smamitayim

Motzi Shabbat in Jerusalem

2010-05-08T23:22:00.002+03:00

We took a little walk in downtown Jerusalem after Shabbat got out tonight. We ran into some of my American colleagues from the chaplaincy delegation that is here and one of them was kind enough to snap this pic of us.

Shabbat afternoon we walked to the Old City and to the Kotel (Western Wall). It was kind of on the warm side, but really just beautiful weather. On the way to the Old City, we stopped in Independence Park for a bit and heard a boy of about 9 complain angerly to his parents about their choice of a place for their picnic -- "אתם ממש פריירים! (you are real freiers) for picking such a spot when there is a one with more shade and nice water over there," he cried. Freier is a yiddish word that roughly translates as sucker or rube; some say it is an Israeli obsession to not be a freier.

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Before we ran into my friends, Minna got a sugar-free ice cream -- I think she looks like she's enjoying it so much in this pic that she could be in an ad for it!!! (I had a taste and have to admit it was a lot better than diet ice cream I've had in the States!)

From Israel Spring 2010

Here and there

2010-05-05T15:12:00.006+03:00

So far in these few days in Israel, I am enjoying all the things I expected to enjoy: the smell of the jasmine, the papery magenta glory of bouganvillea, the nervous-making challenge of speaking Hebrew and, of course, eating bourekas and drinking cafe hafuch! There are also tangible things I don't quite know how to put into words: the pungent smell of an unidentified plant that rises into the nostrils as the sun heats the soil on the many gravelly paths around Jerusalem, the odd slickness of the paving stones under my sandaled feet.

But one thing that's very present for me on this short-but-sweet trip is that there are lots of things I could do to connect with Israel (and especially with its Hebrew-language culture) from anywhere but find myself not doing. For example, from a technical perspective, there's nothing that stops me from reading Israeli newspapers online from Boston or Reading or one of the many wifi-enabled rest stops between the two. In particular, Ha'aretz has a book review section on Wednesdays that I know I find an especially enjoyable challenge. But, sitting here in Tmol Shilshom (a bookstore, cafe, happening spot here in the center of Jerusalem that I never know how to get to except by wandering around til I find it), drinking espresso, enjoying the other tourists and regulars, I find myself actually poring over a book review in Hebrew for the first time in months.

It's interesting to me that all the technological advantages of being alive today still can't compete with the phenomenon of "out of sight, out of mind." Connecting with Israel and its people still requires the work of setting a kavannah (intention) and also of setting a priority in terms of how I structure my time. For that matter, I could do a better job of keeping in touch with people here. So, the question I leave open for myself is this: Given that --even in the States-- I am much better at paying attention to the people and the tasks that are right in front of me than I am at remembering who and what else exists in the world, how best to find ways to set Israel and Hebrew before me consistently enough that the thread is not entirely broken in the months (and probably years) away?

Can I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone and that Jews who live far from here have often worried about the tendency to forget? When the psalmist writes: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy" (Psalm 137), I hear not only longing, but a real concern about forgetfulness. Knowing my own tendencies, I don't dare make any such vows. But I do want to leave this potential for forgetting open as a place for further inquiry.

I laugh at your parking ticket!

2010-05-05T08:58:00.001+03:00

Well, actually, despite Minna's apparent bravado, we just paid it.

In the old days, you had to wait in line at the post office to pay tickets (which is what the rental car people still told us we would have to do), but it turns out that you can just go pay them online.

Minna's been seeing old friends and going to museums while I've been attending the spiritual care conference.

Tomorrow we'll be in Tel Aviv relaxing and then it's back to Jerusalem for Shabbat and then, before you know it, we're back on a plane to the States -- short trip!

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Here's Minna, by the way, driving down the streets of Jerusalem (along with a link to some more pics from the trip):

From Israel Spring 2010

Getting back to the land -- care for the caregivers

2010-05-03T18:51:00.000+03:00

That's the Mediterranean sea behind those two bleary-eyed (but happy!) faces above. Minna and I were just an hour off the plane at Ben-Gurion in Tel-Aviv. I'm here for the 6th annual Israel spiritual care conference (it's so great to see professional chaplaincy start to get established here in Israel!). Minna came along as part of a long-term ambition for our lives together -- to make coming to Israel a regular part of what we do and not something that only happens every decade or so. I was so excited over the last week or so, thinking about coming here and often found myself daydreaming about walking along the streets of Jerusalem again and hearing the language of the Hebrew Bible spoken out of the mouths of children as their first language. Coming here is a way of my caring for my own spirit.

I'm looking forward to the conference, too, tomorrow and Wednesday. There's a delegation of Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors from the States here for the conference, so this could really be a watershed event for chaplaincy training in Israel, an educational pursuit that is only in its infancy here.

It's exciting!

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Here's a view, by the way, of the ocean from where we drank some coffee after we dipped our toes in the sea.

From Israel Spring 2010

[x-posted t0 abayye]

Minna's got a brand new bike!

2010-04-20T04:14:00.001+03:00

It's a Novara (REI) Transfer -- a slightly retro "urban" bike with a seven-speed internal hub (like the old English three-speed bikes, but with seven gears) and that has a comfortable upright riding position (as well as fenders, a chain guard to keep your pant legs from getting greasy, a rack for carrying cargo and front and rear lights that get their power from the wheels turning so you can ride any time of the day or night).

I actually got to ride it before Minna (the UPS guy came with it while she was at yoga!), and I found it pretty fun.

It was also fun just following Minna around and taking some pics on her first ride. I kinda like this one, too.

From Minna's got a brand new bike

By the way, if you're interested in what's been happening in our lives, I've made a couple of other posts this month over on abayye that tell some of the story:

Just another Secular Sunday

2009-10-19T02:55:00.001+02:00

After what seemed like a full month of Sundays devoted to holidays, this weekend finally bought a "Secular Sunday" that was available for _normal_ things like going to the mall or doing the laundry. But Minna and I decided to keep celebrating one more weekend! We did that by taking a little trip together to some great places in upstate New York -- Storm King, one of the best places anywhere to see outdoor sculpture, and Dia: Beacon, a huge former factory that's now dedicated to displaying large pieces of art. It was Minna's first time at Storm King (I'd been there a number of times before) and the first for both of us at Dia: Beacon (I really loved it!).

The pic above is _not_ Minna in front of a rock -- it's a sculpture (Catskill) at Storm King by _another_ Bromberg, Manuel Bromberg.

Late adopter

2009-08-12T01:03:00.001+03:00

My father, of blessed memory, loved high-tech and made his living working in that field. But, yet, he was no gadget freak -- he needed real convincing that a new technology, whether it be personal computers or email, really was worth adopting.

He's passed the late adopter thing (as well as the love of technology) on to me, so it was only yesterday that I finally took the smart phone plunge -- and at that it was, Minna, not me, who actually made the purchase. We have iPhones!

Late adopting, actually, despite what this guy says, is a pretty rational strategy -- the newest of the new is usually too expensive and too untested, and I've usually regretted the times I was an _early_ adopter (like with mp3 players; I brought one with me on my Israel year and 2000, and it was a real disappointment).

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about this iPhone so far. . . . I think I waited just the _right_ amount of time.

Thanks, Minna!

[X-posted to abayye]

First tomatoes

2009-08-09T19:58:00.001+03:00

These cherry guys are still green, but we did get our first two ripe tomatoes off of two of our full-size plants, today -- they were delicious!

Yeah, it's a bit late for the first tomatoes, but we got them in the ground kind of late. Well, and not really in the ground, too (as we have no ground). Here they are in their containers:

Some of the leaves, however, are looking a little sad, which had us worried with all this talk about an epidemic of tomato fungus:

I'm trying to stay hopeful, though and am looking forward to these guys turning red!

[X-posted to abayye]

Memories of Israel

2009-07-21T23:43:00.001+03:00

It's hard to believe that we've been back in the States for less than two months now, but it was a nice reminder of our days in Israel yesterday when the photo CD from the Hazon/Arava Israel ride arrived in the mail. I'll be posting some more photos from it soon, but here's one of my faves.

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Here's another great photo from the ride (the two of us, plus, Harry, a very cool guy who rode on his folding Brompton!), along with a link to some five dozen or so of my favorites from the pics they sent us.

From Hazon ride 2009 (great pics!)

[X-posted to abayye]

Back on the "X"

2009-07-20T21:43:00.001+03:00

Last time I posted here (about a month and a half ago -- wow, what a long time) I also featured a pic of this little porch. But some things have changed! The bins that I was then "making soil" in (in part by ripping up cereal boxes into bits) now feature actual tomato plants (with baby tomatoes on them!). And, somehow, the bicycle that was also in that first pic has "grown" in this one. Unlike the plants that needed weeks (not to mention sun and water) to grow, the bicycle did all its growing, today -- I got my Xtracycle kit out of my storage unit, where it had been languishing for over a year now, and used it to stretch my bike another foot and a half and make it so I could carry the 65 lbs. or so of books that are on the back there (with my rabbinic ordination certificate in the cardboard on top of it all!).

Here are all the books, etc., unloaded at their destination and sitting by the elevator to get to my office upstairs. I've never really had a good place to hang my ordination certificate before, but my new office seems like a perfect place!

Here's another view of the bike loaded before departure:

It's so exciting for me to have an Xtracyle, again. True, I've still been able to bicycle commute and grocery shop without it. But shopping with a _regular_ bicycle seems so limiting after you've owned an Xtracycle -- you're always wondering if all the groceries, etc. will really fit, or if you can _really_ carry that large size of bleach home without busting your panniers (I'll never forget the time back in LA when I busted one of my brand new REI "Around Town" panniers the first time I used them by buying lots of large size liquid items at Smart and Final . . . bummer!).

It's not that the Xtracyle has _infinite_ cargo carrying capacity, but it's just so much more than you can hope to get on a standard bike. At K-Mart, today, I didn't even think twice about buying a lamp; it would have been really hard to figure out how to carry it on a standard bike. You can see the box with the lamp in it in the rear of the Xtracycle below, on the right side, along with a the rest of a total of some $110 worth of stuff I picked up at K-Mart and the supermarket.

The bike I _stretched_ is an old Giant Sedona I bought in LA around 2001 or so. I rode it all over LA, including up into the Sepulveda Pass (where my rabbinical school was) and along Mulholland Drive, which could be pretty exhilarating, especially after a rain when usually hazy LA became clear and beautiful. I call it "the junker" because it's in kind of rough shape. But now that I've X-ed it, I'm going to upgrade it some and have ordered about $300 worth of new parts, including two new wheels and a rear disc brake. The disc brake will come in pretty handy when the bike is loaded with a lot of stuff and when it rains. For now, I am getting by with _no_ rear brake. This is not as dangerous as it sounds (contrary to popular wisdom, front brakes are much more effective than rear brakes, especially when you are descending), but it's far from perfect. I have no rear gears hooked up either (turning the bike, effectively, into a 3-speed). This is not by design, so much, as just by practicality -- I'm just not enough of a bike mechanic to do the full conversion in one day. I hope to hook up the rear gears at least in the next few days. . . . . But, who knows if will really find time. . . . It's been a great summer, but one where I've been so consumed by my work (supervising/teaching six student chaplains we have with us for the summer) that not much else has gotten done (witness how I haven't blogged here at all!) . . . . Though, I can't really blame the lack of blogging just on being busy. I think I am a little overwhelmed by all the (good!) things going on in my life right now to be able to step back enough to reflect on them and write about them. Besides all the good times with Minna there is the fall -- when I start a doctoral program at NYU!!! . . . . I am so excited about that program. I've wanted to be doing doctoral work for a long time. And I think this is the next logical step for someone who has the kind of ambitions I do -- I don't just want to be involved in chaplain education (as a Clinical Pastoral Education, CPE, supervisor). I want to be involved in educating other _supervisors_. I want to be a voice in shaping the future of both rabbinic and pastoral education. I want to be able to say something about how people can be nurtured to be more compassionate and to be more effective leaders. I'm interested in that both for clergy and for doctors and other medical staff. . . . So, the doctorate is the place to go. . . So, I'm excited . . . And scared, too!!! :)

At times like this in my life, it's important to find ways to stay grounded. Cycling helps me do that. A cycling that is not just for exercise, but is part of a lifestyle -- a lifestyle that has an intent to be kinder to the earth by burning less petroleum than I would if I was driving just to do errands around town. A lifestyle that helps remind me that food is not something that just magically appears in the supermarket, but starts in soil that comes from the Earth that God gave us. A lifestyle where I do not just toss everything I don't consume into a landfill but where I try and recycle some of it (you can't really see it well, but the leftmost bin in the first pic above is a covered compost bin where we've been putting our food scraps).

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Although I think the latest X configuration should do me for a while, but I think my future -- especially if there is a longer bike commute (with more hills) waiting for me -- may hold some serious upgrades. I love the idea of a Big Dummy like this guy has (the Big Dummy is frame purpose-built for an Xtracycle -- no _stretching_ needed, which eliminates the "flex" Xtracycle users know so well). I also find the Stoke Monkey electric assist system for the Xtracycle to be a fascinating concept. . . . . Yeah, I know, electric _assist_ sounds like cheating. . . . But I find pretty compelling this way that the Stoke Monkey folks answer that criticism:

Most electric bike products are designed for people who don’t, won’t, or can’t ride regular bicycles, even without passengers or cargo. Stokemonkey is different, designed for avid bikers who will continue to ride on their own power most of the time, but want a more capable car alternative some of the time. We don’t believe in replacing human power with electricity; we believe in replacing cars for work that even the strongest cyclists seldom if ever choose to handle without a car. Developed in a car-free household, Stokemonkey is for fellow riders who want to become more completely independent of cars in their daily lives.

Now if Stoke Monkey didn't cost nearly $2,000 maybe I would already have one! :)

[x-posted to abayye]

Making soil

2009-06-08T03:22:00.001+03:00

One of the most beautiful ways to get in touch with the never-ending miracle that is God's act of creation of our world is to engage in the acts of creation that God has gifted us with the opportunity to participate in. Years ago, I used to garden some, mostly vegetable gardening -- tomatoes and green peppers and such. I haven't had access to land to do that for a very long time. I still don't, but now I have access to the little back porch above and I spent some hours today preparing containers for tomatoes and herbs. I realized that I hadn't bought enough potting soil for the containers, so I went in search of other organic matter to give the soil some bulk and maybe some nourishment and water-holding capacity for the plants, too. First, I threw in some vegetable scraps we had been saving with the idea of starting a compost bucket. Then I went in search of cardboard and paper and tore up every bit of unnecessary food packaging we had hanging around (why does breakfast cereal come in boxes, anyway?). Above you see me tearing them into bits and pieces.

It felt good to be taking things that would go into a polluting, land-consuming landfill and to try and put them to a productive purpose. It reminded me of how much I love the earth. . . . And the God who gave it to us.

Have a great week!

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Here is a closer-up view of the cardboard on its way to "becoming" soil (along with a pic of me "in the act").:

And here is how things looked when we were a bit closer to done planting:

In case the last pic made you think Minna _can't_ smile, here she is smiling!

[X-posted to abayye]

New Yorkers Try Composting With Worms - NYTimes.com

2009-06-07T17:31:00.000+03:00

We're thinking of trying this at home.

New Yorkers Try Composting With Worms - NYTimes.com

Dreaming of Jerusalem on a fine day in PA

2009-05-26T16:29:00.003+03:00

Already my year in Israel feels a bit like a dream. Images fray and I strain to hold on to their threads. Everything is different here: a wide landscape of green and a light rain on a late spring day. Alan and I wandered into a Kmart on Friday and I immediately felt like a visitor to a strange planet I had only heard of in movies. Everything was shiny and there were gadgets to fill needs I never knew I had (a special citrus peeling device that left me muttering, "Couldn't you just use a knife?"). And I feel slightly like an amnesiac returning to my memories. Yesterday, just as I was about to start pumping gas, Alan remembered that the car (my car!) can't be filled all the way up. And, contrary to expectations, my old cell phone has returned to me. Different number, but the little thing is still filled with all the old contacts. It feels heavy with the weight of numbers I forgot I ever had.

I am worried about how to hold on to what was important to me about being in Israel (stay up on the local news there, keep my Hebrew gains). Don't know whether we'll keep this blog going, but it will certainly be a helpful record for me.

Perhaps, from the perspectives of "Israel educational" and "Jewish peoplehood," the comfort of being back in the States is double-edged, but I am unequivocally happy to be here. Spending the weekend in Sag Harbor, I made sure to visit both the ocean and the bay. Soaked up sweet moments with family. And I feel like I am coming home to myself in some important ways.

Meanwhile, I need to find a place to live....

Shared hopes, shared learning – a workshop in Israel on spontaneous prayer

2009-05-21T22:47:00.001+03:00

Growing up, I think I thought of prayer itself – certainly offering a spontaneous prayer out loud off the top of your head! -- as something inherently Christian (and not Jewish). I never even imagined I could become comfortable doing it myself. So, it was really exciting for me Wednesday when one of the participants in a workshop I was leading at an Israeli Spiritual Care conference said she had come to the workshop in the hope that I could help her to get over her own discomfort with offering spontaneous prayers!

Offering a custom-made prayer – tailored specifically to the situation and the hopes of the suffering person you are with – can be a powerful source of healing. The greatest pain for an ill person is often not directly from their physical sufferings – it is the loneliness people experience amid their illness. The sense that they are now somehow different than everybody around them and that nobody can (or is willing to) understand what they are going through. The sense, maybe, that they have been forsaken by God.

A unique and beautifully tailored prayer from a visitor of faith coming into their hospital room can help break that loneliness. It can help the person to feel seen, to feel that someone had indeed heard their situation. And that that person is genuinely joining in their hopes and wants their suffering to end. And, finally, by bringing God into the experience, the offering of a spontaneous prayer can help heal a spiritual rift and help the person to feel a renewed relation with (a loving) God, even amid the confusion their sufferings bring.

And, yet, so many Jews – like the participant in my workshop – are reluctant to offer spontaneous prayer, largely because it doesn't “feel” Jewish. That's why it was so important to me to put a Jewish “stamp” on my approach to spontaneous prayer, and to come up with my own framework for composing my prayers. This framework is based on the structure of the Amidah , a central prayer of the traditional Jewish prayer service. My approach – and the Amidah – are divided up into three basic parts:

1) שבח/shevah/Praise (the “approach”) – This is where you address the One to whom you are approaching, and what specific aspect of that Ultimate Reality you want to hear your prayer. By choosing whom you are addressing and what aspect of that “whom” to address, you say something about what your theology is – what you think God (or an Ultimate Reality or Force) is. So, when you're offering a prayer for someone else, you can say something about what his or her spirituality is about in framing this first part of the prayer. If the person has a “Vertical” or “Transcendent” understanding of how God relates to humans – an understanding where God is far above us and directs what's below, you could start by saying something like, “Father above. You are the one who has always directed us and given us strength ...” Or, if the person has a more “Horizontal” or “Immanent” God view, you could start with something like, “Oh, Source of all life. You have nourished the plants and trees around us and we find you everywhere we look . . . “

At the end of this section, I also introduce the person, by name, to God, and say something about what is happening for him or her. Something like, "Dear God, we stand here before you with Sarah. She is frightened about the surgery coming tomorrow."

2) בקשות/bakashot/Requests (the “ask) – This is the heart of the prayer, the expression of what we would like God to grant us. If you're offering a prayer for another person, there are two ways you can approach this. The easiest and most straightforward one is to simply mirror back the hopes the person has expressed to you. A great way to help this process is to ask the person right before the prayer, “is there anything in particular you want me to pray for?”

While I always do ask this question before offering my prayer, I don't think the straightforward approach is quite enough. The experience of doing this workshop – and interacting with the great people who came – helped clarify for me why I want to do something more than simply rephrase the person's hopes. It's because offering a prayer is not just about the words of what I say. I think it's not even just about the feelings expressed along with those words. When you're in a real pastoral conversation with a person – where real pain and real, deep hopes are expressed – something more comes into the room. Something is summoned. Maybe it's called the shekinah. Maybe it's called God. Maybe it's something from all the other people who care. Maybe it's just spirit. But, as intangible as it is, it's real and powerful and a key to true healing. It should not be ignored.

