Yom HaShoah

You get these moments of clarity rarely in life. Today I had one: standing streetside, in front of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem on a beautiful, perfect spring day as the siren sounded for two solid minutes. Traffic came to a complete standstill. People stood at attention on the sidewalks. As I stood there, by myself, the thought I had was of complete clarity: remembering the Six Million in the living State of Israel.

It goes back to a theme that I've talked about time and again--that here you do something in memorial or go see part of our culture in a museum, and then you are back out in the living, breathing Jewish State. It is here that one million refugees from Europe found a home after the war. It is here that they built their families. It is here they could live their lives. Here Yom HaShoah is one day--on the radio, on television, in newspapers, in ceremonies in schools and other places, with the flags at half-staff. And then it's over. . .and life goes back to being lived in the Jewish State.

I have felt a powerful attachment to this place all year, but never more so than at 10 a.m. this morning in Jerusalem.

Erev Yom Hazikaron l'Shoah vlgiborah
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day

I just returned from a moving ceremony at Yad Vashem that opened Yom Hashoah here in Israel. The radio is playing quiet music. Tomorrow at ten a.m. the country will stop as an alert is sounded for one minute. Even traffic in the middle of the highway will stop.

The ceremony was an example of Israel's civil religion. It began with the flag being lowered to half-mast and a memorial torch being lit; soldiers stood in formation all evening. (I won't even begin to detail the security for an event that had the president of the country, the prime minister, and most of the government.) Both the president and prime minister addressed the gathering, actors read excerpts from Holocaust diaries, there was a very moving torch lighting by six Holocaust survivors. The religious element came at the end when one rabbi read a psalm, the "chief rabbi" of Israel recited Kaddish, a cantor did a haunting rendition of El Maleh Rahamim, and the ceremony concluded with the singing of Israel's national anthem, Hatikva.

Yom Chamishi, Thursday

Long time, no talk. So what's been going on here? Well for one there are tourists in Jerusalem. Today I was working out at my gym at the David Citadel Hotel next to school and there were actually people loading luggage, people in the lobby, people in the pool...in fact, I've never seen so many people there. Let's face it: it's been a high-end morgue for the better part of last year. During Pesach it was great to see the lights on in the hotels around town...signs of life.

Today the College was open and I spent a good part of today in the library working on a paper and a take-home final in my class "Introduction to Halakhic and Aggadic Literature: How to Read a Rabbinic Text." At the beginning of the year I couldn't make heads or tails out of this stuff, and now, well, I hope I'm making sense. There's still a long, long way to go and I'm not fooling myself to believe that I know anything but the barest minimum at this point. Fortunately next year I have a wonderful teacher in Los Angeles, Dvora Weisberg; I know I will learn much from her.

Students were back, too...working away. Many students went to the Former Soviet Union to lead Pesach sederim. I admire them for going, but I don't second guess my decision for a second to stay in Israel during the holiday. Pesach was really that...a holiday...more relaxed...that is, if you stay off the roads. It seems like the whole country took a trip. And the countryside is beautiful after all of that rain!!!

In the news today there was another pigua, this time in Kvar Saba, across the Green Line from Kalkilya, the Palestinian city. The security guard who prevented it from being massive was killed along with the homicide bomber. There is a new government (!) theoretically emerging in the Palestinian Authority--but anything that moves Arafat out is a good thing.

I've spoken in the past about how we have these tragic events here in Israel and people just go on as if nothing's happened because what else can they do. But it does have an impact. Yuval sees it in the schools with the kids that he teaches. Today it was confirmed in the newspaper that it's having a major impact on children in their formative years:

Terror trauma affects 40 percent of children


By Akiva Eldar



Around 40 percent of Jewish children suffer from moderate to severe symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to a Tel Aviv University study, 15 percent of them report medium to serious symptoms, and 9 percent report clinical-grade symptoms.

The study, conducted by Dr. Avital Laufer at the Adler Center for the study of children in distress, is believed to be the most comprehensive since the start of the intifada about the influence of terror on Israeli Jewish children.

Some 3,000 children in grades 7-9 on both sides of the Green Line took part in the study and 70 percent said the terror had influenced their lives in some manner. Some 20 percent said they had a relative who was exposed to a terror attack, and 2 percent said they were directly affected by a terror attack.

The five schools with the highest rates of PTSD were all religious and were, in descending order, the Gush Katif school, the religious school in Ariel, the religious school in Rehovot, the religious school in Netanya and the school in Kiryat Arba. The researcher explained that "presumably, religious children have more relatives living in areas exposed to terror."

