FSU Journal Day 6

Day 6

After a quick breakfast, Daniel and I met Emma in the lobby of the hotel in order to go to the market and look for some interesting Russian souvenirs. The first area we came to was reminiscent of the Israeli shuk or an American flea market – stalls of clothes and household goods, people calling out to us to convince us to look at their wares, etc. The clothing that they were selling was all very Russian in the sense that it was much more fashionable-looking than you might find, say, in the US.

When we came to the end of this area, we paid a small admission price to enter the souvenir and antique parts of the market. Emma assured us that the souvenirs are of good quality and are far cheaper here than at the tourist attractions. Stall after stall sold Gzhel ceramics (a folk art produced in the village of Gzhel since 1802 – it is white with blue designs), metryoshka dolls (Russian nesting dolls – the wooden dolls that open up to reveal other little dolls inside), lacquer boxes depicting famous Russian sites or fairy tales, fur hats, birchbark decorative crafts, wooden toys, plates painted with Russian designs, porcelain dolls, and decorative eggs. We strolled past all of these gifts, calculating how many rubles we had and translating the prices to dollars (about 33 rubles to one dollar). Emma negotiated for us as we purchased a little plate, an egg, a box, and some dolls.

Afterwards, we went for a stroll in the antique segment of the market. Emma told us that she loves to walk through here because the different accents and kinds of things people discuss here belong to another time – the people play chess and discuss history among the artifacts of a bygone era. We saw samovars, swords, photographs, wall hangings, dishes, paintings, and much more. As we walked through the stalls some shopkeepers offered to explain their items to us even though they could tell that we had no intention of purchasing anything. As we were poking around, Daniel stumbled upon a beautiful silver yad (what one would use to read the Torah) sitting on a table next to a Bible with a painting of Jesus on the cover. We picked up the yad and examined the details – two little chassids danced around the top. We asked the price, but as $200 was outside our souvenir budget, we regretfully put our find back on the table for another traveler to find someday. Later we also found a channukiah perched on a shelf of decorative items. One of our finniest finds was at a coin stand, where a man was selling, among other things, New Israeli Shekels (yes, the currency that Daniel and I use every day). Daniel was thinking that if the price wasn’t too high, we could maybe make some money off of this, and he asked the price, but it was roughly equivalent to the 10 NIS coin that we would have been buying. The guy was selling half shekel coins for the same price as 10 shekel coins, and we thought that was kind of a rip off for whoever was buying… so Daniel offered to sell the guy some shekels, but he said he had enough. Too bad. As we were heading out of the antique area, Daniel stopped to admire some amethysts that an old man was selling, and found himself (along with Emma) trapped in conversation with the man, who told him about the process of polishing the stones, and about the superstitious beliefs about the stones being able to give health and fortune.

While we were in the market, Emma called Anya to see if David and Jordan had made it to the hotel, and we learned that they were milling around the same market as we were. We met them excitedly and swapped some stories with them about our travels in Lipetsk and their trip to the Ural mountains and the Western edge of Siberia.

Several days ago I had mentioned to Emma that I would be interested in seeing the place where the Moscow Yiddish Theater had once performed, and so today our first stop was to be the theater and the synagogue nearby.

When we arrived at the synagogue, two older woman greeted us, saying “Chag Sameach!” We went through a security check and at the other side a traditionally dressed man addressed Daniel, Jordan, and David in Hebrew, asking where they were from and if they would like a tour. Our translators looked on as he spoke to us in Hebrew, telling us the history of the building. It was erected in 1883 by the Jewish railroad baron Shmuel Poliakov – it had once been his home. During that time, public synagogues were not permitted in Moscow, but because Poliakov was so influential, he was allowed to open the synagogue so long as only his family would attend. He had a very small family, but he included on the list of those permitted the names of many of his friends as well. I don’t remember the whole history of the building, but as I understand it, the synagogue was closed during the soviet era and reopened as a chabad house, which is how it currently functions. Around the original building, they have constructed a larger structure with classroom and offices, so that the outside of the original building remains, encased in the later structure. In the sanctuary, the man giving us the tour showed Daniel, David, and Jordan that there is a trap door on the bimah that leads to an exit, so that if there is any trouble, the congregants will be able to escape. This is no idle threat, another Lubavich synagogue in Moscow, the Marina Roscha synagogue, has been subject to fire in 1993, bombings in 1996 and 1998 and a stabbing in 2006. This makes Jewish life seem pretty bleak in Moscow, but the synagogue enjoys a large rate of participation (too large, from the perspective of the progressive Jews we talked to) and seems to be a vibrant, active community. When we left, Anna and Emma were very angry though. They told us that the Chabadnik who had spoken to us had pulled them aside and offered them money in order that they would bring their friends to the synagogue. When they told him that they were Reform and that they didn’t think it was appropriate to pay their friends to participate in Judaism, he told them that he would give them the money and they could give their friends presents for participating instead. They left in a huff and spouted to us their frustrations about Chabad and its manipulative outreach strategies. They told us that they are shocked by this idea of Judaism and proud of their Reform practices.

