Yom Shani, Monday, from West Springfield, Massachusetts (nowhere near Jerusalem)

Yuval and I are visiting family here in the East Coast...it's Yuval's first trip ever to the Eastern United States. I'm using my cousin's computer--a religious reader of the BLOG (and that's his only religion)--let's just say that my family isn't THAT religious overall.

Been studying on the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe that are right around the corner. It is an awesome responsibility this year--leading a congregation in prayer. Before I do it, I want to cram as much education as I can (well, cram's not a nice word--how about cram....) so that I can know the context of the prayers, the theology behind them, and hopefully inspire the folks in the congregation.

This baby rabbi business isn't that easy...basically you get thrown in...which is what's happening to me on September 6th when I will have my first outing with the congregation in Bremerton, Washington (near Seattle).

But for now, it's chofesh (vacation). . .but there's still learning to do, even here.

Shavua tov!

Yom Shishi, Thursday evening

I put a picture of Jerusalem on my desktop today...it's like having a window out on the view that I marveled at over the last year. The transition back to Stateside life continues with the knowledge that the students for the Year-in-Israel program are starting on Sunday (Yom Rishon!) Lucky them! It's hard not to miss Israel, and especially weird is that I still can't keep straight the days of the week. I'm used to Thursday night being the start of the weekend and Shabbat being Shabbat. As one of my Israeli friends said here in LA it only feels like Shabbat on Sunday morning...the rest of the time this place just keeps moving.

And I do mean moving. God forbid you get in the way of someone in a hurry in one of these tanks that Americans love to drive, cellphones plastered to their ears. I cannot described how many near accidents have happened by people not paying attention to their driving. It's a big frightening, which is why I won't use my cell phone while I'm driving unless I have an earphone. You just can't afford to be distracted.

Visited HUC-JIR here in LA yesterday and took out some books to help with preparations for the Yamim Noraim (Rosh ha Shana, Yom Kippur), as well as a book "The New Rabbi" about the replacement process for a rabbi in Philly. Even though this is one more example of the trials and tribulations that rabbis face in synagogue life, I'm still looking forward to being part of it, making a difference (not to sound trite). We also received our schedule for the beginning of the school year here in LA. I'm looking forward to being anchored in my new life with the school year because since I arrived in LA it's been like "Where has this new part of my life gone?"

It's right around the corner. . .

Yom Reviee, Wednesday afternoon in LA. . .

Here's an item by Elan Ezrachi, a wonderful Jewish leader in Jerusalem. His partner, Naami, and he are the parents of three great kids; Naami will be acting dean at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem this coming academic year as Rabbi Marmur goes to London to work on his dissertation. Read on:

Missing the 'Experience' of a Lifetime

 
By Elan Ezrachi (published in the Forward July 4, 2003)

One of the direct outcomes of the intifada has been the dramatic decline in the numbers of Jewish visitors to Israel. The most striking of all was the collapse of the "Israel Experience," as the youth trips to Israel were commonly called during the 1990s. From the summer of 2000, when a record 10,000 North American Jewish youth visited Israel, the numbers have plunged 92%. In the summer of 2002, there were only 820 North Americans of high school age participating in an educational program in Israel - 60% of whom were Orthodox.

Throughout this crisis, it has been accepted that the decline was due to the deterioration of security in Israel. Nevertheless, a mixture of real and perceived danger, combined with the shock of the September 11 terrorist attacks, led us to believe that the halt in travel to Israel was temporary. They will come back, was the common wisdom.

Yet the nature of the events in Israel made it impossible to predict how long this refrain from travel would prevail. The continuous level of violence and the expectations surrounding the war in Iraq put planners and parents in an impossible situation. There were times when even the most passionate lovers of Israel had to reconsider their travel plans.

The data concerning youth who plan to come to Israel in the summer of 2003 is already known. As we face the third summer of the intifada era, now is the time to assess the real problems and challenges.

Happily, this coming summer's numbers of American teens will double. Similarly, the latest information is that the "Birthright Israel" program, which serves older ages, is also on the rise, as are the semester and yearlong programs such as Young Judaea Year Course and the Hebrew University Rothberg School for Overseas Students. This growth is happening at the tail end of a regional war and under a cloud of uncertainty that still hangs over the Middle East. Certainly, this is a reason to celebrate.

