Going Back

I haven't updated this in a long time, and there are lot of half formed blog posts on thoughts from Israel that I never finished writing.  In large part that is because this has been a very busy semester for grad school, and will continue to be.

But, in the time since I got back little things about my time in Israel kept nagging at me, and I would often find myself thinking about when I could go back.  So, a few weeks ago I applied to go back for an extended period.

Today I found out that I was accepted!

There are a million and one details to work out, including working with the group to find the right internship location and filling out more than a few scholarship applications.

But I am going back!  The program will consist of one month of intensive hebrew, followed by a four month internship.  There will be plenty of group trips across the country I am sure.

I will finish my masters program in early December, and then will be in Israel from (roughly) February to early July of 2013.

Places

There is a list somewhere of all the places that you will see on a Birthright trip. Each trip adds its own pieces, each tour guide emphasizes something different, and each group is unique. But there are set places you will see barring some sort of unexpectedly bad situation.  There are also a list of places that no birthright group would ever go.  This is about a place from each list, about a third of a mile from each other.

When we got to Jerusalem, we walked around the outside briefly and then through the Jewish quarter to a spot on the roofs where we could see the whole city.  It looked very different than I expected, in part because you always have this mythical view of Jerusalem, and the realization that almost all of it was destroyed multiple times, most recently rebuilt after the 1968 war, just never hits you till you are there.

After a short talk about the city we walked to a small overview and saw the Western Wall for the first time.

Jamie gave a long talk here that I heard almost none of. I had spent most of the day before and that morning trying to write a prayer and still had nothing on the paper.  I ended up writing something while he spoke, but it was very short. Frankly everything that I could think of writing that would have been some sort of prayer seemed small and insignificant, fleeting if you will, in the face of the place.

As we walked down the magnitude of where I was hit me in a way that I find impossible to describe.  I decided as we walked down to put Tefillin on. Its only the second time I have done so, and was the first for most of our group that followed.  For those of you who aren’t Jewish… well let me give the long story.

Arguably the most important prayer in Judaism is the Shema.  In English the words are: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.”  It is part of a series of prayers, one of which commands us to put the words of Torah on our hearts and on our minds.  The Mezuzah is the answer to the commandment to “inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” and Tefillin are the traditional (usually Orthodox only wear them now) answer to the commandment to “bind them as a sign on your hand, let them be a symbol before your eyes”.

The entire experience for me was incredibly powerful, and much more important to me than I would have ever predicted.  It surprised me that a place that was effectively little more than a retaining wall for a part of a Temple built by a puppet King could be so powerful, yet I can say without hesitation it was one of the most powerful places I have ever been. (I know I used powerful 20 times, deal with it)

Sadly, it wasn’t that way for everyone.  The reason is that the Wall is controlled by a group of Orthodox who refuse to treat women as equals.  Women are only given access to about a fifth of the wall, meaning that instead of time alone to pray, even in a quiet part of the day, they are greeted by this:

This is what my friend Teddi wrote about her experience and the above picture:

I waited my whole life for this and it wasn't what I expected. It wasn't personal; it was awkward. It's very difficult to have a moment with God with so many people around and all fighting for the same spot. The women's side of the wall is considerably smaller than the men's side, so I literally had to push my way to the front. I folded my piece of paper as much as I could, I literally shoved it in a crack, and I said a very quick prayer. The most comforting part of the whole episode was knowing that somewhere in the premises was a piece of paper containing a prayer that my dad had written 40 years prior. 

After we walked around a little more my friend Amanda and I went through a very cool archaeological museum of a mansion destroyed in 70 CE and then made our way through the alleys to the Church of the Holy Sepluchre.

This Church supposedly contains the place where Jesus was crucified, the rock where his body was washed and the cave where he is buried.  (I didn’t figure out what I was looking at until I got home and could look it up) Sadly, it is also not without controversy over control, and there are constant fights (sometimes actual physical fights) between groups of monks and priests from the various sects of Christianity that control it.  Further, there are significant historical reasons to think that some or all of the places found in the Church were actually somewhere else in the city.

Shrine surrounding the "Sepulchre" or cave where Jesus was buried.

Shrine surrounding "Golgotha" or the spot where Jesus was crucified.

Having said that, it was still a very powerful place to visit.  Even as a non Christian, to stand in a place that was very clearly holy and had been for hundreds and hundreds of years has to have an impact on you.  You could feel the emotion, faith and devotion of the people around you, and it is a place of significant spiritual importance.

