עד מתי?!!!

We all have different phobias. Some are afraid of spiders, some of flying, others experience inexplicable tremors when confronted with tea or the color yellow. Now there are a whole slew of people who duck when they see a bulldozer.

Yesterday an Arab Israeli from East Jerusalem drove a bulldozer onto Rechov Yaffo, the busiest road in Jerusalem, and knocked over a bus, rammed into cars, and slugged automobiles with his shovel. Forty people were wounded and three killed, among them a mother driving her baby home from a hospital clinic. After the thing hit her car the first time, killing her, passersby ran for the four-month-old baby on the seat beside her and got him out just before the car was struck again and totally crushed. 

I woke up to the news, though of course the victims' names weren't yet on the news so that the army would have a chance to tell the families first. My sister is in Jerusalem right now, visiting my grandmother. They were supposed to go to Ramat Beit Shemesh Wednesday, a trip that necessitated taking a bus down rechov Yaffo on the way to the bus station. I called them, and my mother, and my father, and left messages on home answering machines, and at offices, and on pagers, and nobody picked up or got back to me for a full two hours after I'd found out about the terrorist murder. Of course that was reassuring, because they would have called if something happened. I tried not to worry that maybe they had simply forgotten to call. Everything was fine. But what would you do if your sister was supposed to be on the same road that a man went insane on with a bulldozer? When my mother called to say that my sister was fine, my grandmother was fine, and thank God my grandfather had been a full two buses behind the one tipped over, so though he'd heard the bulldozer he hadn't seen it, I cried from pure relief.

I cried from relief, then I cried because someone somewhere is sobbing their heart out in grief and anger. The people at my summer job stared at me, confused. I explained, and they said "it's so hard to understand, both sides sound the same in that whole middle east thing."

Both sides sound the same! An insane, evil, sick, twisted creature goes rampant in downtown Jerusalem killing the mother of a newborn baby and two other men, and it's the same thing as the Israeli Defense Force refusing to fire because Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields! I don't understand how anyone can be so evil, I refuse to believe that the thing that got into that bulldozer yesterday was anything near human, but I also don't understand how anyone can equate such murder, targeting civilians, with an army that warns civilians to evacuate the building that's going to be bombed because a terrorist is hiding inside. Go ahead, sing the pain of the residents of Gaza (and it's true, they live under terrible conditions-- that are caused to a great extent by Hamas and the other terrorist factions inside) but dig a hole and cover up the pain of the people that were wounded and killed and whose mother and brother and father were murdered yesterday. We don't want to know about it: they were Israeli, and thus forfeit our sympathy. 

ה' יקום דמם. 

האשה צנועה

Wonderful, amazing, absolutely thrilling news! With not so much connection to Israel, but definitely important on the Jewish feminist front.

First, an explanation of terms:

An agunah (עגונה) is a woman whose husband has run off without giving her a get, a Jewish divorce. Though civically divorced, she cannot remarry by Jewish law, and the civic courts won't interfere because it's a religious issue. In many cases, the man is holding out for lots of money, or sometimes just ruining her life because he can. Fine. 

Though the plight of the agunot has been becoming more and more publicized recently, the rabbis really have not done all that they can to help these women. They announce that he's shunned by the community, and sometimes get him thrown in jail, but more often than not, do nothing. And we all know that where there's a rabbinic will there's a halachic way. I mean, they found a way for elevators to run on shabbat but they can't find a way for these women to reclaim their lives?!!?!?!!

In Straight Talk, a book by Sally Berkovic, I read the most wonderful thing. Just like in Aristophanes' play Lysistrata, where the women all stop sleeping with the men until the men stop fighting, in a community in Canada all the women refused to go to the mikvah until an agunah in the community was given a get. 

Now, in Judaism in order to be allowed to sleep with your husband, you must first wait seven days after your period and then dunk in the mikvah, a ritual bath. When the women in the Canadian community refused to go to the mikvah, they were in effect withholding sex from their husbands until such time as the agunah would be free to continue her life. Instead of one lonely, powerless woman trying to convince the rabbis to exert pressure on her husband, an entire community of horny men applied leverage to the shmuck so that he would give his wife a get. Awesome, aye?

Happy Birthday Israel!

In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles. –Ben-Gurion

Today is Israel’s 60th anniversary of Independence Day. Sixty years ago, Ben-Gurion and a group of pioneers together signed their name to the Declaration of the State of Israel. Among other things, the Declaration states:

“THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Has it kept its promises? Is Israel just and equal to all its inhabitants? What about the arsim, the Ethiopian immigrants who are greatly discriminated against in the school system and professional arena? The Russian immigrants who join gangs and push drugs? Does Israel really give religious freedom to all? Atheists have a hard time practicing in the Holy Land. The Israeli government has definitely not safeguarded the holy places of all religions, though perhaps that’s not its fault: Maarat Hamachpela is divided in half, Arab graves desecrate the side of the Temple Mount, and Har Zeitim is practically under siege. Women are pushed to the backs of government-owned buses in religious neighborhoods, and barred from holding prayer services at the kotel. IDF soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians during terrorist-targeting missions. The gay pride parade was cancelled last year due to fear of violence. Justice was not served when Sharon ran for PM on a basis of not giving away land at any cost and then tossed away Israelis’ homes without the referendum that the country was screaming for. The government members have suffered an embarrassing barrage of personal scandals this past year.