But that “something” can't be truly summoned – or be a part of the prayer – if what is expressed is not something in common, something shared, that was part of the encounter. That's why the number one question I ask myself in composing this part of the prayer is “What do I hope for this person?" Bringing myself into the prayer in this way, allows me to offer a more powerful prayer, one that expresses Shared Hopes, and provides a more complete caring experience.

As you can imagine, however, this kind of a "Use of the Self" in spiritual care is controversial, and the participants in the workshop challenged me about it, expressing shock at the possibility that I might offer a prayer for something that the person I am caring for does not want. My answer to them is that, if you truly take a Shared Hopes approach, that that kind of "contradiction" of the suffering person's hopes is not what happens when you express your hopes for them -- because in a Shared Hopes approach, it's not really my hopes or the person's hopes I express -- it's the shared ones that arose in the "space between us" during our conversation.

There's a theory behind this. It's called intersubjectivity. In short, it holds that communication and the creation of meaning are not things that one person does on his or her own. It's something that is co-constructed by the two or more parties in any interaction. It's an especially influential idea in psychoanalysis, and it provides a theoretical basis for the therapist to use the feelings he or she experiences as a tool for understanding, and caring for, their clients. This theory has freed psychoanalysts from feeling they have to take the kind of cold, detached attitude that Freud did with his patients. Instead, they can become more warm, human and genuine with them. This theory has the potential to free spiritual caregivers in the same way, so that they can bring true emotion, feeling and spiritual depth to things like their spontaneous prayers. [The best expression of this theory in the field of pastoral care is Pamela Cooper-White's book Shared Wisdom .]

3) הודאה/hoda-ah/Thanksgiving (and a wish for peace/shalom) -- This part (along with the first one) is a tremendously important part of my approach to spontaneous prayers that is missing from so many other approaches (which tend to only include "ask" elements). It is a chance to return to a place of humility (after the audacity of asking God for things) and to restate something about what we believe about God and about our wish to be in relationship to God. It is also a chance to take our prayer outside the small, immediate realm of the patient's experience and bring it out into the broader realm of all humanity. And this is a key part of almost all religious practices in the major faith traditions -- to link each individual with the community at large in a way that brings greater power to our effort to elevate our spirits and reach for something higher. Communal experience nurtures faith, as do our acts of caring for others. Thus, I conclude every prayer with a wish for peace, starting with the person before me, but then moving outward. First to wish for peace for the person's immediate family and loved ones, but finally I move on to a wish for peace for all people.

Before I offer this request for shalom, I first, as the Amidah does, offer thanks, and say something like, "Dear, God, we thank you for everything you have given. We thank you for the gift of life, and for all that we have been able to know -- especially the love we have been able to experience -- during our time here on earth."

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Another part of a Shared Hopes approach -- one that I borrow from the Jewish prayer tradition -- is to, as much as possible, put the language of my prayer in the language of "we" and to say things like "we pray for you to give her strength, oh gracious God." (Jewish standard forms of prayer -- like the Amidah -- ask for things using the language of "we".)

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I was so impressed with the people who attended my workshop. Many of them are already using spontaneous prayer in their work and they shared their experiences with it. One participant shared that sometimes when there is a prayer that appears to have particularly touched a person, he writes it down and shares those written words with the patient.

Another participant shared a four-part framework for composing spontaneous prayer he uses in Hebrew. His approach is very similar to mine, but differs in the last part especially:

ברוך אתה ה' (אלוהנו מלך העולם) ה_____________ ץ	1) This approach begins with the words that start every standard Jewish blessing, "Blessed are You, HaShem our God, King of the Universe, Who ____________." The "Who" part is key here. In the blessing before eating bread, we say "Who brings forth bread from the earth." When we say the havdalah blessing marking the end of Shabbat and the beginning of a new workweek, we say, "the one distinguishes between the holy and the secular." In this approach, the spiritual caregiver works closely with the person to determine which "Who" of God to address here. (This process, I believe, allows the prayer to start, as my introductory section does, by saying something about the person's theology in making that introduction to God.
אתה יודע	2) Literally, "You know". The words following the "You know" are a chance to say something about the situation the person finds his or herself in, and to hold that up to God.
הבקשה	3) This is an "ask" section, just like mine.
אבל אם לא, תן לי כח להתמודד	4) I was fascinated by this final section, because it is not something I have in my framework. It says "but if my requests are not granted, give me the strength to cope." I think this is a very powerful thing to have in a prayer and it can -- as the participant himself stated -- foster an important humility that can be a key part of a spiritual growth that can lead to better coping. It seems to me to reflect an acceptance that is a key part of a suffering person's coming to a stronger place, one that has room for entering into a positive relationship with God even amid inexplicable suffering.

Here is a copy of the contents of a handout, I created for the workshop. It has some more details about my approach and that of others who have worked in this area before, especially the work of Rabbi Bonita Taylor, a New York chaplaincy educator (Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor) who has long focused on helping her students gain experience with offering spontaneous prayer. The handout, especially, emphasizes the importance of linking a prayer to an assessment. That is, as I said at the beginning, the truly effective spontaneous prayer has to be one that is specifically tailored to the person and the person's situation and hopes. So much of the prayers some clergy and spiritual caregivers offer do not meet this important minimum condition. While they may indeed be said off the top of the caregiver's head -- rather than read from a book -- they are essentially canned words that the caregiver would say for anybody.

It was such a privilege to give a workshop at this pioneering conference and to have some close contact with people doing such exciting work in Israel. I am grateful to have had the opportunity. I pray it will be the will of the Holy Blessed One -- the One who is the author of all knowledge, compassion and spirit -- that I will be able to offer more such workshops in the future and to learn again from students and to continue to grow in my knowledge and mastery in this area. And may it be the Holy One's will that there will be many more such conferences in Israel and that the infant field of spiritual care there will continue to grow and to thrive.

[X-posted to abayye ]

One more קפה הפוך with bourekas

2009-05-20T09:29:00.003+03:00

My bags are very nearly packed (still unclear how all of the stuff will fit into the available space). Our flight leaves in the middle of the night tonight. And I have come to my local coffee shop for one more קפה הפוך/cafe hafuch/(literally "upside-down coffee") cappuccino and two little cheese bourekas. This favorite little breakfast of mine reminds me of Israel's crossroads status: a European coffee with a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean pastry.

Even (or perhaps especially) with all its challenges, I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to spend 10 months here. I leave very ready to be back in the States and also deeply hoping to be able to spend more time here in Israel in the future. I am better able to express what I value both about Jewish life and culture here and Jewish life and culture in the Diaspora. My two sentence versions of these views:

- I value Israel primarily as a vital center of Jewish/Hebrew cultural production. Creating (and continuing to create) a Jewish state has allowed for, inspired, and goaded people into expressions of art, literature, poetry, music, and scholarship which are huge gifts not only to the Jewish people, but to the world.

- Diaspora and exile are not 100% overlapping categories; in Jewish history, having a "center" has never meant that "periphery" has nothing to offer. Perhaps because of how I grew up, perhaps because of some deeper constitutional attributes, perhaps for reasons that need not be explainable, I personally have always felt more interested in Jewish life on a variety of "margins" and find myself looking forward to building my rabbinate back in the U.S. of A.

But I will miss this place, the country itself (with all its contradictions) and its people, my neighborhood, and this little place that has supplied warm coffee and tasty baked goods:

And now to finish packing and clean, clean, clean.

Bringing professional caring to Israel

2009-05-19T12:09:00.000+03:00

The fifth annual Spiritual Care conference in Israel opened today with an emotional and intensely personal keynote address by Rona Ramon (pictured above), the widow of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first person to travel into space, who was killed tragically in 2003 during the re-entry of the shuttle Columbia to the Earth's atmosphere.

It is amazing that this is only the fifth such conference in Israel. This nation of contrasts is, one one hand, a highly modern economy fueled by a high-tech industrial sector that is still thriving amid the world-wide recession. And, in many other ways, it is yet an infant nation, still building institions, like chaplaincy (and environmentalism, as I wrote a few weeks ago), that we take for granted in the United States. I feel so privileged to have a chance to be present among the 150 or so pioneering professionals who attended Ramon's talk this morning and who will be at the conference over the next two days.

As I write this, I am listening to a lecture by a true pioneer -- a woman who is working to not only bring Spiritual Care to this young nation, but to bring it to a relatively new and sometimes challenging population to care for: immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tomorrow, I will be a presenter, myself, giving a workshop on techniques for offering spontaneous prayer.

I am so excited to be here at the conference at the Ma’ale HaHamisha Conference Center in these beautiful hills on the western outskirts of Jerusalem!

[X-posted to abayye]

The mighty Jordan, and the tiny North

2009-05-18T14:20:00.004+03:00

This little "rapids" is about as mighty as you will ever see the river Jordan -- a waterway that, like the country it flows through, can be so giant in our imaginations and in our hearts, even if it is but tiny in the "real" world. The "kayak" with the screaming children upon it is rental from Kfar Blum, the kibbutz in the northernmost part of Israel where Minna spent a year as a teenager. We managed, as our days dwindled here in Israel, to sneak to the north for a bit, and Minna got to finally show me around Kfar Blum.

Here she is, in front of a statue of the kibbutz's namesake, Leon Blum, who was once the prime minister of France:

The room she shared was on the second floor of this building:

We met this little guy nearby. He was pretty cute, although not too friendly:

On the way up there, we had a chance to stop briefly at Beit Shean, an amazing ruin of an ancient city that, being at the junction of the Jezreel and Jordan river valleys, was on the trade routes between the empires of Mesopotamia (Babylonia, etc) and of Egypt and the rest of the west.

Much of the significance of Israel in the ancient world was due to its being located between these two great groups of empires. It is no accident that the Torah begins its story of the Jewish people with Avraham leaving his father's house in Mesopotamia, and later tells of his journey to Egypt before settling finally in the Holy Land and burying his beloved wife Sara in Hebron -- the basic experience of the ancient Israelite people was the experience of being a little people situated on, and sometimes wandering upon, these roadways between these "giants". Other of our "Avot" -- like Joseph and Jacob -- would make journeys similar to Avraham's in the course of their lives.

In Beit Shean, Minna found this pomegranate tree, and was fascinated by its "baby" pomegranates, still more flower than fruit.

It was glad to see the north one more time!

Minna the instructor

2009-05-14T19:29:00.000+03:00

I really like this shot I took of Minna, today. She looks like she's deep into her instructor mode!

Keep on teachin', Minna!

Dust storm update

2009-05-13T21:46:00.004+03:00

The folks at Hazon found this cool aerial photo of the dust storm that temporarily suspended the Hazon-Arava Israel ride on its last day.

The photos are taken from an airplane at 8000 feet, around Beer Sheva, about 90 miles north of where we were riding.

The storm itself came from Sinai and covered the entire Negev. The height of the sand-wall was about 4000 feet, and moved at 38 miles-per-hour.

I can't testify that the winds where we were reached that speed, but I can say it was the toughest headwind I ever tried to ride into!

The night of the fires

2009-05-11T23:30:00.003+03:00

It may get scary as the night goes on, but when Minna and I went walking through this Jerusalem park at around 9:30pm tonight, the bonfires of the Lag B'Omer celebrations around us had more of a family feel than the wild "Lord of the Flies" atmoshphere one of our friends had predicted -- there were quite a few parents and young children around, having bbq's amid the bonfires.

I really enjoyed walking around the park. It was a reminder -- as our days here in Israel come towards an end -- of the specialness and uniqueness of living in a Jewish country. I am so glad to have had the chance to be here so much this year.

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Here are a few more photos of the fires at the park near the Hartman Institute (as well as some from the smaller San Simeon park).

From Lag B'Omer and last days in israel

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And here (admittedly, completely unrelated) are some Orthodox men touring Gan Sacher (a park) the day before on Segeways.

From Lag B'Omer and last days in israel

Standing at the mountaintop

2009-05-08T00:26:00.002+03:00

One of the exciting parts of the Hazon-Arava Israel ride for me was that the riding days of our journey from the Mediterranean to Red seas were separated by one of my very favorite Torah portions: קדושים/kedoshim, or Holy ("you will be; for Holy am I, HaShem Your God").

I love this Torah portion, or parsha, because it stands at the very center of the Torah. Not only is it in the very middle of the middle of the Torah's five books, but it is at the center of the Torah's central narrative: the narrative of a people coming out of slavery to the wondrous -- but also terrifying -- task of trying to be all of everything that God expected them to be. And God surely expected a lot of a people who, as slaves, had never even before been expected to make decisions for themselves. God expected them now to have so much wisdom as to be able to even figure out how to be קדוש/kadosh, to be Holy.

The Torah tells of the many stumbles of the people Israel in their efforts to find their way to becoming what God expected of them as they wandered through the desert. They sometimes complain and wish for the simpler times that were the predictability of the simple life of a slave. But the biggest stumble came just before back in chapter 10 when Aaron's two sons, in their excitement, brought "strange fire" before God, and were destroyed for this mistaken attempt to take part in holiness.

The whole rest of the Torah, beginning here with this parsha, is about the acts of repairing from this mistake -- about the acts of learning how to be Holy. The parsha gives a grand list of requirements for being Holy that is a kind of updating of the Ten Commandments. This list is almost the same as the Ten Commandments, but it has one important addition -- it commands us to take care of the poor and make sure they have enough to eat from the produce of the Land. And this book of the Torah comes towards its conclusion with this specific focus on the land and who may eat of it. It declares that you cannot treat this land as a resource that can just be used constantly with no regard for its limit. In the seventh year, the land must -- as God did on the seventh day of creation -- rest. It must have a Shabbat:

וְהָיְתָה שַׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ לָכֶם לְאָכְלָה, לְךָ וּלְעַבְדְּךָ וְלַאֲמָתֶךָ וְלִשְׂכִירְךָ וּלְתוֹשָׁבְךָ הַגָּרִים עִמָּךְ.
And the Shabbat produce of the Land will be food for you -- for you, and for your servant, and your maid, and your hired hand and for the stranger who dwells among you. (YaYikrah 25:5 )

Rashi, the great Medieval bible commentator, says that the reason the Torah lists all these people who may eat from the food of the Land is to emphasize that in that year -- that special Shabbat year of the Land -- you cannot act like you are a בעל/baal -- a master -- over the Land and the people who work and live on it. You are equals, and you must share in the food of the Land equally.

This, the Torah tells us at the central place that is this great parsha, is part of what it means to be a Holy people -- to be willing to rest the Land when it is the time for it to be rested, and also to be willing to make sure all are fed, and all know what it is like to be treated equally as a human being.

Riding through the desert at the beginning of this week, I thought often about what it means to be Holy. I thought of how precious water is. I thought of the great gift that God has given us in these modern times to be so free of the terrible diseases that for most of human history killed most people in the earliest years of childhood -- to have so much abundance of food that literally billions can be fed every day even with so much food just being thrown out before being eaten. These are the gifts that have come with our mastery of the tools of science, gifts that would not be possible without the intelligence that God has given us.

Yet with such great gifts comes so much responsibility. Being a Holy people in our time means limiting our overuse of the tools of science. It means not squeezing every drop out of what lies in the ground below us. It means giving the Land its Shabbat in its time. And it means that all among us are able to live full lives and enjoy the benefits of this Land.

We spoke of water so often during the bike ride. How precious it is, and how much we squander it. The experts who spoke to us sought to raise our awareness that the water that we use is not just in the obvious uses that happen when we open a faucet and take out water for things like our showers and our cooking. Every product we use -- the very clothes on our backs -- took water to produce. If we're really going to preserve this precious resource, we need to raise our awareness of all the inefficient ways it is used in the manufacturing and food production that supports us.

This is nowhere more true than here in the Middle East. The shortage of water regionwide is not what caused the conflicts that plague us, but it stands in the way of finding solutions. If there ever is to be peace, a way must be found for everyone to drink, for everyone to have the opportunity to live a full life.

Our speakers told us of some of the amazing things that are happening in Israel to solve the water crisis, things like the desalination plant in Ashkelon, and the widespread use of recycled sewage water for the irrigation of crops. Israel is one of the world leaders in these kinds of technologies. They are not cure-alls -- it takes a great deal of energy, for example, to make desalination work -- but they are wonderful examples of the determination of people here to find solutions.

****************

As I let go of the brake levers on my bike to start that final descent from our position near the mountaintop of הר יואש/har yoash -- some 2,300 feet above Eilat and sea level only about six miles away -- I thought of how precious life is. I cried with joy inside as I felt the wind whipping by my ears and witnessed the glory of the mountain and hillsides I was screaming by. God was out there somewhere and I was standing -- even as I was rolling rapidly on my two wheels -- before that Lord of my life. I was grateful for what I had been given. And, I promised to do my best to take care of it and thus make it a place where God's infinite and wondrous Holiness would be welcome among us humans here on earth.

Shabbat Shalom!

[X-posted to abayye]

Saving the world with two wheels

2009-05-07T16:22:00.001+03:00

Jerusalem is a tremendously hilly city, yet, as our bus plodded its way through some of the city's most crowded neighborhoods on its way to the central bus station last night, I was cheered to see people on bikes -- some of them wearing the kippah that marks the religious, male Jew -- winding their way through the dense traffic on narrow streets.

One thing that makes Jerusalem doable by bike (despite the challenges of the hills, etc.) is it's actually amazingly compact compared to America's sprawling cities. Even Jerusalem's most far-flung neighborhoods are only about six miles from the city center, and most people's commutes are much shorter. Many Americans, on the other hand, find themselves commuting dozens of miles in each direction every day.

This more-compact nature of Israeli cities is just one of the many ways Israel has set itself up in a way that makes a more sustainable, and environmentally friendly, lifestyle possible, and is a reminder that there is much we can learn from the way Israelis approach life.

That is not to say that Israelis are more environmentally conscious than we are. I was reminded of this last Shabbat when we were in Mitzpeh Ramon as part of the Hazon-Arava environmental bike ride trip. I stepped outside the prayer service for a moment to get some air and think alone. It was so beautiful to look out towards the huge desert crater -- an inspiring example of God's works. But below my feet were the cigarette butts and other garbage that Israelis seem to feel free to dump anywhere. As one of the speakers on the trip told us, environmental consciousness is only beginning among the general population in a country where security concerns have long been paramount. He held out hope to us that things are changing, however -- as evidenced by the recent election in Tel Aviv of some environmentalists to city government -- and Israel is growing to be more consciously concerned about preserving some elements of the quality of life, and not just the preserving of life.

I was so glad to have a chance to contribute something back to Israel with two wheels (by participating in -- and raising money for -- an environmental bike ride). The bicycle has never been just a means of recreation for me. When I was a kid, I had a paper route, and I hauled my papers with a bicycle that had baskets on its sides and to which my Dad (of blessed memory) had jury-rigged a folding shopping cart as a trailer. I rediscovered the bike as a means of carrying cargo (groceries and such) while an adult in Los Angeles, and have continued that practice even amid the hills and winter winds of Reading, PA. I try to cast for myself in Reading a life more like the one I am able to have here in Jerusalem, a life where things are only a few steps -- or a few pedals -- away, and I do not have to get into some gasoline-burning and carbon-fume-expelling device every day.

Heschel talked about the glory of Shabbat as Judaism's great solution to the dangers of technological civilization. Shabbat does not ask us to abandon the benefits of technology -- we get to work for six days -- only not to be dominated by it, to be able to live free amid it. Those five riding days from sea to sea and inside the great emptiness of the Negev desert were a reminder that there is another way than living dominated by technology, and of how two wheels can help free us to be able to live free. I was so grateful to be a part of it, and hope to keep learning from it.

