Helicopters and airplanes in unusual numbers and loudness flew over the nearby coast this morning as I sat translating an Arabic article about the anticipation of war in the Middle East this summer. Always a pleasure to see how the media enjoys heating things up when negotiations and processes are at a standstill. As though an absence of activity could only signify the calm before the storm.
Amidst the roaring choppers and plane engines in the nearby distance I received a phone call from a friend and she wondered if I had heard what happened.
No, now what?
Ten killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the Freedom Flotilla that has been heading toward Gaza with seven boatloads of humanitarian aide and nearly 700 international passengers. Ok.
And so began the search on the internet. Haaretz, New York Times and the BBC. The reaction and the thoughts followed.
Both a feature and a flaw, I aspire to view events and the stories of the people involved from as many angles as possible. Having lived in Israel for a little more than three years now, it is always true that the real understanding of a situation can be found in the grey area. However, regardless of whether the grey area illuminates motives and rationale that assist in comprehending the way things go down, the end result usually is that Israel finds itself in an unconscionable mess.
So I'll just start listing my problems and questions as they come to mind.
First, the blockade on Gaza. An act of collective punishment? Yes. Recently I read a list of permitted and forbidden items that can or cannot traverse the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which was published by an Israeli NGO by the name of Gisha. Rice and beans and lentils, for example, are all permissible for entry into the Gaza Strip. However, cinammon and coriander seeds are not. Certain learning materials are able to be collected, others are not. My conclusion from reading the list is that the blockade seeks to severely lower the quality of life of the Citizens of Gaza. To make their life so bland and boring and difficult that they will collectively do something against their leaders. The blockade is not in place to merely monitor and prevent the smuggling of weapons that could be used against the State of Israel. The seige on Gaza serves to frustrate, intimidate and to control the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It has little to no affect on the strength of its leaders in Hamas.
On the issue of humanitarian aide sailing in from distant ports of Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and so on. These missions do not help the people of Gaza. They are publicity stunts to provoke a response from Israel that will only serve to harm Israel's already sullied reputation as well as to illustrate to the Israeli people how ill-equipped its military forces and its leaders are in making decisions in a perceived crisis. Moreover, when I read dispatches through listservs of the people aboard these ships, I get the sense that they are living in a fantasy world in which they star as Robin Hood, Indiana Jones, or any other savior-hero type that is swooping in to save the day, in their very own choose-your-own-adventure novel. They have no idea what they are getting into when they board those ships and from what happened this morning, it is clear that their approach to humanitarian aide and how they represent themselves to the international audience is rather muddled.
What do I mean?
An informed person would know that when the Israeli Defense Forces makes a statement that your flotilla should not approach the coastal waters of its territory (occupied or otherwise), they are not joking. Moreover, if you are aboard a ship of humanitarian aide and you claim to be doing so for the sake of nonviolence and/or the rescue of the Palestinian people, you do not attack soldiers with knives and sticks or try to steal their guns (as mentioned in the BBC). Also, if you are an informed person, you would know that not too many months ago, the Israeli Navy intercepted a ship on its way to Gaza from Cyprus whose cargo, unbeknownst to its crew, consisted entirely of weapons from Iran, destined for Gaza. If your charge, as is that of the Israeli Defense Forces, is to protect your citizens, knowing that ships heading for Gaza are not necessarily just carrying humanitarian aide, why on earth would you allow your unit to permit the passage of these ships without, at least, a thorough search of content? What, Israel is supposed to take these people at their word? That would be the day...
From my point of view, in reality, it's all about the stardom and the glory. If it weren't, another outcome to this incident would have been possible. Israel offered to the Freedom Flotilla safe harbor in Ashdod. All the materials of the ships would have been inspected and granted passage to the Palestinians in accordance with the lists of permissible items. The participants would be processed and sent back to their respective countries. In this scenario, Israel would still be the asshole, the Gazans would get at least some of the aide, and the participants could return home, proud of their resistance and defiance of the seige against Gaza and tell all their friends and family how they stood up to the Israeli war machine.
But no, it didn't work out like that. In the end what has happened? No one has won.
14 people are dead. Tens of others are hurt. Soldiers and commanders are wounded. Everyone is being treated at the Tel Shomer hospital just outside of Tel Aviv. The Gazans do not receive the aid. Israel has yet another already lost public relations battle to fight. And Netanyahu meets with Obama tomorrow, supposedly. Wonder how that will go?
And meanwhile, the warmongers of the media are probably salivating over the rise in the mercury of socio-political tensions.
Me? No false pretentions here folks. I'll be praying that, at least, for the next 16 to 17 days, people will hold it together so that I can get married, as planned.
** As of June 2, 2010, I understand that nine deaths resulted in the aboard ship battle between activists on the Mavi Marmarra and the Israeli Navy. Not 10 and not 14. As of yet the identities of these deceased individuals have not been released. I do not know if they were bystanders or were in fact those who participated in attacking the Israeli soldiers that descended upon the ship. As per the information now available, as well as the feedback from certain individuals, I am deleting the value of "innocent" that I originally placed next to the number of deadly casualties in this event. As deeming them innocent is as premature a judgment as calling them guilty. Gil, I stand corrected. Thank you for your feedback and criticism. It made me do some critical thinking, which is always necessary in times like these.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Black Sheep Son
A couple Saturdays ago Eitan and I attended the screening of a film made by a woman that is part of the synagogue community to which we belong. The film's name is "HaBen HaSorer," which, literally translated, means the black sheep son. I knew little more about the film than that it was about a family whose son decided to become more religious. Wondering how such a topic would be addressed in a documentary showed at a progressive Orthodox synagogue in North Tel Aviv, I thought it would be an interesting experience at the very least.
Eitan and I paid the 25 shekels ticket price and took our seats in the makeshift screening room that is also our synagogue's sanctuary, as well as its banquet hall, as well as its study center. With 50 other members of the community, some familiar others not, after dealing with technical difficulties, the viewing got underway.
HaBen HaSorer opened with a scene of young men, noticeably religious with their tzitzit and peis hanging down from hips and sideburns, being asked what they wanted most in life. Here the viewer was introduced to two important characters of the film, Yaakov and Itzik, the former being the film maker's cousin and the latter her brother.
After ten minutes of viewing, I suddenly realized that this story, mainly focusing on Yaakov, was following him on a spiritual journey of sorts. A quest to find himself and what was important to him. But I couldn't concentrate on this aspect because it was clear to me that the way in which he chose to do this was by joining what is known in Israel as "Noar HaHarim" (The Youth of the Hills). As bucolic and and innocuous as that title may sound, it masks what has actually become a great point of concern, contempt and frustration for those of us in Israel who would like work toward some sort of workable peace between Israelis and our neighbors the Palestinians. The Youth of the Hills, whether out of religious inspiration, zealous ideology or soul-searching, build and inhabit the outposts and far out settlements of the West Bank. These are the young men and women who believe it is their right to reclaim the biblical lands of the Hebrews by working the soil and shepherding sheep and goats on the rolling hills of what I certainly believe and hope will one day be Palestine.
Once I understood what it was that I was watching: Yaakov inhabiting a ramshackle dwelling, Yaakov scrambling himself some eggs on a makeshift stove, Yaakov sitting with his sheep out on the green and rocky hillsides of South Hebron, I started to fidget and wondered if I should have paid the 25 shekels that supported this film on that evening. Quite viscerally, I felt as though a war was going on in my brain. Mass confusion, anger, disgust, curiosity. Why had I come on this night and why hadn't I been informed that this young man becoming more religious was actually a lunatic settler boy living in proximity to the Palestinian village of Sousia, where I helped families pick their olives two years ago without fear of retribution by the nearby settlers, only to have their trees chopped down three weeks later by those very settlers? Why was I being asked to listen to this story of a quest for self-definition in internationally disputed territory, which no one in the film seemed not consider as a major problem? I thought to myself, "who makes a film about Jews in the West Bank without a political agenda?" Or something along those lines...
