"This isn't what we meant."

Last week, I spent two days in Bethlehem on a program with Encounter, which provides brief experiences for Jewish leaders in Bethlehem, Hebron and East Jerusalem. As it was quite an interesting, thought-provoking experience, I've been meaning to write a lengthy post on my experience for the past week, but being crazy busy haven't found time for an adequate update. But, since I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for a visit with sister Shayna to Beirut (!!) I'll share a few thoughts generated by the experience before I finish packing and prepping tonight.

First off, Encounter is not meant to be a "dialogue" program, in that rather than coming together with Palestinians to discuss thoughts and perspectives from both sides of the issue, the goal is to meet and listen to Palestinians living in Bethlehem, and see a (granted, tiny) slice of the Palestinian experience. In essence, to have an Encounter.
(Elliot and I with our gracious host, Osama)

Bethlehem is mainly a Christian city. As such, nearly all the Palestinians we met are Christian. On the one hand, this is certainly a narrow and limiting perspective on the issue, since most Palestinians are of course Muslim, and there are undeniably religious components to the conflict. That said, listening to the perspectives of life in a Christian Palestinian town - where ties to the Palestinian issue are cultural and ethnic, but not religious per se - underscored that as much as the conflict has roots in religious conflict, it also a conflict of nationalist identity on both sides. On the Palestinian side, it is greatly about the desire for channeling nationalist Palestinian identity into a tangible, physical state. On the Jewish/Israeli side, occupation and the inherent problems stem not only from religious connections to the land of Israel, but also from Zionist-nationalist desires.

The question that has remained in the background of so many of our experiences and learning this year thus returns: What does it mean for Israel to be a Jewish state? How is this reflected (or not) in the policies and actions of the state, and how should Judaism as a religious code and ethic come into play in determining our actions and attempting to fix the incessant problems in Israeli society?

Continuing with the internal thought process of Jewish religious identity versus nationalist identity also returned me to this question: In our long history, Jews have had a dual identity as wanderers (in the desert, in exile in Babylonia and then throughout the Diaspora) and as permanent citizens of the physical land of Israel. A hallmark of the Jewish experience has been our ability to build community wherever in the world we have gone - Sukkot is partially a shout-out to this ability, as is the entire Rabbinic tradition born out of exile as we transformed Judaism from a religion based on Temple rites to one based on prayer and halakha.

[I should note here that when I discussed this thought with Naamah, another Dorot fellow, she made the excellent point that even during our wanderings, our thoughts and hopes revolved around our pining for Jerusalem, our longing to return to "our" land, a land promised to us. This is as much a hallmark of Judaism as is our existence wandering in exile.]

Looking to the times in our history when we've held nationalist power - e.g. the kingdoms of Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem under King Herod and the Hasmonean Kings - and we've been subject to the same hypocritical, corrupt tendencies that have befallen just about any and every sovereign ruling power.

The same can be said today. In building the state of Israel, there has constantly been this tension between religious and nationalist identity. And for all the idealistic underpinnings of the state, from the kibbutz movement to "making the desert bloom" (although that one has questionable motives even so) Israel suffers from the same birthing problems of any other sovereign state (underscored again today during our Dorot seminar on Bedouin peoples in Israel, a situation for which the parallels to US treatment of Native American populations is terrifying).

At the heart of it, and the question that was by far most difficult was this: Given the problems of sovereignty in Israel and throughout our history, is nationalism corroding modern Judaism? We may quickly be reaching the point of no return in the Israel-Palestine question (if we haven't already), wherein a two-state solution is no longer feasible. And there are many differences of opinion as to what this means for Israel as a state - but none of them are particularly optimistic.

Continually, from the serious environmental problems to "solutions" for the Bedouin peoples' land claims to the erecting of the security wall (particularly its route...but there isn't near enough space to go into that now), I am struck by the short-sightedness of the Israeli government's decisions and actions. The quick-fixes, band-aids quickly slapped onto deeply troubling problems, are not working and won't. Israel needs to consider it's larger future, or I fear that in 100 years (or less) Israel will have crumbled in on itself, and the dream will be over.