[X-posted to abayye]

Snorkeling and theology

2009-05-06T21:50:00.005+03:00

Though back in Jerusalem now, I am still thinking about this morning's short but sweet snorkeling outing. The water was a bit cold for extended exploration -- not surprising considering that Eilat claims to have the northernmost coral reefs in the world (never mind that Wikipedia thinks the winner is Norway) -- and it was choppy as well. But it was still wondrous for me. Seeing the fishes in the Oceanarium yesterday (see Alan's pics and post) and then again this morning, filled me with a sense of awe and joy at the diversity of Creation. The line from liturgy that echoes in my head is: מה רבו מעשך ה' כולם בחכמה עשית/"How manifold are your works, God, in wisdom you have made them all."

These words from the morning prayers remind me of how Unity unfolds in our earthly experience into endless disctinct possibilities. I take joy in remembering the importance of diversity and in having these living, swimming, fishy reminders of its importance.

Here's on of my favorites of the dozens of different fishes I saw this morning. It's a Purple Tang:

The fires -- soon!

2009-05-06T20:37:00.002+03:00

When we arrived home, today (see here), we found this pile of wood and cardboard in the entrance of the building. Now, just having come back from an environmental bike ride, I am somewhat hopeful it is piled here for recycling purposes. But I know it is much more likely that it is preparation for next week's Lag B'Omer, a holiday that the religious and the secular alike celebrate here by setting bonfires all over the city . . . . . I just hope they move it out from underneath the buidling before they torch it up! :)

[X-posted to abayye]

3 Mivtza Kadesh

2009-05-06T19:57:00.001+03:00

We raised a glass high when we arrived back at the apartment in Jerusalem after the bus ride home from Eilat and the end of our bike ride from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Minna and I both offered our hopes as we drank together -- asking for, among other things, many other experiences that will help bring the two of us closer together and also that will bind us more strongly to the Jewish people and the land and people of Israel. I wished also that it would be the Holy Blessed One's will that we would continue to find ways to have fun together that will involve some exercise to renew our bodies and our souls, and will take us out into the great outdoors that is the infinitely wonderous creation that God has given us. I felt thanks and gratitude, especially, to the Israeli crew who spent so much time with Minna and I when we were often the last riders of the group, and encouraged us and offered us their friendship. Most of them were alumni of the Arava institute who were volunteering their time for the ride this year. תודה רבה!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Todah Rabba)

Fishes!

2009-05-06T07:56:00.001+03:00

Before we leave Eilat, today, to return to Jerusalem (for our last two weeks or so in Israel), we're going to try and go snorkeling.

Maybe we will see some fishes like these (that we saw at the local aquarium, yesterday)!

Made it!

2009-05-05T09:59:00.007+03:00

Rolled into Eilat safely yesterday afternoon though the last day's journey was not without incident. Alan got caught in a sand/dust storm! Intense head wind and unbreathable air made the ride unworkable and all the riders pulled off the road and waited for the bus to scoop them up. The bus, meanwhile, was taking me and my smaller group on a tour of Timna (where the dust storm had not yet reached). We got to see some amazing sandstone "sculptures" as well as copper mines from the Calcolithic period and Midianite rock carvings before we cut our tour short to ride to the rescue of the cyclists stuck up on the plateau.

As a full busload, we rode to the top of the final descent into Eilat where the wind had finally died down enough to ride safely. They let Alan go down the steep descent first (out of the whole group!) because he likes fast descents. He rode down with Kfir, our professional lead rider, and they arrives together at the bottom of the hill. Then we all rode in formation to our hotel and I had a quick dip in the Red Sea before checking into our room.

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Here, by the way, is the map of the whole ride:

View Larger Map

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Now folks are heading their separate ways. Alan and I will stay here today and head back to Jerusalem tomorrow. And now, off to the Oceanarium!

On to Eilat

2009-05-04T06:56:00.005+03:00

Alan has ridden away and I'm getting ready to head out as well. He'll ride from a nearby junction (doing a bit of back tracking) all the way down to Eilat. My group will be bused to Timna -the site of some ancient copper mines-- to do some touring on mountain bikes. Then we'll meet up with the rest of the riders for lunch and all head down into Eilat together.

One blessing of this trip has been the daily davening/praying. An irony of living in Jerusalem this year has been the marked absence of a daily prayer community for me. But both Alan and I have made it to morning prayers every day of the ride and it's been nice to have our little traveling group praying together. This morning, looking at the mountains over in Jordan, coming to the prayer that
focuses on gratitude, I felt particularly grateful for all the people who have supported us on this ride --the staff here, but also all the friends and family members and colleagues who gave the donations that made this journey possible.

Here at Ketura, we've gotten to meet students of the Arava Institute and hear about the work they are doing. One theme that many students expressed --Israeli, American, Palestinian and Jordanian-- was that they came primarily for the environmental studies, but have been most transformed by the social aspect: building a learning community based on co-existence. Being able to meet the people who benefit from the funds we raised makes a big difference!

I've also very much enjoyed the touring I've been able to do by only riding half-days. On Thursday (which seems like a year ago), we met a man named Haji Ibrahim. He is a communal leader in an unrecognized Bedouin village. The village doesn't receive any support from the government and is placed dangerously close to a number of toxic sites. He is very concerned aboout the health impacts on his community and had a number of very sad stories to share. He welcomed us warmly to the village and shared coffee he had ground himself and tea whose every herb he picked and described in detail.

Yesterday, I visited Kibbutz Lotan, a community associated with the Reform movement. This trip has definitely re-ignited long-dormant fantasies of kibbutz life. Much more to tell, but the bus is leaving soon.

God willing, this afternoon, we'll be swimming in the Red Sea!

Kibbutz Ketura!

2009-05-03T17:57:00.002+03:00

Minna snapped this shot of me on the road bike I've been riding (lent to me after I broke a spoke on the mountain bike I'd been riding) outside the guest house at Kibbutz Ketura, where we arrived today after a 60-mile bike ride from the lip of Israel's great crater (which is not _really_ a crater), Makhtesh Ramon, where we had spent Shabbat. Kibbutz Ketura is the home of the Arava Institute, an environmental organization dedicated to trying to find sustainable living situations for all the Middle East -- something that, hopefully, will one day bring us closer to peace!

It was a great -- but challenging -- ride, today, with some spectacular descents, through some truly amazing desert scenery. We started the day with morning prayer on the lip of the Makhtesh before descending into it at high speed. It was such a great way to start the day -- praying in God's great glory... in the Holy Land!

Here's Minna at the Kibbutz with the desert mountains in the background.

And here she is in the Kibbutz pool talking with Gonen, one of the Israeli members of the crew who we've made friends with and who is working on a doctorate in environmental education.

And here are just some of the other riders _chillin'_ at the pool after a day of riding.

In addition to the spectacular riding, this has really been just a great Jewish community building experience -- just such a wonderful opportunity for folks to deepen their connection to Israel, environmental causes and Jewish fundraising efforts, amid other people doing the same thing!

Mizpe Ramon!

2009-05-01T15:04:00.003+03:00

After 35 miles of riding --mostly uphill-- through beautiful desert, we have arrived at Mizpe Ramon. I haven't looked at the view yet, but the hotel sits on the rim of Machtesh Ramon a huge geological formation that many people erroneously call a "crater"...too tired to explain; Google it if you're interested.

Too exhausted for anything right now, actually, so I'll just say: Saw a fox, lots of ibex, some flowers, lots of desert; feeling proud of both of us and impressed with the Hazon/Arava crew; looking forward to a restful shabbat with Alan and (mostly new) friends.

Greetings from Ashkelon on Yom HaAtzma'ut

2009-04-29T21:02:00.003+03:00

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

2009-04-29T18:03:00.001+03:00

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!

2009-04-24T18:14:00.002+03:00

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

2009-04-21T12:53:00.002+03:00

"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

2009-04-21T11:09:00.001+03:00

"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.

_______________________

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

2009-04-19T22:34:00.002+03:00

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

2009-04-16T21:29:00.004+03:00

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!

2009-04-13T12:30:00.000+03:00

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

2009-04-12T13:50:00.002+03:00

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

2009-04-10T11:24:00.003+03:00

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

2009-04-08T12:52:00.001+03:00

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

2009-04-05T08:41:00.002+03:00

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!

__________________________________

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

[X-posted to abayye]

Wildlife window update

2009-03-24T16:01:00.005+02:00

I think the doves are nesting in the wildlife window's nesting space. My key pieces of evidence: 1. Yesterday I saw a "changing of the guard" where one arrived and took the other one's place 2. We've been having (at last) some truly torrential rains here and it seems that at least one of the doves stayed with the nest all through the stormy night. This morning it was clearly occupied by one very very wet bird.

I am sorely tempted to open the window and peek, but I don't want to disturb them. It's a little odd to watch them getting soaked when five inches away, on this side of the glass, everything is (relatively) dry. But, while I might in fact peek in once there are baby birds, I hereby publicly state my commitment to resist the temptation to invite any of them inside.

This is a picture of mama or papa bird's tail with a reflection of my hand in the window glass...not my finest photographic moment.

Oh! And the bulbuls are still here too, but they have never seemed interested in that nesting spot. The two species actually just seem to ignore one another (typical urbanites).

Lost cat

2009-03-20T14:02:00.005+02:00

What's the difference between a street cat and a pet cat?

People definitely think of street cats as a mass, a horde. They lump them all together, can't tell them apart, see them as pests. I think the ways we view street animals are windows into the way we view anything and anyone whom we have dismissed as "other." They are also windows into what we fear or despise about ourselves. I am especially intrigued by the sense of street cats as indistinguishable from one another. What makes distinguishing possible? What sets one creature apart from any other?

The fact that people have pet cats here in Jerusalem is for me a fine lesson in the constructedness of social reality. It's the same species, but somehow I designate this one (or ones) "mine"and those others as "nothing." And let me be clear that reality's constructedness doesn't necessarily make it any less real. I certainly feel differently about my own kitties, safe at home in Sag Harbor, than I do about the dozens and dozens of cats I see here everyday.

Which brings me to the sign I saw on a parking meter for a lost cat. When you make a "LOST" sign, it's always good to include the creature's distinguishing characteristics. Let's look at these features one at a time:

"Grey with white paws." Again, while many people tend to claim they can't tell street cats apart, this marker is relatively obvious. None of the five or six cats I saw in the alley where the sign was fit the description.

"Fat." It's not surprising that a pet cat would be fatter than a street cat, though I have to say the cats here cover a pretty normal range of cat size and very few look like they are actually starving.

"Skittish." The Hebrew word here פחדן/pachdan/"fearful one" is actually probably best translated colloquially as "scaredy cat." And really, who wouldn't be?

And then came the most striking descriptor: Clearly the cat's most distinguishing feature as far as the people missing it were concerned and yet an attribute that would be hard to see just by looking. Here in a city (and a world for that matter) teaming with the abandoned, the ignored, the uncared-for, a posted adjective to remind me of what really makes the difference, an attribute that I think we ought to try applying to more and more of those we encounter. This gray and white, fat, scaredy cat was also described as "Loved."

An added note: It sounds like it is mating season for the street cats of Jerusalem. I find myself actually looking forward to seeing lots of kittens. Whether feral, wild or somewhere in between --pigeons, for example...are they the descendants of domesticated birds used in the Temple service?-- the animal life of the city helps me connect with innocence in a place where purity seems in short supply. So even though I know that the streets are full of cats (some people would say "overrun" or "overpopulated" but I would not be those people) and those cats are often in rough shape and seem as if they are not well taken care of, even so I look forward to seeing fresh kittens.

Best part of Purim

2009-03-11T21:11:00.004+02:00

As Alan's last post indicated there really has been a lot going on! My family's visit (minus some much-missed key players!) was wonderful. In all of my mixed feelings about being here and its joys and challenges, having family here --with me as the main tour guide-- afforded a wonderful opportunity to figure out what I really wanted to share with them of this strange and beautiful country. One real highlight was visiting Kfar Blum, the kibbutz where my brothers and I each spent our tenth-grade year. Our consensus: everything looked smaller except the cows which somehow looked bigger.

Both there and throughout our trip it was amazing to hear Isaac speaking Hebrew!!! That he is as comfortable as he is with the language after relatively little contact with it for over 15 years drove home to me the idea that the true key to speaking a second language is not the size of your vocabulary or the precision of your grammar, but your willingness to engage in the act of opening up your mouth and trying to communicate. And hearing their papa speaking Hebrew definitely sparked Daia and Sadie's interest, at one point leading them to ask, "Papa, how old were you when you started to learn Hebrew?"

So very much more to tell about their visit (and kudus to each one of them for making the journey!) but no sooner had they left than I got on a plane for a quick trip to visit Alan! If a major theme of this year is retracing my steps from 10th grade and healing/fixing various things along the way then indulging in a quick trip back to the States was a big big healing. Left over from that year was the sense that I was somehow "trapped" here and just had to "stick it out." No, the adult me happily remembered, I can come and go as I please (credit card in hand). This has the added benefit of getting a sense of Israel as more accessible: It's not some far off alien territory; it's really just a plane ride away.

I flew back to Israel late Sunday night and would have forgotten that Monday was Ta'anit Esther/the Fast of Esther had I not been reminded of it by a snippet of liturgy that I heard as the Orthodox men began praying all around me on the plane. It's a dawn to dusk fast and, because of the hours lost in flying was a very short "day" indeed. By the time I got home from the airport it was already dark.

Purim was starting to be in evidence on the ride home: here and there a pedestrian in a tiara or a crazy clown wig. But Purim in Jerusalem started a day later (walled city, long story) so I've been in a sort of jet-lag and Purim fog for the last 48 hours or so.

Hands down best part of Purim this year: The משלוח מנות/mishloach manot (customary gifts sent to friends and neighbors on Purim) from Jacob and Tamar. When I finally left the apartment today I found on my doorstep a Roll-Your-Own sushi gift basket complete with bamboo sushi roller, prepared rice, nori, veggies, and --most important of all-- instructions! As you can see from the pictures, my technique will take a lot of work but it was delicious! Definitely the most creative משלוח מנות I've ever heard of. Ingenious! Thoughtful! Yummy!

What's going on

2009-02-17T04:20:00.003+02:00

Well, you might think from seeing the lack of posts on this blog that not much has been going on, lately. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The truth, I guess, is that I've been living my life Stateside these days and Minna, still in Israel, has been very busy! She's got a "full house" going right now -- not just her parents visiting (and staying in the apartment at 3 Mivtza Kadesh), but also her brother, her sister-in-law and two young nieces! Just since the younger visitors' arrival on Friday, they've been to the Jerusalem Zoo, the Old City (including the Kotel) and Gilo (where they visited with a friend who is on the Jersualem police force and her family). . . And that's just what I remember!!! (From what Minna has told me.) . . . Tomorrow they're going to visit the Supreme Court (especially exciting for Minna's lawyer dad)!

Meanwhile, the one "Israel-related" thing I've been doing here is continuing to train for the Hazon ride in the Spring (we're going to ride from Tel-Aviv to Eilat, 300 miles!). Today I got back from a two-day training tour of about 85 miles total. It was fun, but _very_ challenging. It's winter here in Pennsylvania. Happily, there was no snow or anything else falling from the sky, but sub-freezing tempatures kept me dreaming about spring in the Negev!

Minna Got a Brand New Bag*

2009-02-06T15:25:00.004+02:00

Shabbat is rushing toward me, but I had such a lovely morning that I wanted to share. Not surprisingly, small town girl that I am, what I love most about being here is having mornings like this:
Got up, put tiny computer and a few re-usable shopping bags into my new big red purse,* grabbed the compost and headed out the door. I dumped the compost and went to Duvshanit, my "local." Duvshanit is a family-owned coffeeshop and bakery and they make my favorite challah in town. I have more than once arrived after the last of the challot sold out and have since tried to make a practice of getting there early (8:30 at the very very latest). I got challot and rolls and ordered myself two little cheese bourekas (baked in the kitchen in the back) and a large low-fat cafe hafuch/קפה הפוך which literally means "upside down coffee." If there is a distinction between this and a cappuccino, I don't know what it is.

Then I sat and mostly answered emails and very gratefully wrote thank you notes to folks who had made donations to our Hazon Israel Ride (if you want to give and haven't yet, you can do so by clicking here). I've been enjoying the aspect of fund-raising that involves getting in touch with people I might not otherwise get around to contacting.

After lazily typing away and watching the pre-shabbos crowds rush in and out, I walked back toward my house and went food shopping at Mister Zol.

Now the chicken is in the oven and shabbat is very close! I love being able to walk everywhere and living in a neighborhood where the things I need most (besides Alan and the rest of my family, none of whom are things) are right here.

*This bag was hand-picked with the very able assistance of Jen Klein who is an expert in such matters. I have never developed a purse habit, but with a bag like this, which is not done justice in these pics, I think I could get used to it.

Wildlife update

2009-01-31T20:47:00.003+02:00

Thursday evening, walking home from a my Children's Literature class at Machon Schechter, I saw a porcupine! I was walking down the steep hill that leads between some scrubby areas when I heard a rustling in the bushes. When I looked, I saw that one of the bushes was walking! I waited and sure enough, a very large porcupine ambled its way across the road about fifteen feet away from me.

I had recently been thinking about how much I missed seeing skunks in my neighborhood in Boston, and this critter had a similar air about it that said: my apparent cluelessness is simply a measure of my confidence that you, human, have no real interest in getting any closer to me. It was gigantic though! Maybe two and a half feet long!

A woman was walking her dog nearby and after the porcupine was gone I asked her, "What is that called?" and she told me the name in Hebrew: דרבן/Dorban. Then she asked what it was called in English (so much for the "perfect accent" people claim I have).

A little bit of internet research revealed that this was an Indian Crested Porcupine and that they are pretty common here. They are the largest rodent on the Asian continent and can grow up to 3 feet long and weigh up to 35 pounds. The joke/question about how porcupines mate is answered in interesting detail here, but --with apologies to most of our readers-- the entry is in Hebrew only. One tidbit: porcupines are usually monogamous.

Fear -- and awe -- with Women of the Wall

2009-01-26T18:34:00.009+02:00

Monday morning I woke up at 5:30am and walked to meet my friend and classmate Emma. Together we walked to the Old City, up the rocky path to the Zion Gate and down to the Western Wall. It's Rosh Hodesh, the new moon marking the beginning of the Hebrew month of Shevat. Every Rosh Hodesh, the Women of the Wall meet to pray together.

A Rosh Hodesh service would typically include morning psalms and prayers, the Hallel service (a set of celebratory psalms used on new moons and festivals), and reading from the Torah. For women praying at the Western Wall, this last part is actually illegal under Israeli law.

It turns out that wearing my tallit was also illegal. I didn't know that it was illegal, but I did know that it felt scary. There were nine of us there, huddled in the back of the women's side of the space in front of the Kotel. I wasn't sure what to expect of this whole experience, so I found myself watching the other women closely for social cues. Emma took out her tallis so I took out mine. And then it hit me: the other women had tallitot that could easily have passed for a scarf or shawl that happened to have fringes on its corners; my tallis is a large rainbow tallis designed by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. It more or less shouts: "Hello, everybody, I'm wearing a tallis!!!"
I felt fear and hesitation and then I realized that this fear and hesitation is one I have been walking around with since I got off the plane last summer: fear of the scrutiny of my Haredi/ultra-Orthodox brothers and sisters. And, in this context, not only fear of their disapproval, but fear of their violent attack.

This garment that I wear as a reminder of the mitzvot, that I wear to wrap myself in Divine light and love, was now turned into a marker that I could be attacked for wearing. Suddenly not wearing it did not feel like an option. I wrapped myself up and took a moment to let the space underneath its folds be the only space, to let this place itself --regarded as Jews by holy and yet governed by laws which strike me as deeply unholy, as simply wrong-- to let this place itself disappear. To remember that, more that I am subject to Haredi scrutiny, I am also subject to ultimate scrutiny. I chose which master to serve, I tried to let fear melt into awe. And then we prayed.