Yet, with all this (u’vchol zot… do you hear me G-d?) Israel is doing wonderfully for a country only sixty years out of the shell. It is a refuge for Jews from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, France, Morocco, etc. It is trying to iron out the kinks of a secular government running a religious country. Women have it better in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East: they are free to vote, work, and wear what they will, and the speaker of parliament, president of the supreme court, and foreign minister are all female. Israeli soldiers follow a fifteen-step process before even being allowed to load their guns when they are in an area with civilians. Homosexuals from Arab countries and from Nablus and the West Bank flee to Israel for safety. Young Israelis fired with passionate idealism and love for the country are working even now to resurrect integrity in Israeli politics.

Tomorrow in Israel, families will pack the parks and grassy lawns with their mangalim (grills). There will be flag dances and children’s performances, singing and drinking. Like any other country celebrating Independence Day, Israelis will party. Unlike any other country, Israelis will ask themselves whether their State still has the right to exist. For the first time since its creation, Israelis and Jews worldwide are losing their certainty that Israel will be around for the rest of their lifetimes. Like a young teenage girl growing in a world surrounded with sick body images in the media, Israel is being swayed by the constant barrage against it. Yet it must remain confident if it is to continue as a strong nation for the next sixty years.

The Silver Platter

"And his blood was crying out from the ground." -Amir Gilboa

Tonight is Yom Hazikaron. Memorial Day.

One day a year it’s okay to cry for those who gave their lives for Israel. So on Yom Hazikaron we press pieces of tissues to our aching eyes, and dutifully count off the names of friends and relatives, and dream of peace. And the rest of the time, the 364 days that are not Yom Hazikaron, we try not to think of the cost in young lives, the tremendous blood payment that has been made. But then someone mentions how Gal would have loved this, he always loved playing scrabble on shabbos afternoons, and someone else says their fence hasn’t been painted since Ariel… and those pictures of Doron keep cropping up on youtube and one cannot always keep one’s eyes lowered when one passes the piano to skirt the basket of memorial packets put together by friends and family of the loved ones and nobody can hear a bar of Mah Avarech without leaking teardrops a bit and neither can we hear an ambulance siren without flinching or look a hijab in the face without ducking and the pain is constant but in this country it must be pushed aside because who will understand that we all have someone who has died, that we are bound to even the dead we don’t know because they died for us, and after all what is our pain compared to that of the mother who will never hold her boy again? The girlfriend who will never wink at her lover again? The toddler who will grow up with Abba’s picture on the mantelpiece and the knowledge that his father died for his country.

Don’t give me that crap about war being kind. Nor the silver platter nonsense. Dulce et—I don’t believe it. I believe in children growing up, growing old, growing… Do whatever you have to do. Funkthewar, Fuckthewar, just end the war.

דע לפני מי אתה עומד

For the first time ever, the Israeli government is funding the building of a Reform synagogue. It may be a difficult thing for Americans firmly convinced of the sanctity of separation between Church and State to grasp, but this is actually a step towards religious equality.

The Religious Affairs Ministry controls funding for the building of synagogues. In the past, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, an orthodox institution, has not acknowledged the validity of liberal Judaism. Jews in Israel who were not comfortable with orthodoxy generally had nowhere else to go, and drifted away from religion entirely. Though it’s common knowledge that secular Israelis often know Tanach better than dedicated Diasporic Jews.

The current schism between religious and nonreligious Jews has deep roots. Modern Israel was built by secular Zionists who established socialist communities called kibbutzim. At the time of the creation of the State, many religious Jews worldwide protested its creation because they wanted to wait for mashiach (messiah) and thought a secular government had no place in eretz hakadosh. Patriotic secular Israelis hated religious Israelis who refused to do army service and protested that they did their share for Israel by sitting and learning all day. During the hitnatkut, the schism widened as some secular Israelis saw nothing wrong with giving away land (besides the obvious military imbecility of it) and religious Israelis saw their homes destroyed by a secular government. Just recently over Passover, an intense debate raged about whether or not to legally allow the public sale of leavened food during the holiday.

Nowadays there is a mass exodus of secular Israelis from Israel. America is the dreamland that they flee to. In any city in the States one can find a cynical community of expat Israelis living the good life. In Israel, the religious Zionists are putting their all into the country. They compete to get into the most elite units in the army. Religious Zionism holds the future of Israel.

The divide between religious and secular Israelis is more pronounced to a visitor from the United States. Last year, I noticed how towns and neighborhoods were divided by religious observance, effectively segregating the religious and nonreligious. Some Israelis are making efforts to merge the two worlds- programs like Gesher and Tzohar, and individual dati leumi couples who live in secular neighborhoods, attempt to bridge the gap. But it’s difficult when the mindset of one group is to try to become as American as possible, and the other believes “higiya zmah hageeulah” –the time of the redemption is arriving.

The government’s decision to fund a Reform synagogue shows a new willingness to embrace alternative paths of Judaism. Although certain things must remain under the control of the orthodox rabbinate if they are to have any credibility for the orthodox population (eg: marriage), spiritual outlet for secular Jews is an absolute must if Israel is to have any future of reconciliation between chilonim and datiim. We may be as different as apples and oranges, but in the end we’re all juice.

