Greetings from Ashkelon on Yom HaAtzma'ut

As Alan's post below tells in greater detail, we have arrived at the beautiful Ashkelon seashore on the first full day of our Hazon Israel Ride. Today I took the option of riding half the day and touring half the day. We visited a kibbutz that from 1945-1948 had a secret underground bullet factory. Workers entered through the laundry and the ventilation system used the chimneys on the laundry and the bakery nearby. Our tour guide, Yuval, was fantastic, combining a tour of the site with thought-provoking questions and his own reflections on what it meant for him --as an educator and a soldier-- that Yom HaZikaron/Memorial Day and Yom HaAtzma'ut/Independence Day were right next to each other. I'm proud of Alan for taking on the challenge of longer riding days, but I'm also very excited for the touring my shorter days leave room for.

Back in Boston, my rabbinical school community was also celebrating Yom HaAtzma'ut. Daniel (my study partner here in Israel) and I were asked to write reflections to be read at the morning prayer service in Boston. My words are included below. Tomorrow we head into the desert! It will be a very long day of riding for Alan and another half day for me plus a tour of a Bedouin village. We're also closing in on our fund-raising goal, but still need a final push. If you've got what to give, please visit our donation site by clicking here. AND, I got a write-up in the local Sag Harbor paper a couple of weeks ago; click here for the interview.

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Reflection for יום העצמאות/Yom HaAtzma'ut 2009

I am a warmly welcomed guest in the home of an eccentric and beloved relative. She offers her riches openly, a well of generosity. Swaths of desert and seashore and forested hills, I gulp down landscapes of such variety and beauty that I want more and more. Cappuccino and burekas for breakfast, their tastes and smells layering and mixing like the many languages I hear in the streets.

She promises protection and safety, a place to call home. This home: musty, windswept, full of old secrets, constantly under renovation, full of ghosts and and booby traps and pregnant women and young men pushing baby strollers. She is the strongest person you have ever met and she weeps constantly, not only for the death of her children but with the overwhelming longing brought on by the smell of sun-heated pines.

And I am both enchanted and terrified. I walk on tiptoes but with deep curiosity. There is always a lump in my throat when I speak to her, and I do not know whether it's from the miracle of Hebrew coming out of my mouth or from pure and inescapable anxiety.

We are, to each other, both deeply family and deeply foreign. She is a well of generosity and just as generous with scrutiny and criticism. She shows me myself in her mirror; it is one-way glass.

I open myself to listen, her songs and poems and speeches and jokes come flooding in. My own voice is washed away. I know she wants me here, but then she doesn't really know me or see me as I am; she doesn't really need me and she has me doubting that God really needs me. I know she wants me, but I have to leave a lot of myself behind.

Yet I am no more fair to her: I need her to love me; I wish she would leave me alone. I am by turns proud of her and embarrassed to be seen together in public. I cannot wait to get away and I cannot wait to come back.

When I am not here, and when I speak of her, I want to remember her in the fullness in her nuances, with all of her tensions intact.It is the sharpness of these tensions that makes her unforgettable.

The more I know her, the more I want to know her. I want to know her all the way down to a depth where disillusionment is no impediment to loyalty, disappointment no obstacle to love.

Milk and honey
Well and good
But what sets me celebrating you
is this more specific mix:
זבל/zevel* and jasmine flowers

(*Zevel means "crap," literally poop/manure but also in a somewhat similar sense of the English slang. As I wrote about early in my year here, the combination of dog poop and flowers in Jerusalem sums up something important about my experience here.)

A day of independence

Life just seems so much more intense -- so much more real -- to me here in Israel. In some ways, the Independence Day beachside bbq's that we witnessed when we arrived in Ashkelon, today (after pedaling 50 miles from Tel Aviv) were not much different from the ones you find in the States on July 4. But there was some incredible energy to it here. Minna told me a female cab driver here told her that if they were to pull over the car right there, the bbq-ers would run over to share their food with them -- עם ישראל פתוח/am yisrael patuah, the nation of Israel is open, the cab driver told her.

And, of course, the Independence of this holiday is so much more recent than the US of A's independence -- it only happened in 1948. And, even more importantly I think, the price of this independence is so much more current and intense, with all the wars and such that have touched this land and this people. Independence Day here is immediately preceded by Yom HaZikaron, Israel's memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. That holiday began on Monday night with a one-minute siren. All the shops were closed in Tel Aviv where we were staying. We turned on the television to a children's channel and watched a show where the host interviewed a small group of young children in depth about what it was like to have lost a parent to war. I just could not imagine something so intense being on a major network in the States as part of a national holiday.