No one threw anything at us or attacked us physically (though there have certainly been attacks in WoW's 20 year history). Mostly the worst we were subject to was dirty looks. I was reminded of the college course I took on deviance. Jim Monsonis, a favorite professor of mine, had us do a project where we were instructed to "do something mildly deviant and write about it."

When it was time for the Torah reading, we trucked all the way over to Robinson's Arch, a site further south on the wall where men and women can pray together, where women can form a minyan, a site which is freed from the clutches of state-backed ultra-Orthodox control. When I asked why we were moving, one of the women said simply, "Because if we tried to read Torah here, we would be lynched."

I have too many mixed emotions and thoughts to describe here and now but I am very glad that I went.

Meanwhile, back in the States . . .

2009-01-26T05:07:00.002+02:00

. . . I went for a (cold!) bike ride, today! (Training for Hazon Spring Israel ride.)

Composting Kavod

2009-01-23T15:17:00.002+02:00

This community compost bin is in a little park down the street from my house and directly on my way to Machon Schechter. When Alan found out about it, he was somewhat incredulous that I wasn't taking my compostables there. Turns out that a partner's incredulity can sometimes be a decent motivating tool: I have been bringing my scraps and peels and whatnot to the bin ever since. This morning I combined a trip to the compost bin with my stop at the cafe for challah and coffee (my favorite challah here comes from the bakery/coffeeshop around the corner from me where I am something of a regular).

As I walked into the little park, I noticed an older gentleman seemingly hanging around by the compost bin. He was all bundled up and looked as if he might be...loitering. I realized that I was feeling somewhat unsafe. While street crime, in the sense of muggings and the like, is all but unheard of in Jerusalem, verbal sexual harrassment is much much more common than anywhere else I've ever lived. I haven't encountered anything truly horrendous; it's more of a constant quiet buzz of comments which distracts me from going about my business.

Because of this, I was none too pleased about moving toward the compost bin with my little plastic bag, but I didn't want to throw it in the regular trash or bring its steamy organic contents into the coffee shop. So, I kept going toward the bin and when I passed the bundled-up man he nodded and said slowly, "כל הכבוד/kol ha'kavod" (Literally "all the honor," this phrase is used to mean "Good job" or "Good for you!").

It was deeply refreshing!

On what you can build, not what you destroy

2009-01-20T20:34:00.001+02:00

"Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy." These are the words that (now) President Barack Obama uttered today in a part of his inaugural speech that addressed the Muslim world and critics of the West.

I don't know if Obama had the people of Gaza in mind when he spoke these words, but they certainly came to my mind as I listened to him. The people of America are not the only people who stand at a crossroads. As Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza and its residents start the task of sorting through the rubble, the people of Gaza stand at a crossroads. Which way do they want to go? Do they want to build? Do they want to focus their energies on creating the institutions -- and the economy -- that a successful nation needs? Or do they want to remain focused on destruction and hate? Do they want to continue devoting their energies to following Hamas' professed goal of the destruction of the State of Israel? Do they want to keep on supporting people who use courtyards and alleys right beside their homes and mosques to fire deadly missiles at Israeli civilians? Or are they ready to throw off Hamas' rule (or, alternatively, force Hamas to change its program -- to focus its energies on building Gaza instead of destroying Israel).

______________

I found tears in my eyes throughout Obama's speech and in the moments I saw his face on the television screen beforehand. The tears came from many places, but one was of fear. I looked at Obama's head -- hatless despite the cold, as JFK was hatless at his inauguration -- and thought of what a fragile thing the human body is. So much hope put in that person. And it could all be taken away with a single bullet. I was afraid for Obama and for us. I thought of Martin and Bobby. . . . and of the Russian civil rights lawyer killed just, yesterday. I thought of the courage it takes to work for freedom and change in the face of the possibility of violence. I thought of the courage it takes to choose life, to choose to build, instead of destroy.

It is this courage that I see when I think of the people and nation of Israel; they are very much on my mind these days, especially when I have a loved one there who I left behind just a couple of weeks ago. It pains me so much to know that the impression many have of the State of Israel now -- an impression left by the television images of destruction in Gaza -- is of a state dedicated to destruction. I wish people could see the miracle that is the building of what is now a modern state with an advanced, high-tech economy from what was largely a poor, agricultural nation not so long ago. A building that has been accomplished against so many odds. A building that has happened despite the hate of so many for the Jews and for the state they formed. A building that happened despite so many acts of violence against it. This is a people that long ago chose building over destruction and that would gladly keep its tanks and planes in their sheds if only they could.

______________

After Obama spoke, Elizabeth Alexander delivered a poem that near its end featured a repetition of the word "love" again and again. And then the 87-year old Rev. Joseph Lowery delivered his benediction. His words will probably be most well-remembered for the rhyming he used at the end in depicting a vision of a world where race is no longer an obstacle. But I was most touched a few sentences earlier when he quoted the vision of Isaiah that "nation would not lift sword against nation" and modernized Isaiah's "they shall beat their swords into plowshares" to add a hope that tanks would be made into tractors.

Then he quoted one of Martin Luthur King's most favorite biblical verses (Amos 5:24) -- "let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

May it indeed be the Holy One's will.

[X-posted to abayye]

Not to worry

2009-01-14T13:12:00.004+02:00

I just met my neighbor for the first time. We had two conversations in the space of five minutes. The first was prompted when we both walked out of our apartments with cell phones in hand trying to figure out why there were warning/air raid sirens going off.

When I heard the sirens I thought, "OK, let me look outside and see what the locals are doing." So, I poked my head out the window and then realized that was useless and potentially stupid. As I opened my apartment door to see if anyone was heading down to the מקלט/miklat/bomb shelter, I met a neighbor I had never seen before. She had clearly just thrown her coat on over her house clothes; she had two phones and her wallet. She asked me if I knew what was happening and I asked her the same and my immediate thought was, "I don't remember how to say, 'siren!!!'" But we communicated. The sirens stopped while we were wondering what to do. She headed back to her apartment and said, "Good, I hope I don't see you again in a little bit." I agreed but asked that if she figured something out, to please tell me.

I came inside, looked up "siren" and found the local radio news online. They said that sirens had been heard in many neighborhoods in Jerusalem (the word they used for "siren" was not any of the five options the dictionary had given me) and that they did not yet know what was happening but they would tell us as soon as they knew. Then, after the rest of the news (the dead in Gaza, rockets in Ashkelon, and more rockets from Lebanon) they said that we should all relax in Jerusalem and return to our routine because it was just a תקלה/takala/a mishap, a fault, a hitch in the system's giddy-up, nothing was going wrong in Jeruaslem.

And then my nieghbor knocked on my door to tell me the same news. Not to worry.

Empty Classroom

2009-01-12T23:03:00.002+02:00

I went to my "Streams in Modern Judaism" class today to find that there was only one other student there. This is one of my two classes that I take with Israeli grad students and usually there are six of us in the class. Where was everybody?
-Two apparently have long commutes which may be complicated by military stuff going on (this was unclear to me; are they from the South such that their kids are not in school because of threat of Hamas rocket fire? Is traffic weird in other parts of the country? I couldn't quite understand what was being said about them).
-One has been putting together packages to deliver to IDF soldiers and was busy with that.
-One is a reservist who has been called up.

So that left just me and J. J's son is serving in Gaza and she said she hasn't been able to get anything done because she just sits by the phone and watches the TV all the time.
Our teacher was saying that it was good that we were there because too many people were reacting to the war by being glued to their televisions and that, as much as possible it would be good for us to try to go about our daily lives normally.

While we were in the middle of reading Ismar Schorsch's "The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism", J's phone rang and she ran out of the room. The text was discussing the Conservative view that peoplehood and religion have never been separate for Jews and --thinking that J had just gotten some update about her son-- our teacher said sadly, "Another aspect of peoplehood in action."

It turned out that at the same time that her son is in Gaza, her elderly mother's health is failing. J's predicament was very poignant for me: this odd combination of "normal" sadness and difficulty layered on top of wartime concerns. That "life goes on" for those of us (relatively) far from the front means that life goes on in all its complexities and all its challenges. This call that J got was telling her that her mother was not doing well and that she needed to come be with her right away. I found myself feeling relieved that it was her mother who was dying and not her son and then feeling that this relief was somehow absurd.

I was the only student left in class; we went back to discussing The Sacred Cluster.

The real Israel

2009-01-06T18:35:00.006+02:00

Israel has certainly been much in the news, lately, which has led many people to think again about what Israel means to them and what the still-young nation's nature truly is.

I thought about this on Sunday as I looked out on the Jerusalem view above. At that moment, I felt filled with a love for Israel and for Jerusalem. It's a challenge for me to understand what this love is really all about. After all, this view is not one of Jerusalem's famous ones. It does not have the Old City, the Western Wall or the Mount of Olives in it. And, yet this fairly ordinary view of west Jerusalem -- from a park hillside not far from the Israel Museum and which I have walked across many times on my daily business -- speaks to me deeply.

My thoughts brought me to the Pesach seder meal – our yearly “Feast of Freedom”. We conclude with the words, “לשנה הבאה ביושלים/l-shanah haBa b-yerushalayim” -- next year in Jerusalem. Since the time – since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 – that Jews in large numbers have come to be able to live in Jerusalem, some have changed those words slightly -- “לשנה הבאה ביושלים הבנויה/l-shanah haBa b-yerushalayim haBenuyah” -- next year in the [re]constructed Jerusalem.

It never leaves my thoughts when I'm in Israel that the very existence of this State – and the very fact that I, a Jewish person, am able to get on a plane and freely go there to visit – is a miracle. It is a miracle built on the incredible sweat, spirit and courage of the Israeli people over the decades of the 20^th and now the 21^st century.

Yesterday, I spent much of the day going through various airport security stations on my way back to the United States via London Heathrow. All of us who have gotten on an airplane since September 11, 2001 have gotten used to these kind of intense security procedures, procedures that are based on the fact that there are people out there who would just like to murder us, just because of who we are. Just to make a political point.

But, when we leave the airport here in the States, we leave all that behind – including that strange feeling that comes with the realization that some people want us dead. In Israel, however, that sense never leaves. For all the decades of its existence – and even for the Jews who lived in that land well before the State was formed – it has lived like the inside of an airline terminal. When school kids go out on trips, it is never without someone with a gun. To enter a shopping mall – or even to go into many cafes – you must pass a security checkpoint and have your bag examined.

To build and maintain a country like Israel takes incredible spirit, vigilance and courage. That is what I see when I look across that park valley at the hills of the neighborhoods beyond – I see the built Jerusalem. I see the evidence of all the blood, toil and sweat that the Israeli people have devoted to the project we call the State of Israel. And it is that which I feel the most love for and awe of – much more than for any of the great holy sites the city is famous for.

With a war in Gaza and with Hamas rockets falling daily on the cities of Israel, now is a particularly poignant time to reflect on the sacrifices it takes to maintain this State. I was very sad to have to leave Israel at such a time of crisis. As small a thing as it is compared to the sacrifices that Israel's soldiers and their families are making, just being there as a tourist or student is still an important way of showing support – of showing a willingness to join in the dangers and struggles that come from being a people that some would just like to murder, whether it be with rockets fired at random places in residential neighborhoods or with suicide bombers getting on a random rush hour bus. I will miss Israel, and especially Minna, who I left behind there to continue her studies in that Holy city.

___________________________

I had ridden on Sunday by bicycle up to that hillside to meet Minna who was finishing up a class at Machon Schechter near the hilltop. We walked down a bit into the park and took pictures of each other on bicycles for our Hazon ride web page. This coming Spring Minna and I will be showing our support for Israel by participating in a charity ride to raise money for two organizations particularly dedicated to the task of maintaining Israel's threatened environment. You can help us by donating on my Hazon Irsrael ride page here! (http://arava.kintera.org/2009springride/abayye)

In the above pic, you can see a bit of an olive tree in the foreground on a right – olive groves are one of the most famous and beautiful parts of the Israeli landscape and it's a bit of a miracle to find them so close to the “built” Jerusalem of Wolfson Towers in the background. . . . . In addition to the people, what I love about Jerusalem and its surroundings is just the hills, so many of which have olive trees growing on terraces built into the hillsides. The site of those hills always takes my breath away.

Here is Minna also riding amid the olive trees with the “built” Jerusalem in the background.

Here she is again:

Minna's Hazon Israel ride donation page is here. (http://arava.kintera.org/2009springride/minna)

And here's our _team_ page.

[X-posted to abayye]

Tired

2009-01-05T18:35:00.003+02:00

I went to class today and when my teacher asked how I was I said that I was tired. I didn't explain that I got up early this morning to see Alan off to the airport or that doing so left me not only sleep-deprived, but sad to see him go. My teacher said, tiredly, "Well, you're not the only one." And then the maintenance man who was removing a piece of audiovisual equipment from the classroom chimed in: "Everyone is exhausted from hearing about what is happening with our forces."
We nodded in agreement (though it was unclear what the content of this consensus was).
We opened our notebooks and started class.

Quiet

2009-01-01T12:06:00.003+02:00

Quiet. That's what Ehud Barak says is the goal of Israel's current operations in Gaza -- "quiet for the south." By quiet, he says he means no more Hamas rockets falling on Israeli citizens within range of Gaza. No more sirens going off, giving people "45 golden seconds" to stop wherever they are -- even driving their cars -- and try to find cover, something a woman in Ashdod wasn't quite able to do the other day.

Here in Jerusalem, where I unfortunately will only be for a few more days before I have to return to the States, there is a strange sense of quiet. I feel confident that we are out of the range of Hamas' rockets for now. But, it has been raised in my conscious for the first time that I am staying in an apartment that does not have a "safe room". I do not have a gas mask or anything else I might need if Jerusalem suddenly came under a serious attack from the skies.

And, I well know that the quiet can end in many other says. I was here at another time of "quiet" -- in the summer of 2000 when there was real hope that, with Bill Clinton's help, a real peace agreement might be forged and all this death and violence could come to an end. But, at that time, the Palestinians, then led by Arafat (who has since passed from the scene), chose another course and returned to a violent path to seek their goals. Bus and other suicide bombings fell upon Israel over the rest of the year I was here and beyond. Everyone here knows that such attacks could happen, again.

Israel is gambling that it can continue to prevent such attacks with such measures as the controversial security barrier that prevents people from the West Bank -- hopefully, including suicide bombers -- from freely entering into Israel. The stated goal of this current operation is to, as I said above, prevent rocket attacks from Gaza. The possibility of rocket attacks was very much on my mind a few days before the operation began when Minna and I were driving up the relatively new Highway 6, a toll road that makes it possible to head from Jerusalem to the north of Israel without having to either pass through the Jordan Valley (in the West Bank) or through the traffic of Tel-Aviv. I noticed how close the road runs to the West Bank and, thus, how easy it would be for a tiny cell of terrorists to shut down the road entirely with a few homemade mortars. I know that it is not force that is preventing that from happening. Rather, it is a political solution -- the currently relatively good relations with the Palestinian Authority (which controls the West Bank, while the more radical and Islam-focused Hamas controls Gaza).

I think this is what this current operation has to really be about -- not stopping Hamas from firing rockets, which is something that is pretty much impossible to do with force, but with making a political statement to the Palestinian people. A statement like, you have a choice. You can either live in peace beside us and have a chance to form a real state that can join the community of nations and start to build a stable economy, like the Palestinian Authority is starting to do in the West Bank. Or, you can continue to live in a continuous state of mutual violence next to us. If you choose the second option, note that Hamas cannot even protect itself, not to mention you, from the Israeli Defense Forces. Look how pathetic and hopeless are their attempts to respond militarily with a few rockets. Look how our planes took them by surprise and killed so many of their leaders in the initial attack last Saturday morning. How is it in your best interests to choose to be led by such people?

Of course, Hamas is gambling that the Palestinian people will hear the opposite political message. They are hoping that -- instead of the people in Gaza looking to the West Bank and deciding it is better there -- that the people in the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) will look to Gaza and let their anger and outrage motivate them to choose Gaza's current path, the path of Hamas. If that happens, few places in Israel will have the safe feeling of quiet I enjoy now.

In order to reject Hamas' path, the Palestinian people will ultimately have to accept something that they have not been able to accept for decades before the State of Israel even came to be in 1948 -- they will have to accept that Jews have a right to live in this land and that the State of Israel has a right to exist. That will indeed involve much sacrifice for them.

But it is the only path to quiet.

[x-posted to abayye]

Impulse purchase

2008-12-25T06:54:00.003+02:00

Back in the States -- on what was Christmas Eve day -- I'm sure many people were finding themselves making all sorts of unplanned last-minute Christmas-gift purchases when they spied something out of the corner of their eyes on the way to the checkout line. But last night in Tzfat (צפת/Safed), the ancient mountaintop center of Jewish mysticism, when Minna headed to the checkout line at a little food store, what caught her eye were the tools -- 9 little shot glasses packed together in a box, wicks that can float on the top of oil and bottles of olive oil meant just for the task -- to make an oil-burning menorah.

As darkness fell, we lit five of the little lamps -- four for the fourth day of Hanukah and one as the "Shamas" -- out on the balcony of the little hotel where we came to stay in this northern Israel town for a couple of days. I had been here on Hankuah once before and fondly remembered the sight of many little glass boxes outside the houses with the little oil lamps inside -- the Jewish tradition asks us to "publicize the miracle" by lighting where other people can see, which is why we lit on the balcony of our little room.

We didn't have a wind-protecting glass box to put our little shot glasses into, so I didn't feel safe leaving them alone. We sat out on the balcony watching them burn for well over an hour, trying to keep warm under a blanket, snacking on crackers and cheese and listening to some NPR from back in the States.

Tzfat is a strange and magical place. It is so much like Jerusalem with their Old City's of winding, narrow medieval streets and stairways made of light-colored stone and with their hilliness. But there's a quietness to Tzfat that both adds to its charm and that makes it seem unreal compared to the stark reality of Jerusalem, a city that despite being much smaller than New York has an intense bustle quite like that largest of American cities. Jerusalem -- especially the Old City -- is very much at the intersection of the Jewish and Muslim worlds, with its intensely coveted Holy sites important to both faiths and its large minority Muslim population. In Jerusalem -- as peaceful as it can be at times and as safe as I usually feel when I am there -- it is impossible to forget that you are in a place that has been warred over pretty much continuously in one way or another for a very long time now. Tzfat, on the other hand, is a place that is only Holy to the Jews (although the Arabs certainly fought for it in the 1948 war, as the war memorials in the center of town attest).

The city is held most Holy by the Hasidim, who make a practice of visiting the graves of the famous scholars of Kabbalah -- like Isaac Luria -- and praying there. Yesterday afternoon, Minna and I walked down through the steep hillside cemetary to the grave of Joseph Karo. It was cold and rainy, but we enjoyed our walk. It is a privilege to be able to have this time with Minna in the Holy Land, and I will be sorry to leave in a week-and-a-half after this too-short trip.

On the eve (almost) of my . . .

2008-12-16T21:50:00.002+02:00

. . . . return to Israel, we have lost another giant who disseminated Torah among Israel.

You can read my tribute to Rabbi David Lieber here.

Strawberry season

2008-12-15T22:55:00.004+02:00

Much to the surprise of (and clearly without prior consultation with) us Americans, it is now strawberry season here in Israel. Here, have one:

Arbel and more

2008-12-13T22:06:00.007+02:00

Ouch! My legs and arms are still quite wonderfully stiff and achy from yesterday's short but steep hike on Mount Arbel. The end involved climbing up the side of the cliff using a series of metal hand/foot holds that are permanently installed. Our terrific guide, Missy (who was hiking in a long skirt), was thoroughly nonchalant about this hike. There was no warning beforehand (e.g., for people who are afraid of heights) nor any hint really that there would be any seemingly insurmountable challenges ahead. She was very aware of what the hike entailed (she and her family had just gone the previous week) and I guess she simply assumed that we would all make it one way or another. I actually found this "ignorance (on our part) is bliss" approach to a physical challenge very refreshing. As we were on the last stretch of the hike (when the ascent had turned back into a stairway cut in the mountain and I no longer needed to use my arms as well as my legs to propel me) one of my colleagues asked how I was doing. By now there were quite a bit of endorphins kicking in and I found myself beaming and calling out, "I feel like a mountain goat!" I hope to go on this hike again (maybe with Alan and/or my parents and brother and his family).