From the synagogue we walked to the theater where once performed Solomon Mikhoels in the famous avant-garde Moscow Yiddish Theater. There wasn’t much to see there beyond a plaque on the wall, but we spent a few minutes reviewing the history of the place, and you can imagine I was tickled to be doing some Yiddish tourism! In brief, let me answer two questions: 1) What was the Moscow Yiddish Theater? The Moscow State Yiddish Theater (which you can read all about in a terrific book by Benjamin Harshav) was founded in 1919 in Petersberg and moved to the new capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow, a year later. Given what we know about the suppression of Jewishness in the Soviet Union it may come as a surprise that such a thing as a state-sponsored Yiddish theater ever existed, but Stalin’s policies shifted dramatically from his initial encouragement of national/ethnic cultures in ways that were in support of the Soviet project to his later insistence that all Soviet citizens must conform to the same patterns and ideals. The theater was founded by Alexander Granovsky, and as a sophisticated avant-garde theater, it became a symbol of secular Yiddish culture in the USSR and the world over. It performed mythical abstract pieces based in Jewish folklore and folk life. Two of the most famous participants were Mark Chagall, who designed sets and costumes for the productions, and Solomon Mikhoels, a very talented actor and director. The theater closed in 1949 a year after Mikhoels was murdered in a Stalinist purge. 2) Who was Solomon Mikhoels? Solomon Mikhoels was a great and famous actor and director for the Moscow State Yiddish Theater. He was also the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, supporting Stalin against the encroaching threat of Nazism. He traveled around the word trying to garner support for the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. After the war, Stalin became suspicious of Jewish contacts with other Jews outside of the USSR and with Jewish self-expression generally. He closed the Yiddish theater and the Jewish Anti-Fascist committee, eventually executing all but two of its members. Mikhoels was the first to be executed, in January 1948 in Minsk, in a staged car accident. He received a state funeral.

So, we snapped a few photos, and then we headed to lunch. On the way, we picked up a gingerbread cake, which we are told is a terrific Russian treat, and decided that when we returned to Israel we would have a tea party with it to celebrate the end of Passover. Over lunch we talked about David and Jordan’s trip – we learned about the vibrant Jewish communities they met, and the great need that these communities have for more support. They spoke to us of a para-rabbinic leader of a community who really wants to go back to school but feels he cannot leave because there is no one to replace him and the community will fall apart without him. We learned much about tensions with Chabad. But we also learned a lot of positive things about creative and energetic communities, students going to youth programming, multi-generational rich and warm Jewish life. I asked David if people there seemed as keen on leaving Russia as the young people of Lipitsk seemed to be, and he answered that making aliyah was not something that the students there really talked about. I feel somewhat relieved about this – and then I wonder if the relief is appropriate.

After lunch, we met a friend of Emma and Anya’s, Sveta, and together we visited the Kremlin, a fortress that was built on the intersection of three rivers (only two now remain) – the city of Moscow forms rings around the Kremlin itself, which was the original city, dating back as far as 1147. The Moscow Kremlin has long been the center of Russian statehood, where tsars and hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church lived. The walls, which were built in 1367-1368 were originally white stone, but were rebuilt in 1485-1495 in red brick by Italian workers (Italians were better architects than Russians) who were all executed upon the completion of the city so that they would not reveal its secrets to foreign powers. At the beginning of the 18^th century, Peter I transferred the capital of Russia to St. Petersberg, but the tsars continued to be coronated in Moscow. In 1917 yhr Soviet government transferred the capital back to Moscow, and it remains the center of Russian government to this day. Since 1992 the president of Russia lives inside the Kremlin.

