom lives in Jerusalem. Emma has lived in Moscow all her life but she loves to travel and has been in many places throughout Europe. Emma is responsible, knowledgeable, and eager to help us and teach us. We couldn’t have asked for a better translator, though she keeps insisting that she doesn’t know very much or apologizing for forgetting English words.

After a long car ride we finally made it to the hotel, driving past suburban areas, parks adjacent to historical landmarks, and beautiful churches with bright blue and gold onion domes that we are told were built only just recently. The hotel is very nice and we look forward to sleeping here.

We went out to lunch in a restaurant called Moo Moo (MY MY in Cyrillic letters) which served Russian cuisine – we had salads, blinches, and Daniel tried Kisiel, a popular desert drink that consists of sweetened juice thickened with cornstarch or potato starch, with dried fruits added to it. Across the street from the restaurant there was a beautiful pink and white building that seemed out of place among the dark, severe brick buildings that surrounded it. I asked Emma about the building and she told us it was once the home of aristocracy but is now an office building. This city is layered so thick with history that each spot was once something to someone, long ago.

We were scheduled to give a lecture to the students at the Machon program next. Machon is a para-rabbinic Jewish leadership training program that draws students from throughout the Former Soviet Union. Many students who finish the program either make aliyah, go to rabbinical school, or work formally or informally for and in Jewish communities in the FSU. We didn’t have much time to teach because we were running behind schedule as a result of the traffic jam, but we did our best with the time we had. In the small classroom we sat at the head of the table and spoke to the class of two women and about seven men of ages ranging from high school graduates to young professionals. Our lesson was on the creation of new rituals (largely drawn from what we’ve learned from reading Inventing Jewish Rituals by Vanessa Ochs). After each sentence, Leonid Bimbat, the rabbi who teaches at the Machon program, translated for us. After a brief introduction defining new rituals and discussing how they are developed and why they might be useful, we introduced the ritual for Miram’s cup. The class told us that their teacher had mentioned the ritual but had not explained it, so we talked a bit about Miriam’s well, about the reasoning behind the tradition, and about how it fits into the rest of the seder. Then we had students paint glasses that they could use for the ritual. Some students seemed excited to paint and some a bit skeptical, but we figured that since we would be lecturing for them the next day too and they’d just been at an HUC lecture by David and Jordan we would do something a little easier and more fun for the short time we had. While they were painting the glasses we had a short discussion with the students about the efficacy of new rituals – can they be as important as old ones? More important? When do we need a new ritual and who can create it? The students seemed to take to the idea of new rituals naturally, saying that all rituals were new once. I wonder if their lack of resistance to newness is connected to the fact that for many all of Jewish tradition is new to them as they did not grow up in observant households. I don’t know. In any case, given the time that we had with a tired audience of students at the end of their school day, I was proud of our performance. We’ll go back tomorrow for more.

David, Jordan, Leonid, Anya, Emma, Daniel and I then went through the Moscow subway in order to get to the restaurant where we would have dinner to ‘say goodbye to chametz.’ We walked through a network of underground shops selling baked goods, flowers, DVD’s, clothes, and women’s underwear until we reached the train station. Let me just say that the Moscow Metro is amazing. It is the world’s second most heavily used rapid-transit system and the trains are always packed though they arrive roughly every two minutes. I has 12 lines and 177 stations, and on a normal workday it carries over 7 million passengers. It is state-owned and was built almost entirely undergroung except for the lines that cross the Moskva river or the Yauza River by bridge. The first stage of the metro was opened in 1935, but work on new lines continued through World War II and the spaciousness of the metro is due in part because it also functioned as a bomb shelter during the war. The Council of Minsters moved its offices to the metro, and Stalin made public smeeches there on seval occasions. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line is very deep and was built during the Cold war as shelter in the event of a nuclear war. The stations are all extravagantly decorated with statues, stained glass, and marble. The metro stations themselves were definitely worth touring and many of the pictures we took were from inside the Moscow Metro. The stops are named after the streets they are near or historical figures such as partisans, scientists, and politicians.

The restaurant where we ate dinner is meant to be decorated as an old train station and the waitresses wore conductor uniforms. The food was quite good – in addition to vegetables and other ordinary foods, I was able to sample small stuffed buns filled with cabbage, potato pancakes, pickles, and Russian raisin-filled pastry. We drank cider – apparently the only cider served in Moscow as cider is not native to Russia and has only recently made its way here as Russians have traveled throughout Europe. Over the course of our discussion we talked about Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions regarding what is permitted to eat on Passover. Leonid said that even though most Jews in Russia are of Ashkenazi origin, they should be able to do whatever they like because Jews in the FSU were not raised in a particular tradition, and they are free to choose whatever they want. I wonder if Jews here really do have this kind of blank slate, or if this is just an excuse to eat rice and beans. This is an interesting question, particularly as David and Jordan told us that their presentation to Machon on ethical kashrut didn’t go over well because the students seemed to imply that people here aren’t in the privileged position to be able to care about the treatment of animals in the production of their food and because progressive Jews shouldn’t care about halacha (including kashrut) anyway. Is claiming that Jews here have no background to draw upon true – they have no family traditions and they don’t want to be guided by halacha – or is going too far? From where do they draw their Jewishness?

After dinner we were to go for a walk but ran into a crisis when an ATM ate Daniel’s bank card as he was trying to extract rubles we panicked a but after deciding upon a plane to retrieve the card tomorrow when the bank reopened we continued on for an evening of tourism in the biting cold of a Moscow evening. It seemed particularly cold as I was wearing a skirt in order to blend in with the style in Moscow – everyone seems to be very fashion conscious, with brightly painted lips, fancy boots, skirts, and jewelry. In order to fit in I brought some of the nicest clothes I own!

Emma led us to Old Arbat Street for a stroll. It is a pedestrian street full of cafes and shops. The first mention of the Arbat was in 1493 as a road leading from the Kremlin to Smolensk. The neighborhood used to be home to elegant churches but later became a prestigious living area where wealthy and famous people could rent their lodgings. The street was almost completely destroyed in the great fire during Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow in 1812 and had to be rebuilt. Alexander Pushkin lodged here for some time, as did Tolstoy. Today the street also has many notable statues in cluding one for the Soviet-era folk singer Bulat Okudzhava – who Emma told us was one of the first singer-songwriters in Russia. During Perestroika, the street was a gathering place for informal youth movements and street musicians. Voktor Tsoi’s wall, which we visited, is on a side street off Arbat. It is a monument to the years of Perestroika and Russian youth still gather there to drink and play songs of Tsoi and other songwriters. We went up to look at the wall and they invited us to join them. The buildings that line the streets are graceful and old, and we strolled leisurely as Emma entertained us with her expansive, encyclopedic knowledge of Moscow. She pointed to buildings and landmarks – a tall building built for Stalin, a statue of Pushkin and his wife. We stopped in a chocolaterie and Daniel had a small thick hot chocolate the consistency of syrup, while Emma talked about the literary figures painted on the alls of the shop. Emma even took us into the first McDonalds in Moscow it opened in 1990 and was at the time the world’s biggest McDonalds – she said lines for McDonalsd used to stretch all the way down the street. McDonalds seems to have adapted to the history-loving, monumentalizing culture of Moscow, and Emma gave us a lesson in Moscow history by walking us through reproductions of historical maps and paintings of Moscow that were hanging on the ways of McDonalds.