I'll end, for now, with perhaps the most powerful sentiment expressed during the Encounter experience. During our final session, the facilitator for our small group shared a conversation she'd had recently with a friend of hers, a 103 year old woman who has lived in the land of Israel since the 1930's. Looking back over the last century - the British Mandate, the founding of the state, and the extraordinary efforts to build Israel as a Jewish state - and considering the profound problems plaguing Israel today, the woman said:

"This isn't what we meant."

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Chagim b'Yerushalayim

Wow. Being in Jerusalem for the Chagim (high holy days) is exhausting! But also wonderful, rejuvenating, and so very different than last time I was here for them. And, they're not even done...Sukkot starts in some 26 hours or so...

First off, let's talk davening. The structure of davening during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is not all that different from any other service, particularly Shabbat. But as most Jews can tell you, it's a hell of a lot longer. But how many "high holy day Jews" can tell you why they're so long? Not to delve overly into specifics but with some additional prayers, blessings and psalms here and there, mostly the services of the chagim are simply the usual prayers "filled out" by extra oomph as we transition from the past year into the new year.

In particular, the repetition of the Amidah, in which the Hazzan (person who is "leading" the service) vocally repeats the entirety (and then some often) of the personal Amidah the entire congregation has individually recited softly. This takes some time. And if one doesn't realize this is what's happening (and I can't even count how many years I went without knowing this) then essentially you're just sitting there in schul while the hazzan recites pages and pages of hebrew.

Two essential bits of knowledge really changed my davening experience this year:

a) The hazzan's repetition of the Amidah really is important, not just fluff. Why? There's a good chance that during our individual recitations of the Amidah, we've made a mistake (or several). While understandable, this is rather worrisome if you subscribe to the belief that the prayers you recite during the Chagim, and their delivery, are directly responsible for whether you get written into the Book of Life (vs the Book of Death) for the upcoming year. Enter: the Hazzan, whose repetition of the Amidah serves to represent the entire congregation, meaning in case you made a mistake during your individual Amidah, the hazzan has you covered. Multiply that by a couple hundred congregants though, and the hazzan has a huge responsibility! He or she is responsible for covering the mistakes of the entire congregation for which he or she is davening...no pressure. This means you should thank your hazzan, because while you sit there tuning in and out of pages and pages of hebrew, the hazzan is busy getting your back. It also means he or she had better know what they're doing.

b) Important as the repetition is, it's really long. And it's totally legit to bring in some supplemental reading (as long as it's relevent...harry potter maybe not so much...one teacher recommended Sh.Y. Agnon's Days of Awe which I found perfect) to occupy yourself while the hazzan is chanting away. Maybe even preferable, since if you're not reading there's a good chance you're just sitting there thinking bored thoughts about, well, whatever, whereas if you bring in some relevant reading you're keeping yourself engaged in the spirit of the chag.

Knowing this, I was able to prepare myself in a very different way than ever before. I had a much better idea of what was happening during t'fillot and was to able to keep myself engaged when before I would just have been bored. And, as I hopped around to different schuls, which is impossible in Spokane, I also got to experience several different styles of davening, which was also really nice.

The other really great chag experience: community. For every meal (except breakfast) there is a gathering. Which means two dinners and two lunches...and since I was at a different friend's meal for each (mostly either Dorot friends or Pardes friends and extended), it meant I got to spend some great time with many different friends at each meal (with of course a bit of overlap, but really a lot of different groups for each meal), eating good food, drinking wine and enjoying good company. This is something really only possible in Jerusalem.

Also, so completely different from Nativ, because these were my friends, inviting me to their homes for these meals. Contrast this with Nativ, when meals were either with the entire program at our homebase, or if you went to someone's home it was likely because you were set up through the program. That was great for what it was then, but it just reinforces how different my life is in Jerusalem now, and how very worthwhile it is to spend this time living here again, though I spent half my Nativ year living here.