We bought tickets to see the famous cathedrals of the Kremlin, and we walked through church after church with paintings on the wall that read like cartoons of stories of Jesus and of various saints, especially St. George. We saw collections of jewelry and church artifacts. In one of the cathedrals, we saw the tombs of statesmen and church officials, some dating back as far as the fourteenth century.

We noticed that the time was going faster than expected and hurried to St. Basils Cathedral in order to get in before the closing, but to no avail. We were just a few minutes too late and the only attraction we were able to see was the entertainment of Emma arguing with the security guard. Nevertheless it was certainly impressive to catch one last look at the outside of this ornate and unusual building.

In place of a tour of St. Basils we went to a chocolate shop so that Daniel could have one last hot chocolate. We joked and laughed over chocolate flavored tea and coffee, and had a terrific time of it. We worked on perfecting our reading skills, tentatively sounding out words spelled in Cyrillic.

Then we went for a casual walk through Moscow. We passed a Russian bath house and went in for a peek. The walls were ornately decorated, but as we climbed the stairs and saw men sitting in towels, we decided to head back down. Daniel and David continued on and were amazed at what they saw – men lounging in towels and dining together on expensive food and drink. Baths are apparently a Russian institution – nowadays especially among the wealthy.

We walked through an area that used to be quite poor but has been renovated a bit – it is located between a convent and a monastery and no one knows why crime was so rampant in between these institutions. We walked past the KGB buildings and Emma told us that her aunt spent two years in the building followed by three years working in Sibera because she had written a letter to Golda Meir. After she returned from Siberia she continued with her activist work and one day she received ticket to Israel in the mail with the message that she was to leave in 24 hours and could not return.

We had dinner at a sushi restaurant that we stumbled upon on our walk. We spent a long time there laughing and joking, teaching silly American slang to our Russian friends, etc. As it started to get late, we took the metro back to the hotel and bid farewell to Emma. She gave us a small gift on our leaving, and we exchanged e-mail addresses – I hope that we will keep in touch.

We left early in the morning for the airport, where we said goodbye to Anya and flew back to Tel Aviv. We were surprised at how familiar Hebrew seemed after a week in Russia!

Off to Moscow!!

We leave early early early in the AM for Moscow!
I'll be keeping a journal and I'll try to post it here when I get back. We'll be sure to take a lot of pictures.
In the meantime, you can take a look at our schedule:

7^th of April, Tuesday

10:50	Arrival to Moscow
13:00	Check-in, Hotel
14:00	Lunch
15:00	Lecture in Machon
17:00	Sightseeing tour
19:00	Dinner
20:00	Private time

8^th of April, Wednesday

10:00	Breakfast in Hotel
11:00	Lecture in Machon
14:00	Lunch
15:00	Privet time
17:00	Preparation for the Seder
19:00	Seder
20:30	Departure to Paveletskiy Train Station
21:20	Departure to Lipetzk	Train № 29, Paveletzkiy Train Station

9^th of April, Thursday

07:23	Arrival to Lipetzk
12:00	Sightseeing walk
14:00	Lunch
15:00	Private time
17:00	Preparation for the Seder
19:00	Seder
20:00	“Socializing”
21:00	Dinner

10^th of April, Friday

10:00	Breakfast in Hotel
14:00	Lunch
15:00	Sightseeing walk
17:00	Meeting with congregants
19:00	Shabbat
21:00	Dinner
22:57	Departure to Moscow	Train 029В

11^th of April, Saturday

08:55	Arrival to Moscow	Paveletzkiy Train Station
11:00	Shakharit
12:30	Private time
13:20	Lunch
14:30	Meeting with Netzer Youth group
16:00	Private time
17:00	Netzer project - “Havdalah in Moscow”
20:00	Dinner
21:00	Private time

12^th of April, Sunday

Free day

13^th of April, Monday - Departure to Israel.