The ride, today, was the first part of our trip from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Here's a shot of Minna near an amusement park we took a break at just south of Tel Aviv:

And here are some of the other riders outside the amusement park:

And here we are by the beach when we finally got to Ashkelon:

It was a great day! .. . And it was so great to be in Israel for Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). I almost didn't mind when the disco music of nearby celebrations kept us up way past our bedtimes last night, or even having to dodge the debris left over from the street celebrations on the narrow streets of Tel Aviv's Neve Tzedek neighborhood as we rode through it this morning. . . . I really felt free -- independent -- riding today!

[X-posted to abayye ]

Trained!

Well, ready or not, next week Minna and I will be going on the Hazon-Arava bicycle ride -- all the way from Tel-Aviv to Eilat! Today, I went on my last training ride, my fourth ride of the week. On Sunday and today, I took challenging rides through the Aminadav National forest, which includes the mountaintop Yad Kennedy monument to JFK (see pic on the right). Twice this week, once with Minna and once with our friend Amy (who will also be on the Hazon ride) I went to Yad Kennedy itself.

I really enjoyed my ride, today. I went past Har Herzel on my way to Ein Kerem and then down past Sataf to the Nahal Refaim entrance to the national forest. For a number of kilometers from there, I followed the Nahal (a Hebrew word for a stream) on a dirt road. It was so beautiful to be in the Nahal's valley and looking up at the hills around. From there, I climbed up almost to the Yad, and then down to get towards home. I was out for six hours all told. Oh, how I will miss riding in these hills!

The approximate route I took today (up until a spot below Yad Kennedy where Minna and Amy like to rest) is below in the red [part of today's route was on the path of a trail from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem that's called מים אל י-ם in Hebrew and "From Coast to Capital" in English]:


View Spring 09 Jerusalem/Israel Rides in a larger map

Shabbat Shalom!

[X-posted to abayye ]

Bye, bye, baby

"Ugly Baby" -- as Minna named the baby dove who was born in our window nest -- has, we presume, flown away to start his new life as an adult dove bird of Jerusalem.

We would have loved to witness the lift-off, but Ugly Baby was here this morning when we left to get some breakfast at a local cafe, and when we got back this afternoon the nest was empty.

Fly safe, Ugly Baby, fly high!

Stopping everything

"It's a memorial for the Holocaust. It's Yom HaShoah ."

That's what I said to the young (British-sounding) tourist who turned to me after the ceasing was over and the people got back in their cars at one of Jerusalem's busiest intersections. She asked, "what was this? What were people doing?"

By the ceasing, I mean one of the most short -- but powerful -- ceremonies in all of Israel, the way Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) is marked. At 10 am, a siren goes off everywhere in the country and everything comes to a stop for two minutes. At the busy intersection Minna and I were at, there was horn honking right up to the moment the siren went off. But then it all stopped and the honking drivers all got out of their cars to stand at attention for the silent observance. A similar observance will be held next week for Yom HaZikaron, which honors the dead from war and terrorism.

Last night, Minna and one of her classmates had the honor of being at the official national ceremony for Yom HaShoah, which was held at Israel's main Holocuast Museum, Yad VaShem.The Prime Minister and many other dignitaries were there.

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It was kind of an important step for me to be so intentional about engaging such an important part of Israeli life as Yom HaShoah -- on this visit I have been so consumed by the work and such I brought with me that I've been more "just living" here as opposed to "visiting" here. On one hand, that's great -- it's an expression of how much I feel at home here in Jerusalem. On the other hand, this is such a special opportunity to be here, and who knows when I will ever be able to be here, again. I have about four weeks left -- I'm going to try and enjoy them! :) . . . . . I have _definitely_ enjoyed the bicycle riding that I finally managed to get to this week. I posted here about one great ride I took Sunday. Yesterday, I took a shorter, but still challenging ride up to Yad Kennedy. . . . . The beauty of the hills on that ride -- and in all the hills in and around Jerusalem -- is something that speaks to me in a way I just cannot describe. As I write this I am sitting in a park overlooking one such beautiful hillside not far from where Minna is at class now at Machon Schechter. . . . . It really is these things -- the hills and the people of the city -- that speak to me so much here, and not necessarily so much the famous holy sites like the Western Wall. . . . I've been reading Karen Armstrong's book on Jerusalem. In the opening pages she talks about what it is that makes a place holy to people. She says it has something to do with an association a place gets with the _experience_ of the holy. . . . Somehow, for me, God is closer here. Here, in the people. And in the hills.