לא קלה היא דרכנו

As the bus rolled past farmland and little groves of forest, it dawned upon me how much the countryside looked like Columbus. Then I shivered and shook the thought from my mind. Poland and Ohio could not have anything in common if I was to have any peace when I returned.

We’d been in Poland five days, and had three more to go. Our group of seminary girls, in Israel for a year of post-high school Torah study, had taken advantage of the Heritage program’s pre-Passover Poland tour to both learn about the Holocaust and affirm that we remember.

After only half a day, I wanted nothing less than to return to Israel already. I felt dirtied by Poland. Driving through its pretty landscape I sat glued to the windows of the bus, intrigued by the phantom blood that I saw running alongside the roads. I hadn’t wanted to go. I’d felt that a trip to Poland would merely be outlet for histrionics and somehow unfairly appropriate the Holocaust for myself, using those who died in an emotional game. But my own idiocies couldn’t let me keep from respecting the memories of those who perished there, nor from making the statement to the world that yet another person would never forget, so I found myself on a bus filled with Orot, Migdal Oz, Shaalvot, and MMY girls intent on capturing Poland on their cameras already filled with photos of a happy year spent learning in Israel.

We trundled along from cemetery to concentration camp, abandoned synagogue to derelict ghetto. The mud squelched into the boots we’d bought specially for this trip (who packs boots when they’re going to Israel for the year?) and clung to the Israeli flags dangling damply from our backpacks. Exhausted by a max of three hours of sleep a night and even more by the emotional barrage thrown at us, we marched along in a sort of numbness from horror to horror, subsisting solely on mapah chamahs and the knowledge that at the end of the week we’d be on a flight back to beautiful Israel.

Belzec left me gasping: too much death thrown in my face on a sunny day. Majdanek left me disgusted: it looked like my summer camp, except for the smiling empty gas chambers. Birkenau resembled the University of Maryland with its brick dormitories, a comparison I still try not to make whenever I notice the chimneys on the buildings here. Auschwitz II was too massive: I couldn’t see the end of it from the entrance, nor comprehend its enormity until four days after returning to Israel, when I woke gasping one night in my bed in Elqana, my mind reeling from suddenly being hit with all of Auschwitz.

The cemeteries were friendlier. Many of them pre-war, they marked my ancestors’ remains beneath mossy stones inscribed with the legend “Isha tznuah” –a modest woman. Often I wished that the engravers had left more of a record; besides modesty, who the hell was she? But modesty was all I got. Something that has survived Hitler’s purge to this day.

The eight days I spent in Poland were mostly spent yearning to get back to Israel. Never had I felt so strongly my position as a Diasporic Jew. My most terrifying moment was awakening alone in a grassy cemetery on a small hill where I’d sat down for “just a moment” to regain some energy. I assumed that everyone was at the top of the cemetery, and only upon gaining the crest did I realize that they’d left me behind, and the bus was nowhere in sight. I flew over the Polish potato fields, mentally running over all the Polish words I knew: “jenkuya,” thank you, and “rynik,” marketplace. I cursed myself for not having rented a phone that would work internationally instead of only in Israel. Strangely, the fear that I started to give great gasping sobs for was that I might dehydrate. Obviously I’d spent too much time hiking in the Holy Land.

If I am stuck in Poland… If I am stuck in Poland… Forever. Of course if I could have thought about it rationally I would have foreseen the bus’ return up the hill, the wiry Israeli security guard flying out and shouting “ayfoh hayit, Chanahleh?” as my friends poured out to hug me. But at the moment, I thought I was facing a very real sojourn in Poland for possibly the rest of my life, or at least until I learned enough Polish to tell someone I wanted to go home. To Israel.

Three days later, when the plane touched down in Tel Aviv and its hatch disgorged us onto the hot pavement, I finally did what I’ve wanted to do for years and never dared to, since my first trip to Israel at the age of ten; I knelt down and kissed the tarmac. Home at last.

Before we entered Auschwitz II, walking down the railroad tracks with a sefer Torah in front of us, the wrinkled survivor with us told us “komemiyut. Walk komemiyut.” Upright, he said. Enter the murder-grounds of your ancestors with heads held high. I wanted to shout to him that he was wrong. That’s not the context! It’s from bentching, the prayer after the meal, and the word is slipped in thus: “V’Hu yolichanu komemiyut l’arzaynu” –“He (G-d) will bring us upright to our land.” I walked into Auschwitz painfully erect when all I really wanted was to curl into a fetal position, but I strode into Ben Gurion Airport with my head held high and glad. Komemiyut.

Israel is coming up on its 60th birthday this week. It’s hard to go from the terrible misery of remembering the Holocaust, to joyous celebration of Israel’s birth, and within the same week mourn Israel’s fallen on Yom Hazikaron, the national Day of Remembrance. But it is also fitting. Israel stands a country young in age but old in memory: born out of the ashes of European Jewry it now exists a safe haven of refuge to Jews worldwide. So that if ever Maryland or Ohio begin to resemble Poland in more than appearance, there is somewhere to go.

לזכר

In memory of the six million.


Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. -USHMM plaque

לא נשכך ולא נסלח: We Will Not Forget, Nor Forgive

Last Thursday night the Hoff theater showed the film “Unsettled” by Adam Hootnick. It is a film about the hitnatkut, the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, that took place three summers ago, from the perspective of six twenty year-olds. It divides up perspectives equably (three for, three against disengagement) and does its best to make everyone seem personable and likable.

I did not go.

I sat in my room, beating my fists against the fake wood of my desk, whisking tears out of my eyes as fast as they could form, and pummeling my mind over and over against the news that Olmert wants to give away the Golan to Syria.

The Golan.

The Golan, that Israeli boys fought and died for during the Six Day War. The Golan, overlooking the vulnerable farmers in the Chuleh valley below. The Golan, breathtaking mountains with cascades of almond and crocus blossoms spilling over on the heights. Give away the Golan, after the spectacular fallout (bad pun, I know) from the Gaza withdrawal. Give it away to Syria, which so clearly wants peace with Israel that it built a nuclear reactor in secret. Good idea. Do you not remember Gaza?

It has been three years since the hitnatkut, and the dominating emotion now is the same as it was then, with a little nostalgia added to the mix: lo nishkach v’lo nislach. We will not forget. We will not forgive.

I remember that summer. I was young, mid-teens, palms sweaty from linking hands in the human protest chain we made stretching from Gaza to Jerusalem. My voice hoarse from shouting the obvious; “Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi!” (One Jew does not exile another). My eyes smarting from the sea of bright orange shirts and bands that were the symbol of protest. My heart convinced that G-d would not allow this outrage to happen. And if He screwed up, I knew Sharon (the then prime minister) was not a big enough idiot to actually give away land for peace! We all knew Oslo had been a big fat failure- there’s no such thing as land for peace. We gave away Gaza, and rockets rained on Sderot and Ashkelon and Iranian militants smuggled weapons into Gaza. Giving away the Golan or Jerusalem are equally stupid ideas. While I’m debunking myths, let’s do another: there’s no such thing as a ceasefire. As Noam Bedein of Sderot Media Center said: We cease, they fire.

The more than 800 refugees who were kicked out of their homes by their own country, by their own army that had sworn to protect them, in some cases by their own friends and cousins and lovers, are still living in shanty towns throughout Israel. They are fighting hopeless, endless legal battles with the Israeli government for the payment they were promised for their land. Their belongings are still kept in huge crates by the sides of the highways because they have no room for them in their houses. And Olmert wants to give away more. Land for peace, land for peace. It’s become the mantra of the left wing.

Israelis want peace more than anything else. I grew up singing popular Israeli songs, “Noladeti lashalom” (I was born for peace), “Shir lashalom” (Song of peace), “Od yavo shalom aleinu” (Peace will come upon us), and my favorite, “Hinay ba hashalom” (Here comes the peace). Can you spot the trend? Whereas the most played video shown on Arab TV this past year was a music video celebrating the act of becoming a shahid- martyrdom by murder. Palestinian MediaWatch shows alarming trends in their newspapers, TV shows, and textbooks. They do not want peace. If they did, then we could talk about peace in that little spot in the Middle East that is causing so much trouble. But till then, no land for a nonexistent peace.

Olmert, listen to the slogans that are raging through the country. Lech labaitah, Olmert! (Olmert, go home!). HaAm im haGolan! (The nation stands with the Golan). Lo nishkach v’lo nislach— we will not forget, nor will we forgive. Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi. Please, Olmert. Listen.

I am in America. I am not yet an Israeli citizen. I have no say. Were the Golan to be given away, I would cry, and I would throb with pain, and I would scream to the high heavens, but I would be two thousand miles away. Jerusalem… is different.

I wear a golden ribbon knotted onto my knapsack. Here in Maryland, nobody has the slightest clue what it means though bags in Israel sport them routinely. It is golden for Jerusalem, and I tied it to my bag as a silent protest against the idea of dividing Jerusalem, the golden city. Remember before ’67, when Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city? It was under Jordanian control, and no Jew or Christian could enter the city. Now it is a beautiful metropolitan capital, filled with people of diverse religions and the ubiquitous Asian tourists who cover the world. Give that away, and no Jew or Christian will be able to enter. Give that away, and I will be on a plane and latched to that ground until they pry me off kicking.

The other area that Olmert has been discussing giving away is the West Bank: Yesha (Yehuda and Samaria). I lived in Samaria last year, in the beautiful little community of Elqana. I took long walks on its brick sidewalks overshadowed by calyonim blossoms. I visited its red-roofed, sprawling white houses and taught the children English at the local middle school. I hiked among the empty hills and looked out over the Arab and Jewish towns. I want to live on a hilltop in the Shomron, in a caravan with one wall covered with books and the other just a wide window with a view of quiet, peaceful rolling hills. And regardless of green line, security fence, assholes named Olmert, or American pressure, I will.

Holy Land Baseball

Check out this link for a discussion about... baseball in Israel! That's right, we know you've all walked past Gan Sacher and gotten that little thrill of home when you heard the crack of the American yeshiva boys swinging their bats, but now you can watch Israel's own baseball league play!
Go to:
http://exportingbaseball.blogspot.com/

The Sin of the Spies: חטא המרגלים

And Moshe sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and he said to them: Go up, see the land, what it is, and what the people are who dwell on it. -Bamidbar 13:17

This Tuesday, an 84 year-old man was arrested for passing information on the United States military to Israel. Twenty-three years ago.