Shira Chadasha

Tonight for services we visited a much-spoken-of shul called Shirah Chadasha. It's run by an Orthodox community who push the bounds of Orthodoxy with regard to gendered restrictions - most notably, women lead the kabbalat Shabbat services.
We met our friends at the front entrance and walked into the building together. When we arrived at the sanctuary Amanda and I went into the women's section and Daniel and Jon into the men's section. Amanda and I were greeted warmly and ushered into seats. All around us were women, some wearing pants but most wearing long skirts and long-sleeved shirts with high necklines. Several of the women were wearing head coverings. The women smiled at one another in greeting, but mostly were otherwise intense in prayer. Unlike in other traditional prayer environments I've experienced, the women were praying audibly, confidently, reading the words and chanting the melodies aloud. Their voices were solid but delicate, and the music of the prayers filled the modest room. The men sat on the other side of the room, on the other side of the mechitza which was a flimsy white chiffon curtain. They seemed like ghosts clouded, obscured, and distant, praying in partnership with the women, like mirror images, like echoes of our words and motions. There was something beautiful in the separation and the sameness, in seeing one another and yet being apart. And the white of the mechitza made the men seem somehow like the Sabbath bride. I found myself feeling strangely attracted to the mechitza, strangely inspired by it, while nevertheless repulsed by the notion of sex-segregated worship.
The music was beautiful. Melody followed melody, each intertwining with improvised harmonies from both sides of the curtain, as though the men and women were reaching accross to one another, defying and celebrating their separation. The beauty of the voices - and they really were quite talented singers -moved me, and though I had come to the services in order to say I had been to this synagogue, in order to experience a new cultural curiosity, and certainly not in order to pray, I found myself praying.
I did not expect to like Shira Chadasha - I was predisposed to think that any place that separates by sex was not a place in which I would comfortably be able to pray, because it is a place that perpetuates social injusitice and inequality. Although my feelings at Shira Chadasha directly contradicted my sense of disapproval of sex-segregated prayer, I am still not convinced that Shira Chadasha is doing enough - often people speak of this synagogue as "so progressive for Orothox", as really unusual, as making great strides. And before I visited I was frustrated with this idea, because they were still separating by sexes, and so they simply weren't doing enough. I felt this way and I still feel this way. And yet...I also really enjoyed services this evening, found them meaningful, perhaps, because of the beauty of coming together through separation, of separating to find one another in sound and voices, because of the eerie, holy sensation of seeing another through a veil, of the transformation of the familiar, of the community created by breaking the whole into halves. And so, I am torn about Shira Chadasha. I disapprove, and I am moved.

1776 - or 1948

Last night Daniel and I went with a group of HUC students to see a production of 1776 by a Jerusalem English-speaking amateur theater company. The production was pretty decent for community theater and of course the HUC cantors who took part in it were terrific, but one of the most interesting moments of the whole show happened at the very end, after the bows and the applause, when John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamen Franklin, and a host of others stood lined up on the stage and the director stepped forward to address the audience. She explained that while 1776 is a story about America, the sacrifices made in the name of democracy and freedom are close to the hearts of us all because of the sacrifices made in the establishment of our own country, Israel. She recognized an audience member who had been an Israeli spy in Lebanon and had been improsoned for years as a result of her work. Then, a tearful John Adams continued in making the connections betwene the pursuit of liberty in colonial America and Jews in Israel fighting for their own land and an escape to anti-Semitism. He asked the audience to rise, and a group of people with American accents were led by English-speakers in American colonial garb in the singing of HaTikvah. The sentimental nationalism was a bit much for me, but afterwards, several of us exclaimed about that moment and how we'd like to write term papers on American Jewish Israeli immigrant identity - how they expressed their American-ness as Jews living in Israel, and how they expressed their Jewishness and Israeliness through and by connecting it to American mythology surrounding the founding fathers. It was all very... interesting.

The Bread of Affliction and other Yucky Pesach Things

The kids at the preschool are finally starting to understand that my Hebrew isn't so great, even as I'm feeling more confident with Hebrew (yesterday I gave a presentation in Hebrew class that I was very proud of and am still patting myself on the back for it...) Today one of the kids corrected my Hebrew several times and seemed to get a big kick out of it, while another said to me, "Jessica, my dad taught me a song for you!" and proceeded to sing "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" with a thick Israeli accent. He is three years old. It was adorable. Today in preschool we also played a riveting game of "do we eat it on Passover" the results: matzah -yes, because it is matzah. hard boiled egg - yes because a long time ago when the Israelis were slaves in Egypt pharaoh made them work hard - hard work is represented by hard boiled eggs because they both have the word hard. pizza - no because it has flour, honey - no because it is sweet and we are only supposed to eat yucky things, marror - yes because it tastes bad.

Trip to the Negev, etc.