After about ten minutes of befuddlement, I realized that instead of fighting what I was seeing, I had been given an unique opportunity. The opportunity to see, through the eyes of Israelis and the reactions of an Israeli presumably religious audience, an internal issue and phenomenon to which people living on the outside are not privy, and probably wouldn't have the patience to witness. And furthermore, I somehow understood that if I could just turn off my brain's judgment mechanism, I might learn something about another point of view. Another truth among the many truths that battle for position of dominant reality in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
From that mindset, I was able to enter the world of this family. A religious Israeli family who sought to abide by the laws and rules which they believe God commanded them to uphold. Along the way, their son felt lost, as though his life had not enough meaning and he set out on a spiritual quest appropriate for his social and religious milieu. Like many other young men and women of his community, he followed the courageous youth into the hills of Judea and Samaria. His family was not supportive, they called him all sorts of crazy. Throughout the film, in clips showing Yaakov and his mother, she would nag at him, "Why can't you just be normal? Find a wife, live in a house, why do you have to go live out there, alone?"
The documentary follows Yaakov to the Gaza Strip, in the nomenclature of his social group, Gush Katif. The family is filmed while making preparations before Shabbat, inhabiting an abandoned beach shack on the coastline of Gaza. Seemingly, this Shabbat was just before the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. From the perspective of the inhabitants of Gush Katif, the filmmaker takes the viewer there to see. Portraying a way of life that may seem idyllic for those who could relate to life there or did live there. One scene shows a young person going from shack to shack delivering a bouquet of flowers to make the Shabbat special and beautiful, a community service of sorts.
Another impressionable scene takes place is one in a synagogue, where a rabbi is imploring his congregants not to fight the soldiers who would take them out of their houses. That violence is not the answer and that everything would be fine. From the upstairs gallery a man screamed that Jews shouldn't exile Jews, that they had to raise arms, that they had kick and scream and fight to stay in their homes. The camera follows the man out into the street where he continues his tirade against the government, against the army, against the state. In all of this Yaakov is sitting by, watching with his friends the scenes unfolding -- I.D.F. soldiers carrying individuals who have refused to leave their homes to buses, babies crying, mothers with agonized faces. The Israeli Border Police dressed in heavy black uniforms with riot gear marching through the street. In the audience people were shifting their weight and sighing in their seats.
Later on when Eitan and I discussed the movie, he recalled his experiences of patrolling homes in Gaza after people were evacuated in 2005. He was in his officer's training course and his particular unit had to make sure that no one reentered and re-inhabited their homes in the middle of the night. He doesn't know what disengagement helped, for him it's difficult to see any benefits in light of everything that has happened since and everything that hasn't happened since. He remembers very clearly when he and another female soldier were on duty. He made her laugh at some joke and while enjoying the positive attention from this girl, a woman walked by and commented, "Oh yeah, laugh, really funny, I'm being taken out my home, but you, laugh..."
Eitan also remembers a commander who was religious. This guy's superior decided to make an example of him and took him to evacuate people from their homes before the soldiers. Not long after going in, this religious commander came out of a house with tears streaming down his face and was excused from the duty he was supposed to carry out.
From these stories I understand that it's all very complicated. It's your point of view. It's your upbringing. It's what you have been taught is right and wrong. It's about who you believe is in charge and what truths such faith requires you to uphold.
The issue of the army arises in the film as well. Yaakov's family insists that he enlist. They are a religious family but they are also a Zionistic one. One prominent scene with the filmmaker's grandmother, "Safta-le," as she is lovingly called by her grandkids, tells that when her family left Germany most of them went straight to the United States. But she was a Zionist, she believed in Israel and that just like all other peoples of the world, the Jews needed a country of their own as well. So she stayed to make a life for herself and raised a family and clearly cherished what had developed from nothing into a dream come true.
It is clear that Yaakov had mixed feelings about the draft. He had his ideas of roaming the hills with his sheep, living the simple life. And all his mother wanted him to do was get married already.
Another interesting scene was one in which Yaakov's father was working on his farm with a few cows. One can assume that the place is near to Jerusalem but it is unclear if it is a settlement of the Jerusalem area or what. Nevertheless, it becomes more evident when Mahmoud and Khalil enter the scene. Two Arab men who work with Yaakov's father. It is clear that these men are on good terms. Mahmoud's wife and her children are filmed visiting with Yaakov's family. It is difficult not to see the similarities between these two families, one Arab and Muslim, the other Israeli and Jewish. Both women have their hair covered, their tasks are to care for children and to serve the food. The men also have the tops of their heads covered and they talk about God and the similarities of their traditions. I wondered if I was meant to understand that not all settler families hate Arabs and vice versa. Or if it was just a fact of these two families lives, that they work, live, eat and play together.
Toward the end of the film Yaakov does join the army, but a scene of him walking along a road between the grassy hills, once again, only this time in full army gear, gun and rucksack, seemed foreboding and ominous. My fear was that the next scene would show how Yaakov had been attacked by Palestinians in the West Bank, walking alone in soldier's uniform, alone, in the land that he felt belonged to him.
Surprisingly, it is the filmmaker's brother whose funeral the viewers are unprepared to witness. Itzik, the brother who wanted to see his wife smile in the beginning of the film, had fallen in battle in the Second Lebanon War.
The film ended shortly after and I still felt a little confused. On the one hand, I felt like I had just watched an extremely intimate family home video. The stories depicted were of a boy coming of age, of a grandmother aging gracefully and happily , basking in the love of her children and grandchildren, the life cycle process as Itzik's wedding and the brit milah of his first child were filmed as well. But I couldn't get out of my mind the backdrop upon which all of these colorful life stories were developing. Settlements, outposts, Gaza, disengagement, the Second Lebanon War. The interplay of religion and nationalism, Zionism and idealism. And as the viewer, I was being asked to identify with all of these story lines as a fellow human being, as a member of a family who could relate to general themes, even though the specifics did not fit.
I think that if I knew Yaakov in his days as a youth of the hills, I would have insisted that he take his flock to the wide empty spaces between Herzilya and Netanya, and that he get the hell out of the hills of South or North Hebron. If I could sit down with his mother and father, I would ask if they knew that the biggest issues on their hands with regard to Yaakov living in the hills shouldn't have been whether or not he would get married or join the army, but rather that his youthful journey quest, and those of however many other youth of the hills there are roaming around the West Bank, directly contribute to the continuing deterioration of my safety and security in Israel proper. And if I could sit down with Safta, I would ask her if we could talk to her kids and grandkids about the wonder and miracle of Zionism and how we all have to get on the same page if we want to keep living here enjoying our state of the Jews.
I tried to turn off my political mind. But after this film, I think I became reacquainted with that awareness that how we live our lives does matter. What we believe to be our God-given rights, or, exercising our conception of entitlement, can contribute to another's enduring of an infernal hell. And our ignorance to the effect that our lives can have on another's, eventually leads to the destruction of us all. Because in the context of Israel and Palestine, the hills in which one may choose to go and find themselves, time and again, only too quickly turn into bloody battlefields.
Eitan and I paid the 25 shekels ticket price and took our seats in the makeshift screening room that is also our synagogue's sanctuary, as well as its banquet hall, as well as its study center. With 50 other members of the community, some familiar others not, after dealing with technical difficulties, the viewing got underway.
HaBen HaSorer opened with a scene of young men, noticeably religious with their tzitzit and peis hanging down from hips and sideburns, being asked what they wanted most in life. Here the viewer was introduced to two important characters of the film, Yaakov and Itzik, the former being the film maker's cousin and the latter her brother.
After ten minutes of viewing, I suddenly realized that this story, mainly focusing on Yaakov, was following him on a spiritual journey of sorts. A quest to find himself and what was important to him. But I couldn't concentrate on this aspect because it was clear to me that the way in which he chose to do this was by joining what is known in Israel as "Noar HaHarim" (The Youth of the Hills). As bucolic and and innocuous as that title may sound, it masks what has actually become a great point of concern, contempt and frustration for those of us in Israel who would like work toward some sort of workable peace between Israelis and our neighbors the Palestinians. The Youth of the Hills, whether out of religious inspiration, zealous ideology or soul-searching, build and inhabit the outposts and far out settlements of the West Bank. These are the young men and women who believe it is their right to reclaim the biblical lands of the Hebrews by working the soil and shepherding sheep and goats on the rolling hills of what I certainly believe and hope will one day be Palestine.