I was on the hike with my colleagues from the Rav Siach program and it was an inspiring way to kick off our shabbat together. As one participant reported, he was physically awed by our hike, intellectually awed by our discussions and arguments and spiritually awed by our praying together and what a rare chance for all three to come together. This group of rabbinic students from different denominations (plus me from no denomination) were in for a challenging weekend; spending shabbat with a group of people who feel strongly about their widely divergent approaches and practices can be difficult, painful, and tiring. At one point in planning this shabbat, we had discussed trying to see if we could set it up so that there was an equal distribution of discomfort. I had it easy in many regards: my own rabbinical school community is pluralistic and diverse (though admittedly much of that diversity is muted by our desire to remain a cohesive community) and I have been exposed to and enjoyed serving a wide variety of Jewish communities.

Shabbat started with an unscripted "bang" which was such a classic multi-denominational "mishap" that it almost seemed as if it had been scripted: After lighting candles, we walked to the room where we were supposed to be praying and learning together. The light in the room was off. Our coordinator, who is Orthodox and doesn't turn lights on and off on shabbat, was embarrassed that she hadn't set this up before shabbat started and she (and the rest of us) all froze. At this point, before anyone could move fast enough to talk about why this was a problem, a considerate Reform rabbinical student, who has no problem using electricity on shabbat, stepped forward to turn the light on. Now our Orthodox rabbinical student, who was already stretching himself right to the limit of what he could deal with because of his deep desire to be with the rest of us for shabbat, stepped aside and would not enter the room (because of a prohibition on causing another Jew to do work which he sees as violating shabbat even if the Jew doing the work doesn't see it this way). We all stood around outside the room looking at each other and one of the Conservative rabbinical students spoke rather sharply to the well-meaning and now very embarrassed Reform student.

It was, in some ways, exactly the kind of dilemma that no amount of discussing could have brought to the fore. What a marvelous opportunity! But first we had to find a place to pray and learn together while we figured out what to do about our "ruined" room...From this crisis point of (what some saw as) violations of shabbat, harsh words, and hurt feelings, we were "off and running" for a shabbat of difficult and ultimately wonderful conversation, including a level of honesty that we might never have otherwise reached. Much anger, confusion, love, frustration was dug up and I am now deeply curious to see where we go from here. If nothing else, I deeply admire the willingness each of my colleagues (and, I hope, new friends) to share our truths with one another.

There is so much else I was hoping to share here! As Alan mentioned in his other blog, I went to a very moving funeral last week. I didn't know Rabbi Mickey Rosen well at all, but I have been going to Yakar, the shul and learning center he founded, for services most Friday evenings. Even from the few times I heard him daven (pray) and heard him speak, it was clear to me that I wanted to connect with him more, I very much wanted to learn from him. I went to his funeral, at least in part, out of the sense that we have a long tradition of learning from our rabbis even (and sometimes especially) from their deaths. There were too many people to fit in the room designated for giving eulogies; there were hundreds and hundreds of people. I stood in the middle of the crowd waiting to go into the room and did not have any reason to push to the front. Consequently, when they decided to simply bring his body into the middle of the crowd, I ended up standing right next to the men holding the stretcher. Jews in Israel are buried without coffins, wrapped in a tallit. One striking thing from the two funerals I have attended since arriving in July is how very small people look in death.

Rabbi Rosen's wife stood near his body and said that he hadn't wanted them to call any great rabbis to eulogize him and that he hadn't wanted anyone to say much of anything, but that she wanted to tell us some things that we might not have known. She said that he had been battling illness for many many years. Yet when he went to the מכלת/makolet/grocery each day and the man behind the counter asked how he was, he always answered "כוסי רוויה/cosi revayah/my cup runneth over." She also said that when there was something he did not have strength for he would say how he really thought God had wanted him to do this, but that perhaps this was not the case if he was not being given the strength...then he would push on and do it anyway. And she said that all his life he would dream and then do and that he kept dreaming right until the end. And when she asked him if he was sad about dying, he said that because of his children and the joy they brought him, he was not sad. When she finished her brief words, she said we would now do as he had them do in shul: we would be silent for a few moments and then we would sing. Rabbi Rosen's illness made him look to me much older than he was. His voice was shaky, but I loved his singing and the singing of his family and his congregation. To be with him in his death, surrounded by this song is a learning I will not soon forget.

One other thing I wanted to mention, and then I have to go to sleep because I have another hike tomorrow (ouch!): December is a month of many sad anniversaries for me (tragic deaths and near deaths) and I often feel simply very sad: not necessarily depressed, but aware of an undercurrent of sorrow. Yet this December (the aforementioned funeral not withstanding) I haven't been having these feelings. I suspect that the weather has fooled my system. It should be cold and rainy, and because of the drought one is not really allowed (culturally speaking) to talk about how beautiful the weather has been. But the sunny and only slightly cool days have definitely tricked me (so far!!!) out of my December blues.

Tomorrow marks the 16th anniversary of the murders at my college. I will be remembering those who died, those who were wounded, and all of us who suffered losses and traumas that night. May this warm December warm my remembering heart.

Remembering Odetta

2008-12-03T18:01:00.007+02:00

When people hear me sing, they often like to tell me who I sound like. Given the range of very different suggestions, I usually assume that what they are telling me has more to do with them than it does with me (e.g., Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Tracy Chapman...not exactly birds of a feather vocally speaking). Consequently, I don't pay much attention to these comparisons; they don't make any emotional impact on me. There are two exceptions, singers I will admit I am deeply proud to be compared to: Ronnie Gilbert and Odetta.

As announced on the homepage of the New York Times' website, Odetta has died. There is a wonderful video of an interview with her as part of the Times' "Last Word" series. In the video she talks about how some of her own earliest connections with the songs of African-American workers, prisoners, and slaves were from the recordings of Alan Lomax. Reflecting on what she connected with in the music she says, "You're walking down life's road, society's foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can't get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life." Those who wrote and sang these songs insisted on life. At the interviewers request, she also talks about her personal wounds from the overt racism of the 1950s. "But what the wound caused --the fear, the hate...-- the music has healed," she says firmly, "I'm not saying I love everybody...but it helped me shuck that off. It helped me see myself, instead of waiting for somebody to look at me and say that I'm OK." Using singing to help people see themselves in this way is a big part of my work as a voice teacher.

I knew Odetta mostly from an LP my parents had. It introduced me to her "Freedom Trilogy." She sang this medley from the stage at the 1963 March on Washington and it includes "I'm On My Way" which I have adopted as a song to use in association with Passover and the Book of Exodus (and with any other occasion where I can get away with it). On the same album, if memory serves, is her wrenching rendition of the sea chanty "Santa Ana." Though my shipmates would likely never have guessed, my own chantying drew much more inspiration from her than from any sailor.

I saw Odetta twice. She came to Eastern Long Island to perform once when I was a kid. I remember the performance space being very small and feeling almost overwhelmed by how her voice and her presence filled it. I remember the performance as having happened at the Parish Art Museum in Southampton, but I'm not 100% sure. One thing I do remember for sure about that performance: She sang a song that was a setting of some of the words of Winnie the Pooh. After singing it, she laughed and said, "Words by A. A. Milne, music by O. Odetta."

The second time I saw her, I actually got to meet her. I was performing with Clearwater's Hudson River Sloopsingers at Symphony Space in Manhattan. I don't remember what the occasion was, but Odetta was also on the bill and after our set, I ran into her backstage. Completely struck by her strength and her grace, I stood in front of her awestruck and then managed to say, "You are a beautiful woman." She fixed me with her gaze and, with that voice that was simultaneously both crystal clear and connected with untold and complicated depths, she answered slowly: "Takes one to know one." I do wish that I could have known her more.

"Range" is the word that comes to mind, not only in describing Odetta's singing but in seeing how full a swath of the spectrum of human ways of being she embodied in that singing: easy fearlessness, both woundedness and healing, cutting intelligence, and playful, even flirtatious, humor. Everything she had, everything she was, poured through her voice. I think of Odetta as one of my musical/spiritual foremothers; I feel blessed to be in her lineage.

Click here for a recording of Odetta singing "Take This Hammer." My favorite verse: "If he asks you, was I running, tell him I was flying, boys, tell him I was flying."

From Hebron to Tel Aviv

2008-11-30T00:04:00.003+02:00

As promised, a post about our tiyyul to South Mount Hebron with שוברים שתיקה/Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence plus a little addendum based on my visit up north this shabbat.

One of the first things that tipped me off to how much I would appreciate our tour guides from Breaking the Silence was Micha'el's explanation of the road that we took from Jerusalem to the hills south of Hebron. He told us that in order to understand this landscape, we needed to think about the map as three dimensional rather than two dimensional. He was referring to the series of bridges and tunnels built in the wake of the Second Intifada that basically create an overlapping infrastructure by which Israelis and Palestinians trying to traverse the same terrain travel on completely different road systems. He also began talking to us about how Palestinians have rights to access their agricultural lands but that this access is interrupted in ways that he described as "Kafkaesque." One example: there are gates in the separation barrier surrounding Palestinian cities that are open at specific hours to allow access to vineyards, orchards, and pasture. However, everyone and every vehicle requires a permit and attaining such permits can verge on the impossible. He said that even donkeys need permits.

Our tour basically consisted of viewing various places in South Mount Hebron where Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages and/or agricultural lands butt up against each other. Israeli settlements (plus roads to these settlements, as well as agricultural operations like dairies, archeological areas, and even JNF forests) have security buffers around them which are off-limits to Palestinians. There are also some zones which may be closed to various parts of various populations at one time or another. For example, Breaking the Silence usually brings groups on tours of Hebron but, because of the recent unrest, primarily between settlers and the army, our tour guides were forbidden from entering the city. So, instead we drove around the South Mount Hebron area stopping to get out and look at various sights.

What I liked best about our tour guides was that they were able to very intelligently tell us what we were looking at and its context vis a vis Israeli history and policy in the West Bank AND juxtapose this bigger picture with straightforward personal accounts of their own experiences as soldiers. This combination of smart, complex explanations combined with heart-felt stories was very moving to me. One thing that was important to Micha'el was to make it clear that he was not in any way "anti-Israel." He explained that he had, in fact, volunteered to serve a fourth year in the army after his mandatory service was up. They painted a picture of the organization aims to be at least somewhat pluralistic in terms of espousing a particular political viewpoint or advocating a particular solution to a given issue. A bit of evidence of how this plays out in action: Jewish Israeli men are obligated to serving in the reserves, some people affiliated with Breathing the Silence fulfill their reserve duties and others refuse to do so for reasons of conscience.

The most important aspect of our tour, from my perspective, was our tour guides refusal to offer us advice or solutions. I felt a deep desire to shift away from the scenes right before our eyes and join in the conversations that kept starting up about political solutions. And I deeply admired our guides' abilities to acknowledge that desire AND to bring us back to taking in what we were here to witness. I came away with a deeper understanding of the group's declared two-fold mission:
1. To collect testimonies from soldiers who had served in the territories.
2. To bring people to see first-hand what was happening in the West Bank, with an emphasis on bringing Israelis to see what was being done in their name and on their behalf.

This emphasis on simply witnessing and listening to soldiers' stories felt very right to me. One particularly moving moment was our visit to the village of Susya (not to be confused with the nearby Israeli settlement of the same name). The village had been forcefully relocated several times and the villagers had since decided to live as individual families on their respective agricultural lands rather than to reconstitute the original village of several families. While they are allowed to work their land, they are not technically allowed to build on it or live there. We came to a man who was using a tractor to prepare the land to be sown (we think the seed would grow into feed for the animals). Our tour guides hoped he would tell us his story of mutiple relocations. However, his land abutts a buffer zone and its boundaries are not entirely clear. Some of his land goes up the hill toward where Israeli soldiers stand guard and he is afraid to work there. Our presence (including a couple of us who were wearing kippot) made him feel safer and he quickly decided to use his time more wisely and take the opportunity to stop talking to us and head up the hill a little ways to plow and plant. He is pictured above in his tractor before he cut short the conversation and got to work. In the foreground on the left is Micha'el smiling and explaning what is going on.

I got yet another perspective on all of this
Shabbat when I went to visit the Arzis, my adopted family from my year on kibbutz. Omri, the younger son, who was pre-verbal when last we met, was home for the weekend from his army duty. He serves in the Nahal brigade. I didn't get to talk to him directly, but when I told Amira about our trip to the West Bank, she said that Omri had served in Hebron and had some pretty horrible stories to tell himself. Like our tour guides, she emphasized the fact that by and large the treatment Palestinians receive (at checkpoints for example) is completely systemic and is not a measure of the sweetness or meanness of any individual soldier. She framed it in terms of Omri, a truly menschlich kid as far as everyone is concerned, just trying to retain his own humanity in a truly messy and inhuman situation. Or, as our tour guide had put it: If you're going to maintain an occupation, this is as pretty as it's going to get. You can't do occupation any prettier than this.

The Nahal brigade is known dividing soldiers' time between regular army service and more community-service oriented work. Omri is currently in a period of his service in which he does work which he finds much more meaningful than manning checkpoints: he teaches and facilitates after school groups for youth in one of the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. The language the family uses is that he is "our soldier" (as in "Our soldier is home for the weekend"). I hope to have the opportunity to learn more about his work; even though last time we met he was barely learning to walk, I feel a little bit like he is my soldier too.

Night in Mumbai

2008-11-27T17:30:00.004+02:00

When we read about things like yesterday's terror attacks in Mumbai, it can strike us as awful, but also very distant -- very far away. . . . . But to think about my own loved one huddled in the dark, defenseless behind a locked door, just hoping that nobody with a weapon would break in (the image brought to my mind in reading Minna's below blog post) . . . it just brings the sheer horror of it home in such a profound way. . . . I cried in reading it (and I'm crying now writing this). . . . Part of that has to do with Minna and how much it hurts to think she suffered that. But I think I am also very much crying for the people Israel -- so many centuries of people hating us -- and for humanity as a whole. So much suffering. So much hate. So much death. Oh, Lord, when will it end? Please. Please. Bring peace upon us. Let it be speedily. In our days.

Night of the Gliders

2008-11-27T00:04:00.004+02:00

I hope to write a post about our tiyyul/trip yesterday to South Mount Hebron in the West Bank with tour guides from שוברים שתיקה/Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence. At the moment though, I am remembering what I was doing 21 years ago tonight. How do I know what I was doing 21 years ago tonight? Well, it was the night before Thanksgiving and my American Class classmates and I had made as many preparations as possible to give ourselves a Thanksgiving feast. Cranberry sauce was impossible to find, but we did order a turkey and it was waiting the nearby town of Kiryat Shmona for us to pick up on Thanksgiving morning. But, in a way, Thanksgiving morning never came that year.

Instead, that Wednesday night there was a series of events which has come to be known in Israeli history as the Night of the Gliders. Two members of the PFLP-GC, a PLO splinter group, flew into Israel on motorized hang gliders. One landed accidentally in a heavily armed area and was caught and killed almost immediately. The second managed, before he was killed, to kill six Israeli soldiers and wound eight others. Kfar Blum, the kibbutz I lived on, was close enough to the action that we moved into an "on alert" mode. Writing this now I realize that I don't even have language for what this mode was or what the procedures were. Folks on kibbutz seemed to have a sense of this as the kind of event they were trained to deal with, but, as a fourteen-year-old, I don't think I really absorbed any kind of big picture.

I was in the shower with a head full of conditioner when my roommate, Esther, came in to tell me that something was happening and we all had to gather downstairs. I do remember having one of those odd moments of wondering whether I should rinse my hair out first or just get out of the shower as is. I rinsed. When I went downstairs to the lawn by our buildings, I realized that the רמקול/ram kol/PA system was blaring but that I did not know what it was saying. One of our מטפלות/metaplot/house-mothers/care-givers was giving us instructions. She told us to walk directly to the apartments of our respective adopted families and stay there. It was later explained to us that if there was rocket fire or other bombs falling we would have gone to the bomb shelters, but that when individual terrorists are wandering around with guns and hand grenades, and you don't know if they have all been accounted for, it's better not to be gathered all in one place.

I remember walking on the quiet deserted paths and being afraid that one of the men on guard duty would find me and not know who I was. When I got to the Arzi's apartment, one hint of the night's strangeness was that the door to the apartment was locked. Amira (my adopted mother) let me in and told me that Doron (my adopted father) had already left to join the kibbutz's own defense efforts. The boys (now in their twenties but then three and one) were still fast asleep and unaware of any goings-on.

Amira said we should move to the room farthest from the door so we went into their bedroom and turned off the lights. I remember feeling scared and nervous, but also reassured by Amira's apparent calm. I also remember finding it oddly humorous that this incident allowed me my only chance that year to sleep on their waterbed. And after talking for a while (with me asking lots of questions) we did sleep. Maydan and Omri slept through the night as well only to awaken frightened in the morning by the PA system.

Although both terrorists had been killed in the night, all the communities in the area were closed off and essentially shut down the next day just to make sure there was no one else wandering around unaccounted for. It would have been a regular school day for us, Thanksgiving or no, but because of the attack, the school was shut down. Partly this was because it was a regional school and with all the communities sealed, none of the students from surrounding kibbutzim could get there. We were also under the continued order not to have lots of people all gathered in one place. Instead we each went to our respective work places (where we normally worked every Tuesday), which meant that I spent the day with the 3-year-olds in the פעוטון/pa'oton/daycare. It also meant that our turkey spent the day in Kiryat Shmona. I don't think many of us felt like we were still in the Thanksgiving spirit.

I left the country more or less for the intervening decades and it is only in doing a little bit of research for this blog post that I learned how impactful the night's events were. In addition to the obvious impact on the dead and wounded, the Night of the Gliders is seen by some as being the event that "kicked off" the First Intifada. It was also seen as signaling an unreadiness on the part of the IDF. Additionally, the deaths of a number of the soldiers were blamed in large part on the fact that the sentry guarding their base panicked and fled when the terrorist fired on him. However, many people felt this was unfair and the incident and subsequent court martials led to an increased awareness of the dangerous tendency to shift blame solely to the lowest ranking soldier involved.

Inside and out

2008-11-24T15:10:00.002+02:00

I love my course on זרמים ביהדות בעת החדשה/Streams in Modern Judaism. I love it in four aspects: content, vocabulary, Israeli context, and the reactions of my Israeli classmates. The content itself (starting with the Treaty of Westphalia) is partly review and partly new. Much of it is material that I feel like I should know already but don't. But what is completely new is the Hebrew vocabulary. Learning this topic in Hebrew means that potentially boring heard-it-all-before subjects (Emancipation, citizenship, religion versus nationality, blah, blah, blah) are reinvigorated for me as challenging vocabulary lessons. Learning about all of this in the context of Israeli society is also a draw. Our assignment for next week, for example, is to read three platforms from the Reform movement: The Pittsburgh Platform (1885), The Columbus Platform (1937), and the platform of the Reform movement in Israel. Finally, perhaps my favorite aspect is the reactions of my (largely "secular") Israeli classmates.

Today we were talking about early Reform changes to the liturgy and to the entire realm of everyday Jewish practice (e.g., kashrut). One woman began passionately voicing her disapproval that the Reformers wanted to do away with many aspects of Shabbat observance. How could they do this, she argued, when so many of the prohibitions are laid out so clearly in the very text of the Torah itself? She quoted texts verbatim and emphasized that these practices were part of the Ten Commandments themselves. Of course, she noted parenthetically, she did not keep shabbat, but still! Many people have told me that it makes more sense to think of most "secular" Israelis as something closer to "non-practicing Orthodox" and my classmate was clearly fulfilling this stereotype: "There is only one way to live a Jewish life!!! So what if I happen not to live that way, at least I'm not making any changes."