Incidentally, Moscow is the largest city in Europe. Historically it was the capital of the former Soviet Union, Russian Empire, Tsardom of Russia and the Grand Duchy of Msocow, and today it is the capital of the Russian Federation. Moscow is also home to the largest number of billionaires in the world and was named the world’s most expensive city for foreign employees in 2006, 2007, and 2008. The first reference to Moscow dates from 1147. In 1156 Prince Yuri Dolgoruki of Rostov ordered the construction of a wooden wall to surround Moscow. It was sacked in 1238 and the Mongols burned the city to the ground. Moscow became the capital of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality in 1327 and it expanded and developed into the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1480 Ivan III broke Russians free of Tatar control, and Moscow became the capital of Russia. Moscow has seen many invasions and uprisings. The plague of 1654-1656 killed half of Moscow’s population. In 1712, after Peter the Great founded St. Petersberg, Moscow ceased being the capital of Russia. During the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Moscow was burned – no one is sure whether the Russians did it to prevent the French from accessing Moscovite resources or if the French did it themselves. Nevertheless, Napolean’s army, plagued by hunger and cold had to retreat and was nearly annihilated by the Russian winter. Folowing the Russian Revolution of 1917 Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union. Moscow is located on the banks of two intersecting rivers, and it is designed as a series of circles around the Kremlin.

Finally at the end of the evening we made our way back to the hotel as Daniel impressed Emma by sounding out the names of subway stations. Emma says she is pleased that we prepared for our visit – but I think we couldn’t possibly have prepared enough and I am so grateful for her guidance and really so impressed with her capable maturity. I am excited to get to know her better over the course of the trip.

FSU Journal Day 2

2009-04-16T14:12:00.000+03:00

Day 2

We woke up in the morning still tired from the previous day’s journey. After dressing and packing our bags we made our way to the sumptuous breakfast buffet. A player piano chimed, fancy china an silverware surrounded dishes of beets and salads, meats and cheeses, and a wide assortment of pastries. Daniel and I helped ourselves to cottage cheese blinches, fruit, and tea. We then met Emma in the lobby of the hotel where she and Sasha, a Muscovite Reform Rabbi, went with us to Machon.
We arrived at Machon in time for Shacharit services. A pleasant-seeming kippa-wearing guitar-playing cantor led services in Hebrew and the students followed along capably, all performing the choreography of the service in unison. It was actually sort of amazing to pray in Hebrew next to people with whom we otherwise can’t converse without a translator. After services and a brief coffee break, Leonid turned the class over to us so that we could lead a discussion.

Our lesson was focused around the passage in the seder “Ha Lachma Anya” which is said directly before the four questions. We read the passage in Hebrew and English, and then we did a close reading, going line by line through the paragraph and considering its meaning. I felt tha the conversation, though slow because of translation, really pushed me to think in new ways about the paragraph. We were surprised at the ardent diaspora-peoplehood men tality of the students. They spoke of the Jewish people as having one heart, and the land of Israel being anywhere where the people of Israel live (they joked that they have their own Western Wall here in Moscow – built next to the synagogue out of stones from Jerusalem). At first they didn’t seem eager to speak but eventually they seemed to warm into the conversation and they ultimately thanked us by telling us that they got a lot out of it.

The students come from varied backgrounds – one is an accountant, two are dancers, one is trained in theater, one in marketing, one in vocal music, etc. They come from Russia and Belarus. After our program was over they had a few minutes to ask some questions about ourselves, American Reform Judaism, etc. They asked very serious and very big questions: “How do American Jews relate to the Holocaust?” “Is there anti-Semitism in America?” “How did you become interested in studying Judaism?” We answered the questions to the best of our ability, but I hope we aren’t the only people they have a chance to ask about these questions, as we are far from authorities. They all seemed interested in my interest in Yiddish and one person asked me if there are native Yiddish spekers in the US and about the history of Yiddish literature. I wish I had time to answer all of these difficult questions but was pleased to have a chance to share some thoughts.

After our lesson we went upstairs for a cup of tea (Russia is apparently the third most tea-drinking country in the world, after England and Japan) and met some people in the workroom who were preparing for the seder. They were peeling quail eggs to use on the seder plates and we offered to help. When one woman asked if she could take a picture of us, we agreed provided that we could take a picture of them. They were very nice, cheerful, and excited to have us there.

When we left Machon it was to take a shared van to a metro to the bank, where we learned that Daniel’s bank card had been destroyed and returned to the Bank of America, because he didn’t tell the b bank that he would be traveling.
We went out for lunch at a Russian restaurant where we ate the last chametz of the week – black bread, pancakes stuffed with mushrooms, and a famous Russian drink called kvas – a fermented mildly alcoholic beverage made from black rye or rye bread. Its origins go back 5,000 years to the beginnings of beer production. Kvass has been a common drink in Eastern Europe since ancient times and is mentioned in the Old Russian Chronicles in 989. At one time it was more usual for peasants and monks to drink kvass than water. Kvass is marketed as a patriotic alternative to coca cola and is undergoing a kind of revival in Russia. In response, Coca-Cola launched its own brand of kvass in May 2008, and Pepsi has also signed an agreement with a Russian kvass manufacturer to act as a distribution agent.

After lunch we went to a museum of a bridge that was found in excavations in the 1970’s. The bridge was built in the 1500’s for a river that no longer exists. We saw tiny coins smaller than a fingernail, pots and pans from the 1500’s and household goods. After the museum we strolled briefly along the Red Square. We hope to go back and see it in greater detail at a later point.