Ben-Ami Kadish worked in the U.S. Army as a civilian engineer. He engaged in espionage for Israel while working in a military arsenal until 1985. The twist? His control agent was the same as Jonathan Pollard’s.

Pollard’s face has loomed at me from the sides of buses, t-shirts, and stickers, but perhaps you’re less familiar with him. The facts: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/

Pollard was a civilian American Naval intelligence analyst, who found information that was being withheld from Israel despite the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding, which made Israel legally entitled to it. The information included planned attacks against Israel by Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran. When he approached American officials about it, he was brushed off. Idealistically tied to Eretz Hakadosh, he gave the information directly to Israel.

Pollard was arrested in 1985, entered a plea agreement, and was given a life sentence without parole, though the charge he was indicted on was merely that of passing information to an ally without intent to harm the States. He is the only person in the history of the U.S. to receive a life sentence for spying for a U.S. ally. His sentence is much harsher than even most of those convicted of treason –those who spied for an enemy.

Kadish’s arrest brings up the Pollard case with a vengeance. There are those who worry that it will further delay Pollard’s pardon, which Jews in both America and Israel have been agitating for with increased vehemence recently. The Jewish concept of pidyon shvuyim, a responsibility to release innocent Jewish captives, has assumed great importance. Just as when Jews nationwide protested the incarceration of Natan Sharanksy in the Soviet Union and made him a symbol of human rights, supporters of Jonathan Pollard are hoping that he will be likewise freed if enough publicity and pressure is generated.

Letter-writing campaigns have burgeoned across the States. Everyone pelts their personal congressmen with love notes about the idiocy of keeping Pollard, the agent of a friendly country, locked up forever. When I visited Israel this winter, coinciding with Bush’s (unwelcome) visit, buses had photos of kidnapped Israeli soldiers Ron Arad and Ehud Goldwasser underneath pictures of their captors, and a picture of Bush above Jonathan Pollard. I attended the ceremony changing the name of Paris Square to “Free Jonathan Pollard” Square, where emotions escalated and Israelis cried for Bush to pardon the man who did not hurt America, but was loyal to Israel.

Israel claims that it has not spied in the United States since the Pollard affair. Regardless of whether this is true, it has decided that using the American Jewish community to spy would be a bad idea. But the question remains: where do our loyalties lie? Were we in Pollard’s situation, what would we do? It’s a question that every person must answer individually.

As children, we all asked ourselves whom we would support were America to war with Israel. More mature, we now ask ourselves how we should vote: with Israel’s best interests at heart, or America’s? There is a definite Jewish idea of dina d’malchutah dina –obeying the law of the land— and linked with that is a loyalty to and respect for the country that has given one the right to live and practice Judaism freely. So we can’t dismiss America’s claim on us. At the same time, Israel is and will always be the Jewish homeland, the place we have dreamed of for two thousand years of exile. It doesn’t have to be either/or —enter Soleveitchik. The debate begins…

Loving The Land With My Feet

The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. –Thoreau

Hiking is the unofficial national sport of Israel. On national holidays and during the summer, Israelis and visiting tourists swarm over the country, clambering up mountains and wiggling down waterfalls. Brown Israeli children splash each other in the country’s rivers. Arab boys catcall from the low branches of olive trees. Fathers shlep bonneted toddlers on their backs, teenage girls cover their heads with mitpachot so they look married, and 2.5 liter Ein Gedi water bottles litter the sides of trails.

I love it.

There is nothing so wonderful to me as hiking Israel. Forget the stupendous variety of landscape in the country, the sheer beauty of its cliffs and deserts and ocean and watering holes. A walk in Israel is a journey through history. I hike up the same mountain Avraham herded sheep on, scramble over Roman-era ruins, crawl through a trench from the ’67 war, and straighten up, my hand in the strong grasp of a chayal. Every puff of dust that my feet raise as I trek raises a corresponding gasp of appreciation from my mind. This is my land, I think. Each step I take cements it to me more firmly.

One of my most exquisite hikes was the week my father and I spent in Machtesh Ramon, in the Negev (Southern Israel). At first the stark, barren rockiness of the desert left me cold. But at the end of days of exhausting hiking, lying covered in the white dust, watching the sun set in golden veils over the reddening cliffs, I began to thrill to the beauty. The sonic boom of Israeli fighter planes practicing low over the machtesh jerked me out of my doze and reminded me that the allure of this country is all bound up in its people, its unbeatably plucky fight for survival and the pride I feel in its accomplishments.

Another heavenly ramble took me down near Eilat, by the Egyptian border. Instead of the worn rocky trails of the Ramon area, I swam through huge dunes of sand. My friends and I waded up the piles of endless sand, to run and roll and gasp down their sides. I took off my hiking boots, rolled up my pants to my skirt hem, and dashed off barefoot to seek solitude. After five minutes I’d left the group and our guard far behind. Only the little hollows of my footprints linked me to humanity. Just self, sand, and sky. Lying in my sand angel, flinging thought up to the heavens, I understood why Israeli tour guides always blather on about the prophets talking to G-d alone in the Sinai desert. If I were going to suddenly believe in G-d because of a landscape, this would be it.