And then a young man in the class said that he understood that the teacher was saying that the early proponents of Reform understood themselves as taking the best that Judaism had to offer and working as part of continuous Jewish history. But, he wanted to know, what exactly were these rabbis retaining given all the things they were ready to get rid of? "Sure," he said, "there's the One God, but outside of that?" "חוץ מהאל האחד...מה?" I nearly burst out laughing (but lately when I laugh I also start coughing and I knew I didn't want to do that) partly because of his minimization of God and God's Oneness and partly because, especially to my ears, saying it in Hebrew sort of makes it sound like a truly deep question: What is there aside from the One God? Two responses rose in me simultaneously:
1. A joyous remembering of the Torah's audacious claim: אין עוד מלבדו/There is nothing outside of the One.
2. A good wordplay chuckle compliments of Groucho Marx: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

Pre-Shabbos rush

2008-11-21T09:39:00.002+02:00

Rushing, rushing, rushing, to be ready for shabbat (which comes in even earlier here in Jerusalem, which no one has been able to explain to me yet...anyone?).
Rushed to the Mister Zol around the corner to get fresh chicken and veggies.
And in my rush I was (still!) confused and then delighted and then amused at myself when the woman working behind the olive counter said, "Shabbat shalom," while hanging me the little plastic containers.
And in my rush I began to feel an annoyance rising as the very cute but very slow little old lady came to a complete stop right in front of me in the exit to the grocery store. Why was she stopping? Because she wanted to pause, to reach up, to kiss the mezuzah.

Gotta go rush some more!

P.S. the Bulbuls are putting on a full-blown nature show at the window, complete with one of them hanging upside down from a vine and alternately flapping wildly and holding its wings tight to its side and making a series of squawks. The other one sits below on the window sill and "pretends not to notice."

How much is that bulbul in the window?

2008-11-19T23:52:00.002+02:00

When Alan was here he tried to tell me that a bird had come into the apartment. I only sort of believed him. But for the last few days, at least two of these birds have been perching on the grating, peering inside, flapping against the glass and generally seeming to indicate that they would like to be inside. They also do some sort of dance together. I can't tell if it's a mating thing or a fledgling-still-asking-to-be-fed thing. It involves puffing itself up and gesturing at the other bird with its beak.

This is our wildlife window. The vines growing on the building are flowering and the area outside the window is abuzz with bees. This is also the window through which a now-deceased rodent probably entered. Why do I suspect this window? Because, one lovely evening, before said rodent's entry and subsequent demise, I once spotted a suspiciously similar-looking rodent eyeing me through the vines.

We can also sometimes see lizards (smamiot even!) through the window. It's a fun view through the glass, kind of like an enclosure in a zoo except that we are the ones on the inside. All of this is more interesting because we live on the second-and-a-half floor, which is no big deal for the bees and the birds, but does mean that the four-legged critters are climbing up quite a ways in the vines.

The birds are either Yellow-vented Bulbuls (because of the bright yellow patch near its, um, private parts) or White-spectacled Bulbuls (because of the white circles around its eyes) depending on which website you want to believe. There seems to be another species which is also called "Yellow-vented Bulbul" but is a different bird and lives in Southeast Asia.

It's a lovely window and I am now inclined to keep it closed. Once the bees leave I may open it again, but only when humans are sitting right near it and keeping the out-of-doors at bay.

Judaism in general?

2008-11-18T22:44:00.002+02:00

I am participating in a program called "Rav Siach" which brings together rabbinical students from many different movements/backgrounds and gets us all talking to each other. This evening we were asked to write (100 words or less) in response to the question "What vision of Judaism do I want to promote in my rabbinate?" We put what we'd written it in a little square in the middle of a big piece of paper and then sat around a table and passed the pages around wrote commentaries on each other's writings (or commentaries on commentaries). It turned out to be a fascinating and enjoyable exercise, definitely a good way to get people into potentially challenging conversation.

The biggest button this exercise pushed for me was that I knew my answer would be different depending on who I was "promoting" this vision to. The Methodist pastor down the street is a much different audience/conversation partner than the elders in the synagogue. I want to be able to speak to people where they are. And then I realized that this very desire to meet people where they are, in their own particularity, is a big part of my vision of Judaism. So, in my bristliness, I wrote the following:

"Judaism in general" is not my Judaism. In a society which consistently promotes breadth over depth and which (not illegitimately) holds abstraction, depersonalization, and problem-solving as the keys to efficiency and "progress," Judaism by its very particularity allows and urges people to connect, to deepen, to integrate, to wrestle, and to wonder. Judaism says: Take your sweet, odd, particular self, take this strange and wondrous Torah, these challenging traditions and rituals and turn them, turn them as you grow in seriously playful relationship with self and Other, with uncertainty, contradiction, and Mystery.

What I'm doing here

2008-11-18T16:01:00.003+02:00

"Why are we here?" Always a big question. The chair of my sociology department once suggested at a beginning-of-the-year departmental gathering that this could more easily approached by breaking it into its component questions:
1. Why?
2. Are we here?

(Ah, the humor of the academy.)

But seriously, last night's Hebrew College event (despite Sharon's palpable absence due to weather/airline problems) was a wonderful chance to share some thoughts on "Why rabbinical school?" and "Why Hebrew college?" It's always good to tell and retell our own stories about the choices we have made. And being able to sing for people (despite my voice still not being at full capacity) after having felt somewhat muted was a wonderful reminder of how important that aspect of my work in the world is to me.

Danny Lehmann's visit --and his asking good questions about the school's Israel program-- has also allowed me to articulate another way of thinking about our (my and Alan's) motto that "Israel IS the curriculum." In particular, I said that the school might want to think more about being explicit about the component of the Israel program which is about experiential learning. "Just doing it" and gleaning what we can from our everyday lives is a great start. However, there are also wonderful models of experiential education, learning through adventure, and the like.

After my second year of college, I spent a few months sailing from Boston to the Virgin Islands on a 125' schooner as a participant in the SEAmester program, which at the time was run by Long Island University. One of the "courses" for which we received college credit was called "Navigation and Seamanship." We did have some formal lessons, but much of the course "material" was decidedly hands-on. We did have a final exam though, and as it approached my fellow students and shipmates started asking Captain Bobby Hall what would be on it. His simply answer: "Everything that has happened since you set foot onboard is fair game."

I also found myself recalling my time teaching in the Chicago Field Studies program in which undergrads had a 30-hour-a-week internship and then came to a seminar to learn how to do ethnography. They consistently found that this combination enriched both their learning and their work experience. Even if they weren't intending to be social scientists, a regular practice of taking field notes allowed them to look back at and glean deeper wisdom from their hours on the job (about themselves, their ambitions, the role of work and school in their lives).

This blog is part of my attempt to get the most out of my informal learning this year. Another goal: meeting with "real Israelis" in casual settings (and maybe doing some formal interviews as well). Alan talks about CPE as he runs it being an "action and reflection" model of learning and one dream for the Israel-year component of the rabbinical school would be for this reflection to be better integrated and supported. I really mean it when I say that I learn about Israeli culture as much from being in line at the grocery store as I do from anything I could learn in a classroom. The junk mail is a "cultural text" no less than the latest novel. After all, learning what people think they can sell --what real or perceived needs and desires advertisers are tapping into-- is an important window on any society. And today I was excited to see that a phone book had arrived on my doorstep...what a delicious data set! Another example I reported in our meeting with Danny Lehmann: in my class on "Streams in Modern Judaism" class yesterday, we were reading an article about the Reform movement. The article stated that two million Jews identify as Reform. I didn't do the math in my head, but it sounded about right to me. My Israeli classmates were simply incredulous. Two million Reform Jews?!?! Where were all these strange creatures? So, here the simple reporting of a demographic fact allowed me to learn something about my classmates and their worldview and how different it was from my own.

I have to end this post because my coffee-date (a genuine "real Israeli") will arrive shortly. I will leave you with this picture of my educational setting:

Jewish Continuity?

2008-11-16T07:39:00.004+02:00

When we went to visit the ruins at Tzippori some weeks ago (just before my trip to Haifa), one theme of our visit was "Jewish Continuity." What I neglected to mention in my blog post, was that our visit there was also marked by a rain/wind/thunder storm of biblical proportions! My classmate Brian just sent along this picture he caught of me. I didn't have a raincoat with me and my umbrella require constant, vigilant "sail trimming" (tacking, jibing, etc.) to be of any use. I'm not always sure what people are really talking about when they use the words "Jewish Continuity" but this image seemed like one possibility to add to the mix:

Remember when the music....

2008-11-15T22:12:00.003+02:00

My guitar came with me to Israel.
And then it sat on the floor of the apartment stuck in its case until this evening. The president of Hebrew College and dean of its rabbinical school (aka Danny and Sharon) are in town for the General Assembly of the UJC (United Jewish Communities). They're using the opportunity to also host a recruitment event for the rabbinical school: "What Do We Need From Jewish Leaders in the 21st Century?"

They asked a couple of rabbinical students to present something and I was asked to sing. Suddenly something that would be a no-brainer in the States became a "first time ever." I've never "performed" in Israel before and, as I said, I hadn't even taken the poor guitar out of its case until tonight. My fingernails were all wrong for guitar playing and I've lost all my callouses!

I'm very grateful for this opportunity, if only because it got me to open up the guitar case! My voice is still recovering from a cold, but I trimmed my fingernails, tuned her up, and played a little bit just for myself. I made sure I remembered the chords for the song I want to play on Monday night. And then I played some of the first songs I learned to play on guitar, "The Loving of the Game" (which I learned from a Judy Collins album) and "Early Morning Rain" (which I think I had on a Peter, Paul, and Mary tape that I brought with me to kibbutz). The music of the "folk revival" is also an important part of my own tradition, my own Torah. I often feel very constrained as I walk around Jerusalem. For one thing, there's just not a lot of room to be a female rabbinical student in this town, and I imagine many of my progressive male counterparts actually feel the same way. Connecting with this "foreign" music felt very freeing.

I rarely play music all by myself (on the "best in performance"/"best in rehearsal" spectrum of musicians, I fall on the far end of performance with my fellow rehearsal-avoiders). And I don't think of myself as a guitarist and almost never play my guitar without singing. But my throat just isn't ready for singing and plucking out my "cowboy chords" all by themselves felt very sweet. I was reminded of the words from Harry Chapin's song: "Remember when the music came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire..." and "Remember when the music was the glow on the horizon of every newborn day."

Overheard at the Mall

2008-11-12T13:25:00.002+02:00

I am at the Jerusalem Mall and just over heard the following snippet in English: "Well, for the next few hours I'll be in J-ru and then tonight I'm going to head to Tel-y." Not only did the nicknames for Jerusalem and Tel Aviv crack me up, it was a good reminder that --unlike me who feels like leaving Jerusalem is a big trip-- lots of people go back and forth easily and even commute between Israel's two largest cities.

And now, I'm off to shop for a vacuum cleaner....

A walk to the pharmacy

2008-11-11T16:32:00.007+02:00

As I have often found myself explaining, many aspects of being here feel like retracing my steps from when I lived here 20 years ago. Sometimes this has a "do-over" quality; it offers the deeply healing opportunity to make choices as a 35-year-old that my 14-year-old self did not know as options. For example, I literally felt like I was retracing my steps when Alan and I climbed Masada. First of all, his companionship is itself a tikkun, a healing of the loneliness I felt doomed to as a teenager. Just as importantly, I have learned how to set my own pace, how to worry less about how others might or might not be seeing and judging me, and, thank God, how to rest and enjoy the view.

One thing I was dreading in anticipation of coming here for the year was getting sick. It would not be an exageration to say that I associate being in Israel with a variety of ills. The first time I came here, to visit my older brother, Isaac, during his 10th-grade year on kibbutz, I got an ear infection. I had gotten ear infections quite a bit as a younger child, but they had stopped after I stopped eating dairy for a year and I hadn't had one in years. But there I was, staying behind in the King Solomon Hotel while my parents went in search of medicine (hastily prescribed by the father of a my Hebrew school teacher Shelly).

The year I lived here I had chronic colds which in the end were deemed sinusitis. I became quite fond of the doctor in the kibbutz's infirmary but saw him much less after he put me on antibiotics prophylacticly. In addition to the large amounts of dairy in the local diet, I also blamed the fact that I worked with 3-year-olds. Not only does my Hebrew vocabulary include little-used words for childhood diseases, I even managed to catch one myself. Even though I had been vaccinated as a child, I was awakened by pain in the middle of the night and wandered to the bathroom mirror to see my face and neck grotesquely swollen with mumps! The three-year-olds ran around with little piggy faces -the Hebrew חזרת/hazeret, with its etymological link to "pig" is apt-- seemingly unbothered by the virus. I was in bed on codeine for a week and none of the boys in my class would be in the same room with me.

Then the summer after my freshman year in college, Isaac and I were back on kibbutz and I was working with kids again. This time, for the first time in my life, I got strep throat. I proceeded to get strep throat just about every semester thereafter, usually right around finals week, usually when I had a voice recital. I became expert at formulating hot lemonades and I can go on for quite a while about the wonders of gargling.

All of this added up to a resistance to admitting to myself that, yes, I really did need a sick day today. I had already tried chicken soup and throat lozenges. I was cheered by the fact that none of my glands seem swollen so I'd been going to classes despite the facts that I didn't have much of a voice left and that I spent much of the time blowing my noise. At about 3am last night, in the middle of a particularly rattling bout of shivers and teeth-chattering I was reminded of my friend Steven Lewis' habit of saying "Oh good, another f***ing learning opportunity." I am not sure what good, if any, is meant to come of this particular "retracing" but I decided it was definitely a good idea to stay under the covers for much of today.

So, what I really wanted to write about was my walk to the pharmacy this afternoon because it seemed like a wonderful little snapshot of life here:
Jerusalem is electing a new mayor today and one of the first things I saw and heard was a van going by with its רמקול/ramkol/loudspeaker blaring. I did not catch what was being said, but the huge signs on the side of the van made its viewpoint clear. It said that as of 14:00 hours the voter turnout was 54% חרדי/Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) and 12% חילוני/Hiloni (Secular). I couldn't tell whether this meant that 54% of haredim had voted or 54% of voters were haredim but the concern was written even more starkly: above these numbers it said, החרדים כובשים את העיר/"The haredim are taking over the city!" The haredi candidate, Porush, was depicted in cartoon form in his posters. My friends and I wondered whether this was an attempt to make him look less scary.

The pharmacy was closed when I got there, but the sign on the door said it would open again at 16:00 (a number of businesses, as well as the post office seem to have these "afternoon siesta" hours). Another customer arrived two minutes before the pharmacy was supposed to open. He asked when it was opening and when I told him he remarked that the proprietors must be "more Yekke than the Yekkes!" for waiting until exactly 16:00 to re-open (Yekke is a mildly derogatory nickname for German Jews, believed by some to stem from their insistence on wearing formal jackets even in Israel's 100 degree weather).

On my way back from the pharmacy, I stopped to get myself a treat of kubbeh (a delicious meat-stuffed dumpling of sorts) at the grill place. Another customer walked in as the man behind the counter was ringing me up. After asking about the freshness of a particular item, the customer reached over the case and onto a counter where some chicken fingers were cooling. He took one to taste.

Continuing my slow, congested walk home, I noticed that even some taxis had signs on them for political candidates. Then, just before I got home a man with a kippah rushed past me. He said something to the man in the kippah who was approaching me. The man approaching me looked back at the hurrying man and said, in English, "Actually I' m already past mincha." Apparently the man in the hurry was trying to find enough men to make a minyan but the other man had already prayed his afternoon prayers.

I am going to try to go to my evening activity, but not before a dose of medicine and a dose of chicken soup.

Mastery

2008-11-04T17:05:00.002+02:00

My classes at Machon Schecter have started and it feels good to be discovering my new routine. I'm learning Talmud there and taking a Hebrew class, both of which have lots of rabbinical students in them. But I am also taking three classes that are offered as part of the graduate program at Schechter and so my classmates are all Israeli graduate students. At this point I am happy to be just soaking it all in and I'd say I understand about 85% of the proceedings. My class on "Current Streams in Judaism" only has five students total and my classmates were very patient in listening to me explain who I was and why I found the topic interesting (it seems to be a required course for some of them).

I had a very interesting moment in my class on the Book of Jonah yesterday. We were looking at the second verse and the teacher surmised that I had an English translation. The verse includes the Hebrew imperative k'ra al/קרא על/literally "call upon." Usually the word el/אל/"to" would be used with this verb instead of al/על. She felt the JPS (Jewish Publication Society) translation did a good job of translating the import of this seemingly small change. She asked me to read the verse in English and I read aloud: "Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come before me." "Proclaim judgment" was the part of the translation that interested my teacher, but what interested me was my own internal response. I was filled with a feeling that at first I could not identify. Pride? Excitement? And then it hit me: I was filled with a feeling of competence and even mastery. Reading sentences aloud in English; here was a task for which I was so very well-suited. Why, I knew English as well as anyone else in the room and undoubtedly better than all but a few.

It's an odd thing to be excited about, being fluent in one's own mother tongue, but the feeling of competence highlighted for me how much of the experience of being in Israel for a year is about learning to keep one's head up while feeling incompetent in one basic life situation after another.
I hope to learn (and write) much more about the Book of Jonah, whose basic story about trying to run away from God and from ourselves has already inspired me deeply. But in class yesterday, I was mostly just so relieved to be able to answer my teacher's request confidently. Imagine how my joy grew when she asked me to...read it again!

(The mp3 for "Gone Tarshisha," my song inspired by the Book of Jonah, survived my recent computer crash and I'm happy to send it to anyone who wants a copy...unless someone knows how to post the mp3 itself on the blog....hmm.)

Haifa and it many conveyances

2008-10-30T14:19:00.010+02:00

After a short-but-sweet tiyyul with my classmates on Wednesday which included visiting the archeological sites at Tzippori and eating an amazing lunch in a Druze village I caught a bus to Haifa. One of my students from the Genesis program last summer had invited me to come and speak to his English class at Leo Baeck High School. I don't recall ever going to Haifa before so I decided to take the day to look around.

I stayed at a beautiful and peaceful Carmelite monastery called Stella Maris. The Carmelite order was founded there by a group of Crusaders who decided to try to settle down and live as hermits in emulation of the Prophet Elijah who is said to have hidden in a cave. There are actually at least three different places in Haifa which are said to be Elijah's hiding place. Next to the monastery (and its guest house) is a church built around one such cave. There is a feeling of ancient reverence in this building constructed protectively over a small room of stone.

Much of my time in Haifa was spent in much more modern circumstances though. Spefically, Haifa provided a wide array of fascinating transportation options and I ended up more or less structuring my visit around riding around in as many different conveyances as possible. The grand total: a funicular, a cable car, three bus lines, a train ride to Tel Aviv, and finally, exhausted, a cab to my hotel.

Yes, Haifa has what I thought was a subway, but Alan corrected me and told me it was a funicular. It's called the Carmelit and it goes straight up the mountain. After buying my ticket and walking down lots of stairs to the platform, I initially got on it going the wrong way. I couldn't understand where to be to get on it going in the other direction until one of my fellow passengers explained that the cars run on the same tracks and you know which one to get on based on whether it's going uphill or downhill. Both the platforms and the train cars themselves are built to accomodate the slant of the hill. At each station, the platform is actually a series of platforms: a small platform and then some steps up and then another small platform, etc. And inside the cars the floors and seats are similarly stepped and built at what must be a reverse slant so that you are sitting straight up and down even though the train car itself is flush with the grade of the track. If this explanation is confusing, let me assure you that the feeling of riding on this contraption is somewhat disorienting as well. When I got off at the top, I felt as if I had "sea legs."