We took the subway to the neighborhood where we would be attending our first seder – the seder for the Jewish English-speaking Ex-patriots group (JEEPS). The seder was located in the beautiful home of Andrea Wine, a historic building with an apartment exquisitely decorated. It was stunning and opulent – paintings on the walls, high ceilings, crystal drinking glasses, a zebra skin rug in the foyer. The guests were also prestigious – Israeli ambassadors to Russia, the owner of an international bakery company, the head of the Jewish Studies Program at Oxford University. The hostess was dressed to the nines in tight-fitting black pants and a chic white top, her hair done up in an elaborate fluffy style, her wrist graced with golden bracelets, her lips painted brightly. We chatted with the guests for a while and then began the seder itself – we were merely guests at this seder, as it was led by the Oxford professor, The seder moved quickly and felt like an American one, but we could not stay for long because we had to catch the train to Lipetsk. We took our leave as politely as possible in the middle of the maggid, and the hosts sent us off with some matzah. On our way to the train we picked up some cheese and chocolate as part of a complete and healthy dinner.

We were surprised by the train car – we barely fit in it with our luggage – two beds on top and two seats below our compartment, which the three of us were to share with one other traveler. We ate our dinner and planed for the Lipetsk seder together. Then, we pulled our sheets onto the beds and nodded off to sleep.

FSU Journal Day 3

2009-04-16T14:08:00.001+03:00

Day 3

The train ride was surprisingly comfortable – four people in a closet-sized chamber, but with the door closed and the lights off, we lay on our shelf-like beds and slept soundly. I awoke in the morning as Emma pulled back the curtains to reveal a tree-lined landscape speckled with snow. As the music – a ten-minute warning before we reached the station – sounded, we put our belongings together, crammed our cheese, chocolate, and matzah into our bags, and left the train.

We were met by a gathering of smiling faces. Olga, an older woman with a fur-lined red coat and a fancy-looking pair of boots greeted us in Hebrew - we later learned that she studied some Hebrew last year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We drove through Lipetsk to our hotel – on the way passing roads like “Soviet Road” “Revolution Road” and “Lenin Road” and a very prominent, large memorial to those who fell in World War II. Emma told us that while Moscow is making an effort to return streets to their pre-Soviet names, many smaller cities are quite content to keep the street names as they were before the fall of the Soviet Union.

When we got to the Lipetsk Hotel, we sat in the lobby and got down to business, asking for details about the seder and what we should expect there. We were told that we would be leading the seder ourselves, that the community would be excited to participate in something fun and unorthodox, and that the community rents out a restaurant for the whole night and really looks forward to the event. The families will be of all ages and we will be sitting at the table for young adults, next to the youth group table.

Along with Olga were two young women who were to give us a tour of Lipetsk in the afternoon. Both are members of the Lipetsk progressive Jewish community, and both speak English – which is probably why Olga asked them to give the tour. Viola is studying to be an elementary school English teacher and she spent last summer working in Wildwood New Jersey, and Katya is a high school senior who hopes to go to Moscow for school next year – she has spent time studying abroad in England and Ireland to improve her English. Olga is very proud of their linguistic accomplishments.

We went up to our room to change, and then met Emma at the hotel’s café for breakfast. We both had salad as it was the only option on the menu that was both vegetarian and kosher for Passover. We’ve notice throughout that Emma and later also that other members of the Lipetsk community don’t keep kosher for Passover and they eat pasta, cake, pakcakes, and vodka – really anything chametz except bread – which does make some kind of sense. While we were at breakfast Emma showed us the banners of Russian sports teams that were hanging on the wall.

After breakfast we met Katya and Viola and they took us on a tour of Lipetsk. We began by walking to a park. On the way, Katya told us that Lipetsk is home to 500,000 people – it is a small and spacious city filled with building, some of which are very ornate and some of which are Spartan-looking. The roads are wide and the cars are mostly old. We saw from a distance the steel factory for which Lipetsk is famous – it is the largest such factory in Russia and was built to supply the military for World War II. Many people in Lipetsk are employed by the factory, but because of the economic crisis many were fired recently.

We walked to the park, where there is a spout of sulphate water from a mineral spring believed to be beneficial for health. It tastes like rotton eggs, and we each took turns sampling it and wincing. The park is pleasant and in warm weather I can understand why it is a popular place to go. In the park there is a building where pensioners play chess and cards and socialize with one another.

After the park we visited a statue of Peter the Great which was erected in 1996 to celebrate 300 years that the navy has been at Lipetsk. Lipetsk is on a the Voronezh River, and Peter the Great, who studied ship building, founded the city as part of his naval efforts. In 1703 he ordered the construction of a cast iron factory in Lipetsk for making artillery shells. Scenes from the founding of Lipetsk surround the statue – Peter the Great entering the town and signing a charter. At the top, Peter the Great strides boldly forward. Emma took the opportunity to tell us a bit about the history of Peter the Great and how he opened a window to the west, reformed the government, and Europeanized the Boyars by making them cut off their beards. She said that he was very great but could also be very cruel – at one potential uprising he killed all participants to demonstrate that he didn’t want any disobedience. He liked European science, culture, and order but he didn’t like emerging European notions of democracy. Peter the Great (1672-1725) ruled Russia from 1682 until his death. He implemented reforms aimed at modernizing Russia, in terms of military and government and also in terms of society – he required that his courtiers, state officials, and military dress according to Western tastes. As a young monarch he traveled around Europe in hopes of creating an anti-Ottoman alliance, and there he learned much about shipbuilding and Western culture. He saught to end arranged marriage and changed the Russian calendar to the Julian Calendar. He declared War on Sweden in order to obtain control over the Baltic Sea and become a naval power in the Great Northern War. He also founded St. Petersberg, and moved the capital to this city with its European atmosphere. When he attacked the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1710, Peter’s campaign was a disaster. Nevertheless Peter’s northern armies captured what is today Latvia and Estonia from the Swedes and occupied Finland. In October 1721 Peter was named Emperor of All Russia, a title that was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs who were afraid that Peter would claim authority over lesser ‘kings’ because of his imperial title. Peter also reformed the Russian Orthodox Church, erecting the Holy Synod, a council of ten clergymen, to take the place of the Patriarch. He implemented a law that no Russian man could join a monastery before the age of 50 because he was concerned that too many men were evading the army by joining monastaries. In 1722 Peter created the Table of Ranks - precedence was determined by merit and service to the Emperor in a strictly measured fashion, and not by birth. The Table of Ranks remained in effect until the Revolution in 1917. He also introduced a decree on compulsory education that dictated that all children of the nobility, of government clerks, and lesser ranked officials must learn basic mathematics and geometry. He abolished land and household tax and introduced head taxes that were applicable not only to property owners but also to serfs and paupers. Peter the Great died of bladder problems that led his bladder to be infected with gangrene. Emma went on to tell us that if you study Russian history you will find that just about every other tsar wanted reform and every other tsar fought against it. In a similar pattern, every other High Secretary of the USSR was bald.

We next went to the synagogue which is run by Chabad. It was built three years ago. We walked around the inside a bit – there are classrooms and pictures of East European Jewish history on the walls. I was impressed at the magen David at the top of the building – the Moscow center just said “cultural center” on the door and outwardly shows no signs of being Jewish.