First of all, the big news of the week is that I have decided to attend Columbia's Yiddish Studies PhD program next year - and I am very excited about it! I don't want to write much about it because the purpose if this post is to write about the tiyyul but please feel free to ask me questions about it as I'd love to describe the program to you if you are interested.

OK, so we arrived home on Saturday night from a terrific tiyyul and it's been a very busy week as we're scrambling to finish homework between social engagements and preparation for our trip to Moscow. Today I was at the preschool, where we talked about Passover, made charoset, tasted some matzah, and danced to "avadim hayyinu". Yesterday in Hebrew class we had a long and heated discussion about Pat Oliphant's political cartoon about Gaza that appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday- we discussed whether it was anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or both (and if it's possible to be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic), what the symbols used in the cartoon could mean, whether American Jews should have denounced it, if it should have been published at all, and we eventually got into a debate over whether American Jews should feel connected to Israel's political decisions and how they should express that connection. The conversation was particularly interesting because I was the only American Jew who took part in it - it was Europeans, some Jewish and some non-Jewish, an Israeli, several American Christians, two Koreans, etc. Some people were very certain that the cartoon was not anti-Semitic and some felt even more strongly than I do that it presented dangerously anti-Semitic images. My feeling is that I have no problem with the message of discomfort with Israel's actions in Gaza nor do I believe that a newspaper should not be allowed to publish such a thing, as I believe in freedom of the press, but I do think that the images in the cartoon were inappropriate, dangerous, and, yes, anti-Semitic. I think by equating Israel with Nazis, the cartoonist ignores the historical specificity of both the Holocaust and Israel's actions in Gaza and does both a disservice, and that by turning the Star of David into a symbol of destruction he suggsts more than that the state misused its powerful military presence, but that Judaism itself is a violent force in the world. By drawing the soldier without a head, Oliphant reverses traditional anti-Semitic cartoons of the Jew who controls the world through the power of his intellect, but that the Janus-faced opposite view of Israel as pure unthinking brute force is equally scary. And I also think that representing Gaza as a little old lady and a baby exaggeratedly unfair, even for a political cartoon. But I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. A political cartoon, after all, is supposed to be an exxagerated version of reality... Yesterday I also went to my two Yiddish classes - in one class we read a story about Jews in Eastern Europe moving to America, and in the other we discussed Tevye the Dairyman. On Sunday I had an interesting anthropology class in which we discussed the Religious Zionist singles scene and the pressures and forces that create the scene, the impact of the scene on the people within it, etc. In my literature class we discussed a story by Brenner titled "Nerves" which was not my favorite that we've read thus far but had some interesting points.



That brings me to Saturday, and to the tiyyul. Rather than going backwards in time in a disorganized fashion, I'll take it from the top, from Thursday morning when we loaded ourselves into the bus and left from HUC. We drove for several hours until we arrived at Ben Gurion's tomb, where we discussed Ben Gurion's leadership and vision, and the centrality of the dessert to an understanding of Israel. The Negev desert is 66% of Israel's area - over 6,700 square miles, and has an arid and semi-arid climate, defined according to average rainfall (2 - 6 inches), type of soil and natural vegetation.

After our initial discussion, we hopped on the bus and went to the Ben Gurion National Solar Energy Center, a research center to explore methods of collecting solar energy efficiently. A small soft-spoken man dressed in a thick sweater led us in the desert sun as he proudly described his facility. The testing center was established in 1985 to compare various alternative solar teachnologies, including one that uses solar energy to heat oil, which then creates electricity, a system of large parabolic mirror troughs used to heat water into steam, photovoltaic sysetems. In 1991 the center became a research facility that investigates new materials, the impact of solar energy usages on the enviroment, etc. The research facility also docuuments solar radiation in the negev in order to identify promising locations for new solar power stations. The speaker provided us with a lot of statistics that I have since forgotten with regard to how much energy different devices produce in comparison to the average energy used per household, etc. The Ben Gurion research facility also has the world's largest solar tracking dish, which is 400 sq.m. in area and capable of concentrating the sun's rays up to 10,000 times.