Another study, conducted by Adler center doctoral candidate Tamar Lavie in the summer of 2001, before Operation Defensive Shield, found that 70 percent of Palestinian children suffer from symptoms of post traumatic stress. In the West Bank, some 37 percent suffered from high degrees of PTSD and the study found that some 50 percent of Israeli Arab children suffer from some form of PTSD.

So....the situation is not good for children and other living things. Let's hope that there will be progress toward a legitimate peace process, that the children will grow up without the fear of terror, and that people will continue to come to Israel to visit!

Motzei Shabbat, Saturday evening

The clock is ticking. Two months from today I will return to Los Angeles. I promise you I will savor every last drop of my time here in Israel and I also can guarantee that I will be back to visit and maybe. . .

Today is Shabbat Hol Ha Moed Pesach and it's traditional to read Shir ha Shirim, Song of Songs in the tefilla. This is the first year where I've heard it and actually experienced the sounds and smells of spring that the author is talking about! Very cool. . .

You know, today I had this weird observation....here I am, davening (praying) in a Bet Knesset (synagogue) in Jerusalem. . .familiar davening that I've done at home, but I was here in Jerusalem. It was just another one of those gee-whiz moments. I mean, we're talking about the Exodus from Egypt to this place (or near here anyway. . .) And last week I was looking into the Sinai Desert!

I'm still enjoying the break. . .and hope to get some work done this week. . .but mostly I'm just enjoying being here and soaking it all in.

Shavua Tov!!!!

PS I'm still amazed at how much I've learned. . . it's made my prayer experiences much more meaningful.

Erev Shabbat, Friday afternoon

Today at the Israel Museum I visited many wonderful exhibits, including one on the 80 year history of the Israel Electric Company and their building plan from the 20s through the late 30s. Looking back it is completely remarkable that they got built and that the place was electrified. One of the more interesting tidbits was the reactions of local Arabs to the "threat" of modernization that electrification represented. The person behind all of the effort to get the grid up and running for the then Palestine Electric Company was a real Robert Moses of his time (look it up if you don't know who Robert Moses was....maybe while you're on one of the Long Island roads that he built...)

Another exhibit was artwork, some classic, some modern, some contemporary by Israeli artists.

And of course the Israel Museum is famous for its Judaica collections, including synagogues that have been reinstalled from Italy and from India. I am struck as I visitt museums with Judaica here in Israel that, unlike visiting museums with Jewish religious and cultural items in places in Europe, here I walk outside and I'm in a living, breathing Jewish culture. We are alive...the people of Israel live. It is always impressive to see ritual items in museums, but it's much nicer to see them in use in the real world by real people....Jews, who have survived against all odds.

So with the Israel Museum perched on a hill, across from the Knesset, with views of Jerusalem from all sides. . . .AM YISRAEL CHAI!

Shabbat Shalom!

Hol HaMoed Pesach, Thursday evening

Shalom! Last night was a beautiful seder at the home of Jonathan and Helen. It was also a veritible tour of the styles of cooking for Seder with food from Helen's Moroccan side of the family (sephardic) and Jonathan's wonderful Ashkenazic food...some of the best gefilte fish I've ever had, along with a spicy fish, and two kinds of soup. Then the big turkey, stuffing, and other goodies. There was also an assortment of folks at the seder: parents, students, friends, children, English speakers, German speakers, French speakers, Hebrew speakers. . .it was a panopoly...so were the hagadot that were used. It was loud, fun, to the point, loving, and beautiful.

Today, after I went to the synagogue here on French Hill, Yuval and I traveled to the Negev to visit with his family at his brother's home on a kibbutz near Beer Sheva. There was tons of food (meat!!); we hung out all day and I was amazed at how fast time flew by. In the middle of the day my grandmother called from the States and she was greeted by a unified "Hag Sameach" by everyone in Yuval's family. A sweet moment.

On the way back to Jerusalem we stopped in a field of beautiful wild flowers...red, purple, yellow, under the twilight sky. Pesach is only one day at the beginning and one day at the end...not the two day thing that happens in the Diaspora (another wonderful feature of living here.)

This is an amazingly beautiful country--not anything like what is seen on television in the States. Get over here while everything is green and blooming. From the desert to the Hermon in the north, from the seas to the cities and everything in between, this is one diverse place!

Erev Pesach, Wednesday afternoon

Hag (holiday) is in the air...all of the radio stations have people calling in wishing each other "Hag Sameach" (happy holiday...). The kitchen is FINALLY cleaned, including the fridge (my favorite thing to do.)

Pesach Sameach....a happy Pesach. It is with joy that I approach this Pesach, my first ever in Israel. Last year at this time we were learning about the Pesach massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya where 29 people were killed. If you recall, we stayed at that hotel in December. This year, they are expecting 150 people for seder. Life goes on, in sadness, defiance and joy.