We took a Lipetsk bus to go to our next destination. Emma told off two boys who said “fuck you” very loudly on the bus. “We have Americans here and you are making a bad impression” is what I think she said to him. Afterward she told me that we were probably the first foreigners these boys had ever met.

Our guides took us to the Lipetsk historical museum. The building looked like a mansion with grand windy staircases and long elegant windows covered with white chiffon curtains. We started by looking at pictures of life in the Russian gulag – prison. Emma carefully explained the pictures to us as we walked through. Our next stop was a room about the early history of the USSR. We looked at political cartoons where capitalist was beating the worker, at newspaper headlines, typewriter, and other artifacts. Emma kept us informed with anecdotes about the history – for instance there was a law about World War II that the Soviet Union must win and that no one may turn back from a fight. This was a very cruel law because if a small number of soldiers encountered a large army they were forbidden to retreat and guards would stand in the back and shoot anyone who fled the fight in panic.

The next room was about World War II. Posters boasting “We will go to Berlin!” were interspersed with reproductions of army tents and pictures of soldiers. In Russia World War II remains a significant part of national identity – 13% of the population perished during the war. We passed a giant World War II memorial on our way from the Lipetsk train station, and we’ve been told by others on similar trips that World War II was omnipresent throughout the FSU.

The next two rooms were art exhibits. The first was of a painter who used broad firm strokes to create his art. Trees in bright yellow formed a cage behind which you could see cities. He also painted a lot of still lives of food and especially fruit – a bowl of strawberries for instance. A portrait of the painter hung on the wall. He looked through a window into the distance while behind him a stern but elegant pile of lines and curves was lit dimly from the sunlight streaming through the window. It looked like limbs, or perhaps just abstract shapes, like metal or water. Emma thought that this abstract piece might represent the painter’s art. The second room was of Russian landscapes. Some snowy and barren, some with hills and trees and wheat. The sky was gray in most pictures but where there were people they seemed quite happy. In one a monk reclines and dips his feet into a river, a look of ecstasy gracing his face as it reaches toward the sky. In another, a little hut covered with snow sits modestly in a barren landscape. As we were leaving a woman who worked in the museum approached Emma and asked her to translate as she asked us which paintings we’d liked and told us which were her favorites. She seemed very peased to have foreign visitors – I guess it isn’t every day that tourists visit the Lipetsk Museum.

We went out to lunch and chatted a bit with our guides. We learned that Viola is originally from the Ukraine. She lives her as does her sister, and one of her cousins lives not far away, but the rest of her family is still in the Ukraine. She doesn’t know if teaching is really her calling, she likes to work with children but she also loves to travel and might be interested in working in the tourist industry. She has been abroad as part of her university, she and a group of students spent the summer at Wildwood studying English and working in housekeeping. Katya has lived in Lipetsk all her life, but her family is from a small town two days away by train. She still has a grandmother there who she sees about once every two years. Katya studied English at school and in an exchange program in Ireland. She won a contest for an English language learning organization and was able to go by herself for two weeks to England to study English there as well. She told us that she has two certificates in English and her English is probably the best of any of the high schoolers in Lipetsk. Next year she hopes to go to Moscow for university and eventually she wants to move abroad and go into business. Both women seemed excited to practice their English skills with us. At the end of lunch Daniel, Emma and I did some last-minute preparation for the seder. We had wanted to do an acting activity but Emma couldn’t find a good text in Russian for it on the internet, so the three of us hurriedly wrote it on our own. Daniel and I told a simplified version of the exodus story broken into scenes, and Emma translated as we told. We printed the translations and quickly changed into our fancy Pesach clothes and took a cab to the restaurant where the seder would be held.

We were greeted enthusiastically by Olga who was dressed to the nines in a glittery dress and bright lipstick. The restaurant is called “The Cave” – it has stone walls and wooden doorways, kind of a mock medieval feel. The community rents it out for Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Channukah, and Purim – the community funds don’t cover it but instead they charge each member for the event, and the members give extra as a fund for those who can’t afford it. It is a big room and was arranged with the tables all around the walls so there was space in the middle. A table was set up in front where we would stand and lead the seder. It all reminded me a bit of a Bat Mitzvah reception, with microphones and a DJ seated behind us.

We went over some last minute details about the seder and presented Olga with some gifts for the community. Olga I the community’s jack-of-all-trades and matriarch. She teaches them Hebrew, leads their services, and brings people together. She said that the community has something like ten different clubs – two Hebrew classes, a youth group, a kabbalat Shabbat group, a women’s group, a group for lovers of Jerusalem, a group for lovers of singer-songwriter music, and classes for children, among others. She says that it is not good for one person to do everything and she tries to divide the responsibilities – she’s designated a youth group coordinator for instance – but that she is basically the community’s leader and expert. She is very proud of her community, which she says is growing. She told us that many members of the community have prominent positions in Lipetsk – one is a lawyer, one runs the Lipetsk hotel, etc, but it seems that many others are factory workers, which is how most people are employed in this city. She told us that the community had won a grant to bring together Azirbijani, Armenian, and Jewish youth. In fact, three different people proudly told us of this program and their hopes of its continued success.

Olga introduced us at the beginning of the seder (in which about 45 people – children, youth, adults, and elderly – attended) and told everyone that the seder is very important and they should be patient though they are hungry and appreciate the ritual. Then, she handed us the microphone, sat down, and it was just me, Daniel, and Emma in front of the crowd. We were nervous at first – Emma told us her knees were knocking – but we started to get the hang of it after a while. We went through the seder, explaining briefly as we went through each piece, singing some pieces and saying others, and sometimes asking congregation members to read sections in Russian translation, and at the maggid we had each table act out a different scene from the story. Everyone participated enthusiastically and this was a definite highlight for us and for the community. We made it to the meal a bit hurriedly as Olga told Emma that we should be quicker because many people had come straight from work and were tired and hungry. Nevertheless we did all of the pieces of the seder before the meal enthusiastically if a bit quickly.

We never finished the after-meal part of the seder as the festivities that followed seemed important to the community’s traditions and we didn’t want to put a damper on the celebrations. First, as we at our salads (they had ordered special vegetarian food for us) Olga talked about the importance of the Jewish community as a place where people help each other and support one another and are intimately connected. She spoke many times throughout the evening about the importance of the community and about how she is so proud of her Jewish community. Then, the community wished happy birthday to a member – a group of five or six community members stood up and recited a poem about the member, gave speeches, and sang songs before giving her a necklace as a gift.