Over the Sukkot break last year seven friends and I hiked yam l’yam, a three day hike from sea to sea. We started at the Mediterranean and ended at the Sea of Galilee. We followed the orange, blue, and white stripes of paint along nachal kziv, up har meron, past Tzfat, and down to Tiberias. (By the way, I love the symbolism of those stripes: orange for sand, blue for ocean, and white for sky). Families passed us, offered us food, gave us directions. Reaching the Kinneret late at night after three days of grueling beauty, we danced and dunked each other in exhausted triumph. On the tremp (hitchhike) back to Jerusalem, I thought of what I’d like to do next.

Shvil Yisrael, the national trail, runs from the most southern tip of the Negev up to the Northern border with Lebanon. It’s a three-month trek that takes in every piece of Israel. When I make aliyah, the first thing I will do is take three months off, a big backpack, and my tanach, and learn my country from head to toe. As they say, hiking Israel is like caressing the land with your feet.

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

I am a Jewish woman. Hath not a Jewish woman eyes? Hath not a Jewish woman hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

This post starts right here in College Park. But it ends, like all good things, in Israel…

I am a Jewish woman. Staunchly Jewish, strongly feminist. Proud of both. But lately, I’ve been floundering in intense frustration.

I don’t want to be told what I can’t do because I’m female. I’m sick of studying Torah and suddenly coming upon texts that degrade or downright insult women (e.g.: teaching your daughter Torah is like teaching her prostitution, the sins of Bnei Yisrael are like the menstrual blood of a woman, women are less intelligent than men, etc). I hate the intense anxiety that I feel when I enter the beit midrash and find it entirely populated by surprised male eyes. I’m tired of feeling firmly situated in my religion just to find that really it’s talking only to the men.

It’s ironic that one of the most painful parts of being a Jewish woman is the way supporters approve of women who go out of their way to participate in Jewish ritual. As though being born to a Jewish mother, raised as a Jewish girl, and loving one’s G-d and His creations is not enough of a reason to want to fulfill G-d’s word. Don’t they understand that their approval is just as demeaning as their criticism?! That we need male approval to praise G-d sickens me.

Several friends of mine here at Maryland, committed and well-educated women who are passionate about their Judaism and unwilling to abandon Orthodoxy in pursuit of fulfillment, have come together to address the issue. To empower ourselves, if you will. Only we’re not allowed to say “empower” because apparently it’s a word that scares men. And so, WOJAM is born: Women’s Orthodox Jewish Alliance at Maryland. I wanted it to be WTF–Women’s Torah Forum—but they thought it would send the wrong message. Funny, I think it says it exactly right.

First we began women’s prayer groups once a month, on the holiday for the new month. I love it. It’s not leading the prayers or organizing the davening that’s so wonderful, it’s the knowing how. After having prayed three times a day, seven days a week, for the past fourteen years of my life, I finally understand how the service works. But it hurts to separate from the rest of the community. Every time the door opens between us and the mainstream minyan I’m reminded that we’re cutting ourselves off from them.

So WOJAM brainstormed to find a way to help make us an equal part of the community within the regular services.

We hit upon a novel idea. Pass the Torah to the women’s side after Torah reading on Sabbath mornings and have a woman carry it through the women’s section so the women can kiss it. It’s something that has been instituted in several modern orthodox communities throughout the States, so is not entirely unprecedented. It violates no halacha: we would have a stand between the men and women’s section so that the man and woman passing it off wouldn’t touch each other, and we would do it specifically only on the Sabbath so that it won’t add a great amount of time to services during the week when students have classes to get to.

We discussed it, getting gradually more and more excited about a chance to participate in the davening halachically, and arguing out ways in which to approach the community about it. We spent hours hashing over ways to phrase our point, and whom we should ask for support and who for permission, and whether it would really be beneficial.

The rabbis who are affiliated with Hillel both told us that there are no halachic problems, but they weren’t comfortable deciding such an issue. It’s a community issue, we were told again and again by the different authorities we approached.

So we took it to the community. The two gabbaim, the students in charge of the services, disagreed. The younger one had no problem with it. The senior gabbai, who has lots of influence in the community, felt uncomfortable with it. But more than fairly he said that he didn’t see why his discomfort with it was any more important than our discomfort with our current status in davening.

The next step was a meeting of the leaders in the Orthodox student community, numbering about fifty, male and female. It was at this point that I began to feel the most intense frustration. People had ridiculous reasons for not wanting to allow women to carry the Torah. They were worried about our motivation: do we want this because we’ll get a spiritual high out of it, or only to prove that we can? Never mind that nobody ever asks a guy if he feels close to G-d after kissing the Torah. We were told, “You don’t really want this.” Beg to differ. We know what we want! Some idiot even brought up the issue of women’s menstrual impurity, when everyone with even a modicum of knowledge knows that a) since the destruction of the Second Temple everyone is in a state of ritual impurity and b) a Torah is a holy vessel that cannot contract impurity. Even the guys who had no problem with it were not especially supportive, saying such things as “I don’t kiss it, it doesn’t kiss me” (okay, I know that’s funny). The worst thing I heard was this: “it will influence the way people see modern orthodox Judaism, which is actually really good to women. If we let women carry the Torah, people will think that they were discriminated against in the first place.” WHAT???!!! Meaning, you don’t want people to think you discriminate against women, so you’re going to discriminate against them?! Get a brain, man!