After a lunch break, we drove to Makhtesh Ramon for a hike. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Negev desert was covered by an ocean. At the bottom was sand, followed by a layer of limestone formed from the bones of sea creatures. Slowly, the sea started receding, leaving behind a hill which was slowly flattened by water and wind. Approximately five million years ago, during the earthquake known as the Syrian-African rift, rivers changed their courses and began carving out the inside of the crater known as mackhtesh ramon. Once the layer of limestone eroded, the sandstone, which was softer, fell away at a much faster rate than the surrounding limestone walls, which gradually grew taller. At the bottom of the crater, more ancient rock was exposed - the oldest exposed rock in the crater is 200 million years old. Our guide showed us fossils of ammonites, an extinct group of marine animals that once lived in the makhtesh. The hike we went on was short but quite challenging, and the view was terrific.

After the hike, we drove to the Bedouin tent where we spent the night. We listened as a performer played Bedouin instruments and told us stories, had a filling dinner of salads, rice, and potatoes, and sang songs and played games around a campfire. We slept in sleeping bags on the tent floor and rose early to go on another hike.

One group went to Har Shlomo for a more difficult hike, but we decided to go to the easier hike at Timna Valley Park. We watched a high-tech video chronicling the history of the national park, which is located about 30 km north of Eilat. The park includes what are believed to be the oldest copper mines in the world. Archaologists once belived that they were mined by King Solomon, but they are now knoen to have been worked by Egyptians and Mideans, as well as Romans, Nabateans, and Ummayids. The park is also noted for its natural sandstone formations, including "mushrooms" - protruding rocks in which the bottom area has been worn away by particles lifted by the wind, to create a mushroom-like appearance (hence the name). We were amused by large signs pointing to "mushroom and a half" and other silly names. The hike was relatively easy, the weather was mild, and we had a great time walking, chatting, and enjoying lunch by a man-made lake.


Our next stop was Kibbutz Yahel, a Reform Kibbutz in the Aravah Valley, where we stayed for the next several nights. The kibbutz was founded in 1976 by young people from the US, Israel and around the world who identified with progressive Judaism. They make decisions based on religious knowledge and communal ideals. In the harsh desert climate they have created profitable agricultural operations - they grow their own dates, pomelos, peppers, and other produce, and they also have a flourishing dairy farm. We drove to the pamelo fields where we heard stories about cooperation and friendships that the kibbutz has formed accross the Jordan-Israel border (which the pomelo field is directly next to) over the years. We picked our own pomelos and returned to the visitors area of the kibbutz (they have a desert tourism branch were we stayed in very pleasant suites separated by grassy fields).

The next day we took a tour of Kibbutz Lotan, a Reform Kibbutz that was founded in 1983 by 20 Israeli and 20 American youths. It espouses values of sustainable living and creative ecology, and sees itself as an educator and leader in areas such as permaculture, sustainable architecture, and recycling. We went on a tour of the facilities and made seed balls that we are meant to take with us and throw (Johnny-appleseed fashion) in places that we think could use a little more plant life. We also listened to a talk about Israel's need for progressive Jews to make aliyah - the talk provided heated discussion on the bus ride that followed.

At the Coral Reef in Eilat several people went snorkeling, though the water was a bit too cold for me and we sat on the beach, read, and chatted with friends. The Eilat coral reef is the northern part of the Red Sea's 4500 km of coral reefs, and the most northern one in the world.

We returned to Kibbutz Yahel in time for Shabbat, and after we heard a short talk about the role of the Israeli rabbinical student who serves Kibbutz Yahel, several HUC students led a beautiful, music-filled service. After dinner, one of the HUC teachers led a small group in singing zmirot (songs) with gusto. One song after the other, we went through most of our shared repetoire until the head of the dining hall told us that we had to leave the building and we milled around the picnic tables as we continued to sing. We ended the evening playing board games with friends.

On Shabbat morning we walked to a nachal (Hebrew)/wadi (Arabic) - a dry riverbed that contains rain once or twice a year during heavy rains. We held services under a tree in the middle of the desert, and during the time when there might usually be a sermon we were given time to wander off on our own and explore the surroundings. Following the service, some of us chose to go the long way home, climbing up into the hills before spotting the kibbutz and making our way back down.