Once I understood what it was that I was watching: Yaakov inhabiting a ramshackle dwelling, Yaakov scrambling himself some eggs on a makeshift stove, Yaakov sitting with his sheep out on the green and rocky hillsides of South Hebron, I started to fidget and wondered if I should have paid the 25 shekels that supported this film on that evening. Quite viscerally, I felt as though a war was going on in my brain. Mass confusion, anger, disgust, curiosity. Why had I come on this night and why hadn't I been informed that this young man becoming more religious was actually a lunatic settler boy living in proximity to the Palestinian village of Sousia, where I helped families pick their olives two years ago without fear of retribution by the nearby settlers, only to have their trees chopped down three weeks later by those very settlers? Why was I being asked to listen to this story of a quest for self-definition in internationally disputed territory, which no one in the film seemed not consider as a major problem? I thought to myself, "who makes a film about Jews in the West Bank without a political agenda?" Or something along those lines...
After about ten minutes of befuddlement, I realized that instead of fighting what I was seeing, I had been given an unique opportunity. The opportunity to see, through the eyes of Israelis and the reactions of an Israeli presumably religious audience, an internal issue and phenomenon to which people living on the outside are not privy, and probably wouldn't have the patience to witness. And furthermore, I somehow understood that if I could just turn off my brain's judgment mechanism, I might learn something about another point of view. Another truth among the many truths that battle for position of dominant reality in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
From that mindset, I was able to enter the world of this family. A religious Israeli family who sought to abide by the laws and rules which they believe God commanded them to uphold. Along the way, their son felt lost, as though his life had not enough meaning and he set out on a spiritual quest appropriate for his social and religious milieu. Like many other young men and women of his community, he followed the courageous youth into the hills of Judea and Samaria. His family was not supportive, they called him all sorts of crazy. Throughout the film, in clips showing Yaakov and his mother, she would nag at him, "Why can't you just be normal? Find a wife, live in a house, why do you have to go live out there, alone?"
The documentary follows Yaakov to the Gaza Strip, in the nomenclature of his social group, Gush Katif. The family is filmed while making preparations before Shabbat, inhabiting an abandoned beach shack on the coastline of Gaza. Seemingly, this Shabbat was just before the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. From the perspective of the inhabitants of Gush Katif, the filmmaker takes the viewer there to see. Portraying a way of life that may seem idyllic for those who could relate to life there or did live there. One scene shows a young person going from shack to shack delivering a bouquet of flowers to make the Shabbat special and beautiful, a community service of sorts.
Another impressionable scene takes place is one in a synagogue, where a rabbi is imploring his congregants not to fight the soldiers who would take them out of their houses. That violence is not the answer and that everything would be fine. From the upstairs gallery a man screamed that Jews shouldn't exile Jews, that they had to raise arms, that they had kick and scream and fight to stay in their homes. The camera follows the man out into the street where he continues his tirade against the government, against the army, against the state. In all of this Yaakov is sitting by, watching with his friends the scenes unfolding -- I.D.F. soldiers carrying individuals who have refused to leave their homes to buses, babies crying, mothers with agonized faces. The Israeli Border Police dressed in heavy black uniforms with riot gear marching through the street. In the audience people were shifting their weight and sighing in their seats.
Later on when Eitan and I discussed the movie, he recalled his experiences of patrolling homes in Gaza after people were evacuated in 2005. He was in his officer's training course and his particular unit had to make sure that no one reentered and re-inhabited their homes in the middle of the night. He doesn't know what disengagement helped, for him it's difficult to see any benefits in light of everything that has happened since and everything that hasn't happened since. He remembers very clearly when he and another female soldier were on duty. He made her laugh at some joke and while enjoying the positive attention from this girl, a woman walked by and commented, "Oh yeah, laugh, really funny, I'm being taken out my home, but you, laugh..."
Eitan also remembers a commander who was religious. This guy's superior decided to make an example of him and took him to evacuate people from their homes before the soldiers. Not long after going in, this religious commander came out of a house with tears streaming down his face and was excused from the duty he was supposed to carry out.
From these stories I understand that it's all very complicated. It's your point of view. It's your upbringing. It's what you have been taught is right and wrong. It's about who you believe is in charge and what truths such faith requires you to uphold.
The issue of the army arises in the film as well. Yaakov's family insists that he enlist. They are a religious family but they are also a Zionistic one. One prominent scene with the filmmaker's grandmother, "Safta-le," as she is lovingly called by her grandkids, tells that when her family left Germany most of them went straight to the United States. But she was a Zionist, she believed in Israel and that just like all other peoples of the world, the Jews needed a country of their own as well. So she stayed to make a life for herself and raised a family and clearly cherished what had developed from nothing into a dream come true.
It is clear that Yaakov had mixed feelings about the draft. He had his ideas of roaming the hills with his sheep, living the simple life. And all his mother wanted him to do was get married already.
Another interesting scene was one in which Yaakov's father was working on his farm with a few cows. One can assume that the place is near to Jerusalem but it is unclear if it is a settlement of the Jerusalem area or what. Nevertheless, it becomes more evident when Mahmoud and Khalil enter the scene. Two Arab men who work with Yaakov's father. It is clear that these men are on good terms. Mahmoud's wife and her children are filmed visiting with Yaakov's family. It is difficult not to see the similarities between these two families, one Arab and Muslim, the other Israeli and Jewish. Both women have their hair covered, their tasks are to care for children and to serve the food. The men also have the tops of their heads covered and they talk about God and the similarities of their traditions. I wondered if I was meant to understand that not all settler families hate Arabs and vice versa. Or if it was just a fact of these two families lives, that they work, live, eat and play together.
Toward the end of the film Yaakov does join the army, but a scene of him walking along a road between the grassy hills, once again, only this time in full army gear, gun and rucksack, seemed foreboding and ominous. My fear was that the next scene would show how Yaakov had been attacked by Palestinians in the West Bank, walking alone in soldier's uniform, alone, in the land that he felt belonged to him.
Surprisingly, it is the filmmaker's brother whose funeral the viewers are unprepared to witness. Itzik, the brother who wanted to see his wife smile in the beginning of the film, had fallen in battle in the Second Lebanon War.
The film ended shortly after and I still felt a little confused. On the one hand, I felt like I had just watched an extremely intimate family home video. The stories depicted were of a boy coming of age, of a grandmother aging gracefully and happily , basking in the love of her children and grandchildren, the life cycle process as Itzik's wedding and the brit milah of his first child were filmed as well. But I couldn't get out of my mind the backdrop upon which all of these colorful life stories were developing. Settlements, outposts, Gaza, disengagement, the Second Lebanon War. The interplay of religion and nationalism, Zionism and idealism. And as the viewer, I was being asked to identify with all of these story lines as a fellow human being, as a member of a family who could relate to general themes, even though the specifics did not fit.
I think that if I knew Yaakov in his days as a youth of the hills, I would have insisted that he take his flock to the wide empty spaces between Herzilya and Netanya, and that he get the hell out of the hills of South or North Hebron. If I could sit down with his mother and father, I would ask if they knew that the biggest issues on their hands with regard to Yaakov living in the hills shouldn't have been whether or not he would get married or join the army, but rather that his youthful journey quest, and those of however many other youth of the hills there are roaming around the West Bank, directly contribute to the continuing deterioration of my safety and security in Israel proper. And if I could sit down with Safta, I would ask her if we could talk to her kids and grandkids about the wonder and miracle of Zionism and how we all have to get on the same page if we want to keep living here enjoying our state of the Jews.
I tried to turn off my political mind. But after this film, I think I became reacquainted with that awareness that how we live our lives does matter. What we believe to be our God-given rights, or, exercising our conception of entitlement, can contribute to another's enduring of an infernal hell. And our ignorance to the effect that our lives can have on another's, eventually leads to the destruction of us all. Because in the context of Israel and Palestine, the hills in which one may choose to go and find themselves, time and again, only too quickly turn into bloody battlefields.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Hope Beneath a Black Hat?