In the end, we decided to poll the community to see how people felt about the issue. And they decided against it.

I understand that growth is a process, that as more and more women are educated and become leaders in chinuch, women’s position in Judaism will change. The part of me that knows that wants to throw up English literature and run straight into Migdal Oz for as long as it takes, till I emerge the next Shani Taragin, Yael Ziegler, or Tamar Ross. But since my Torah study is nowhere near that level, I can try to change things in the broader community. I can support the women who are able to study and learn 24-7. I can raise daughters who will never feel that they have to rely on a man to explain Torah to them, because their gemara education was indifferent at best. I can, and I will. Which is part of the reason for why I am making aliyah as soon as I can.

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I always cry when I see this...

Red Alert: We Have No Spare Children

“We will only have peace when they love their children more than they hate us.” –Golda Meir


3…2…1… And the children start to sing.

In Sderot, every time the red alert siren goes off, warning the residents that they have fifteen seconds to get to a shelter before a rocket strikes, the preschool children count down and then burst into song to cover the sound of the blast. A far cry from the Mary had a little lamb that we grew up on, but effective.

The western Negev town of Sderot has been enduring rocket attacks from Gaza since 2001. So why, all of a sudden, has it become a rallying point for Jews worldwide? “Support Sderot” rallies have burgeoned across the States, and in Israel the dati leumi are screaming for the government to protect its people. American college students visit Sderot to volunteer in droves. Diaspora communities collect huge amounts of funds for ambulances, shelters, and trauma centers. Three years ago, nobody cared.


Now, Sderot has emerged as the front line in Israel’s war. Sderot residents have pushed past the Israeli government’s desire for secrecy: Olmert fears that publicity about the rocket fire will jeopardize the peace process. Which is ridiculous. The rockets themselves jeopardize the peace process. Closing our eyes and pretending they’re not there won’t solve anything.

For the many Israeli citizens who protested the hitnatkut (the disengagement from Gaza) four summers ago, the situation in Sderot is even more frustrating. Though nobody wants to be right about something like this, the “I told you so”s are resounding from the street corners. It’s even worse that the government watches what is happening in Sderot and learns nothing: Olmert is discussing expelling still more Israelis from their homes in the Shomron and the Gush Etzion bloc.

Israelis are beginning to understand that rockets in Sderot is not simply a local problem. As Iran produces ever farther-reaching rockets and sends them into Gaza to be fired at Israeli towns, Israel citizens in nearby Ashkelon also face rocket barrage. Tel Aviv residents are beginning to get nervous. The IDF is broadening its missile defense system, in conjunction with the States. Yesterday children nationwide practiced bomb shelter drills. It’s no longer a question of simply Sderot. Sderot represents the fear of all Israelis. And the fear of Jews worldwide.

What if Iran used the nuclear weapons that it keeps boasting about? What if instead of the single houses, individual people, and private rooms that are demolished in Sderot, all of Israel went up in smoke? Maybe Sderot is the canary in the mine, not only for Israel but for all of Europe. Iran’s weapons now have the capacity to reach up to half of Europe. Somebody needs to stop them. We have no spare children.

Shtik or Shtark

Beware all enterprises that require new clothes. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Skirts are holy and pants are sacrilegious. Everybody knows that. That’s why all across Israel you can see girls hiking, biking, dancing, and scuba diving in skirts. No longer merely a religious injunction, skirts are part of the culture, a way to declare one’s identity. Different skirts assign different labels: a long, earth-hued, pleated skirt means ultra-religious, a flowy wrap over pants indicates a woman from one of the dati le’umi rural communities, and a chic jean skirt shouts American seminary girl abroad for her post-high school year in Israel.

Last year I wore chic jean skirts for ten consecutive months. Ten. That’s a long time to go without stretching your legs to their full length because your skirt won’t let you. But I managed. I used to slide around the security fence (yes, that security fence) into the Arab olive grove near my school and, draping my skirt over a gnarled branch, exult in the freedom of shorts.

Elsewhere I respected the rules of the ultra-religious. I bought tube socks and cut off the bottoms to form sleevies so my elbows would be easily coverable. I didn’t sit beside males who wore their dress code (penguin suits and black hats, the equivalent of the pleated skirt) on buses. When an old woman chastised me at the Western Wall for crossing my legs, which is apparently inappropriate, I quietly thanked her for telling me and uncrossed them.

But something in me has revolted against the skirt as the mark of the religious Jewish woman ever since my friends decided in eighth grade to give away all their pants to Goodwill. It seems to me a mark of hypocrisy, a sort of promise to the world that you are really a devout person. Such holier-than-thou-ness upsets me (I know you’re thinking it: what could possibly be more holier-than-thou than scoffing at religious practices in a blog? The irony amuses me). I find myself angrily counting up instances in which a woman who professes through her clothing to be pious proves that she neglects true holiness.