I don’t know what it says about humanity that places can become holy simply by having lots of people over time say they are holy.  But, it is what it is, and it worked for me.  There are some moments in life you say you will remember forever and would be hard pressed to think about 5 years later, let alone describe to someone else. This was not one of those days. I will never forget the Western Wall.

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

“Victory”

It has been a few days since I wrote anything, in no small part because the semester started yesterday, and there are too many distractions that go with that.  The real reason though is that we have reached the point when the topics I want to write about take a little longer, and are a little bit more difficult.

The following pictures are not yet on facebook, because I wanted to tell the story first.

A few days into our trip we were joined by a group of young Israelis.  Two of them were still in the military, while the others had finished their service and were now university students.  One of those students was Ofir.  Ofir grew up in Jerusalem, served in the Army and is now a law student.

On the second day with the Israelis we went to Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial, and got a taste of Ofir’s personal experience with terrorism, and he gave a brief insight into the mind of those who disagreed with Rabin’s vision for peace.  The space was less than ideal, and our time was short, so we left it at that.

The next day we were in Jerusalem and went to Mt Herzel, Israel’s version of Arlington, after having been to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial that morning.  While there we stopped at the memorial for terrorist victims and Ofir told us the full story.

 Ofir finding his friend's name on the wall. 

When Ofir was 16, like many he enjoyed going out with friends. On that night he and his best friend went to Ben Yehuda Street, even though their parents had asked them to not go out. They went out anyway, and fatefully agreed to have their pictures taken by the old man offering cheap pictures of people. A few minutes later a bomb went off and his friend was killed.

In telling his story it was clear that almost 10 years later it is still incredibly painful for Ofir, but I don’t think he was the only one with tears in his eye after telling the story.

Later that evening, our schedule sent us to Ben Yehuda Street for a relaxing night out.  While walking we passed a water fountain, which Ofir pointed out was the memorial to a victim of terrorism, killed by rooftop snipers. A few blocks later, as the group spread out, Ofir showed us the place where his friend was killed. The buildings around still had some marks, including a metal overhang still marked by shrapnel that was a good 75 feet away from the spot.

 The spot is just to the right of the Change store. The awning with shrapnel is out of the picture to the left on the same side of the Ben Yehuda but across the alley.

What this story is really about is the question I asked Ofir.  While standing in front of the memorial to his friend and a dozen other Israelis, many of them teenagers, I asked “How does it feel to come out and drink and go to clubs in the place where your friend was killed?”

Ofir looked me in the eye and said one word: “Victory”.

I can’t think of any phrase that better sums up the very fact that Israel exists.  While at the memorial Jamie spoke a little to the fact that there was a movement for many years to build something commemorating the victims of terrorism and it was resisted. After the Second Intifada, there came a point of view that Jamie described with, “Simply by choosing to continue to live here everyone is serving and being brave.”

As I have discussed in prior posts, there was an effort in the early days of Zionism to create a new kind of Jew. This new Jew would be different from the ultra religious Jew hiding in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. This new Jew would fight for the right to survive and would win.

The question formed in my mind after visiting Yad Vashem, “Did we create a new Jew or did we simply put a new emphasis on something that has been there for 2000 years?”  The Jewish state was destroyed in 70 CE, yet we still existed when Zionism was founded at the turn of the 20^th century.

Our last day in Israel we stayed at a Kibbutz in the hills outside Jerusalem built in the 30s, about 6 months after 5 Jewish farmers were killed by terrorists. Its existence is the Jewish response everywhere in Israel (and in Ofir’s answer), “We will build”.  When they fight us we will continue on.  But to me that same streak existed even in the victims of the holocaust.

When a young man my age can get children to sing traditional songs as they are taken into a gas chamber, that is the same courage and faith. When a rabbi says the Shema and thanks God for existing as he is killed, that is the same courage and faith; the belief that we as Jews will always survive and prosper and grow no matter how many obstacles are thrown in our way.

Of course, the question is, where do we go from there as Jews who do not live in Israel or who do not live with the threat of pogroms?  It is easy to be Jewish in America, even in the South when I have lived in places surrounded by prejudiced people at times I have never felt unsafe or threatened. On Saturday night if I want to get a beer I will just drive downtown and not think twice about it. The idea that by going to a place like Glenwood South I could be killed by a bomb at any time is something that would never even cross your mind.

So are we part of the old Jews, that may have had courage, but spent their lives hidden in their religion and culture? Or are we part of the new Jews, forged by the Holocaust and the fight for Israel’s existence that grow and prosper and maintain our culture while changing that culture? Do we have to choose?