A final note on Kol Nidre, perhaps the most important individual service for me of all the chagim because of my personal connection playing one of the recitations on cello for my home schul in high school. I always hope to find a Kol Nidre experience that will really take me somewhere...and sadly this hasn't happened for most of my Kol Nidre experiences in the past 7 years. This year, I heard some great things about the Leeder Minyan, so I decided to check it out. And it was really, truly a wonderful experience. Leeder Minyan is mostly young to middle-aged Jews, very Carlebach-y davening (lots of niggun singing, harmonization, longer melodies, etc), and while it has a mechitza it's very informal with just a table between the sections (rather than a full-height curtain) and a fair amount of mixing around the peripheries of the seating areas. With all the singing, it's also very long - about 3.5 hours - but it's Kol Nidre in Jerusalem...what else are you going to do? And since I didn't even bring my watch, I really barely noticed the time.

Something in particular that really did it for me was that as we got to the kaddish prayer just before the start of the Amidah, we began singing a beautiful, spirited niggun (a niggun is a melody sung without words, a classic form of Jewish musical expression whose roots are mainly in Hassidic Judaism) that lasted for probably ten minutes, with two or three upswells and downswells before quietly settling out as people began their individual Amidah prayers. As we began singing the niggun, I had pulled my tallis over my head (Kol Nidre is also the sole evening service in the entire year when the tallis is worn) and found that by the time the niggun came to an end I was completely in my own spiritual space, carved out in the midst of this community surrounding me, completely ready to daven my personal Amidah, completely in the moment. It was perhaps the most intense spiritual moment I've ever experienced in an indoor "schul" setting.

So, all in all a really wonderful chagim experience thus far...and Sukkot is yet to come! Someone mentioned a day or two ago that while Yom Kippur is about being inside, with community, Sukkot is about getting outside the synagogue and community walls, going out into the world and being present not only in our small communities but also the greater community. As such, a few of us are going backpacking, which of course is really exciting for me. Probably the Negev, but maybe up north in the Galil...check back in a week or so from now for the update on how that went :-)

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Changes

I wrote the following as an early assignment for a Creative Writing course I'm taking in Jerusalem at Pardes. I think it reflects some of how my experiences here have changed, and how I am so often in dialogue internally with my last year-long stay in Israel...

14 September 2008

For this first out-of-class assignment, I've chosen to sit in front of the Super HaMoshava on Emek R'Fayim. The Why is simple: it was here, just off Emek R'Fayim, that I lived the last time I was in Israel, seven years ago, at Beit Nativ.

It was here that I gorged on Burger's Bar - before it became a sizable chain, and existed in a small hole where the cook/cashier chain-smoked as he prepared the delicious burgers. And yes, they tasted better back then.

It was on Emek that I ordered heaping portions of Thaliandi stir-fry in an effort to quell my rumblings resulting from lack of good Asian food. I gave them a lot of business back then. Now, they are gone.

It was at Beit Nativ, on Yoshua bin Nun street, just off Emek, that we sat, seven years and three days ago, watching together in silence, as one - then two - airplanes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It was in that living room, just off Emek R'Fayim, that I whispered a silent prayer of thanks through my stunned senses that, as we watched the towers fall, my sister had decided to go to work late that day. She worked in the WTC building next door. She was still at home when I called some thirty minutes earlier, getting ready for work, as yet unaware that anything about that day was at all unusual.

It was at Beit Nativ, just off Emek R'Fayim, that I again witnessed terror from afar. I had left the US, having weighed the dangers of terror attacks in Israel witnessed from afar, only to arrive in Israel and find myself again on the other side of the Atlantic, watching. It was here that I watched as the my home country began to make less and less sense. Here, at a strange removal from events at home, I watched an administration co-opt terms like Patriotism and Loyalty and I watched as this administration sent out its hunting dogs on the trail of revenge for an act that, however terrible and despicable, I felt we did not fully understand. It was here that I witnessed the first moments in the subsequent tarnishing of our nation's image in the world around us. I watched how pity and empathy were inverted into scorn and disbelief.

So much has change since I lived here seven years ago. My bag still gets checked when I enter a school or cafe, but I can sit and enjoy my meal or coffee without wondering whether the backpack of the sketchy man who just came in contains the device that will blow this place apart.