Then, the dancing began. The DJ played some music beginning with Hava Negila and then going into a mix of American contemporary and oldies-style music mixed with Russian pop and even a few Yiddish songs. We barely had a chance to eat because we danced so much – everyone was on the floor, from young to old. One older man, who told Emma to tell me he was originally from Odessa, asked me to dance many times. He danced wildly and enthusiastically and at one point showed off his Russian dancing for me, falling over as he squatted on the floor and kicked his legs. At another point as we were sitting at the table a boy and a girl from the youth group approached us and asked us to dance. The boy, Zachar, took my hand and led me on the floor for a slow dance, while the girl danced with Daniel. I was sent right back to middle school as he put his hands tentatively on my waist and I on his shoulders and we rocked back and forth and spun in a circle in awkward but pleased silence. At one point he asked me in English “Do you speak any Russian?” and I said “No. Do you speak any English?” “No” Then silence. Later he said, “Good music.” And I said, “yes.” After a while I said, “You dance well” and he thought for a while before producing the words, “Thank you.”

All evening different people came up to us to introduce themselves and to complement and thank us. The youth director, Matvey, told us that we were the best team of HUC students they’ve ever had here – the best prepared and the most enthusiastic. Several people complemented my voice as well. When we were seated with the young adults – who were very friendly and excited to chat with us, with Emma’s help, they poured us several shots of vodka (not Kosher for Passover but we decided that we didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable so we didn’t point it out) and told us to drink with them because it pulls people together. I took small sips and no one seemed to mind that I wasn’t drinking much. They poured Daniel’s glasses high though and he drank them without flinching.

The dancing went on for a long long time and was great fun. It was interrupted only once when the afikomen was found and Olga presented the winner with the puzzle Daniel and I brought from Israel, and gave stickers we brought of the aleph bet to all of the students. She quizzed the community with questions like, “What was the name of Moses’s sister?” and when she finished with the quiz she told everyone how proud she was of them – I imagine that she taught everyone the answers to these questions herself. At one point some people from the youth group asked if we would have our picture taken with them and we and the youth group (about eight students and the director) went into the foyer for group photos. One member of the youth group had Emma translate as he told us that it means so much to them for us to come and it really shows them that someone cares about them and what they are doing and it is so important. He hopes to go to school in Israel and eventually go to American and live with his aunt in Chicago. It seems that few of the young people here want to stay here.

At 11:00 PM we called for a taxi and to the protests from the few people who remained that we were leaving so early, we left with many embraces, and exchanged e-mail addresses with many people who hope to visit us some day.

All night certain people had been excited to be near us – Katya danced with me a lot and sat close by to practice her English – I will write her an e-mail as soon as I get home and hop she will stay in touch with us. Emma was terrific and really made everything possible. She was with us all the time and translated every word unfailingly. It was because of her that we were able to communicate almost seamlessly with the community and know what was going on.

At the end of the night as we entered our hotel room she said to us, “I don’t think you understand what your visit means to these people and how hard it is to be a Jew her even now. You have done something very important for them by coming – it is not a small thing.” She’s right that we can’t understand – but perhaps we are beginning to see. Leonid has only been to this community once, so even though they are a strong community and some of them have been to Israel on MASA, they are really mostly on their own, trying to discover Jewish practices under Olga’s guidance and hold together their identity and their community.

FSU Journal Day 4

2009-04-16T14:06:00.002+03:00

Day 4

In the morning after breakfast Daniel and I planned for the Kabbalat Shabbat service we would be leading in the evening and took some time to rest. At 1:00 PM we met Mattvey, the youth group coordinator, and Emma, and walked with them to a restaurant for lunch. Mattvey is a chef – he graduated from a two year cooking degree program and works as a chef though his hobby is working with computers. With Emma’s help, we talked to Mattvey for a long time about a number of different subjects – it started off as a light conversation about cooking, life, movies, etc., but eventually became a very serious and informative talk. We learned that there is a lot of tension between Chabad and the progressive community. This is something we had learned about Chabad in the FSU generally – ((incidentally if you want to read a good summary of contemporary Jewish culture in Moscow there is a terrifically useful chapter in it in David Shneer and Caryn Aviv’s work New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora)) Matvey told us that Chabad claims it has the only legitimate form of Judaism and it does so in a noninclusive way – the Chabad Rabbi sad that a Jew married to a non-Jew is as toxic as a person with AIDS. 80% of the Jewish community in Lipetsk is intermarried and the progressive community welcomes non-Jewish family and friends as members of the community. Chabad has more money, government recognition, and international clout, while the progressive community here is more or less on its own. Chabad meets in a beautiful new synagogue and the progressive community in a small room in an office building, though the Chabad community is only a few years old and the progressive community was founded fifteen years ago.

We asked how much Jewish history the community knows and found that they know very little, and that the Holocaust is barely taught in public school. Certainly the Jews here are more aware of Holocaust history than are their non-Jewish counterparts, but that knowledge seems limited, and knowledge of Jewish history outside of the Holocaust is all but nonexistent.

Daniel and Mattvey talked at length about whether one needs to follow commandments to be a Jew. Mattvey argued against the Chabad model and Daniel mostly agreed with him that Jew should not feel obliged to follow all of the commandments in order to consider themselves Jewish. Moreover, he encouraged Matvey not to think of himself as practicing Judaism as defined by Orthodoxy incorrectly, but instead to think of himself as practicing progressive Judaism correctly.

We asked Mattvey if he wants to stay in Lipetsk or move away and he said he wants to stay – he can have a good job and a good life here. He told us that people are always thinking that life is bad in Lipetsk and would be better in Israel but Mattvey thinks that life here is good - he feels connected to the Jewish community here and has economic opportunities as a chef that might not be available to him elsewhere. He also feels connected to Jews around the world because he has family and friends in Israel, France, England, Belarus, and Ukraine. He has done training as a youth group leader and has gone to Jewish camps, so he has connections with Jews throughout Russia and the FSU. But ultimately Lipetsk is his home and where he wants to be.

After lunch we took a bus to a run down office building, and in a small room about the size of the living room in our Jerusalem apartment, we found the home of the progressive community. Apparently they used to be in a larger space but recently downsized because of the economic crisis.