Rabbi Landau is a one man band. Sitting around the Shabbat table at a community dinner, throughout the Shabbat zmirot (songs) and sharing the sound of a trumpet, kazoo and a variety of drum beats emanated from Rabbi Landau's table corner into the upstairs women's gallery serving as a dining room, of the Beit-El Synagogue on Frishman Street in Tel Aviv. During introductions he told of his six children and two grandchildren, his service in the I.D.F. and his time spent in Irvine, California, as a rabbi and teacher. Not even fifty years old, Rabbi Landau's blue eyes sparkled from beneath his tall, stiff black hat, announcing his Haredi Jewish practice.
Due to my horrifying and scarring experience of having to prove myself a Jew to the Rabbinic Authority of Israel over the past year and a half (a saga for future entries when I am ready to write), the moment I see any man in a black hat and black suit,I assume the worst. Misogynist, sexist, bigot, racist, Ayatollah, etc...So when Rabbi Landau began to speak of the Divine in terms of energies, positive and negative, I was intrigued, yet still suspicious. Perhaps he was "different"?
Dinner progressed nicely, all English speakers from South Africa, England, the United States, Israel and Venezuela. The new rabbi at Beit-El is from Long Island and his wife grew up in Los Angeles. If she and I played a short round of Jewish geography I have no doubt we would have found acquaintances and friends in common. Between two married couples and another woman who works at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, there were nearly ten children running around the table and up and down the stairs, to and from the sanctuary with its high ceilings and dripping glass-bead chandeliers.
At the close of dinner and the blessings after the meal, the group returned to the sanctuary to listen to an after-dinner talk given by Rabbi Landau, before dessert.
Rabbi Landau ascended to the slightly elevated pulpit, introduced himself and the topic of his talk, an organization by the name of Kemach, the Hebrew word for flour..."Without flour there is no Torah," he told me later.
In Israel, amidst the myriad of problems with which this society wrestles, there is the issue of religious men, Haredim, who are not part of the work force, collect child allowances from social security, receive a stipend for all day learning, and who expect their wives to raise one dozen children as well as earn an income that attempts to make ends meet. This dynamic is problematic for a number of reasons. The amount of shekels spent each year on these studious (I have other adjectives to express but won't) religious men is astonishing, enough to be a serious concern to the state. The number of enrolled yeshiva students has reached such high numbers that the State of Israel knows now, that the system as it exists will cause great financial hardship, that is already unjust and unacceptable, to the rest of the population, and will only worsen in the next decade or so.
While it seems as though no one is doing anything about this except for the government, which has thus far failed to make much of a difference through incentive programs for work-study and/or professional training of these masses of yeshiva students, members of the Haredi community, in fact, are coming up with solutions themselves. Baruch HaShem.
According to Rabbi Landau, and to Jewish Law, it is not and never was the norm for Jewish men to study all day and all night, not earning or contributing to the livelihood of the family. Every great Jewish scholar or mystic had some profession -- carpentry, astronomy, medicine, banking etc...If one reads any aspect of Jewish marriage law it becomes very clear very quickly that the onus for providing food, clothing, shelter, and a general standard of living for the family falls upon the male, the husband. In the event of divorce, the husband is also responsible for maintaining the lifestyle of his now former wife, preserving the standard of living to which she and their children were accustomed during the marriage. Thus, the trend that prevails in Israel today amongst Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and also probably in the Diaspora is not only an historical anomaly, it is also not in keeping with Jewish law.
Well I'll be damned. So what happened?
Rabbi Landau recounted that all of this started in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Six million Jews perished. Rabbis, teachers, scholars, texts, traditions, and so on were destroyed and imperiled. The Jewish world had to respond to the crisis of losing the faith, the tradition and the scholarly study of Judaism, and quickly. Thus came the yeshivas, the all-day study, the exclusive concentration on advancing the Jewish world from near extinction to landing back on its feet.
Over the past sixty years and change, the method worked. There are more Jewish scholars, learners of Torah, rabbis, etc., than there have ever been in Jewish history. However, with this reality has also come the reality of an impoverished population that is detached from the understanding of how a state operates, functions and provides for its citizens.
Rabbi Landau offered an example of a young man living in B'nai Brak (a religious city second only to Jerusalem, perhaps). Landau asked, let's call him Yossi -- how Yossi thought electricity was paid for to provide light in the street lamps of B'nai Brak at night. Yossi replied, "The city provides the electricity."
To which Rabbi Landau responded, "And where does the city get the funding to pay for the electricity?"
"From the government," exclaimed an exasperated Yossi.
"And from where does the government get the money to provide the city with the funds to generate electricity?," asked Landau.
To this question Yossi shrugged his shoulders in reply, allowing for Rabbi Landau to explain to Yossi that the money comes from the people, who pay taxes, who work -- all of which Yossi didn't do, and moreover, his study stipend came from these people as well.
In Judaism there is a concept of parnassah b'kavod, making a living in a dignified way. Kemach is an organization that works gently and carefully within the Haredi community to encourage professional education and training that leads to job placement in viable markets such as computer software, engineering and law, to name but a few. Providing 85% of tuition costs to Kemach participants, those who receive funding are tracked by the organization to ensure that the money is going to the appropriate institution of learning. If the participant fails to finish whatever academic or skills-training program they started, they are held accountable for every shekel of the grant they were given by the organization. Landau boasted that out of 3,000 participants thus far, only forty-something students dropped out, and they were made to pay back what funds they had taken.
In addition to Kemach's placing and funding scores of young to middle-aged men in education programs, they also assist in the job search, marketing responsible and "moral" workers to companies throughout Israel.
Of course there are numerous problems and potential glitches with this. First of all, no Haredi rabbi or religious Knesset member has or will publicly endorse the work of Kemach lest they be accused of supporting the secularization of the men of their community. Furthermore, the men who sign up for these grants have to sometimes hide it from their families or break the news to them after a certain amount of time, for fear of shaming and disgracing the family.
Imagine, a 20th century, fabricated crisis-management mechanism -- that of intensive no-work yeshiva learning -- has actually become more powerful and influential upon rabbis and their disciples than thousands of years of historical precedence of balance between religion and livelihood. This pressure exists to such an extent that Landau retold conversations with rabbis who feared bodily harm if they openly supported such a venture that will put the Haredim amidst the hilonim (secular people).
From another angle, one of my problems with the ultra-Orthodox is their lack of respect for my choices and my lifestyle, "my" meaning a secular way of life. Israel has yet to become a theocracy, it is still a pluralistic state and quite simply, the demographic targeted by Kemach is made up of people who are hostile and sometimes violent toward secular society as evidenced in the recent and ongoing attacks against a software firm in Jerusalem that decided to open for business on Shabbat, as well as a parking lot that decided to accept payment and cars on Friday nights and Saturdays.
While Landau was extremely enthusiastic and positive, hopeful and charismatic, and I too found my heart beating a little faster at the prospect of a brighter future, I couldn't help but think how far could this actually go if religious leaders aren't willing to condone these sorts of ventures publicly? Moreover, if Haredi men come into the secular, non-segregated workforce of Israel where men and women interact freely, "modest" dress codes are not enforced and people of all levels of observance from much to none share the same space, what will happen? Will the workplace start to accommodate them or vice versa? And what happens if some men do start to secularize a bit, exposed to new information and alternative ways of life, with the freedom to think for themselves in an environment completely different than that in which they were raised? Will the program prove itself stronger than the force of the fear of change?
Although Rabbi Landau, even with his millions of dollars-strong budget, has a seemingly insurmountable uphill battle to fight, and the extent of his work is curtailed by the very leaders of the people he's trying to reach, after his talk I couldn't help but feel uplifted.
There is no doubt that having more people contributing to the Israeli economy versus sucking it dry would help the state greatly. Also, trying to bridge the gap between secular and religious people maybe helpful to more (Jewish) citizens of Israel feeling that that is exactly what they are, citizens of a country with a common cause and interest in long-term survival, and not just until the Messiah comes.
Due to my horrifying and scarring experience of having to prove myself a Jew to the Rabbinic Authority of Israel over the past year and a half (a saga for future entries when I am ready to write), the moment I see any man in a black hat and black suit,I assume the worst. Misogynist, sexist, bigot, racist, Ayatollah, etc...So when Rabbi Landau began to speak of the Divine in terms of energies, positive and negative, I was intrigued, yet still suspicious. Perhaps he was "different"?