In the afternoon, we took a tour of the kibbutz's dairy farm. Although Israel is known as the land of milk and honey, those terms originally referred to goat milk and date honey. Nevertheless, Israel is a leader in the modern dairy industry. They produce milk from a cow that is a cross between the German Holstein and a cow native to the Middle East, allowing the cow to withstand the high temperatures. Apparently the cows produce more milk because they are milked three times a day rather than twice, the food is brought to them so they don't waste energy finding it, they eat alfalfa (Arabic for the best food for cows) rather than grass, as well as because of the low altitude. Israeli companies have developed manufactured “high-tech” computer based management systems and dairy equipment, which are sold worldwide. These include pedometers that track the activity of the cows so that on the one day in the month when they are jittery the farmer knows that the cow is in heat, and on days when they are less active the farmer knows that they might be sick. We learned, actually, quite a lot about cows as one of the teachers in Daniel's program holds a masters in dairy farming (from Rutgers!) which he obtained for a previous career as a kibbutznik.

After a quick snack with some members of the kibbutz, we set off on the road for home. It was a terrific, relaxing, warm, and pleasant trip, and we can hardly believe that in a week from today we'll be flying away for another adventure - this time to Moscow!

PS: I posted pictures from the trip online, and you can see them here.

Getting Excited for Passover, and an Update on my Classes

Getting Excited for the FSU Trip!

Passover seems to be galloping toward us, and soon we will be in the Former Soviet Union, sharing in seders with members of liberal Jewish communities in the Moscow region. It's hard to believe the holiday is arriving so soon - I always forget how close Purim and Pesach are to each other! In the preschool we're already teaching a bit of the story of Moses every day. I suppose it isn't surprising that the 3 year olds identify most with the story of Moses as a baby and are most excited to hear it retold, but I am looking forward to hearing their reactions to the burning bush, the crossing of the sea, etc. It is kind of strange to hear the language slippages that allow remembering that "we" were slaves in Egypt to happen more naturally - the teachers talk about the Israelites or the Children of Israel, but the students very quickly start referring to the characters as Israelis.
On Thursday night, Daniel and I met with Rabbi Leonid Bimbat, who is currently serving the Moscow region, and who was visiting Jerusalem for the World Union of Progressive Judaism conference. What we had expected to be a brief conversation during the reception following a WUPJ event turned into a stroll to the center of Jerusalem, where we sat in a bar called "Putin" which was filled with Russian speaking patrons. Leonid seemed disapoointed when we didn't order drinks, but it was late at night and we were hoping for a quick meeting before going home to bed, and not a night out on the town. We asked him a few questions about the communities in Moscow, where we'll be going for Passover, and about what we would be expected to do during our stay. It seems that we will be traveling between three communities: one is a comunity of Anglo- expats, one is a communtiy of mostly older participants, and one a community of families with children. At each place, we will be expected to lead all or part of seders, and perhaps also conduct other community programs, though the extent of this is unclear - we should have a better sense of it once we receive a more detailed schedule. There will also be plenty of time built in for sight seeing. The rabbi warned us that even when we are not with the communities we should consider ourselves on display and be careful not to eat something that isn't kosher for Passover or do anything else out of line with out positions as spiritual leaders. We're wondering, though, how kosher for Passover these communities will be, as we've heard rumors that some students in the past have seen grain-based alcoholic drinks or even bread products at the seder table. We are also worried about the possibility of social barriers and discomforts arising from our vegetarianism and the fact that we don't drink very much...
I've been trying to prepare for the visit by using it as an opportunity to engage with outside-of-class learning, but I am becoming increasingly aware that experiential learning and book-learning are entirely different beasts. I've been reading articles, some of them terrifically interesting, about the way that Russian Jews today see and define themselves, but I wonder if any of this will make my trip easier, or allow me to be more useful to these communities when I am there. We've had workshops on seder leading, on East European Jewish history, and even a brief tutorial on how to read Cyrillic characters, but I think I'll still be a bit bewildered when I get there. Nevertheless, I am very much enjoying the additional reading that I've assigned myself. If you want to join in the fun and read along with me, so far the best piece I've read has been a chapter out of New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora by David Shneer and Caryn Aviv. I've also been trying to give myself a crash course on Russian culture (about which I know very little) and have begun the rather intimidating task of reading Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes. It is a smooth read, but rather a large volume, and I doubt that I'll finish it before we land in Moscow.

Some Thoughts About my Classes

So, this semester I am taking: Yiddish, Sholom Aleichem (the author, not the greeting), Anthropology and Sociology of Israel, Masculinity and Nationhood in Hebrew Literature, and Hebrew.