We were visiting for a youth group meeting – about six youth groupers sat round a table and we were to answer their questions about Judaism, American Jewish life, and ourselves. They started by asking about youth group in America, and we answered their questions about its structure and size. Very quickly, though, Olga pushed the conversation toward how these Jews learned that they were Jewish (and when) and what this means for them. The stories were incredible and really beyond my expectations. Several of these teenagers had spent most of their childhoods not knowing that they were Jews. One boy, Zachar, learned that he was Jewish two years ago. His grandmother lives in Israel and when he was growing up his parents told him that his grandmother was in Australia. One day two years ago Zachar’s parents were talking about Israel and Zachar asked why they were talking about this subject. They revealed to him that his grandmother was actually in Israel and that the family was Jewish. He didn’t get involved in the Jewish community right away, but when he learned about MASA, Naaleh, and other such programs he went to Olga to ask her to be a reference for him, so that he can leave Lipetsk for Israel. As he was preparing by learning Hebrew, he realized that the Jews were just normal people and that he liked them, and he became involved with the youth group. Almost everyone in the room had similar stories – they learned that they were Jews recently and got involved in order to go on an Israel program. If it weren’t for these programs they wouldn’t have pursued their Jewish identities at all, but now they are active and learning and leading their lives as Jews. Only one of the students, Katya, had been involved in the Jewish community since she was little. She said that her mother has always had Jewish friends, but she doesn’t think she is really Jewish. She’s been a member of the community since she was seven and it is a major part of her life. When she was little she used to play Jewish songs on the keyboard for the community.

We asked if everyone wants to leave the community and Olga told us that most young people do not want to stay in Russia. I asked if this was sad for the community and she said that the goal of the community is to teach and foster Judaism and as long as the kids stay Jewish she considers it a success wherever they are. Many go to Israel, but a large percent do stay in Russia. The reasons that they want to go to Israel became progressively more clear to us as the conversation wore on. The Lipetsk economy is not good, and Israel offers a way out. Also the education in Israel is better. We gave them opportunities to ask us questions and Zachar asked Daniel how long he had been in Israel. “Did you serve in the US army then?” he asked. Mattvey explained to Zachar trhat in the US military service is not required and Zachar explained to us that many boys try to get to Israel because the conditions in the Israeli are much better than the Russian army, so they escape the Russian army and go into the Israeli one. We learned that Russian young men are drafted into the Russian army which has extreme hazing practices including beating, rapes, and death. Insufficient supplies, poor pay, and absence of proper training are only a few of the problems that make the Russian army such a terrifying possibility for Zachar and boys like him. Many young Russians escape from the draft through bribery and influence. They go to college to postpone the draft and after college they run away or pay money so they won’t have to go. Those who do go to the army are already disadvantaged – they don’t have the money for bribery. So it’s easy to understand why making aliyah seems like an attractive option.

Daniel asked what the students like about being Jewish and they said it has to do with the sense of community. People here would do anything for each other and are a family. They also said that being Jewish is interesting. Russians are very invested in conformity, but in the Jewish community it is possible to ask questions, talk about interesting and unusual subjects and learn new things. This makes Jews more interesting to these youths than are other people.

The youth group meeting was a surprising and really incredible conversation in which we began to understand what being Jewish means here. We later learned that other groups did not face similar stories of people discovering their Jewishness and wanting to make aliyah, and these stories might be more prevalent in Lipetsk than elsewhere – it’s hard to tell. Olga learned that she was Jewish fifteen years ago, and knew nothing about what that meant. She founded the Jewish community originally just so that Jewish people could meet each other and see other Jews. But the community came to realize that nothing would really happen for them if they couldn’t teach the children. Then Olga began to study Judaism. She has a degree in social work, but her office is lined with other certificates as well. She graduated from the Melton Institute of Jewish Education at Hebrew University, took part in a JCC leadership training institute in Vilna, wrote two award winning programs for her community, and much more. Single-handedly she teaches whoever wants to know what it means to be Jewish and sends the young people on Israel trips so that they can learn more. She is strong and even a bit bossy but is also incredibly talented and knowledgeable – she is a guitar player and songwriter, she is a leader of prayer, a teacher, and administrator, and a fundraiser. And she is a much loved matriarch who has built the community all by herself.

The kids thanked us warmly for our visit but I don’t think they learned nearly as much from us as we did from them – I will be thinking long and hard about them and what it means for them to be Jewish in Lipetsk.

After the youth group meeting, we had a few minutes to prepare a bit for Kabbalat Shabbat services. In the meantime, community members started coming in casually, bearing bowls of food, looking at pictures from Pesach on Olga’s older-looking computer, talking, and laughing. They pushed the tables to the side and set up rows of chairs facing an ark in which a Torah, donated by a congregation in Brooklyn, NY, rests.

Daniel, Emma, and I sat in front and before we began the service we introduced ourselves in more detail than the previous evening and everyone asked a lot of questions – how long are we in Israel, where are we from, what do we do, etc. They were interested that I study Yiddish alongside English literature at university as those things seemed drastically different to them. They asked if my family speaks Hebrew or Yiddish and where I learned the languages.

We began the service. Olga usually leads the services each week and so they know some but not all of the tunes and prayers but they were eager to participate and to sing along where they could. I led most of the music, and Daniel gave a short drash (translated by Emma) about the Torah portion and the congregation listened carefully, nodding their heads to confirm their understanding. After services, as we folded our talitot, the congregation pulled out the tables and chairs and laid the table with food they had brought – salads, fish, vegetables, a latke-like patty made out of matzoh, etc. We sat down to partake of the feast.

We sat at one end of the table and Olga sat at the head. Across the table she called to Emma “What do they do on Shabbat? Do they have food at synagogue?” and the conversation proceeded – questions from Olga and our responses, with comments from around the table and frequent urges for Emma to take a rest and eat and let another English speaker translate a bit. The conversation quickly moved from questions about our Shabbat to questions about our families – are our brothers and sisters all Jewish? Are they Chabad or Reform? This led into a heated conversation about Chabad, which is constantly insulting the community and challenging their sense of authenticity. Olga often hears complaints about Chabad from her community members but she tries to smooth things over because she wants the Jewish community to be able to present a united front. It’s hard enough to be Jewish in Lipetsk without internal problems – Russians do not like people who are different. Chabad has official relationshops with the government, has a whole beautiful building, but not enough congregants to fill it, and everyone we spoke to seems to feel that the community would be better off with no rabbi than with a Chabad rabbi who competes for their members. Of course we did not speak with any members of the Chabad synagogue, who I’m sure have a different opinion. Nevertheless, it is clear that Chabad is imposing its own views about Judaism on a community that is uncomfortable with them.

We paused our conversation a bit in order to do some singing – in Russian with Olga playing the guitar. They sang a song about Jewish eyes which are filled with tears of joy and sadness – you know Jews anywhere because of their eyes. We heard a song about the “rights of Jewish women” which was called “I will marry Jewish.” In it the women say that it is better to find a Jewish man because he will treat them well –he won’t spend his money and time on alcohol, if he is out late it is because he is working, etc. I’m not sure how well a song like this about Jewish superiority would go over in the US but in a country where “Jew” is still somewhat of a slur, I could see why promoting positive self image is so important.