Tonight I will be enjoying seder with my friends Jonathan and Helen and their guests. I'm looking forward to it.

Yesterday I made good progress on my paper for my tefila (prayer) class. I like the way it's developing.

So don't read your hagadah--tell a story. Ask questions. Discuss. Debate. Make sure you nosh along the way. And do the part of the seder after dinner...after the afikomen. Sing the songs at the end.

Pesach is here...the season of our freedom. Hag Pesach Sameach!

Yom Shilishi, Tuesday

Back from the trip to the Negev desert. So you think it's a big deal to be in Four Corners, US, where you can be in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona? Try this for size: we hiked to the spot of a great canyon dividing Egypt and Israel, and looked over the Gulf of Eilat to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Not bad, huh? I couldn't help but think that if Moses and Joseph ended up at this tremendous gulley the conversation went something like this: Moses to Joseph: "Oh s**t...what do we do now?" Joseph to Moses: "You think you got problems? I'm the one that has to get them over it!"

We did lots of hiking, slid down sand dunes, ate dinner in the desert, went to an underwater aquarium, snorkeled in the sea, hiked some more. . .and of course, slept slept slept. I skipped all of the Shabbat programming to catch up on sleep in the quiet desert environment of Kibbutz Yahel where they grow many things, including pomelos. Right now the pomelo trees are in bloom, so it was a sweet smelling desert. The weather was wonderful, comfortable in the day and cool at night.

We are in our "hofesh" which is Hebrew for vacation, or freedom. Pesach is a celebration of freedom, so it was quite something to be in the desert where our ancestors trekked for 40 years (did I mention that we were in a hyena cave???)

So last night it was clean the kitchen for Pesach and today it's going to be about running around Jerusalem to buy Pesach food, get a haircut, and other mundane things that we do on a daily basis here in Israel (again, it's NOT what y'all see on CNN.) If people came over here and did the tiyuulim that we've done (that's trips) they'd be amazed at the great diversity of the natural and man-made environment in Israel. It's a beautiful country (that is if you don't talk about the picnic ground in Mitzpe Ramon that we ate in on Friday that had trash all over the ground. . . people are people.)

Getting ready for Pesach in Israel is something: all of the stores have tons of cleaning supplies on special and the Pesach food takes over all of the grocery stores. So today we're going to the neighborhood of Talpiot to the cheapest grocery store in Israel to stock up. It's really nice....I was reading about how all of the Wal Mart's have the Easter booty in stock...and thinking about the difference here...Hag (holiday) here is Pesach...and the calendar is built around the Jewish calendar. It's more than wonderful....

So Hag Pesach Sameach! Happy Passover....

Yom Reviee, Wednesday, evening

A stunningly gorgeous day in Jerusalem today. We had a wonderful lecture by an art historian who shared her expertise in the various haggadot shel Pesach--from about the 1300's on. It was an amazing lecture and tour-de-force slide show of both pre-printing press haggadot and some of the first that came off the press. Seeing the words of "dayenu" in a 14th Century hagadah, the same words that we sing today. Wow. . . and it's nice to see art from that period that is JEWISH!!

Then today I made an investment in my Jewish/rabbinic library, buying quite a few books that will be shipped to Los Angeles for my studies in the future. A bit of sticker shock, but then, they're an investment. This afternoon and evening I've been working on my take-home final (given early) in my rabbinic literature (midrash, halachic, and aggadic) literature class. I'm so pleased with the relative ease in which I'm doing the translations and understanding the meanings. It would've been Greek to me a few months ago.

In news of the world, it looks like Saadam is done for...fortunately for Israel there was no attack on the country during the war. The build-up was worse than the actual war (at least for Israel.) The brave members of the coalition forces have done a tremendous job (so it seems). . .I wish war, if it has to happen, could be without the loss of life. A naive wish. . .

So now what's the future? What will happen with Syria that's been supporting Iraq during the war? What of the Palestinians in the territories that have been demonstrating in favor of Saadam? What of the peace demonstrators around the world that lumped Israel in with Iraq? What of the so-called "Road Map?" Will this new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority really have any sort of power or is it still Arafat the terrorist in charge? Will the war with Iraq create hundreds of new Bin Ladens as Mubarak said? What will happen in Iraq once the battle is over and the rebuilding begins? Who will run the place?

We live in a complicated world. . . and with the knowledge that I'm acquiring here and with the books that I've purchased, I'm looking forward to growing in faith as I deal with today's world with the wisdom of those who have come before.