There is life here, where seven years ago were only the trappings of those who chose to come anyway, despite the atmosphere of danger. Instead of Thailandi, now, there is Soya - three times the menu, three times the expense. Instead of Burger Ranch, there's an Aroma coffee shop. And where once sat the Kabbala Center, there is now a Buffalo Steakhouse.

The place isn't the same. But then, how could it be? For I also am not the same as I was, seven years ago, living in Beit Nativ, just off Emek R'Fayim.

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GOP VP Pick Gov. Sarah Palin - a Powerful choice

Within the last few hours the McCain campaign has announced its pick for VP candidate and brought Alaska Governor Sarah Palin onstage for her first appearance with McCain in Dayton, OH. Obviously there's a lot to be said about the historical nature of her candidacy as the first female GOP VP candidate. And the question of whether Hillary Clinton's female supporters will be swayed to vote Republican in November is a significant question. But what struck me about the choice as she walked onstage with her husband and children was the brilliant and potent connection she has to small-town America. It's nothing new that the Republican party has historically spoken louder to small-town America than the Democratic party - but with this choice, McCain may have officially eradicated Obama's chances of winning over any significant portion of this demographic.

Why am I so struck by Palin? Follow the jump and I'll tell you...


As McCain's pick for VP became increasingly apparent, I was intrigued by Palin's story - born in Sandpoint, Idaho (a small, wonderful community that I call a second home) and raised in Alaska; an Alum from the University of Idaho (a partner in my AmeriCorps stint after college) and of course her rise from city council member to mayor to governor.

But it wasn't until she appeared onstage with her husband and children that I thought Shit. Small-town, middle America is going to LOVE Sarah Palin.

First of all, her family is beautiful. Not in the rich, manicured sense often seen in political families, but in a manner which will resonate in the hearts of an awful lot of townfolk across America. Her husband is handsome, grizzled, tall and has an easy smile - and has no problem letting his wife take the stage while he stands with the kids. Her daughters are beautiful, and while I haven't seen what her oldest son looks like, he joined the US Army a year ago (on, um, Sept. 11) and, well, who doesn't like a young man in uniform? Oh, and did I mention her youngest son, born just a few months ago, has been diagnosed with Downs Syndrome? It's like something ripped straight out of the human interest section of People Magazine..except they're all standing on stage with Senator John McCain accepting the GOP VP nomination.

Her husband has been a commercial fisherman, in the steel-worker's union and is a classic back-woods outdoorsmen. She herself is a former union member and, Jesus, used to get up at 3 am to hunt with her father. I can't speak enough to the ways in which she, her family, and their stories will resonate with small town residents with whom I've celebrated bagging a 6'3" bear a fireman has been tracking for 5 weeks or a moose big enough to feed the family for two years. And, by the way, whose teenagers are the ones shipping off to Iraq.

And what was the Obama campaign's first response? To belittle her as a "mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience." Yes, this is a true statement. And it's also a statement that, combined with his image as an elitist, foreign candidate, I fear will push away any of the small-town Americans who may have been warming to his candidacy. When held up with the image I saw of Gov. Palin as a strong executive leader, warm mother of a radiant family spread between Iraq and Downs Syndrome and gracious supporter and ardent champion of the American people - including those who don't live in the cities but often struggle as much as any impoverished urban community - I can't help but think that John McCain has made a brilliant choice in his selection of GOP running mate.

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What would Shacharit-Yoga look like?

I'm sitting here with all this excess energy manifesting itself as heat radiating from the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet -- hardly the first time this has happened, and not the first time I've wondered whether there was some useful outlet I could channel this energy towards, perhaps along the lines of Reiki or some such. At any rate, I thought about the idea of "spirituality through movement," which is an idea important enough to me, in theory at least, that it is part of the reason behind the Lotus flower tattooed on my back.

So I began to think about morning rituals.