After singing we again became the focus of conversation. They asked us how we were chosen to go to Russia and we explained a bit about the FSU project and how we are a part of a larger group sent throughout the FSU and had requested to go to Russia because Daniel’s family is originally from there. They asked a question about how we were able to pay for the trip during the financial crisis and as Katya translated she said that everyone is always thinking about and worrying about the crisis. I explained our fundraising activity and they seemed please that our communities were so willing to send us to the FSU and to think that it was a worthy project. As the evening wore on, the conversation drifted to Yiddish. They told me that here only a few older people know Yiddish and the language is dying out. They are very sorry that the young people don’t know any Yiddish and the older people have no one to talk to. Not only did they want to talk about my chosen profession, they seemed especially eager to talk to Daniel in his Rabbinical role. People asked him questions as a rabbinical authority – one woman asked when she should commemorate yartzheit for her grandfather who passed away in the Holocaust – she doesn’t know where or when. Someone else had questions about brit milah. Daniel answered all of these questions adeptly and patiently. I took on a cantorial role, I suppose, in that they asked me to sing some songs for them. I sang a few songs in Yiddish that were easy to learn and these seemed to be appreciated and enjoyed. One congregant told me that I should become a professional singer. In fact, the community veritably flooded us with compliments though they insisted that these were not compliments but truths. They told us that we were the first rabbinical students who they felt really communicated why they had come. They appreciated our enthusiasm and they said that they believe that Daniel is a very special, wise person who will be a natural fit as a rabbi. They told us we should consider ourselves to be part of their community – honorary members who are always welcome to return, and gave us a gift of postcards of Liptesk that we can take back with us.

Soon it was time to leave and we hugged and kissed everyone and tore ourselves away from our new friends in order to pack our bags and catch the train to Moscow. In the hotel as we were packing, Daniel and I discussed that we were able to be so successful because of Emma, who made it possible for us to understand and communicate so fluidly.

On the train we stayed up late, playing cards and joking with Emma.

FSU Journal Day 5

2009-04-16T14:03:00.002+03:00

Day 5

The train ride was much more pleasant this time, as it was just the three of us and we knew what to expect. We stayed up late playing cards and munching on matzah and cheese. It was past midnight when we settled down and went to bed. I woke up early in the morning to see out the window rows and rows of dimly lit trees hovering majestically over the snow-dusted ground. I watched the scenery go by for a while – a cluster of large, high-ceilinged homes near agricultural fields, and then trees and trees and trees. Finally, I allowed myself to go back to sleep, waking up a few hours later to the music that signifies the ten-minute warning to arrival. We hastily put on our shoes, threw our playing cards and matzah into our backpacks and left the train.

We went straight to the hotel to freshen up a bit and from there to the center for progressive Judaism for Shabbat morning services. On the shared van on the way to the progressive Judaism center, Emma asked Daniel where Passover comes from – whether he thinks the historic roots are economic, cultural, political, etc. Daniel gave her a learned answer (he’s getting very rabbinical these days) and a conversation proceeded about different fasts in different religions and about the symbols that different religions use to remind them of core ideas or beliefs. Without objects, it’s hard to imagine what a religion would be. We talked about the prohibition on graven images and why this might have existed – does seeing a picture of G-d so influence the way we think about G-d that it is hard to imagine G-d any other way than according to the depictions? And is this a bad thing? Emma said that it seemed to her that Christians have more objects and symbols than Jews – they have different kinds of fasts that seem to happen more often, they have icons, pussy willows (what Russians use instead of palms for Palm Sunday), crosses, etc. We reminded her of all the objects, ritual and otherwise, that Jews do have, and how they are used to remind us of Judaism’s ideals, but are also in and of themselves powerful because they create the boundaries between holiday and not-holiday. We know it is Passover because there is matzah and a seder plate- if there was no matzah or seder plate but on one day everyone thought about freedom , would it still be Passover? Anyway, it was an interesting conversation and I mostly made note of it because I thought it was interesting to hear people “ask the rabbi” questions about Judaism and religion and to see how well Daniel responded to the responsibility of being the question-answerer.

Services at the progressive Judaism center were quite nice. About 30 people were in the congregation, but we are told that the number is often much higher and people are probably just a little Jew-ed out after their Passover seders. The progressive community in Moscow boasts two rabbis, Sasha and Leonid, and a cantor. This is particularly impressive as there are only six progressive rabbis serving the whole Former Soviet Union area. The congregation itself is quite knowledgeable – one congregant read the Torah, another did the blessings, and all the Machon students were in the congregation as well. The rabbis called me and Daniel up to the Torah for aliyot, which was very nice. The tunes were familiar and aside from the drash in Russian, it was not unlike attending a Reform service in Israel or the US.
After services were over, we went to the oneg hall, where they served different kinds of fish, caviar, matzah, wine, cheese, and dried fruit. We had a little snack and while we were eating several congregants introduced themselves to us. Some spoke a little Hebrew to us, others spoke English. One man in particular had quite good English and we asked him questions about what Jewish life was like during the Soviet Union. He told us that he always knew that he was Jewish but he never knew what it meant to be Jewish, that is until recently. Our conversation was cut a bit short because he had to run off to the Hebrew class that Leonid was teaching, so Daniel and I went up to the Rabbis’ offices to check our e-mail and rest a bit before our next activity.

Emma, who had gone home for the morning, came to the office to join us and we sat in the kitchen with her to have a cup of tea. People kept coming in and out, chatting with us and preparing for various activities. That night they were hosting a deaf seder with an expected turnout of something like thirty deaf Jews, and that afternoon there was to be a youth group Havdalah service. Leonid and a youth group student came to join us as we joked around. We learned a bit about Emma’s curriculum. For the first year of translation school her major assignments involve memorizing passages from her textbook and reciting them – her marks are based largely on pronunciation. We spent a lot of time making fun of the passages she has to recite – “oh I think it is going to rain, let me fetch my umbrella. I’m glad I remembered to wear my mackintosh today.”

Eventually we left the office to go to the Red Square and visit the State Historical Museum. The museum was opened in 1894 by Tsar Alexander III and its lavish decorations include a ceiling paiting depicting a family tree of the Russian monarchs from Olga of Kiev (890-969) to Alexander III (1845-1894). It charts the history of Russia from ancient tribal beginnings through to the Romanov tsars of the 19th century. All of the exhibits were written in Russian, but Emma guided us through much of it and from whatever knowledge we had of Russian history we were able to decipher some of the rest. I was certainly impressed not only here but throughout Russia at the centrality of Peter the Great in the retelling of Russian History. He seems to be the watershed marker between traditional and European Russia.