Dinner progressed nicely, all English speakers from South Africa, England, the United States, Israel and Venezuela. The new rabbi at Beit-El is from Long Island and his wife grew up in Los Angeles. If she and I played a short round of Jewish geography I have no doubt we would have found acquaintances and friends in common. Between two married couples and another woman who works at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, there were nearly ten children running around the table and up and down the stairs, to and from the sanctuary with its high ceilings and dripping glass-bead chandeliers.
At the close of dinner and the blessings after the meal, the group returned to the sanctuary to listen to an after-dinner talk given by Rabbi Landau, before dessert.
Rabbi Landau ascended to the slightly elevated pulpit, introduced himself and the topic of his talk, an organization by the name of Kemach, the Hebrew word for flour..."Without flour there is no Torah," he told me later.
In Israel, amidst the myriad of problems with which this society wrestles, there is the issue of religious men, Haredim, who are not part of the work force, collect child allowances from social security, receive a stipend for all day learning, and who expect their wives to raise one dozen children as well as earn an income that attempts to make ends meet. This dynamic is problematic for a number of reasons. The amount of shekels spent each year on these studious (I have other adjectives to express but won't) religious men is astonishing, enough to be a serious concern to the state. The number of enrolled yeshiva students has reached such high numbers that the State of Israel knows now, that the system as it exists will cause great financial hardship, that is already unjust and unacceptable, to the rest of the population, and will only worsen in the next decade or so.
While it seems as though no one is doing anything about this except for the government, which has thus far failed to make much of a difference through incentive programs for work-study and/or professional training of these masses of yeshiva students, members of the Haredi community, in fact, are coming up with solutions themselves. Baruch HaShem.
According to Rabbi Landau, and to Jewish Law, it is not and never was the norm for Jewish men to study all day and all night, not earning or contributing to the livelihood of the family. Every great Jewish scholar or mystic had some profession -- carpentry, astronomy, medicine, banking etc...If one reads any aspect of Jewish marriage law it becomes very clear very quickly that the onus for providing food, clothing, shelter, and a general standard of living for the family falls upon the male, the husband. In the event of divorce, the husband is also responsible for maintaining the lifestyle of his now former wife, preserving the standard of living to which she and their children were accustomed during the marriage. Thus, the trend that prevails in Israel today amongst Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and also probably in the Diaspora is not only an historical anomaly, it is also not in keeping with Jewish law.
Well I'll be damned. So what happened?
Rabbi Landau recounted that all of this started in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Six million Jews perished. Rabbis, teachers, scholars, texts, traditions, and so on were destroyed and imperiled. The Jewish world had to respond to the crisis of losing the faith, the tradition and the scholarly study of Judaism, and quickly. Thus came the yeshivas, the all-day study, the exclusive concentration on advancing the Jewish world from near extinction to landing back on its feet.
Over the past sixty years and change, the method worked. There are more Jewish scholars, learners of Torah, rabbis, etc., than there have ever been in Jewish history. However, with this reality has also come the reality of an impoverished population that is detached from the understanding of how a state operates, functions and provides for its citizens.
Rabbi Landau offered an example of a young man living in B'nai Brak (a religious city second only to Jerusalem, perhaps). Landau asked, let's call him Yossi -- how Yossi thought electricity was paid for to provide light in the street lamps of B'nai Brak at night. Yossi replied, "The city provides the electricity."
To which Rabbi Landau responded, "And where does the city get the funding to pay for the electricity?"
"From the government," exclaimed an exasperated Yossi.
"And from where does the government get the money to provide the city with the funds to generate electricity?," asked Landau.
To this question Yossi shrugged his shoulders in reply, allowing for Rabbi Landau to explain to Yossi that the money comes from the people, who pay taxes, who work -- all of which Yossi didn't do, and moreover, his study stipend came from these people as well.
In Judaism there is a concept of parnassah b'kavod, making a living in a dignified way. Kemach is an organization that works gently and carefully within the Haredi community to encourage professional education and training that leads to job placement in viable markets such as computer software, engineering and law, to name but a few. Providing 85% of tuition costs to Kemach participants, those who receive funding are tracked by the organization to ensure that the money is going to the appropriate institution of learning. If the participant fails to finish whatever academic or skills-training program they started, they are held accountable for every shekel of the grant they were given by the organization. Landau boasted that out of 3,000 participants thus far, only forty-something students dropped out, and they were made to pay back what funds they had taken.
In addition to Kemach's placing and funding scores of young to middle-aged men in education programs, they also assist in the job search, marketing responsible and "moral" workers to companies throughout Israel.
Of course there are numerous problems and potential glitches with this. First of all, no Haredi rabbi or religious Knesset member has or will publicly endorse the work of Kemach lest they be accused of supporting the secularization of the men of their community. Furthermore, the men who sign up for these grants have to sometimes hide it from their families or break the news to them after a certain amount of time, for fear of shaming and disgracing the family.
Imagine, a 20th century, fabricated crisis-management mechanism -- that of intensive no-work yeshiva learning -- has actually become more powerful and influential upon rabbis and their disciples than thousands of years of historical precedence of balance between religion and livelihood. This pressure exists to such an extent that Landau retold conversations with rabbis who feared bodily harm if they openly supported such a venture that will put the Haredim amidst the hilonim (secular people).
From another angle, one of my problems with the ultra-Orthodox is their lack of respect for my choices and my lifestyle, "my" meaning a secular way of life. Israel has yet to become a theocracy, it is still a pluralistic state and quite simply, the demographic targeted by Kemach is made up of people who are hostile and sometimes violent toward secular society as evidenced in the recent and ongoing attacks against a software firm in Jerusalem that decided to open for business on Shabbat, as well as a parking lot that decided to accept payment and cars on Friday nights and Saturdays.
While Landau was extremely enthusiastic and positive, hopeful and charismatic, and I too found my heart beating a little faster at the prospect of a brighter future, I couldn't help but think how far could this actually go if religious leaders aren't willing to condone these sorts of ventures publicly? Moreover, if Haredi men come into the secular, non-segregated workforce of Israel where men and women interact freely, "modest" dress codes are not enforced and people of all levels of observance from much to none share the same space, what will happen? Will the workplace start to accommodate them or vice versa? And what happens if some men do start to secularize a bit, exposed to new information and alternative ways of life, with the freedom to think for themselves in an environment completely different than that in which they were raised? Will the program prove itself stronger than the force of the fear of change?
Although Rabbi Landau, even with his millions of dollars-strong budget, has a seemingly insurmountable uphill battle to fight, and the extent of his work is curtailed by the very leaders of the people he's trying to reach, after his talk I couldn't help but feel uplifted.
There is no doubt that having more people contributing to the Israeli economy versus sucking it dry would help the state greatly. Also, trying to bridge the gap between secular and religious people maybe helpful to more (Jewish) citizens of Israel feeling that that is exactly what they are, citizens of a country with a common cause and interest in long-term survival, and not just until the Messiah comes.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Hate Crime in Tel Aviv
In Tel Aviv on Saturday two young adults were murdered while hanging out at a gay and lesbian community center. According to newspaper reports, a man dressed in black, wearing a black mask entered the room with an M-16 and opened fire onto the young people who were socializing, listening to music, snacking, relaxing, feeling safe. Two are dead, several are wounded and two remain in critical condition.
Police are searching for the criminal but have thus far not found the hateful murderer.
There is something completely shattering and heart shredding about this crime. Yes, in Israel, it is popular and even acceptable to have less than amicable feelings toward Arabs, toward foreign workers, toward refugees. It turns out, in fact, that Israel suffers from more than its fair share of xenophobia, racism, sexism and all of the other "isms" that can be classified as the ills of society.
But I believe that what happened in Tel Aviv yesterday, to a group of teenagers who meet together to discuss how to deal with their being "different" from "mainstream" society with all of its institutionalized fictions, is absolutely blood curdling. And I am fearful of what it means for Israeli society as a whole.
True, more unbelievable things have happened. For example, the murder of Prime Minister Rabin by the hands of a religious zealot. If a Jewish-Israeli could assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister in cold blood at a peace rally, perhaps anything can happen.