[X-posted to abayye]

Back on the bike

I got out today on a 30-mile ride through the beautiful mountains, full of spring wildflowers, to the west of Jerusalem. It was great!


View Spring 09 Jerusalem/Israel Rides in a larger map

The Hazon (Tel-Aviv to Eilat) ride is only a little more than a week away now, so I wanted to work on getting my "sea legs" before we go, and I brought so much work with me from the States that before today I was only able to get out once before.

The ride, today, was extremely challenging and involved a lot of climbing, but I really enjoyed it. The Judean hills are so beautiful.

[X-posted to abayye]

Counting up and counting down

Counting up
Passover is over; today I ate my first pasta and bread. It was yummy. There's actually a new bread store in my neighborhood that had its grand opening last night when the holiday ended here. Very smart marketing and a move that only makes sense in a neighborhood like mine where most of the folks living here haven't been eating bread for a week. I went in today and picked out a loaf by passing my hand over the bags of bread until I found the shelf where the loaves were still warm!

With the second night of Passover, we start counting the Omer --the period between Passover and Shavuot, the next festival in the year cycle. The counting itself is commanded in Leviticus and marks the time between the offering of the first fruits of the new harvest (in this case represented by barley) until the offering of the first wheat of the new season. It's 50 days which is a week of weeks plus one. Counting the Omer literally means that when night falls (and the new day begins in the Jewish calendar) we say the blessing that accompanies commanded actions and then state, "Today is the X day of the Omer."

Not surprisingly, people have wanted to bring/find other meanings in this ritual. One common way of finding our way through this time is to use the 7 x7 format (seven weeks of seven days) as a way of contemplating in turn each combination of the seven lower sefirot. (Sefirot are Divine aspects or symbol clusters as my teacher Art Green prefers and explains very clearly in his Introduction to the Zohar.) In more recent understandings (e.g., in the shift from Lurianic Kabbalah to Hassidism), these sefirot can be understood psychologically, as different aspects of our own selves. In this way of seeing them, חסד/hesed/lovingkindness, unbounded love is about my own capacity for lovingkindness rather than a focus solely on Divine love. The seven lower sefirot move from חסד/hesed/lovingkindness through גבורה/g'vurah/strength, judgment, boundedness all the way down to מלכות/malkhut/immanence, gateway to reality (literally "kingdom").

By focusing on these sefirot in counting the Omer, we have the opportunity to use this practice to examine our own attributes. For example, the first week we would focus on חסד/hesed/love, lovingkindness. The first day we would focus on the חסד שבחסד/hesed she'b'hesed/the lovingkindness of lovingkindness. We might ask a question like, "Who am I when I am truly in this place of the very heart of love? Are there ways in which I have forgotten or wounded this aspect of myself?" The second day would be גבורה שבחסד/g'vurah she'b'hesed/the boundedness of love. We might focus on our own boundaries around love, "Is the gate through which my love flows too open or too closed?" Because the sefirot are symbol clusters, each one has many different associations and shades of meaning. Rather than fixating on a set meaning for each word, counting the Omer this way is meant to give us a chance to think about all of our attributes and all of the combinations of these attributes with one another and to check in on how our inner workings are working, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our work in the world.

Some years I have spent more time with this practice than others (sometimes keeping a journal or taking some time to reflect each day). This year, I am enjoying counting the Omer each night with Alan (last year we made it all the way to 50 without missing a day!) and letting the practice mostly just be itself. I do hope I'll remember to look for an "Omer counter" while I'm here in Israel --it's a ritual object of various shapes, sizes, and constructions that's meant to help keep you on track in your counting. The one pictured above was designed by Amy Gilron. One of the few Christian ritual objects I was jealous of as a child was an Advent Calendar. An Omer counter with little windows and chocolate...sounds good to me. Click here for an online version that is always amusing.

Counting down
This also marks a time when I am starting to count down to my return to the U.S. Now that both Alan and springtime have arrived, I am less eager to get out of here than I have been at other times this year. But I am still pretty eager to be back on more familiar shores and most especially to be back working, to be back in settings in which I feel more consistently competent, valued, and put to good use!