The first that came to mind was Shacharit, the traditional Jewish morning prayer. Before this thought, I should say, I spent some time attempting to channel this excess energy out of my body and into the world where perhaps it could warm someone in need of warmth while simultaneously cooling down my body. So I began to think of how, for many, the favored time for meditation is in the early morning...which in turn led me to think of the Jewish form of morning meditation - Shacharit.

Built into the structure of the Shacharit service is a scaffolding of prayers often compared to the ascending of a mountain. The initial prayers begin the process of removing sleep from the eyes and warming up one's soul as the prayers continue their progression towards higher planes of spirituality and kavanah (intention). At the peak of the service is the Amidah, during which one draws into his most introspective, personal self while at the same time attempting to open up to the sense of awe and connectedness to the world (at least, that's one way that I see it). Just as a climber cannot remain forever at a mountain peak, though, Shacharit continues into the "cool-down" prayers that gradually bring the davener back into the normal, physical space from which he or she can continue their day.

The previous paragraph is of course a hugely understated summary of the structure and progression of a traditional Jewish t'fillah, but serves its purpose in that there are parallels between its structure/progression and that of meditation and movement practices such as yoga or tai chi whose goal is to integrate body, mind and spirit - moving between planes and from physical spaces into spiritual and back. After all, one doesn't begin an hour of yoga by jumping straight into intricate twists, back bends or balancing acts. And in Shacharit (or any t'fillah, for that matter), one does not just jump straight into the Amidah. Just as there are bows and rhythmic movements during Shacharit that help stimulate blood flow to the muscles as well as the brain, Yoga often begins with sun salutations and forwards bends. So I begin to think now about ways in which a practiced yoga-practitioner could develop a progression of movements that parallel the progression of prayer during Shacharit, and how, with practice, the two could become an intertwined practice of morning meditation, movement and spirituality.

This is a very early thought, and I certainly don't have enough yoga experience to put something like this together just as yet. But as I consider arenas to explore during this fellowship year in Israel, this strikes me as maybe not a bad use of some personal time to begin peeling into some deeper layers of the ideas and motifs I have deemed personally important to who I am and what I value as a Jew and as a person.

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Ok, so it's been awhile - this is true. My apologies for my protracted absence. That said, it's about damn time for an update, so here goes.

Since my last post, I've spent a couple winter months working at Schweitzer Mtn Resort as a ski instructor, which was wonderful and during which I felt probably the healthiest I've felt in at least a few years. So, that was hard to leave, but leave I did before the season was over, to return to Olympic Park Institute where I continued as a field science educator through the spring season. The weather was, well, less than optimal at the start of the season (let's just say that late january-february isn't the best time for olympic peninsula weather) but by the end of the season it was spectacularly gorgeous and, again hard to leave. Follow the jump to find out where I went next :-)


Immediately following a great visit from my sis the last week of May, we drove back to Spokane where I spent a couple days before flying east to Ohio where I spent the summer as Teva Supervisor at Camp Wise, a JCC camp outside of Cleveland. I could write an entire post, or several, about my experiences there, but in short it was a great summer with some very warm and wonderful people, filled with campers small and large, many hikes and hours spent in front of campfires and even a few canoe and backpacking trips thrown in.

Last Sunday, I left camp a couple days early to head to NY for the stateside bit of orientation for the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, which occupies the next ten months of my life! Orientation was both enjoyable and intense, not for it's schedule, which was blessedly relaxed (a welcome change from the hectic pace of camp) but appropriately evocative of both the excitements and the challenges we are set to experience throughout the year. As such, I left orientation with excitement and a head full of thoughts for the challenges the year will bring.

A few other relevant bits of info: there are 12 fellows total, I will be starting off the year in Jerusalem doing ulpan and studying, but may spend time elsewhere after a few months. I'd like to get involved in some environmental work and education, spend as much time as I can traveling, hiking and backpacking (including hiking as much of the Israel National Trail as I can) but will undoubtedly find myself involved in a myriad of other projects and experiences that I have no way of anticipating yet. I have many, many more thoughts both on orientation and the coming year, and fully intend to express them in future posts that will be much more frequent from this point on! So tune back in regularly and if anyone is in Israel then look me up, because I would love to see you!

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