But a closer look at the demography of the prospective travelers should raise serious concern and unanswered questions. The growth in Israel programs, though near the 100% mark, is actually marginal and therefore insignificant when seen in the context of the rate of travel to Israel until a few years ago.

More problematic is the fact that only certain segments of the community are sending their youth to Israel. The Orthodox groups held steady throughout the crisis and continue to send their youth to Israel. The Conservative movement's United Synagogue Youth and Ramah, as well as Hadassah's Young Judaea summer program, suffered great losses of numbers during the first two years of the intifada, but are now showing a significant increase.

On the other hand, the North American Federation of Temple Youth - the Reform movement's youth organization, which sent more young Jews to Israel (1,400) than any other group in 2000 - B'nai B'rith Youth Organization and Jewish Community Center Association are nearing the zero mark. Moreover, in 2000 there were 17 local federations that had independent "Israel Experience" programs. We will be lucky this summer if four federations bring small groups of teens to the Jewish state.

We must recognize the sad fact that most American Jewish youth, including those who are deeply involved in Jewish life, will not have a firsthand experience of Israel during their formative years. This is a multilayered loss.

There is proven evidence that contact with Israel - or the lack thereof - affects personal Jewish development. So does the positive peer-group experience of direct encounter between American and Israeli Jewish teens that the "Israel Experience" has been known to provide.

At the communal level, the North American Jewish community lost a vital leadership development mechanism, as the Israel programs proved to be a breeding ground for the next generation of camp counselors and student activists. Luckily, Birthright Israel provides a last chance for some of these youth to get to Israel for a brief encounter. Without the program, the situation would be even worse.

The growth in travel to Israel during this summer will enable us to strengthen the argument that travel to Israel is possible. The security arrangements that programs offer create safe environments that meet very high standards. But this is not enough. We need to make the case that travel to Israel is vital - not only possible.

Even after the violence in the Middle East subsides, it will take years to restore Israel's image as a great vacation spot. In light of this reality, we need a two-pronged approach. On the programming side, we need to empower all those who are working with youth to think of strategies to bring the "Israel Experience" back to the forefront. We can point to the noticeable signs of growth as well as think of creative new programs that attract young people to visit Israel. Certain types of marketing strategies, such as the use of alumni, can help this trend.

On the other hand, we have to recognize that travel to Israel, when all is said and done, is an _expression of an attitude toward the Jewish state - and not a trigger for future Jewish involvement. The "Israel Experience" of the 1990s - when Israel was "fun under the sun" - did not assume that the youth arrived in Israel with a strong level of Israel attachment. The belief was that the attachment would be developed while in Israel, as an outcome of the program.

The massive decline created a cycle of rapid distancing of American Jews from Israel. In order to break this vicious cycle, the leadership of the North American Jewish community needs to intensify the ideology of Israel in American Jewish life. Only a principled appreciation of the role of Israel in Diaspora Jewish life will lead to the substantial restoration of Israel pograms. As a prominent American Jewish educator recently warned, Diaspora Jewry has reached a point where it is more dangerous not to travel to Israel than it is to visit the Jewish state.

Elan Ezrachi is director of Educational Programs and Experiences at the Jewish Agency for Israel's Jerusalem-based Department for Jewish-Zionist Education.

Yom Rishon, early in the morning, Sunday

I love reading the Jerusalem Report (www.jrep.com) and one of the reasons is the pithy writing of Stuart Schoffman. Here's a taste:


Stuart Schoffman: The Circumcision Monologues
Stuart Schoffman





‘Why Jews Are Cooler Than They Seem’: Ten Executive Snippets

Don't know much about marketing, to paraphrase Sam Cooke (does that date me, or what?), but after hearing the buzz and seeing the ink (including The Jerusalem Report’s Back Page, June 30) about a new study, funded by top Jewish philanthropists and conducted by the fashionable Republican pollster Frank Luntz, with the irresistible title "Israel in the Age of Eminem: A Creative Brief for Israel Messaging," I went straight to my Google and downloaded a copy.