At the same time, this counting down (I'll be home before the end of the Omer, God willing) allows me to focus on those aspects of being here which I truly savor. As I count the days of the new harvest as my ancestors did, I hope to be able to use this space to celebrate the harvest that this year has brought me --sweet, tart, and otherwise.

Ugly appears!

I think I scared this little guy by getting up close with the camera, so his beak cannot be seen. But this is him (her?) -- supended high above the street in the little nest in the vines outside the window.

Ugly baby growing up

The doves in the window nest hatched one little baby. I first caught a glimpse of it ten days ago. I intervened in the course of nature and chased away a crow that had scared off the parent bird and was about to make the chick into lunch. I then used the opportunity of the briefly abandoned nest to take a peek inside. It was one UGLY baby: little stubbly wet-looking not-yet-feathers failing to truly cover its little lumps of fowl-y flesh, eyes that bulged out of any discernible sockets and looked like they were about to fall right off its head, and a beak that looked like a large, badly pasted-on piece of plastic.

I am happy to report that the ugly baby is indeed growing up!!! It changes every day and is now starting to look very much like a dove. Though completely predictable, I still find the transformation miraculous. Its parents leave it alone most of the day, seemingly returning only for feedings. Consequently, I get to watch it a lot (and try to show it off to visitors with mixed success). Once an inert lump, it now frequently stands up to stretch its legs, flap its tiny wings, and preen. It eyes are now solidly IN its head and it has even started to grow into its beak.

I would love to show you a picture, but this only child gets camera shy.

Squeezed between two Jerusalems

People often talk about the ירושלים של מטה/Yerushalayim shel mata/"Earthly Jerusalem" and the ירושלים של מעלה/Yerushalayim shel ma'ala/"Heavenly Jerusalem." Not infrequently during my year here, I have felt that it is actually easier for me to connect with the latter when I am not plopped down right here in the former. This vision of a city of regal peace is easier for me to picture from the safer distance of several thousand miles. While many people feel closer to God, to a sense of peoplehood, to a sense of belonging and wonder here in this earthly city, I have more often found the contradictions between the city itself and what it stands for to be an unbearable strain.

But this tension felt right and even sweet to me at the end of our Passover seder. Gathered around the bed we had turned into a table (we seated ten folks rather comfortably), we sang "Next year in Jerusalem!' I have sung these words at every seder I have ever been to and was curious beforehand to see how they would ring when I was really here.

Pema Chodron in Start Where You Are writes of "the big squeeze" as "a discrepancy between your inspiration and the situation as it presents itself, the immediacy of the situation." For me, this big squeeze is מצרים/The Narrow Places. One reason we reenact our collective mythical emergence from these narrows, from slavery, is that in order to keep moving out of these narrow places, we first need to be willing to feel them, to be able to be fully present to them in ourselves, in those we care for, and in the world. As Pema writes: "It's the rub between those two things — the squeeze between reality and vision — that causes you to grow up, to wake up to be 100 percent decent, alive, and compassionate."

It is said that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche came to teach in the West because he realized that there was something powerful in working with students who already had two cars in their driveways and still weren't happy. Being physically in Jerusalem creates a similar effect for me: Here I am at the center of the world, longing for a more centered world, in the City of Peace, longing for a world of peace. While many poems have been written about the two Jerusalems, the verse that feels most resonant for me right now is actually from the 17th century Japanese poet, Basho. He wrote: "Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo cry, I long for Kyoto."

The story of the Exodus is just that, it is a story about leaving, not a story about arrival. From a distance, we might imagine that this earthly Jerusalem (or another car in our driveway, or any number of other acquisitions) might really be the answer to all that ails us. But right up close I can most clearly discern that the longing itself, and our willingness to be with it, is what matters more.

Being here allows me to feel the distance between what we have and what we want most acutely. While for much of my time here that distance has been merely painful and unpleasant, at our seder it felt infused with meaning. It felt like an experience that will ultimately help me in my work in the world. I want to carry with me this knowing: Even in Jerusalem, telling my freedom tale, I long for Jerusalem.

This feast feeds freedom

A touch of jet lag and a sore shoulder had me up in the very early morning hours, today, laying down aluminum foil on every exposed surface of the kitchen here in Jerusalem in preparation for חג המצות/hag hamatzot -- the Festival of Matzah (otherwise known as Passover). Suddenly I found tears in my eyes.