Yom Reviee, Wednesday

I was going to write about the great weather, the Italian Synagogue that I visited here in Jerusalem yesterday, looking forward to Pesach. . .but there is, unfortunately, something more pressing going on in Israel and that is the dire economic situation. Dire might not be the right word. Right now the government is proposing an economic reform plan that particularly impacts the poor, the teachers, and others in the public sector. Take a worldwide global recession, add the security situation and you have an economic crisis of unbelievable proportions. There are horrible stories each day: children going to school without breakfast, without books, and without shoes. . .people losing their homes and going without food. And then, this morning, this story (warning, don't read it if you don't want to be seriously upset the rest of the day):

Petah Tikva teen hangs himself

By Yam Yehoshua and Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondents

The bag at the foot of Lior's bed contained almost everything the 14-year-old boy might need for the 5 P.M. judo class he had on Tuesday. Only the blue belt, which the teenager had tied to a chin-up bar at the entrance to his room and used to hang himself about two hours before the class was scheduled to begin, was missing.

Relatives who gathered Tuesday night in the small Petah Tikva apartment where Lior lived with his mother, Varda, knew the cause of his act: Lior explained in a suicide note that the family's difficult financial situation made him to feel like a burden.

"Dear mom. I'm sorry, but I'm causing you a lot of problems, and costing you a lot of money," Lior wrote. "I decided that I'd rather die. I'm sorry that I've caused you a huge amount of suffering, and about all the years I've destroyed for you. Love, your son who loves you."

Varda said she had tried to keep the financial problems to herself. "What I hid from the boy, these troubles," she said, "became harder and harder to hide as every day passed."

Yom Shani, Monday Monday

Wow...is the work load acclerating. I have a paper due for our Wednesday study day, a paper for our Tefilla class, and I just received a take-home for my midrash/rabbinic literature class. Still there's plenty of learning going on.

Last night at the Harman Institute we finally got to hear David Hartman who spoke about his chapter in A Living Covenant called "Rabbinic Responses to Suffering." If you have never seen or heard of this book, it is worth looking at, especially chapter eight. His thesis is that yes there is suffering in the world, yes it's part of the natural order of the world and yes, it is unfair. . .but that the model for the relationship with God is one of two people (similar to a strong marriage) that can weather difficult passages. And how does that relationship manifest itself? Through mitzvot, through Torah. Hartman is my kind of philospher: a clear thinker who expresses himself clearly. Example: he says "Do I think that the state of Israel is the dawn of redemption?" Answer: "I have no idea, but here I have a wholeness as a Jew that I couldn't experience elsewhere."

I have to be at school in an hour so more later....I might even cull my notes and share more with you from last night. And....we were invited to study at Hartman for the first two weeks of July with rabbis from around the US who come here for a seminar....hmmmm....too bad I'll be in LA! How much is a return ticket???

Yom Hamishi, Thursday

Hodesh Tov. It's the first day of the month of Nisan, which means Passover (PESACH in Hebrew) is right around the corner. . .and now the news:

We're having a heatwave, a not-tropical heatwave....or, in Hebrew, a sha-rav. (hamsim in Arabic.) It's is hot and I LOVE IT. We had a trip to Tel Aviv yesterday and I stayed overnight with my friend Alix...had some good Asian food and caught a movie. It's great to be in a REAL city.

What do I mean? You mean Jerusalem isn't real? Well, Tel Aviv is hip and has urban energy and rough edges and the beach; Jerusalem is holy and up in the hills and pretty and religious and has the Old City and. . . It is really two quite different cultures....And it's nice to have the yin and yang of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv so close together. I hope to spend some more time in Tel Aviv before my time here is up...but...the weather's better up here in Jerusalem. We get dry hot air..they get hot humid air. So once it's humid. . .Of course the Tel Avivians are not so broken up about the Starbucks thing and point to it as a point of pride that they have their local hangouts and don't need the American import (of course, don't ask them about their love for American clothing, movies, music, television, etc. . .we're not looking at consistency here.)

Right now the big change is underway in our grocery stores as Pesach food is now everywhere. . . and in Israel, the stores change completely. There's sales on cleaning supplies everywhere...it's really another example of how we run on the Jewish calendar.

Next week (Friday) we're going on another tiyuul, this time to the Negev in the south. I'm looking forward to it, as Yuval is coming with me, too. We get back on Monday and then our Passover break starts. So. . .time to get those papers done!

And right now, nap time!

Yom Shilishi, Tuesday

Of course, it's not just about the coffee: another 120 people will be out of work as of Friday and it's not so easy finding a job here.

Spring is just amazing. It got really warm today and it feels great. Tulips are up, trees are flowering, the sun is out, and it really improved my mood! Tomorrow it's off to Tel Aviv; I'm going to stay over and visit a friend. Coming back to Jerusalem on Thursday morning.

Other than that, the clock continues to count down to the end of the school year. . .I'm continunig to work on my research papers and trying to stay motivated. But spring fever...well, it's beautiful!