I must say I found the diagnosis persuasive. I’ve no doubt that most young American Jews are ill-informed about their heritage and "have switched off and turned away from their own identity." I’m sure they find Israel and synagogues and campus Hillel uncool, considering the myriad competing coolnesses of the world at large. Even back in the Age of Aquarius, when I went to college, Golda Meir and Kol Nidre couldn’t hold a candle, amazingly enough, to Gracie Slick and Tijuana two-toke.



After digesting the 50-page report I felt compelled to reach out and help. I carefully considered Luntz’s "‘Ten Commandments’ For the Next Generation of Israel Advertising" (which daringly subverts its own 6th Commandment, "Overly religious appeals will fail"). Commandment No. 2 (entitled "Tell me or show me something I don’t already know") offers a useful formula: "irony + creativity + relevance = success" plus the addendum, "And for the real home run, sprinkle in a little attitude." Since I have long endeavored, however imperfectly, to live by this credo, I figured I was the man for the job. But what clinched the assignment for me was Luntz’s reference (twice) to the feminist theatrical hit "The Vagina Monologues" as an example of how political message and popular culture can be effectively fused.



Space limitations prevent me from publishing the full version of my "Circumcision Monologues: Why Jews Are Cooler Than They Seem." Herewith, instead, 10 Executive Snippets:



1. Exotic rituals. Christmas has nothing on Sukkot, when we not only decorate the tree but party inside it for a whole week. On Purim you’re commanded to do shots of tequila till you can’t remember who Haman (a Biblical villain) was. Best of all is circumcision, which is a guy thing that admits you to the oldest fraternity in the Western world, and is also way sexy (see #2).



2. Jews are hot. A dorky guy like Woody Allen gets babes one-third his age. And even misanthropes are into Jewish women. See "The Devil’s Dictionary," by the toxic-tongued American author Ambrose Bierce: "HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation."



3. No Pope. I don’t mean this ad hominem, I’m a big fan of the incumbent; but what’s great about Judaism is that there is no central controlling authority, not even Hadassah. As for God, by us this is a personal matter. Even the great Maimonides (check him out at amazon.com) rejected the anthropomorphic image of God they try to sell you in Hebrew school.



4. Enormous influence. Tikkun olam, fixing the world, is so fundamental to Jewish thinking that it is inscribed in our very flesh. Once upon a time, a cynical Roman asked Rabbi Akiva how come, if the Jews’ God was so clever, He didn’t create pre-circumcised babies? That’s our job, replied the rabbi, holding up a stalk of grain and the bread that improves upon it. Despite our modest numbers, we have given the world Jesus, Marx, Freud, Dr. Jonas Salk, Monica Lewinsky and Seinfeld, and also (according to informed sources in Islamabad) control the world’s gold reserves, the U.S. government and Osama Bin Laden.



5. Fascinating history. Skip this one if you agree with Henry Ford that history is bunk, but please recall that Henry Ford was the worst anti-Semite in American history, give or take a few neo-Nazi yokels in a shack in Idaho. The myth: We Are One, and for 2,000 years pined endlessly for Zion. The history: Diaspora was a growth industry even before the Second Temple was destroyed, and variegated Jewish communities have flourished symbiotically and adaptively in non-Jewish societies all over the world, just as they do today from Minneapolis to Melbourne, demonstrating an astonishing resiliency despite devastating persecutions that must never be forgotten or minimized, but should not constitute the core of our memory or identity.



6. A peerless sense of humor. Fairly miraculous, considering the Jewish penchant for heaviosity (see #5).



7. Our very own funny, lusty, creative, excessively relevant (see Page One of any newspaper on the planet) but hard-to-sell little country. As Luntz sagely observes, "the reality of young Jews is informed by Rabin’s assassination and the second intifada." Frankly, my reality is informed by these too, only I can’t change the channel, and I’m bummed when I listen, as even Eminem Jews had better do, to Hamas honcho Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who told Ha’aretz in mid-June, shortly after narrowly escaping assassination by the Israeli army, that "this conflict will not end as long as the Islamic land remains occupied. The Crusaders stayed 200 years and then left." One big reason why the Crusaders couldn’t hold out was that European Christendom no longer thought they were cool.