The tears were related to the music in my ears. I was listening to Billy Bragg's version of Woody Guthrie 's "All you fascists are bound to lose. " I heard such courage in Guthrie's words. It sounded to me like a prayer. A prayer for a day where hate and violence would come to an end, a prayer, in Guthrie's words for a time when there would be "people of every color marching side by side." A prayer in line with what was in my heart as I was "making a spaceship" of this kitchen to follow in the thousand's years old tradition of my people to clear their houses of all leavened products for the week-long holiday. . . . Guthrie made me think of my rabbinical school colleague, Rabbi Scott Slarskey, whose teffilin bag while we were in school had on it the words Guthrie had on his guitar -- "this machine kills fascists."

I never asked Scott what those words meant to him, but I know how powerfully it spoke to me to see it associated with a part of the Jewish religious tradition. . . . Because I really believe that it's not enough to just want a world free of the hate (of fascists and others) -- a world of peace and love and freedom. In the last 100 years, too many dreams for that have ended up leading to all sorts of unintended and tragic consequences. To stay on course for our goal, we need God. We need our devotion to God. We need a way to express it. A way that's rooted. That's ancient. That keeps us hand-in-hand with the generations that passed before.

I was trying to keep faith with those generations and their own hopes for a world of peace as I was laying my foil. I was asking God for peace. . . And for freedom.

Have a great Peasach!

[X-posted to smamitayim ]

This year in Jerusalem

For countless generations Jews around the world have ended their Passover Seders with the words, "next year in Jerusalem!" This year I will, God willing, be spending my Seder -- for the second time in my life -- there. As I write this, I am still amidst last-minute packing and wrapping up things here in the States, but at 6pm or so tomorrow I should be above the Atlantic on my way towards Israel. I can't wait to see Minna!

May this year's Seders and Passover be Kasher -- and joyful! -- for everyone.

_________________

At the Seder, our tradition asks us to see ourselves as if we ourselves -- and not just our ancestors -- have been brought out of the bondage of Egypt into freedom. The last year has been a time when I have started to see great hope that many new freedoms and many new paths are being opened up before me.

First among these have to do with Minna. Long have I dreamed of being able to have a partner on so many levels. Our shared commitment to a Jewish life -- and our respective deep commitment to finding paths to Jewish leadership -- has deepened my own Jewish life in ways that I am deeply grateful for and in ways that make me hopeful for a continued blossoming in that part of my life in the future . . . A year ago this time, Minna and I were really just at the very beginning of getting to know each other, and were struggling to find ways to spend time together amid the challenges of a long-distance relationship. But, over the last 12 months, we were able to find a way toward having over two months together in Israel (and are planning on having more time together now).

New paths to freedom have also appeared in my professional life. Most importantly, it was just about a year ago that I passed a big hurdle in my chaplaincy educator/supervisor training process and was officially certified as a supervisor candidate. This put me on the path to writing a series of papers about my approach to chaplaincy education (getting those papers passed is the next big hurdle towards certification).

I got so excited about what I was writing (especially ideas like evaluation as blessing) that I decided I wanted to extend my research and knowledge about how people learn -- especially about understanding how the Jewish tradition has shaped its unique way of forming leaders (rabbis and not rabbis) and how empathy -- caring -- can be taught (here's a recent New York Times article on empathy training in a public school that is interesting, but I think misses the point a bit by confusing being "nice" with being empathetic). . . And that led me to applying to a great doctoral program in Jewish Studies and Education at NYU. I'll be starting there in the fall (don't worry -- I'm not giving up chaplaincy and will continue to be a part of the hospital here)! . . . . . It will be important for me in the coming year, however, to remember how easy it can be to confuse freedom with bondage. . . . The people Israel, after their liberation at God's hand, got pretty confused about this during their long wandering in the wilderness and even made a Golden Calf for themselves in the "freedom" they had when Moses left them alone to go up on the mountain for the tablets. I have taken on quite a heavy task for myself to be starting a doctoral program while still working towards my certification and while still being a contributor to the chaplaincy services at my hospital.

I believe, especially with having Minna's support, that this is the right path for me. But I also know that, for all its benefits and joys, that it may test me severely at times. I pray for God's help and support amid that -- to help me make all my life, and not just Passover, a Feast of Freedom!

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I can't resist including this. . . Have a great Passover!



[X-posted to abayye]