Yiddish: This is a continuation of the same Yiddish class I took last semester. I love the class - the readings we do are very interesting and the grammatical concepts are reinforced by the texts. However, I am frustrated that we never speak or write in Yiddish, we only read texts and translate them into Hebrew orally. I am concerned for next year, when I will probably be in a Yiddish PhD program...without being able, really, to speak Yiddish at all. Even though I can read most Yiddish texts pretty capably, given time and the aid of a dictionary, I think I'm going to have to ask my instructors to begin with me at square one when it comes to speaking or writing, and this is quite frustrating. Nevertheless, for what it is, I have a lot of fun in Yiddish class, am being exposed to a wide variety of texts, and am also learning a bit of Hebrew along the way.

Sholom Aleichem: This is also a continuation of a class I took last semester, which was on Mendele Mocher Seforim. The professor and students are all the same, but the material is different as we have moved on to a new author. I think I prefer Sholom Aleichem - he gets a bit closer to his characters than Mendele. So far, we are reading and discussing Tevye the Dairyman, which is the book upon which Fiddler on the Roof was loosely based. I've read Tevye before several times, but each time I find it very moving. I look forward to the other readings we'll do in the class, as I've never read anything else by Sholem Aleichem, which is a pretty embarrasing hole in my knowledge.

Anthropology and Sociology of Israel: This class looks really cool. Each week, a different sociology PhD student from Hebrew University will come to the class and present on the work that they are doing for their dissertation. Then, they will leave and we will discuss their work as a class. The topics cover a wide range, from the mixed-ethnicity identity of people of both Askenazic and Sephardic origin to the postmodern lifestyle of Israeli flight attendants. So far we've only had one class, during which the professor told us about his work on the sociology of Israeli sociology, to give us a background for the presentations we are going to see in the upcoming weeks. He told us that as Israel was engaged in building the state, sociology was mainly concerned with practical answers to local questions - they applied theories from outside Israel to problems within Israel and used sociology as a tool to aid the government. They did not come up with new theories because they were concerned that theories coming from Israel would be too locally specific and would be uninteresting to the rest of the world. Instead, they understood Israel as a labratory for theories coming from the rest of the world, and they applied these theories to Israeli examples to test their boundaries and usefulness. In particular, they focused on kibbutzim and later on Arab-Israeli conflict. Today, Israeli socioliogy does not have a high status because they have no theories of their own and the world is losing interest in looking at Israel as a testing ground for outside theories. Israeli sociology has, as a result, become less comparative, less concerned with being relevant for the rest of the Western world, and uninterested in the more written about topics such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the influx of Russian immigrants. The topics being presented in our class are sort of far from the mainstream, and are not 'useful' to the government for applications to practical problem solving questions. Nevertheless, I think they will be an interesting way to look at and better understand Israeli society, and I am excited for the class, which at the very least seems like a lot of fun!

Masculinity and Nationality in Hebrew Literature: This class has also only met once thus far, but seems like it will be very good. We are reading from a variety of texts, beginning with Enlightenment texts written before the formation of the state and moving on through Israeli history, looking at expectations for masculinity in Israeli culture and how that has been connected to the building of the state, and how these expectations have changed over time. So far we've onky read one text, which is Feierberg's "Whither?", a novella structured similarly to The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in whcih a young boy begins to question his father's religious philosophy and as he grows up he comes to reject the Jewish religion entirely and tries to discover what new direction Jewishness should take, if not in prayer toward G-d. His solution to the question "whither?" seems to be Zionism, but the conclusion is much more weak than other parts of the text about the loss of innocence and faith, so that the solution he derives seems almost untenable. We haven't yet discussed the text in class, but I am very much looking forward to how the teacher will relate masculinity to secular/enlightened thought or rejection of prayer as a solution to Jewish suffering. Does this naturally lead into a Zionist interpretation of masculinity, or will we have to read more works before we really get there?

Hebrew: I take Hebrew five days a week, and it is taught by two different teachers, who alternate teaching days - this is the same arrangement as last semester. Because I spend so much time in Hebrew, the teachers can really make or break the semester. My teachers last semester were not very good, and this was a major disappointment. The teachers this semester are terrific. They speak and read fast, they ask us to answer many questions, they bring in interesting and varied materials, they assign lots of homework and quizzes and really push us to learn - I think I've learned more in the past week and a half than I did for most of last semester in Hebrew!






You should look forward to hearing from us again with more interesting news soon, as we leave next week for a trip with Daniel's class to the Negev. Hope all is well with everyone at home!