So maybe with perspective, societies, within their makeup, set themselves up for these tragedies from time to time, that may or may not serve as a wake up call to the realities -- of the convoluted and intermingling dynamics of co-existence, or, resistance to diversity -- on-the-ground. And the most tragic part in the aftermath, in addition to the loss of loved ones, of dignity, of perceived images of our open society, our Tel Aviv of many colors, streams, peoples and so on, is how unprepared we are to deal with what all of this means. And how to deal with the situation before we have all of the facts, or even a lead on a suspect that could be apprehended by the police.
After discussions with friends and mulling things over myself, I believe the suspect could be member to one of two streams of society. Either, the perpetrator is a religious person, as the newspapers are presuming, an activist who took to heart the homophobic message of the religious parties such as Shas, which is being singled out as the harbinger of this hatred. Perhaps a young man with questionable mental stability served as the perfect candidate to carry out this sickening vision of divine justice, as some communities have quietly feted this act to be. Or, the individual is part of the neo-Nazi movement in Israel. Yes, the neo-Nazi movement in Israel that is primarily populated by non-Jewish Russian immigrants who forged documents to gain citizenship to a state desperate to win the demographics game against the rising Arab population.
If either of these suspects prove to be the criminal, in my opinion both are equally foreboding and worrisome.
Because how does a society deal with intolerance against a population -- a tax-paying, social security paying, army serving, active and contributing sector of the people? If it is a matter of education, then I believe the damage is already done. Indoctrination of this sort has gone on for years and now someone has come of age in that environment and acted on the hatred and fear of other, that teachers, parents and community members taught him, or her. How does a society address this hatred if the education is taking place within the religious school system over which the secular government seems to have no authority over, and, in light of the glue that keeps the coalition of the current government together, a government which seems to cater to this population's demands to the detriment of the rest?
If it is a neo-Nazi group, what sort of apparatus can be set up in a society, in part, made up of victims or offspring of victims of a Nazi regime? A society in which Nazi ideology -- discriminating, hunting and murdering of another human being in the name of removing that identity from humankind -- seemingly could never take hold. If we cannot even conceive that it could happen, then it is difficult to grasp how to manage once the inconceivable occurs.
Call it Nazi, call it neo, call it fundamentalism, we have a problem.
The police's response or recommendation to the community following the shooting was to close down the city's gay and lesbian clubs and other centers devoted to these people in Tel Aviv. If I'm not mistaken, that is an action signaling the success of terrorism. I live in Israel, and if I'm not mistaken, once again, last time I walked into my university or a local cafe or a busy restaurant or a mall or a doctor's office building or a bank (I can go on) a security guard sat at the entrance, checking bags and faces. So why close down the community and its businesses and support centers? Why not beef up the security? The gay community has been violated, abused, traumatized and threatened. It is the unnegotiable duty of the government and its law enforcing bodies to ensure the safety and security of this population, that they may be allowed to live their lives free of fear from being targets of hate crimes.
As word spread in the hour following the shooting, members of the gay community and friends gathered in a demonstration against the hateful act. In moments like these there is comfort in the public gathering, to be in solidarity against what is ugly, destructive and putrid in our human inclination. But what comes next? How does whatever it is, come next? Who will lead? Who has the answers, and how will this never happen again?
Police are searching for the criminal but have thus far not found the hateful murderer.
There is something completely shattering and heart shredding about this crime. Yes, in Israel, it is popular and even acceptable to have less than amicable feelings toward Arabs, toward foreign workers, toward refugees. It turns out, in fact, that Israel suffers from more than its fair share of xenophobia, racism, sexism and all of the other "isms" that can be classified as the ills of society.
But I believe that what happened in Tel Aviv yesterday, to a group of teenagers who meet together to discuss how to deal with their being "different" from "mainstream" society with all of its institutionalized fictions, is absolutely blood curdling. And I am fearful of what it means for Israeli society as a whole.
True, more unbelievable things have happened. For example, the murder of Prime Minister Rabin by the hands of a religious zealot. If a Jewish-Israeli could assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister in cold blood at a peace rally, perhaps anything can happen.
So maybe with perspective, societies, within their makeup, set themselves up for these tragedies from time to time, that may or may not serve as a wake up call to the realities -- of the convoluted and intermingling dynamics of co-existence, or, resistance to diversity -- on-the-ground. And the most tragic part in the aftermath, in addition to the loss of loved ones, of dignity, of perceived images of our open society, our Tel Aviv of many colors, streams, peoples and so on, is how unprepared we are to deal with what all of this means. And how to deal with the situation before we have all of the facts, or even a lead on a suspect that could be apprehended by the police.
After discussions with friends and mulling things over myself, I believe the suspect could be member to one of two streams of society. Either, the perpetrator is a religious person, as the newspapers are presuming, an activist who took to heart the homophobic message of the religious parties such as Shas, which is being singled out as the harbinger of this hatred. Perhaps a young man with questionable mental stability served as the perfect candidate to carry out this sickening vision of divine justice, as some communities have quietly feted this act to be. Or, the individual is part of the neo-Nazi movement in Israel. Yes, the neo-Nazi movement in Israel that is primarily populated by non-Jewish Russian immigrants who forged documents to gain citizenship to a state desperate to win the demographics game against the rising Arab population.
If either of these suspects prove to be the criminal, in my opinion both are equally foreboding and worrisome.
Because how does a society deal with intolerance against a population -- a tax-paying, social security paying, army serving, active and contributing sector of the people? If it is a matter of education, then I believe the damage is already done. Indoctrination of this sort has gone on for years and now someone has come of age in that environment and acted on the hatred and fear of other, that teachers, parents and community members taught him, or her. How does a society address this hatred if the education is taking place within the religious school system over which the secular government seems to have no authority over, and, in light of the glue that keeps the coalition of the current government together, a government which seems to cater to this population's demands to the detriment of the rest?
If it is a neo-Nazi group, what sort of apparatus can be set up in a society, in part, made up of victims or offspring of victims of a Nazi regime? A society in which Nazi ideology -- discriminating, hunting and murdering of another human being in the name of removing that identity from humankind -- seemingly could never take hold. If we cannot even conceive that it could happen, then it is difficult to grasp how to manage once the inconceivable occurs.
Call it Nazi, call it neo, call it fundamentalism, we have a problem.
The police's response or recommendation to the community following the shooting was to close down the city's gay and lesbian clubs and other centers devoted to these people in Tel Aviv. If I'm not mistaken, that is an action signaling the success of terrorism. I live in Israel, and if I'm not mistaken, once again, last time I walked into my university or a local cafe or a busy restaurant or a mall or a doctor's office building or a bank (I can go on) a security guard sat at the entrance, checking bags and faces. So why close down the community and its businesses and support centers? Why not beef up the security? The gay community has been violated, abused, traumatized and threatened. It is the unnegotiable duty of the government and its law enforcing bodies to ensure the safety and security of this population, that they may be allowed to live their lives free of fear from being targets of hate crimes.
As word spread in the hour following the shooting, members of the gay community and friends gathered in a demonstration against the hateful act. In moments like these there is comfort in the public gathering, to be in solidarity against what is ugly, destructive and putrid in our human inclination. But what comes next? How does whatever it is, come next? Who will lead? Who has the answers, and how will this never happen again?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Nablus the Journey, Part I
When I think of the West Bank City of Nablus I recall an article I read a few years ago at a point when Nablus was under siege. I have this distinct image in my mind, a description from the article I read, of the sliding door of a grocery store barely open. A sign to residents that there was bread to be had, if one was willing to risk their life.
Nablus under curfew meant no one could leave their homes, the streets were patrolled, rather, overwhelmed by the Israel Defense Forces. Anyone who broke the curfew was assumed to be dangerous and ill-meaning and thus a target. A run to the grocery store turned literally into just that. Neither bread nor the return of the designated person to go to the store were guaranteed.
I never imagined that Nablus would be a place I would one day visit.
Sunday morning, my friend Joyce and I met at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv.
At nearly nine o'clock in the morning, late July, the city is already steaming and stewing with humidity. The sun is beating down upon the tops of hatless heads and passengers waiting at bus stops, upon vendors selling fruits, shoes and cookies, and African refugees hanging about in the nearby park.