The monastery I stayed in is built on high hill overlooking the rest of the city and the bay below. Right across the street is a cable car (the kind that hangs in the air, not the kind on tracks) all the way down to the sea shore below. In Hebrew it's called a רכבל/rakebel which combines the words רכבת/rakevet/train and כבל/cable. This one has three small pods rather than a larger gondola.I rode in my own pod and got a kick out of its resemblance to the persimon I munched on at we zoomed down the side of the mountain. Here are some views.

One of those tall buildings was my marker for the train station which I walked too after reaching the bottom.

At the train station, I bought my ticket and then rushed to the platform because I had been told the next train was coming in two minutes! But this is a picture of not-my-train...there were several of those that came first.

The train itself was very fast and very cheap (26.50 NIS or about 7 bucks).
But it was also very crowded, standing room only for part of the trip. Many of the passengers were young soldiers heading home for the weekend. Some found seats for themselves under the luggage rack.

I was sad not to be able to share these many modes of travel with Alan. He's much more a transportation buff than I am. In addition, while there are many wonderful and important lessons to be learned from traveling alone (e.g., the fact that both bouts of crankiness and moments of bliss can arise without any change in external circumstances whatsoever or the fact that one can actually use a public restroom without removing one's backpack), I feel I've spent enough time already learning these lessons and, having found such a wonderful traveling partner, would very much prefer to have his company.

And now I'm going to take a quick dip in the Med before shabbat comes in.

Pilgrim Watching

2008-10-24T11:23:00.013+02:00

Last week I tagged along with the Kleins on a visit to Bethlethem/בית לחם, where Jen and Daniel had eached worked in the past. Jen still has adopted family there.

I found myself to be very much in "observer" mode during the whole trip; just a bit removed emotionally from the various highly evocative scenes I was passing through. First was the getting there.

While Alan and I had definitely been over the Green Line before in our travels together, all the checkpoints we had passed through had been relatively low-key, at least for two Jews driving a car with Israeli plates. An American might have easily mistaken the most casual for sobriety checks (albeit with a very well-armed staff) and the most formal for toll booths (also with well-armed staff). We were usually waved through without even being asked to stop. When we were stopped, the soldier usually wished us "Good travels" or something equally friendly. We were never asked to identify ourselves in any way.

The "terminal" at Check Point 300 (as the cab drivers call it at least) on the road to Bethlehem is another matter entirely. The separation barrier here is very much a wall and the fortress-looking terminal is built into it. We presented our passports at booths much like security/passport/customs checks at the airport and then exited through a somewhat confusing set of hallways and revolving gates. Busloads of Christian tourists/pilgrims were also passing back and forth between Jerusalem and the West Bank. Jen said that some Palestinians reported receiving better treatment at the terminal than they used to at this checkpoint because the soldiers felt more secure and comfortable. I wondered what behavioral intentions had gone into the terminal's design and couldn't help but be reminded of the work of Temple Grandin on designing slaughterhouses to have a comforting effect on the animals.

And then we exited into another world. One of the brothers from Jen's adopted family picked us up in his taxi and took us to Manger Square. Our first stop was the Church of the Nativity. The original church was built by Emperor Constantine I in the 4th Century with his mother, St. Helena, serving as something of a general contractor. There were large groups of Christians speaking at least a dozen languages. They listened intently to tour guides, waited patiently in long lines for a personal glimpse of the silver star said to mark the very spot of Jesus' birth. We wandered here and there among them, past them. I don't recall any situation in which I have felt more like a fly on a wall. We did have one moment of excitement when Daniel inadvertently set off a small "incident" with a guard of some kind by wearing his baseball cap. Whose holy places require you to cover your head and whose require you to uncover your head??? It's all very hard to keep track of!

I was impressed with this tour guides enthusiasm as he explained that the 4th century mosaic was still visible beneath newer wooden floorboards:

I felt both emotionally moved and somewhat alienated by watching other people have spiritually moving moments. The overall effect of this combination of feelings was a sweet but distant wistfulness.

Here are pilgrims leaning in to touch or kiss or at least get a snapshot of the spot of Jesus's birth:

We wandered down into the grottoes and could hear a group of Americans who had gathered in a small room to pray and sing. Their voices echoed hauntingly off the stones walls of the grotto.

When we walked back up and then out into the courtyard, their songs floated up through gratings creating a sense of endlessness.

Then it was on to the shuk where we wandered a bit and ate falafel, noting the differences between Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli varieties. Here, they smoosh the falafel balls in the pita which makes for a much more compact, less messy snack. I wanted to stop and take a closer look at the posters of "martyrs" plastered on many of the walls, but didn't feel comfortable doing so.

Here are some obligatory shuk pictures
of hanging meat. Note the lovely sprigs of fresh herbs hung with the carcasses. In one picture you may also note that the animal's tale has been left with a tuft of hair on it. Don't know why.

From there we walked down hill to the neighboring village of Beit Sahour where Jen's adopted mom had cooked up a simple but delicious feast. Micah was definitely the star, being passed from sibling to sibling to sibling.

We ended our visit in The Tent, a large restaurant where, if one were inclined, one might drink beers, smoke nargilla, eat french fries, relax, or do all of the above. It was a lovely evening with warm and welcoming company and the place had a feeling of respite.

And then it was back to the checkpoint. The terminal itself was largely closed for the night so we walked in on the road. The young woman soldier checking our passports was ready to just let us all through but then suddenly looked at me and said, "Bromberg. You're Jewish?" I didn't lie. I wasn't sure what kind of trouble we were about to get into, but I felt very nervous. She smiled but said firmly "Jews can't go to Bethlehem." We tried to clarify what she meant by this. Had we violated some unknown regulation? No, she meant that we shouldn't go there because it wasn't safe. I definitely felt safer after she let us go. Thankfully, on this trip, the checkpoint was the scariest part of the experience.

It was only on returning home that I was looking at the news on line and found that maybe we hadn't really picked the best day to visit....turns out the IDF was raiding Tekoa, a nearby Palestinian village, after one of its residents stabbed an Israeli police officer and an 86-year-old passer-by in Gilo, a neighborhood in southern Jerusalem which Israel thinks of as part of Jerusalem and the Palestinians (and some other countries too) think of as an illegal settlement. The 86-year-old man died of his wounds.

Old City Stroll

2008-10-21T20:58:00.006+02:00

After a huge and delicious lunch with Alan's visiting family members, we changed our mind about toddling home with our full bellies and instead turned left out of the hotel and headed to the Old City. How had we managed to spend two months together here and never done this before? We walked toward the Jaffa Gate through the new and fancy outdoor mall that sits just outside the Old City.

One interesting thing about this holiday of Shemini Atzeret is that all the sukkahs stand empty, not yet disassembled but no longer in use. As we've noticed throughout the last week, the sukkot vary from makeshift to fancy. In the mall, we saw an excellent example of the way that holiday observance and commerce intertwine here. It's something I feel joyously alienated from during the Christmas season in the United States. But here it was: a sukkah outside a coffee shop that is part of a growing and popular chain whose walls were gigantic banners advertising the chain. Not quite McDonaldization, but pretty close.

Most of the boutiques in the mall were closed for the holiday, but we saw people coming out of the Old City with goods they had purchased there. Passing through the Jaffa Gate we moved into the lively shuk where all the shops were open and catering to both foreign tourists and secular Israelis visiting the city. Here, one could buy any number of varieties of shofar...if one spent money on the holiday. Making our way through the crowd, a bit unsure of the best way to the Western Wall, we decided to start following the growing stream of Orthodox Jews holding prayerbooks and heading intently past all the open shops -- they were not here to shop.

We spent a little bit of time by the Wall. Being there with Alan makes it all the more distressing to me that we can't go up to the Wall together. Last time my parents visited Israel, my dad just stayed with my mom and they went up to the Wall on the women's side. I'm honestly not sure that would be safe at this point. I found the feeling of being under an Orthodox regime saddening, angering, and decidedly unwelcoming.

Leaving through the Dung Gate, we then walked along the outside of the Old City walls, down a street that was better-suited for tourist buses than pedestrians. The sidewalk disappeared and we walked atop low wall, looking out over amazing views of both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. Suddenly we were walking high above a park in which a young man was riding bareback on a white horse. Our stroll continued but the young man on his horse sums up for me the evening's magical quality.

Here's the route we took:

View Larger Map

Among the . . .

2008-10-20T14:22:00.001+02:00

. . . many things I will miss from Israel once I return (too soon!) to the States is the ready availability of delicious and inexpensive cucumbers. I like to wash and dry them as soon as I get them home. Here, I have repurposed an egg container (30 super fresh eggs for only 22 shekels at the shuk!) to speed the drying process.

Other things I will miss (foodwise, at least) include the many wonderful dairy products, the shwarama and the "black coffee". . . and the kosher Burger King!

Perhaps I will find some consolation upon my return in finding the things that are not so easily available here. Hard cheeses (like cheddar and swiss), drip coffee and alike.

Tonight will begin the last חג/hag (holiday) of my trip. . . . I hope it's a memorable one!

Hag sameach!

Sukkah in the country

2008-10-20T00:03:00.001+02:00

Jerusalem has grown out so much that the once-rural moshav of Beit Zayit has almost become a contiguous part of the city now. Still, as we sat with Minna's classmates in Rabbi Michael Schwartz's sukkah there tonight it really did feel like we were out in the country. My favorite part of the evening was when Minna and her friends sang a tune she knows that uses the words of a Mishnah that celebrates an ancient water libation ceremony and the great lights of fire that were lit high above the Temple courtyard during it:

ולא היה חצר בירושלים שאינה מאירה מאור בית השואבה
And there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that was not illuminated by the light of the beit hashoeivah.
--Mishnah Sukkah 5:3

[Beit hashoeivah is the name of the water libation ceremony.]

Tomorrow (well, really since sundown tonight) is Hoshanah Rabbah, which will be our last chance to sit in a sukkah this holiday.

We had a great time, tonight. It's been a great Sukkot!

Finally

2008-10-18T20:40:00.006+02:00

For a Jewish person of my generation coming to spend time in Israel, the number one destination to come and see is Masada, the famous Dead Sea fort where an band of Jewish rebels made a heroic and desperate stand against the Romans not long after the Romans destroyed the great Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE.

But somehow -- even after spending a year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem -- I never found my way there. That finally ended last Friday when I made my first trip to Masada and walked up the steep "snake path" up to the fort.

It was a moving trip and I was glad I went, but it brought me to reflect on how it is that I had never made it there before. I think the main reason is that I was never in Israel on the kind of whirlwind group or youth tour in which most people find their way to Masada; my first trip to Israel was not until I was in my mid-30s when I came here to study for a year.

But I think it's also because of what it is that interests me most about Israel -- I am interested in the living Israel. The Israel of today. Masada is a great testament to the will and spirit of the Jewish people, but an even greater testament is the outdoor Mahaneh Yehuda food market, where -- especially as Shabbat approaches on a Friday afternoon -- you can witness the intensity of today's Israeli life continuning to go on despite the desperate attempts of terrorists to end it through murderous attacks. Similarly, it is the sight of school children laughing and speaking in the tounge of their ancestors -- a tounge that was long dead before Zionists strove to begin its revival in the 19th century -- that speaks to the Zionist within me. Even among the things that speak deeply to my heart are the commercial monuments that are the office towers full of booming high-tech companies that surround Tel Aviv. These are the things -- the living things -- that I love to go to see in my free time while I am priviledged to be here.

But few of these living things is more inspiring than the sight of the living practice of the biblical command to the Jewish people to "dwell in sukkot for seven days". All around Jerusalem you can see evidence of the commitment of the Jewish people to live up to this command -- in every neighborhood there are sukkot to be seen. Some high in the air, built on people's rooftops and apartment balconies. Some built on the ground in whatever open space people could find for the holiday. Nearly every restaurant -- even the most humble felafel stand -- has set one up, often right on the sidewalk, for people to eat in. Many of them are richly decorated (the picture on the left is of the inside of a sukkah where Minna is meeting some friends to sing with tonight). From many of them can be heard the sound of song as people meet to share meals together.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy one that you will find shelter -- and peace and comfort and joy -- wherever you go.

Hag sameach.

Living on the edge

2008-10-15T11:29:00.003+02:00

The sukkah -- that fragile, temporary, partially roofed hut that is characteristic of the holiday that began Monday night -- is not just supposed to be a place of joy and community, but also a reminder of the fragility of life and of the possibility of change. The holiday, itself, comes at a time of the turn of the seasons here in Israel. Yesterday was a pointed reminder that we are at that point of change. The daytime was unusually warm -- almost just like the long, rainless summertime here, again -- and it was a perfect time for us to sit in the shade of a friend's sukkah and enjoy food and company during a long afternoon lunch. But when evening came we were pointedly reminded that it is no longer truly summer as rain fell and chased people throughout Jerusalem out of their sukkot.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that you should find the courage to welcome our fragility and to be open to changes and change. And may those changes bring you joy.

Moadim l'simcha!

Last chance (as the time of joy approaches)

2008-10-13T11:01:00.008+02:00

In a week and a half, I will be returning to the States and Minna and I wanted to get one last trip out of Jerusalem together. I really had two places I wanted to go -- to return to the hills of Mt. Gilboa and I also wanted to see the famous mosaic floor of an ancient synagogue in Tiberias,

Even though it was not the season for Gilboa's famous Irises, it was still a treat to walk along its high ridge and see the views for miles around -- down into the Jezreel Valley and off across the Jordan river into the country of Jordan. The weather was almost perfect.

The drive down to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) was spectacular, although I think the best views of the day were when we were a bit lost trying to find the synagogue and ended up on this narrow road along the ridge above the Kinneret. I suprised Minna at one point by suddenly stopping. There was a turtle crossing the road who I did not want to run over.

The synagogue mosaic was really worth the visit. I had read much about the archeological and historical debates about how to understand an ancient work of art that both contains clearly Jewish symbols and pagan ones -- the zodiac! -- that you would think were theologically inconsistent with Judaism. It was so exciting to actually see this thing that I had read so much about.

It was especially interesting to see what Jewish symbols the artist had chosen to highlight. The most prominent one was the seven-branched menorah of the ancient Temple, but second only to that was a representation of a most central part of the holiday that is to start tonight -- the lulav and etrog of the holiday of Sukkot.

Sukkot is a particularly special holiday here in Israel. During the week of intermediary days -- called חול מועד/hol moed -- children are normally off from school and many parents are either also on holiday or working reduced schedules, resulting in a nation-wide festival atmosphere for both the secular and the religious Jew. It's one of those ways that modern-day Israel had developed to be something like what ancient practice was like: Sukkot was the greatest of the ancient festivals -- as reflected in the fact that the ancient mosaic artist chose to feature Sukkot's lulav and etrog instead of such other alternatives as Passover's matzah or Hannukah's eight-branched menorah -- and today modern Israeli practice has made Sukkot again perhaps the greatest festival.

The ancient rabbis dubbed sukkot זמן שחתנו/zman simchateinu -- the time of our joy. May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that your days of Sukkot will also be filled with joy.

___________

Quick Bread

2008-10-12T06:58:00.003+02:00

I'm writing a quick post about the delicious quick bread I just had for breakfast. I've been computerless for a while now with my new computer arriving later this week (thanks, Mom and Dad and Diane!). Between that and the High Holy Days and maybe a touch of post-ulpan blues, my blogging life has been in the pits. BUT! I did want to sneak in a post about the very yummy banana, apple, date, no sucrose treat that Alan made in the oven. Necessity is once again being motherly and moving us (mainly Alan) to experiment with oven cooking (in our continuing gas-less state).
Today we're heading off in the car mostly to parts unknown. Har Gilboa? Tiberias? The Jerusalem Mall? Hopefully there will be a blog update on the day's adventures.
AND sometime between now and sunset tomorrow we also hope to buy lulav, etrog and be prepared for the wondrous rain dances of Sukkot.

No gas

2008-10-08T11:55:00.004+02:00

Our stove here (as do most stoves in Israel, I believe) runs on cooking gas from a tank (somewhere!) outside our building. We ran out a few days ago and I don't know when we'll be able to get someone to deliver more (or even figure out which one of the tanks is ours; they don't appear to be labeled in any way).

You might think I would be upset about this as I have really enjoyed cooking during my time here. But, at least for the moment, I'm thinking of it as an adventure. We still have a pretty good oven. I'm traditionally the kind of cook who prefers to do most everything on the stove-top, but I can move my frittatas from the stove-top to the oven (even using the same cast iron pan!) . . . and discover other oven cooking options I've never used before.

Perhaps more importantly, we also still have a microwave! I expect to be consulting this Minimalist article about stretching the limits of the microwave quite a bit!

City by the sea, people before the gates

2008-10-08T10:55:00.005+02:00

The sidewalk tables at a fashionable cafe, the ubiquitous presence of two-wheeled conveyances (both the people-powered bicycles and the gasoline-fueled scooters) -- these things you find in the above pic are typical elements, along with the warm Mediterranean sea, of the Tel Aviv Minna and I got a taste of in a short visit there this week shortly before Yom Kippur (which starts this evening!).

The Tel Aviv of today is a bustling, diverse and economically booming city. While the newspapers we read there very much reflected the concern that is rising worldwide over declining stock market prices and other elements of the current international financial crisis, one of the major questions the papers addressed was one that would only be asked by people who are still looking optimistically foward to how they will spend their money: how the crisis would affect Israelis' overseas travel plans. It turns out Europe is looking real good because of the strong Shekel, but the United States is still a bargain for Israelis as well.

We used our time here in Tel Aviv to mix work and play, using the cafes as (wireless internet-equipped) workplaces. We walked along about two miles of beachfront one late afternoon and evening to the South Street Seaport-like old port complex where we sat and drank coffee by the sea for a bit and reread (on my phone courtesy of the cafe's wireless internet connection) a New York Times travel section article on Tel Aviv that came out this past summer. It was interesting to read how the writer described things that we had seen now with our own eyes. He starts his article at the "separated beach", which men and woman use on alternate days to accomodate Orthodox concerns about men and woman bathing together. I wasn't expecting the visceral negative reaction I had to seeing the beach itself. I think it was probably because -- and I wasn't expecting this -- the beach is not only separated, but they have built a wall around it so you can't even see it (or the sea) from the beachside pathway.

We also took a daytime walk through some of the once-downscale neighborhoods in the south that are becoming gentrified. This plaza at a renovated school complex in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood was a perfect place for some folks (and their children and their dogs) to pass a peaceful late afternoon:
While we were sitting in one cafe near Neve Tzedek, Minna found a flyer for an organization that is working to advocate for the interests of non-religious couples in Israel. One of the unusual characteristics of Israel is that the Orthodox rabbinate controls matters of family law for Jews. This means it can be very difficult, for example, for some people to marry legally in Israel. This has led to the phenomenon of some Israelis flying to Cyprus just to get married (Israel, as part of the practice of recognizing marriages legally performed outside the country, recognizes these marriages as legal). The organization is called משפחה חדשה/mispahah hadashah, or New Family.

I really enjoyed our time in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem has the spiritual force and focus that attracts me -- and countless others -- there for study and spiritual growth. But the future health of the state of Israel -- something very dear to my heart -- will depend much more on what happens in Tel Aviv than Jerusalem. It is here that Israel strives for its success in the "knowledge economy" that has become the key for success -- especially for a very small country without much in the way of natural resources -- in the world marketplace. Here are high-tech engineers and dealmakers. Here are the artists and media creators who can make export their products (like Betipul) to foreign markets.

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More than once since I have been here in Tel Aviv I have felt reminded of the war that started on Yom Kippur exactly 35 years ago and that cost Israel dearly in lives lost before the invaders were beat back. As we enter Yom Kippur -- the holiday that more than any other in Judaism asks us to contemplate our own mortality -- I wish for peace for all. May war once and for all disappear from our earth and may it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that we will all come to see the wisdom of the peaceful ways in which the Holy One has instructed us.