Which is why the recent arrest for child-abuse of a woman from the ultra-religious neighborhood of Beit Shemesh who has started wearing a burka in public and accrued a large following of burka-wearers upsets me so.

It’s true that the Beit Shemesh community is slowly going crazy. My aunt lives in Ramah alef, a connected neighborhood, and I’ve spent many Sabbaths sitting outside with my cousins waiting for cars to pass so we can watch the charedim throw rocks at them. I’ve heard about women who have been shamed out of the grocery because the cashier wouldn’t serve them unless they covered their hair (religious married women should cover their hair according to Jewish law). But even the local ultra-rightwing rabbis were baffled by the burka trend.

The mother who abused her children was the leader of this cult of religious women. She refused to take off her burka in court, or speak in front of men. Such misplaced zealousness is an extreme incident, yet it represents an entire group of religious women who think it’s enough to dress the part. It’s most emphatically not. This sort of behavior raises piercing questions about the way people can twist religion to suit their own ends, or even to fuel their insanity. It disgraces those who practice it honestly and meaningfully. And it makes me absolutely certain that I want to continue to bare my elbows to the world.

The Stranger in Your Midst: The African Refugees

“Do not taunt nor oppress the stranger in your midst, because you were slaves in the Land of Egypt…” (Exodus 22: 20)

The modern State of Israel was created explicitly for refugees. It was a made-to-order asylum for the thousands of Jews adrift in Europe post WWII, and since then has functioned as a safe haven for Jews from Russia, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, and most recently France. Under the “Right of Return” law of 1950 any Jewish person who wishes to can live in Israel and claim citizenship. Israel is the homeland for the homeless.

Recently, six thousand African refugees have fled to Israel through the border with Egypt. Of those, 600 are Darfurians who have been granted temporary resident status. The difference between them and past refugees: they are Muslim.

A debate is now currently raging. Can Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, with its own Jewish refugees to fend for and demographics that are tipping heavily Arab-wards, afford to harbor African Muslim refugees? On the other hand, can the modern State of Israel, a country founded to give the homeless a home, a country that is looked upon as a moral guide for other nations, maintain its identity and purpose if it turns away the tired, poor, huddled masses that no other country will accept?

Israel has no choice. Because of all that it is, because of its history and its mission and its position as a spiritual center for humanity, it must accept the refugees. It owes it to itself to take care of these people. Without continuing its legacy of justice, it ceases to exist as a purposeful nation and might as well let Ahmadinejad carry out his threats of extinction. One of the reasons that Israel has such a strong right to exist (a claim that no other country is required to fight for) in the midst of antagonistic neighbors is that it is a bastion of equality and advocate for civil rights. Without a strong self-pride in its compassionate humanitarianism, Israel will lose its identity.

One can come up with plenty of reasons for why Israel ought not to allow the refugees to remain there. Would the U.S. let six thousand Mexicans shelter in its borders? Obviously not—it deports them as fast as it finds them. Why doesn’t one of the fifty-six Islamic countries in existence take in their co-religionists? Israel has enough refugees of its own, what with the Ethiopians still struggling to gain a place in society, and the Gush Katif refugees who still don’t have proper housing. The last time I was in Israel, four months ago, I drove along the highway and saw the huge plastic crates in which the Jewish refugees who were kicked out of the Gaza strip house their belongings. The last thing Israel needs is a tent city for African refugees right outside Tel Aviv. What if the children of these refugees grow up to forget their gratitude and loyalty to Israel, and instead identify with the Muslim extremists in the neighborhood?

What will happen to the refugees in the long term? Perhaps they will become part of the country, bringing their own culture in to join the hodgepodge there today. Religious diversity is a good thing. The African Muslims should not have any more difficulty fitting in than the sfardim, the Christian Arabs, the Ethiopian Jews, the Druze and the Bedouins and the Russian immigrants. Which gives one pause. Yet I firmly believe that in time all will settle and mix and we will simply have a country of Sabras.

At the end of the day, Israel cannot afford to count up the what-ifs of opening its gates. The refugees from the Sudan are not being helped by anyone else. The Jewish State was created out of the horrors of genocide. The rest of the world is in debt to it, not the reverse, but it still owes something to itself. “You were slaves in Egypt” is a mantra throughout Tanach, used to remind Jews of their obligation towards humanity. The modern Jewish State, created out of the ashes of Europe, has the same responsibility.

Introduction

I was born in Montreal, Canada, bred in Ohio, live in Maryland, and the first thing I do upon waking in the morning is check the weather in Israel.

This blog will serve as an outlet for my excitement, frustrations, and love of the land of Israel. It will cover a broad range of topics: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the mood of Israeli religious Zionists, the role of women in Israel, and developments in the academic yeshivah world. I plan to range from the obvious to the obscure, and blog about Israel in whatever direction my interests and current events pull me. 

My slant will be that of a Zionist feminist American woman whose political views tend to the left compared to her placing on the religious scale. I write as one who lived there for a year, has family and friends there, and plans to spend the rest of my life there. As invested as I am, I am a Canadian and American citizen and love both my countries. Therefore, my perspective has a Diasporic approach to it. I am seven hours off and half a million miles away from that which lies closest to my heart. An interesting dialectic often ensues. Enjoy.