Heading toward familiar Jerusalem, we had our instructions to Nablus from the friend we would visit who is currently volunteer teaching at a community center in Nablus that is run by Tomorrow's Youth Organization. Making our way from West Jerusalem to the East Jerusalem Bus Station, the excitement and anxiety kept us both light in our steps, despite the rising heat of the dry, more mild morning of summer in Jerusalem.
After a little bit of wandering about in search of Bus 18 to Ramallah, by the guidance of Najat at the PIJ, we scored two seats on the green and white-striped minibus that would take us through the Qalandia checkpoint and into the West Bank.
Already two years have passed since I traveled to Birzeit via Ramallah in order to interview a professor at the university there. Like many others, I noticed that from the checkpoint to downtown Ramallah, a tremendous amount of development has taken place.
Ramallah is exploding. What used to be a rather depressing few kilometers, from the border of Jerusalem to the heart of this bustling West Bank city, are now dotted with apartments and stores, furniture shops, restaurants and the ubiquitous car garages or repair shops that are so abundant in this part of Palestine.
Joyce and I got down from the bus and found our way, thanks to a few helpful folks and and American-Palestinian man who was waiting to make his way to Jerusalem, to the Ramallah bus station. Using our newly achieved Arabic literacy we managed to locate the proper bus that said Nablus-Ramallah in its windshield. Moments later we were seated and feeling giddy with accomplishment and success.
In all, the journey to Nablus took four hours, a considerable amount of time when taking into account that Nablus is but 44 kilometers or 27 miles from Tel Aviv. (Sixty kilometers from Jerusalem, through which we passed due to the situation.) However, these four hours were hardly dull, with the last leg offering a sense of great adventure.
The long blue bus with brown-gray and crusty interior smelled of stale cigarette smoke. But the company was anything but dull. A woman sitting in front of us, of questionable sanity, was going on and on about something we couldn't understand. The men sitting around us were goading her on, as she insisted that she occupy a row of two seats instead of one at the price of ten shekels. The bus driver suggested she pay another ten and then be fully entitled to her space. At one point a Chinese man sat down next to her, another rarity in these parts, but soon thereafter he found himself another spot in which to sit.
Two young men sitting behind us were clearly fascinated with these two foreign girls siting on the bus with them. As we pulled out of the station it was obvious that they would be commenting and indirectly interacting with us the whole way to Nablus. Once in awhile words like "America" or "hello" and other signals of communication were coming our way. If we were interested in the scenery passing by, they were interested in letting us know what we were seeing.
Palestine is hilly. Rolling hills of sparse vegetation, beautiful nonetheless. Terraced land with olive trees and every few kilometers, a lot of car wrecks in all sorts of disrepair.
Of course I was looking for this spider web system of apartheid roads for which so many in the world criticize Israel. But our route was rather direct and according to one of my professors, in the past few months many of the roads that were closed to Palestinians have been opened and there is more and more free passage through the area. I am sure that this is both accurate and also inaccurate. As I have mentioned before, when it comes to the settlements and the West Bank, at times, I have imagined it to be the wild wild west. What drives and determines policy or military action is confusing and there are always so many sides and stories accompanying each event, that I begin to liken the reporting of activity in the West Bank to "choose your own adventure" novels.
The first checkpoint we went through was empty, no soldiers and no stopping, just an empty concrete structure. But further along near an overpass between nothing and more nothing, seven I.D.F. soldiers were standing around with a truck between them. And after this, I noticed the settlements on the hilltops above us. Places like Shilo and Eli and a few others along the way. These structures had red-tiled slanted roofs without the characteristic black water tanks of Arab villages and cities. Signs began to appear in Hebrew and at the bus stops along the road, young Jewish-settler women were talking on cell phones waiting for Egged buses that I imagine expressly serve these settler populations.
Here I need to say that when I venture into these parts of Israel and Palestine, there is a sort of split that occurs in my psyche. I see everything. I note everything. I react mildly to everything, the things that surprise me, the things that I expect. I can only feel later and analyze later, and often it is painful and affects my mood and general well being for awhile. It is very difficult to take it all in. So much of it simply doesn't make sense. But, first, the visual observations.
I was surprised that we didn't reach a guarded checkpoint until very near to the entrance of Nablus. I thought the journey would be a frustrating stop and start with inspections and the like. It was not.
I was shocked to see white, clearly Jewish religious young women in their modest yet modern dress at the bus stops. I couldn't understand what the hell they were doing out there and why anyone would want to live in the middle of nowhere where they are not wanted and how they could believe and buy into this fanatical ideology that the Jews have the right to populate all of the Biblical Eretz Yisrael. And on the other side of the coin, how they believe that the Palestinians in between them have no right to be there. I recall a thought passing through my mind regarding the soldiers. What mother in her right mind living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, Holon or Ashdod wants her son to be standing with a weapon in the midst of Palestine to protect people whose ideology she herself deems crazy and unwarranted?
And of course the inevitable, how can this be going on? I just couldn't and still can't understand. And frankly, I don't want to understand why these fewer than 300,000 people (because apparently there are different strands of settler feelings and policies on being in illegal settlements), with every day of their lives, feel entitled to put Israel in a position in which the conflict can never end. In which the hands of Israel are tied as global civil society challenges, more and more, whether or not the State of Israel is a legitimate thing or not.
Accusations of apartheid although inaccurate and misdiagnosed are nonetheless spreading throughout academic and social circles. The Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) Campaign against Israel has recently expanded its efforts to protest against Israeli academics and cultural events. This is above and beyond the boycotting of West Bank products, which is a reasonable approach in trying to remove any economic incentive to perpetuating the occupation. Now though, this is a movement attempting to get the world, not to rally around the realization of the Palestinian state, but rather to fight for the erosion of favor, interest, curiosity and inclusion of Israel, and all that is Israeli, in the global community. A simple phrase in Hebrew allows for verdict on that realization, "Lo moomlatz," not recommended.
Returning to the journey. The bus began the approach to Nablus. On the right side of the road at the tops of lampposts and poles there were faded posters of young men who had martyred themselves for the struggle for Palestine. Such young faces, with images of guns on either sides of their head and faded blue and red Arabic writing praising their efforts and their sacrifice. The checkpoint before the entrance into the city was manned with soldiers who waved us through and on our way.
We had finally arrived in Nablus.
Nablus under curfew meant no one could leave their homes, the streets were patrolled, rather, overwhelmed by the Israel Defense Forces. Anyone who broke the curfew was assumed to be dangerous and ill-meaning and thus a target. A run to the grocery store turned literally into just that. Neither bread nor the return of the designated person to go to the store were guaranteed.
I never imagined that Nablus would be a place I would one day visit.
Sunday morning, my friend Joyce and I met at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv.
At nearly nine o'clock in the morning, late July, the city is already steaming and stewing with humidity. The sun is beating down upon the tops of hatless heads and passengers waiting at bus stops, upon vendors selling fruits, shoes and cookies, and African refugees hanging about in the nearby park.
Heading toward familiar Jerusalem, we had our instructions to Nablus from the friend we would visit who is currently volunteer teaching at a community center in Nablus that is run by Tomorrow's Youth Organization. Making our way from West Jerusalem to the East Jerusalem Bus Station, the excitement and anxiety kept us both light in our steps, despite the rising heat of the dry, more mild morning of summer in Jerusalem.
After a little bit of wandering about in search of Bus 18 to Ramallah, by the guidance of Najat at the PIJ, we scored two seats on the green and white-striped minibus that would take us through the Qalandia checkpoint and into the West Bank.
Already two years have passed since I traveled to Birzeit via Ramallah in order to interview a professor at the university there. Like many others, I noticed that from the checkpoint to downtown Ramallah, a tremendous amount of development has taken place.
Ramallah is exploding. What used to be a rather depressing few kilometers, from the border of Jerusalem to the heart of this bustling West Bank city, are now dotted with apartments and stores, furniture shops, restaurants and the ubiquitous car garages or repair shops that are so abundant in this part of Palestine.
Joyce and I got down from the bus and found our way, thanks to a few helpful folks and and American-Palestinian man who was waiting to make his way to Jerusalem, to the Ramallah bus station. Using our newly achieved Arabic literacy we managed to locate the proper bus that said Nablus-Ramallah in its windshield. Moments later we were seated and feeling giddy with accomplishment and success.