When we left the museum we intended to go into St. Basils Cathedral, but found that we were too late. Instead we visited the Kazan Cathedral, and went inside during a service. Inside, the church was filled with people holding pussy willows to be blessed for Palm Sunday. The choir sang solemn hymns as we wandered around the building, glancing at women with their heads covered by scarves lighting candles at the altars of saints. At one point, Emma motioned to us that we should stand against the wall, and several priests walked by in a procession, burning incense as they walked. The Kazan Cathedral was originally erected as a shrine in the early 1630’s to mark the city’s liberation from the Poles during the Time of Troubles. It was destroyed by a fire in 1632 and the Tsar ordered the church to be rebuilt with brick. The church was renovated many times until it is now not known how the church originally appeared. In 1936, when the government was preparing the Red Square as a site for military parades, Stalin ordered that all churches in the Red Square should be destroyed, and the cathedral was demolished. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kazan Cathedral was the first church to be completely rebuild after having been destroyed by the Communists. The restoration was completed in 1993, and now church services are conducted in the cathedral regularly.

We went to dinner in a coffee shop and eventually we were met by the progressive Jewish youth group with whom we were going to do Havdalah. We sat and chatted while waiting for the sun to set, and then we took to the streets. The youth group has a program once a month in which they bring students to different landmarks of the Jewish history of Moscow, explain the significance of the place, and then have Havdalah. This week, they went to the place where the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee held their first rally. There, we read a plaque that told of the committee in Russian, and in Yiddish said the word “gedenk” which means “remember.” The Jewish Antifascist Committee was a Soviet Jewish Organization that operated from 1942 to 1948. Its goal was to call on the Jews of the world, and in particular on American Jewry, to join the struggle against Nazi Germany by supporting Soviet war efforts. The committee was also one of the first institutions to document the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was chaired by Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actopr and director of the Moscow Jewish State Theater. The committee was also considered to be the central representative body of the Jews in the Soviet Union. It had its own newspaper in Yiddish, Eynikeyt (Unity) in which some of the most popular Yiddish writers published. It was dissolved by the Soviet authorities in November 1948 and most of its leaders were executed.

After hearing this sobering story, we walked across the street to a park featuring a giant statue of Freidrich Engels, and stood in a circle for Havdalah. The tune, written by Debbie Friedman, reminded me of how small the world really is. At the end of the Havdalah service, everyone dipped their pinkies into the wine cup and dabbed the wine on their temples. Daniel and I asked Emma what was going on and she was very surprised that we didn’t know. She said it’s a superstition that the wine will grant you luck wherever you place it – if you put it on your temples it will make you smart, if you touch your chest it will bring you much love, if you touch your lips it will make you eloquent, etc. I don’t know where this comes from, but I kind of like it – maybe we should bring it to NFTY or something.

After Havdalah, Emma’s friend invited us back to his apartment for some tea. In all there were seven of us: Emma and her friend, me and Daniel, Leonid and two youth group kids. The friend’s apartment was beautiful – an old building with a painting on the ceiling of the foyer. His dad is a sculptor, and there were photographs of his sculptures on the wall (he does big public monuments). The friend (whose name I don’t remember, sorry) is a very talented photographer, and his art was hanging on the walls as well – they were really terrific. He is now attending an art school, but is thinking about leaving to go into audio production for theater.

Our conversation at the friend’s apartment began with Emma asking me to recount a brief history of Yiddish for her. I thought it was fun that she addressed me with a Yiddish-professor-to-be question, just like she addressed Daniel with rabbi-to-be questions. I explained a bit about the history of Yiddish and she asked whether one might say that Yiddish was more a dialect than a language. This led to a long discussion about the boundaries between dialects and languages: is AAVE a dialect or a language? How about Ukranian? We talked about how people who speak dialects are seen as speaking their language incorrectly, whereas people speaking other languages are seen as speaking their own language correctly – so language is a title of respect. This was a very interesting conversation and everyone was involved in it, commenting on different dialects they know and how different they are from Russian, or how similar, and how people respond to accents that deviate from the normative Moscow Russian. The conversation about language and about Yiddish went on for some time, before we moved to another topic – we asked the students to tell us a bit about how history is thought about in Russia – how do people remember the USSR? They told us that many people are nostalgic for the USSR and hope that it will come back. If you were not a dissident, the USSR promised security that people no longer feel. Also, people tend to remember the good things about the past and forget the bad, which leads them to yearn for a past that was not as perfect as they remember. Obviously Jewish life was not better under the USSR, but apparently some things were better, and we cannot discount that under the USSR there were some stellar accomplishments, and that in contrast to the Russian Empire, the people felt more empowered and in control. Emma’s friend quoted Putin to us, saying, “If you don’t want the USSR to come back, you have no heart, but if you do want the USSR to come back, you have no mind.” People wanting the USSR to come back can also be a problem because many people blame its collapse on the Jews. The government encourages teachers in school not to paint the Soviet Union as something good that they want to return to, and in order to make the USSR seem ‘bad’ they must make the Russian Empire seem, by way of contrast ‘good’ – which causes some problems too. What I found most interesting about this conversation is not only does Russia have no history of democracy, but they aren’t really practicing it today. They have a very low voter turn out and most people just assume that Putin will be their leader and want it that way, as he is seen as strong – one could go as far as to say that they are electing a dictator. A few days later, Jordan asked us if we felt, while we were in Russia, as though the Cold War was still going in – between the visas we needed to get there and the streets named after Lenin, there was something very Cold War-ish about the experience. I am reminded of history classes when we were urged to consider that when historians break time into chunks in order to study it – be it decades or centuries or the reign of a king – the differences between these blocks of time did not emerge suddenly on New Year’s eve of the next time block, but evolved. Maybe Russia is still moving into its next stage, just like 1980’s fashions lingered regrettably long into the 90’s. (OK a bad analogy but you see my point)

Emma asked us whether our experiences in Russia matched our expectations. She told us that she had met another group of Americans, from Atlanta GA, who had unrealistic expectations about Russia and were very surprised. They expected that Russia was very rural and were anticipating seeing bears walking on the streets of Moscow. They thought Russians drink all the time and don’t have access to modern amenities. We told Emma that our experiences weren’t far from our expectations, but we also told her that, not unlike a trip to Israel, we had come to Eastern Europe with the hope and expectation that we would feel some kind of personal connection to the land of our ancestors. And maybe we did, actually, feel that connection. Emma thought this was strange as we aren’t Russian speakers, my family did not come from Russia proper (to the best of my knowledge), and even if our family had come from Moscow itself it would have been generations and generations ago. It didn’t even occur to her that we might have been feeling this nostalgic connection to a Jewish homeland here in Russia, and to me her not thinking about it is as interesting as our thinking about it.

In any case, after tea at the friend’s house we returned to the hotel to sleep in real beds for the night.