[x-posted to abayye]

Where the animals and the people play

2008-10-05T20:52:00.013+02:00

Minna and I managed to get out of Jerusalem this afternoon for the first time in a bit. We headed east to Ein Gedi (above is a view from where we hiked to; there's an ibex in the distance to the right and the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on earth at some 400 meters below sea level -- in the background). [You can click on the image for a better view.]

Israel is largely a desert country, so spots with water you can play in -- like the pools of Ein Gedi -- are prized. Ein Gedi even has some waterfalls. That's Minna (on your right) standing below the biggest one, David Falls.

After we left Ein Ged -- where the ibex play -- we went to a couple of malls -- where the people play.

First we went to Maale Adumim, which is a very large -- and highly controversial -- Jewish settlement of over 30,000 people to the east of Jerusalem. Minna was struck by just how ordinary this place of so much contention seemed to her. We stopped in a mall there and got a cup of coffee and walked around. Then we went for a bit of a walk in the surrounding neighborhood. We found ourselves in a low-lying park that was populated by some of these guys of all things:

Then we headed back to Jerusalem to the mall and got some kosher Burger King, which was a real treat.

Here are some more pictures from Ein Gedi, etc.:

Here's a woman enjoying the scene by one of the other waterfalls while a friend swims in the pool by her:

Here are a couple of more pics of the ibexes on the ridge:

Here's a nice pic of Minna and me taken by the David Falls:

And here's Minna looking contemplative in Maale Adumim:

Death of a Leader

2008-10-03T13:09:00.003+03:00

Minna traveled to Jerusalem in search of opportunities for study and to experience joy in this ancient (and now modern) home of the Jewish people. But sad events can follow us wherever we go. Yesterday, we found ourselves at a funeral for the father of one of Minna's most beloved teachers in her rabbinical school at Boston Hebrew College. The funeral was at Jerusalem's main municipal cemetery, Har HaMenuhot, pictured to the right. It's built around a huge hill on the northwest side of Jerusalem, just south of the main road to Tel Aviv. There were quite spectacular views to the north from the burial site.

The funeral was attended by many of Minna's classmates. I found the below picture on a memorial page to the deceased, Zelig Leader. From right to left is Zelig, his son Ebn (Minna's teacher) and Art Green (the leader of Minna's school).

In the Israeli fashion, the words spoken at the funeral were short and intense. Ebn spoke first and, very much in his style, led the assembled in the wordless tune of a niggun.

I did not know Zelig, himelf, but I very much knew of the famous "Leader Minyan" here in Jerusalem, which is known for the intensity and length of its Shabbat and holiday services and which has been an important spiritual home for many American rabbinical students and others coming to spend a year or so in Jerusalem. I was suprised therefore that the second speaker was not a participant in the minyan, but was a leader in the Jerusalem scrabble club who spoke in English. Apparently, Zelig's inspirational spirit was an important force there as well.

Zelig's youngest son also gave a powerful and tearful talk, begging for forgiveness. Zeglig's brother also spoke powerful words.

After the words of those הספדים/hespidim were spoken, Zelig's body was carried out by members of the black-hatted הברה קדישא/hevre kasisha (burial society) on a stretcher wrapped in a burial shrowd (no coffins are used here in Israel). The stretcher was placed in a van that we walked behind to the burial site where he was laid to rest in the presence of his family and friends.

May his memory be a blessing.

[x-posted to abayye]

In supervison

2008-09-29T11:51:00.003+03:00

In my field, we call the person who does the kind of work that I do a "supervisor." That's kind of a confusing word because I'm really an educator -- I educate student clergy and others about how to be a chaplain or how to go about the task of providing spiritual care to hospital patients and others dealing with crisis, grief and loss.

And sometimes you really find me in front of a classroom, looking a lot like a teacher or a professor. But you'll also find me meeting with my students individually behind a closed door for 45 minutes or an hour and discussing with them in depth the struggles -- often deeply personal or spiritual -- they face in their work with hospital patients. The skill sets I use at those times look very much like that of the psychotherapist. Listening intently -- and helping the person I am listening to examine and understand their own thoughts, actions and feelings -- is most of what I do there.

Popular culture has tended to favor professions like police work or medicine for its television characters, but the pschotherapist is finding a place in a new hit HBO series called In Treatment.

It turns out this show is based -- quite closely from what I understand -- on a much-praised Israeli television show called בטיפול/Betipul. Minna and I have started watching it and are really loving it. It's a particularly appropriate show for me to watch now because I'm at a stage in my studies where I'm working to figure out how exactly the insights from the world of psychotherapy and psychology fit into how I think about the work that I do. And, I'm especially focused on figuring out how to integrate elements of Jewish and Hebrew culture and language into my thoughts. So, it's great to have this opportunity to see how the ideas and concepts of psychotherapy -- and the things that come up in psychotherapy sessions -- are expressed in Hebrew.

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The gift of being able to be here in Israel while I engage in this thought and study is just one of the many gifts that have come to me this past year. It is only about 11 months ago that I first met Minna. In March, I crossed a major hurdle in my pursuit of full certification as a CPE (clinical pastoral education) supervisor. I've been able to do some great learning in my career and have had some great students; I was really enriched by my encounters with those students. . . . Something really Holy happened there sometimes. . . It's just such an incredible thing to be there with people when they are really struggling to find their way to serve God and to grow into the most of what it is that God has granted them the possibility to become.

I was able to do some exciting bicycle rides this year, including three really interesting ones in and around Jerusalem so far (especially this one). The best ride of the year, was touring in Rhode Island with Minna, but it was also great to do a century. I also had a ton of fun this year building and experimenting with an Xtracycle.

There was some traveling to chaplaincy conferences that really led to some great thought, fellowship and growth. The best was having a chance to be a part of a meeting of the new ACPE Jewish supervisors group in Dallas, but I was also really to go to the Racial Ethnic Multicultural networks's conference in Memphis on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assasination.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that you will have the sweetest of years ahead. A year of health and joy.

Shannah Tova.

[x-posted to abayye]

Geshem Yarad!

2008-09-26T13:20:00.002+03:00

In my post earlier, today, I said I had missed the first rain Minna had experienced, today. But just a little bit ago we heard drops falling outside our apartment. I lept to the window to see it.

I actually felt it on my hand!

On the edge

2008-09-26T06:51:00.005+03:00

The last time I lived in Jerusalem, I took a walk one hot day from the Old City back toward the south where I lived. I stopped in a little park on the top edge of a steep ridge not far south of the Old City, and sat down to look at the beautiful view of the valley and heights to the east. I took my computer out of my backpack to write. But, suddenly, I realized somebody was behind me. I looked up to see a young Arab boy with a donkey laden with goods. He spoke to me. I didn't understand his words, but after a bit I came to understand he wanted the soda I was drinking. I handed him the bottle. He drank what was left in it, threw it on the ground and then, with his donkey, disappeared over the steep lip into the valley and the village below.

That brief, almost surreal, encounter has stuck with me and often comes to mind. It's a reminder that Jerusalem is a place of edges -- a place where many different things meet. It is not just the most intimate and complex of borders between Palestinian and Jew. It is also, very much, a place where First World and Third World meet.

The heights around the Old City, and the stunning views from them, are a powerful visual reminder that this is indeed an edge space. Yesterday, I rode my bicycle up to one of those heights -- up to Mt. Scopus, the site of Hebrew University where Minna was having her last day of Ulpan . After spending some time with Minna, I rode the bike to the east side of Mt. Scopus and took in the views -- of desert, of Arab towns and even of the Jordan and the Dead Sea -- that one can see in the deep valley and the mountains beyond. Here's some of what I saw:

In the last picture, you see a monument that dedicates the area there on the east side of Mt. Scopus as a National Forest in the name of a Canadian donor. There are many such monuments and forests around Israel in beautiful spots like Mt. Scopus.

But, as you can see from the trash in the foreground of the below picture, you often find garbage and disarray in the same spots.

I understand this as another manifestation of how Israel is very much a place of edges and boundaries -- ones that are also very much still in flux. What might be a National Forest, today, may be a housing development or a place for a highway tomorrow. A Jewish settlement might become an Arab town, tomorrow and vice versa.

After leaving the area around Hebrew University, I headed south to where this hospital just north of the Mt. of Olives.

It turns out to be run by Lutherans, which is a reminder of home (where my boss and two of my co-workers are Lutheran Clergy).

After leaving the hospital, I descended from the heights of Mt. Scopus and the Mt. of Olives down to the deep valley that runs on the west side of the Old City. I was a bit confused when I got down to the bottom and took a wrong turn into the heart of an Arab town (Bab Ez' Zahara). I was conscious that tensions are fairly high right now. Ramadan is still going on (it ends this coming Monday, the same evening that the first of the Jewish High Holidays -- Rosh HaShannah -- begins). And just the other day there was an attack where a Palestinian driver rammed his car into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at the northwest corner of the Old City. I wasn't feeling frightened but I decided to turn around, nonetheless.

I then managed to get my bearings and ascended a steep and congested road to the very northeast corner of the Old City. The marketplace that iscentered around the Damascus gate spills out all along the road there. I had to get off the bike and walk through the crowds. Finally, I got past the crowds and took a little rest around the New Gate, where I entered the Old City briefly and headed for the Jaffa Gate. The picture at the top of this blog post was taken not far from the Jaffa Gate. That's the Tower of David on the right above the woman's head. A bit of my trusty bicycle is visible on the left.

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There was a 'border dispute' of another sort not far from our apartment last night as well. Someone -- presumably a right-wing Israeli extremist -- set off a pipe bomb outside the house of a left-wing Israeli historian. The historian Zeev Sternhell was, thankfully, only lightly wounded. So called Jew-on-Jew attacks are relatively uncommon here (and usually not fatal), but they are far from unknown. (Here is a New York Times story giving some of the background.)

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Another edge we are on here is the one between seasons. I did not see it (even though I was only a few blocks away!), but Minna saw rain, today (even if only the lightest of drops). It is a sure sign that the long (rainless) summer is over.

It is no accident that the High Holidays come at this time of the turn of the seasons. Rain -- or the lack of it -- was a life-or-death issue for the ancient farmers of this little land that, unlike great Egyptian empire to the West and the great Babylonian empire to the east, has no great rivers to irrigate the crops even when the rains fail. So, it is not surprising that the themes of life-and-death that characterize Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur found a place in those ancients' minds and hearts at this time of year.

Just being in Jerusalem -- just being in this place characterized by edges -- brings those themes to life for me. Life seems so much more precious to me here. More intense. It's the thing I love most about being here.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that the journeys to the 'edges' that you make in this New Year be ones that bring you to the side of life. And to growth and joy.

________________

Here, by the way, is the approximate route of my ride:

Bigger map

Tripping over the Mishna

2008-09-21T14:10:00.000+03:00

One of the joys of studying Jewish texts while in Israel is that the most ordinary of things can spark connections in your mind to the Holy texts you've been studying. Above is a plain, old hole in the ground at a gas station Minna went by this morning. But its seemingly prosaic warning sign -- סכנה, בור פחוח/Danger, open hole! -- made Minna think of the much-studied Mishnaic passages that concern the laws of damages, including what happens when something falls into a hole. . . . Don't think too much of the Mishna while you're walking, Minna -- don't fall in the hole!

A Phishy Avinu Malkeinu

2008-09-21T07:48:00.001+03:00

Here's a little bit of non-traditional High Holidays liturgy (thanks to Gail for bringing my attention to this!):

Yummy Chicken and Last Week of Ulpan

2008-09-20T19:59:00.006+03:00

Alan made this delicious chicken dish for shabbat (and also a meat stew and also a lentil soup). The chicken recipe was adapted from the latest recipe featured by the NY Times' "Minimalist" and featured lots of ginger. Its flavors and textures created a wonderful balance of comfort and excitement --a rare combo in a foodstuff. I'm looking forward to bringing some to school for lunch tomorrow.

I'm starting my last week of ulpan and I can definitely tell that this opportunity for intensive Hebrew learning has served me well. Several times almost every day I come across words, constructions, and turns of phrase that would have left me baffled six weeks ago. There is still an endless amount to learn, but this has definitely been a good jump start.

Tomorrow my friend and classmate Daniel and I will make a presentation (in Hebrew!) in our text class (a mini-course within the larger ulpan that has meets three times a week). The text course has focused on modern Israeli literature and helped solidify my sense that such literature --while usually marked with the designation "secular"/חילוני is in fact a site where "non-religious" authors are asking and wrestling with questions of ultimate meaning. As such it is, for me personally and in my rabbinate, a vital source of Torah that could too easily be overlooked. I'm hoping to spend a significant part of my learning energies this year focusing on acquiring the skills needed to continue tapping this resource.

Daniel and I are presenting on a book called "Tanach Achshav"/תנ"ך עכשיו (which badly but accurately translates to "The Hebrew Bible Currently") written by Meir Shalev. He's best known as a novelist, but he wrote תנ"ך עכשיו before having written any novels. It is described as פרשנות חילונית/"parshanut chilonit"/secular biblical interpretation (which in Hebrew sounds like an even stronger oxymoron). We're focusing on a chapter about how men are called up for army duty and Shalev moves between Deuteronomy's instructions for the draft, stories about King Saul at war, and what all of this means for soldiers and commanders today. Shalev's treatment of תנ"ך/Tanach/Hebrew Bible is different than anything I've ever read before. He treats the Hebrew Bible as a literary whole (jumping between Deuteronomy and Judges, for example, with no distinction in how each book is treated) and he clearly views it as being much more relevant to modern life than any rabbinic writings or interpretations. Both of these tendencies seem very in line with what little I've learned about the use of Hebrew Bible in "secular" Israeli culture. It's odd to be presenting (and blogging) about such a topic when I feel so very new to it (already anticipating that this post will feel like "juvenalia" if I look back at it at the end of the year), but here we are.

Shalev just came out with a new volume of פרשנות חילונית/"secular interpretation" --which I've already added to my growing collection of books in Modern Hebrew-- in which he takes as his topic Biblical "firsts." For example, the opening chapter (which I slogged through a bit of today) deals with the fact that the first appearance of the verb "love" in Tanakh is when Abraham is told to take the son he loves and offer him up as a burnt offering.

Cutest cat in Jerusalem?

2008-09-17T06:18:00.000+03:00

I nominate this Rehavia resident.

Escape from Jerusalem

2008-09-15T12:38:00.013+03:00

Anyone who has read any of this blog will have a sense of how much I love Jerusalem. But -- as it is with the other great city I love so much, New York -- part of staying in love with it is getting out of it, too. This past weekend, Minna and I got to finally spend a little time outside Jerusalem. We got a sense of the incredible diversity one can find in this tiny country on our little trip to Tel Aviv and then to the north.

An author who came to talk to one of Minna's ulpan classes said he sometimes describes Israel to foreigners by saying it's part Iran and part California. If Jerusalem is Israel's religion-obsessed Tehran then Tel Aviv is Israel's sun-worshiping Southern California. As we walked through Tel Aviv's central shopping district, a different image came to Minna's mind -- she said it reminded her of Blade Runner. Much of that comes through even in the daytime as these images attest:

One of the most "Runner-esque" images I saw (but, which, unfortunately, I did not get a pic of) was the sight of ultra-Orthodox Jews who had set up sidewalk tables in the midst of this materialistic scene where they were offering secular men the opportunity to wrap tefflilin.

Another thing that especially caught my eye in Tel Aviv was the bicycles. They seem to be everywhere on its fairly flat streets. And, not just the streets. If -- as I've commented before -- there is a stay-off-the-sidewalks ethic among many of Jerusalem's bike riders, this ethic has not found its way to Tel Aviv. Its riders snake their way though the most crowded of sidewalks, managing to stay upright with their feet on the pedals at even the slowest of speeds by exercising expert balance. Here is once such "sidewalk rider" snaking by Minna:

We also visited Kikar Dizengoff, which features a fountain that was brand-new when Minna did her kibbutz year here as a teenager. It's come to be a bit rundown, but was still a good place for Minna to pose.

Speaking of Minna's kibbutz year, we spent Shabbat with her kibbutz family who now live in a community called מנוף/Manof that's a bit south of their old kibbutz.

Just outside of Manof we found these critters by the roadside.

After we spent some time with the critters, Minna blew her (new!) shofar out over the hills (see pic at top of this blog post).

We also got to Nimrod's castle, a mountaintop medieval fortress built by Muslim rulers to defend against the Crusaders.

Here are a couple of pics of Minna and I there.

We had fun!

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Here, by the way, is the approximate route of the walk we took in Tel Aviv (the blue line):

Bigger map

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And here is the (very approximate!) driving route we took over the course of the trip:

Bigger map

Seven years

2008-09-11T12:53:00.000+03:00

Seven years ago, today, I was newly returned to the United States from my rabbinical school Israel year. Watching the destruction of these towers -- towers where I worked for some 10 years of my life -- on a dorm lounge television screen in Los Angeles was a surreal and unspeakably painful experience for me. I felt so disconnected. I didn't understand why I was in Los Angeles. Why wasn't I there? In New York, my beloved city?

That feeling of disconnectedness stands in sharp contrast to the feelings of connectedness I have now . . . . now that I have finally been able to return to Israel after such a long time -- much longer than I would have imagined when I left here seven years ago.

One of the things I believed in the moments before that first tower fell was that the towers were indestructible. I knew, of course, that what was inside could be consumed by fire but -- in the wake of the buildings having survived that first bombing in 1993 -- I thought the steel frame could withstand anything short of a nuclear blast.

Jerusalem also gives a feeling of being indestructible. Especially, when you look out from a distance at some of the neighborhoods built on hilltops (like then ones you can look up to from around the mall). The state of Israel, as a whole, feels even more solid to me than it did seven years ago. It does not have the feeling of being a bold experiment, but of something solid and thriving.

But the World Trade Center reminds me of how tenuous even the most solid-feeling thing can be. . . . and of how important it is to be grateful for what we have while we have it.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that all that is strong for you stays strong and that you should know safety and peace.

[X-posted to abayye]

Paying Bills

2008-09-10T15:50:00.006+03:00

Sipping down to the muddy bottom of my glass of Turkish coffee, enjoying the cinnamon we have taken to adding automatically, I am feeling very well here.

A water bill came a few days ago and I didn't think it was really ours. The names on the envelope were not those of the most recent tenants nor the names of our friends who own the place. Mysterious names were not reason enough to assume the bill had been misdirected. Rather, it was the fact that the address itself was an address on the street perpendicular to ours. I kept putting the bill in the place next to the mailboxes that it for mail for folks not at this address. It kept showing up back in my mailbox. Finally yesterday it showed up in my mailbox with a note handwritten on the front of the envelope in red ink. The note was addressed to Naomi and I couldn't make all that much sense of the handwriting.

I was in quite a tizzy over all of this last night. There was the mysterious water bill and, even if it was ours, what kind of strange maneuvers was I going to have to go through to pay it? And there was also a piece of paper from the post office saying that I have a package. But I didn't know where the post office was and, wherever it is, it's only open until 1:30 on Wednesdays.

This morning I saw my helpful next door neighbors who said that the bill was indeed mine. The wrong address? It's because our building is on the corner and apparently mail also gets here if it's addressed to where the entrance would be if it had an entrance around the corner. Then just now I called the previous tenant and he was very congenial about paying his part of the bill and also told me that he always paid the water bill online.

So, despite my fears of standing in endless lines in mysterious places to pay bills --which I may yet have the opportunity to experience with some other utility-- I just paid the water bill painlessly through the wonders of modern technology.

Paying the water bill, drinking Turkish coffee, half-hearing Alan in the next room on the phone for his weekly phone meeting with his supervisor. All of these contribute to this feeling that the things I am most enjoying here thus far are the everyday details. These are the tiny interactions through which I am getting to know this country, getting to know Alan, continually getting to know myself.

One detail I am definitely enjoying: the amazing variety of bourekas, croissants, and other tasty baked goods-