8. Guilt. It may not be cool, but, hey, you own it.



9. Jews are disproportionally smart. For a list of Nobel Prize winners, see www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/nobels. If this doesn’t switch you back on, there’s always #10.



10. A proud Jewish tradition of relentless self-criticism. Moses invented the genre back in Exodus 33, and Theodor Herzl (an ambitious Viennese journalist), who sniped in 1899 that "anyone who wants to work in behalf of the Jews needs ... a strong stomach," has a street named after him in Brooklyn and dozens in Israel. Only a cool people congenitally dissatisfied with received wisdom could commission studies like the Luntz report. And come to think of it -- what’s a bris if not a radical critique of what God gave you?

Motzei Shabbat, Saturday evening (Yom Rishon b'Aretz)

A small item in the Jerusalem Post caught my attention. It said that for the first time in two years there are no terror victims being treated in either of Hadassah's hospitals in Jerusalem (Ein Kerem and Mt. Scopus.) Let us pray that this becomes the status quo.

Shabbat morning was spent at Temple Emanuel, a reform synagogue right up the street from me...the director of the LA rabbinic program was there...a nice surprise. A new role that I have to get use to is that of "model" e.g. that if I'm going to be a rabbi, well, then I need to be aware of my behavior in the public prayer envirnoment. So, unlike the majority of Jews who talk during services (and I definitely count myself in that majority), I'm going to have to learn to behave myself, and hold my editorial comments to myself until after the service.

A friend of mine who is a fifth-year rab student told me that it's the double-standard that are part of the rabbi's life--and that is why she thinks when rabbis get together than can be so obnoxious because they can let down their guard and just be human.

So I don't quite know how I'm going to negotiate this new boundary...but I'll do it in a way that works for me...and my new role.

Shabbat here is still difficult...I know that ten hours ahead of time Shabbat comes in to Jerusalem and there's no place like that in the world for Shabbat. Just like right now I know that at 11:30 Saturday night here in LA it's Yom Rishon b'boker (First day in the morning) in Israel, a work day...I would have been in Hebrew right this very minute...

In Israel one of the weird things is that since Sunday is a work day, and the time differences with the West Coast of the US, you have to wait until Monday night in Israel if you want to conduct any business with the West Coast of America...on the flip side, I know that right now at 11:30ish at night on Saturday night I can conduct business in Israel.

Any restaurants deliver from there????

Yom Shishi, Friday afternoon

I just got back from the San Fernando Valley which is part of Los Angeles. I had a meeting in the far western part of the Valley, really out of the valley, that was over at noon, so I stopped at the Steimatzky's (Israeli bookstore) in the Valley, had a coffee, and stopped at a store called "Super Sal"...trying to mimic the Israeli grocery chain "Super Sol." Everyone's been telling me about this place, so I went, and sure enough, while it's not the real Mc Coy, it had many Israeli products....I bought $50 worth of stuff just to populate my kitchen with friendly logos from Israel.

My vacation really isn't much of one. I'm spending time helping the Jewish Community Centers again (a former client and now a client again); I'm getting the house organized, meeting with friends, running to set up a bank account, helping classmates get settled (since I've lived in LA for so long, I'm able to help in identifying neighborhoods and decent deals.) I've also been talking to the folks in Bremerton quite a bit about being their student rabbi! That will make it real.

I would have to say that the most vacation-like element of it all is that I let myself have a nap every afternoon. Which if it's going to happen. . .

Yom Hamishi, Thursday

What a tumult of emotions being back in Los Angeles. It is interesting to hear from people, how relieved they are that I'm back from Israel. But truth be told, if you gave me a ticket to visit, I'd be on my way back right now. Beyond the obvious (the consumer culture, the American values, the sense of we're living in our own little world here), there's the spiritual dilemma...coming from the daily study and life together with my HUC colleagues and life in Jerusalem to, well, America (coming to America!)

So the absence here hasn't been for lack of time, or desire. More lack of knowing what to write. I'm processing information, stimuli, what have you. It's quite striking how little changes in a year here versus how much change I experienced being away...a weird psychological time warp if you will.

So as I work through these ideas, issues, confusion, etc., there will be more to read.