In all, the journey to Nablus took four hours, a considerable amount of time when taking into account that Nablus is but 44 kilometers or 27 miles from Tel Aviv. (Sixty kilometers from Jerusalem, through which we passed due to the situation.) However, these four hours were hardly dull, with the last leg offering a sense of great adventure.
The long blue bus with brown-gray and crusty interior smelled of stale cigarette smoke. But the company was anything but dull. A woman sitting in front of us, of questionable sanity, was going on and on about something we couldn't understand. The men sitting around us were goading her on, as she insisted that she occupy a row of two seats instead of one at the price of ten shekels. The bus driver suggested she pay another ten and then be fully entitled to her space. At one point a Chinese man sat down next to her, another rarity in these parts, but soon thereafter he found himself another spot in which to sit.
Two young men sitting behind us were clearly fascinated with these two foreign girls siting on the bus with them. As we pulled out of the station it was obvious that they would be commenting and indirectly interacting with us the whole way to Nablus. Once in awhile words like "America" or "hello" and other signals of communication were coming our way. If we were interested in the scenery passing by, they were interested in letting us know what we were seeing.
Palestine is hilly. Rolling hills of sparse vegetation, beautiful nonetheless. Terraced land with olive trees and every few kilometers, a lot of car wrecks in all sorts of disrepair.
Of course I was looking for this spider web system of apartheid roads for which so many in the world criticize Israel. But our route was rather direct and according to one of my professors, in the past few months many of the roads that were closed to Palestinians have been opened and there is more and more free passage through the area. I am sure that this is both accurate and also inaccurate. As I have mentioned before, when it comes to the settlements and the West Bank, at times, I have imagined it to be the wild wild west. What drives and determines policy or military action is confusing and there are always so many sides and stories accompanying each event, that I begin to liken the reporting of activity in the West Bank to "choose your own adventure" novels.
The first checkpoint we went through was empty, no soldiers and no stopping, just an empty concrete structure. But further along near an overpass between nothing and more nothing, seven I.D.F. soldiers were standing around with a truck between them. And after this, I noticed the settlements on the hilltops above us. Places like Shilo and Eli and a few others along the way. These structures had red-tiled slanted roofs without the characteristic black water tanks of Arab villages and cities. Signs began to appear in Hebrew and at the bus stops along the road, young Jewish-settler women were talking on cell phones waiting for Egged buses that I imagine expressly serve these settler populations.
Here I need to say that when I venture into these parts of Israel and Palestine, there is a sort of split that occurs in my psyche. I see everything. I note everything. I react mildly to everything, the things that surprise me, the things that I expect. I can only feel later and analyze later, and often it is painful and affects my mood and general well being for awhile. It is very difficult to take it all in. So much of it simply doesn't make sense. But, first, the visual observations.
I was surprised that we didn't reach a guarded checkpoint until very near to the entrance of Nablus. I thought the journey would be a frustrating stop and start with inspections and the like. It was not.
I was shocked to see white, clearly Jewish religious young women in their modest yet modern dress at the bus stops. I couldn't understand what the hell they were doing out there and why anyone would want to live in the middle of nowhere where they are not wanted and how they could believe and buy into this fanatical ideology that the Jews have the right to populate all of the Biblical Eretz Yisrael. And on the other side of the coin, how they believe that the Palestinians in between them have no right to be there. I recall a thought passing through my mind regarding the soldiers. What mother in her right mind living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, Holon or Ashdod wants her son to be standing with a weapon in the midst of Palestine to protect people whose ideology she herself deems crazy and unwarranted?
And of course the inevitable, how can this be going on? I just couldn't and still can't understand. And frankly, I don't want to understand why these fewer than 300,000 people (because apparently there are different strands of settler feelings and policies on being in illegal settlements), with every day of their lives, feel entitled to put Israel in a position in which the conflict can never end. In which the hands of Israel are tied as global civil society challenges, more and more, whether or not the State of Israel is a legitimate thing or not.
Accusations of apartheid although inaccurate and misdiagnosed are nonetheless spreading throughout academic and social circles. The Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) Campaign against Israel has recently expanded its efforts to protest against Israeli academics and cultural events. This is above and beyond the boycotting of West Bank products, which is a reasonable approach in trying to remove any economic incentive to perpetuating the occupation. Now though, this is a movement attempting to get the world, not to rally around the realization of the Palestinian state, but rather to fight for the erosion of favor, interest, curiosity and inclusion of Israel, and all that is Israeli, in the global community. A simple phrase in Hebrew allows for verdict on that realization, "Lo moomlatz," not recommended.
Returning to the journey. The bus began the approach to Nablus. On the right side of the road at the tops of lampposts and poles there were faded posters of young men who had martyred themselves for the struggle for Palestine. Such young faces, with images of guns on either sides of their head and faded blue and red Arabic writing praising their efforts and their sacrifice. The checkpoint before the entrance into the city was manned with soldiers who waved us through and on our way.
We had finally arrived in Nablus.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Simply Lowered into the Earth
One week ago Friday I spent nearly 12 hours in a hospital watching my boyfriend's father fight the cancer that took him away a few hours after the entrance of Shabbat. With Eitan, his mother, sister and brother, I watched Eitan's father, Yisrael, take his final breaths through a bag of oxygen and a telling heart monitor that we all watched in fear and a dreaded knowing of how the evening was going to end.
Having watched my own grandfather slip away from the world of the living just eight months ago, I promised Eitan that once the struggle finished, he would see his father at peace, there would be no more worry in his brow or pain in his clenched jaw. Just as my grandfather let go of all of us with a tear and a smile, so too would his abba.
The death of my boyfriend's father is not a likely topic for a blog that seeks to explore truths on the journey to resolution. But after a year of studying the history of the Middle East, I'm not so sure that resolution is an option, but the truths are still important for the hope that someday something will change. And so, after witnessing the death, burial and mourning rituals for Eitan's father, I believe that there is a truth to be told, a truth of Israel as the state for the Jewish people, to be Jewish in sorrow and in joy.
Eitan's father came from Romania to Israel in the 1960s. Much of his family was killed in the Holocaust, he was born in 1949, one year after the birth of the State of Israel. Yisrael Harod grew up in Yash, a small Romanian city, perhaps even a village. He grew up in an abusive household until his mother left his father for a better life. Yisrael and his mother were poor, very poor. Many of his meals were bread and sometimes onions that made the meal seem like a feast. As a boy at school, as a Jewish boy, he was often beat up and made fun of. He could not always play with other children for fear of his safety. I imagine the fact that he was destitute did not help the situation either. He managed to get small jobs here and there and he saved his meager earnings so that he could purchase for himself a brand new screwdriver, a shiny tool that he never actually used. He would once in awhile remove the tool from its box, admire and polish the specimen, the reward of his hard work and a glimpse into the value and respect he placed in his hard-earned belongings from unceasing work in the future.
When Yisrael Harod arrived in Israel, escaping the clutches of Ceaucescu, he was placed with other new immigrants, in tents, where he would stay with his mother until more permanent arrangements could be made. He learned Hebrew. He joined the army as was his national duty. He met Amira, Eitan's mother. He knew he wanted to marry her very early on in knowing her. She thought he was interested in her friend or her sister, but he had eyes only for her and told her as much.
Only 39 years later, a moment in time, three children later, two of them married, two grandchildren, only 60 years of life, I watched Amira gently smooth the tensed skin of her husband's forehead. His eyes had already rolled back into his head, or perhaps directed heavenward and into the abyss of eternity.
The sun began to lower onto the horizon line of Petach Tikvah, a city of Israel that dates back to the late 19th century. One of the first Jewish settlements in what was then a province of the Ottoman Empire, where Russian immigrants came to escape pogroms, to make real an ideology that sought a safe haven for self-determination of the Jewish people.
We gathered around Yisrael's bed on this Friday night, as though we were standing around the dining room table in his home in Holon, just 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv. Eitan's older brother Yaakov led us in the kiddush. Usually he pours a special grape juice into the kiddush cup. On this night he poured a glass of the sweetest Shabbat wine. We started singing together Shalom Aleichem, welcoming the Shabbat. There is a verse in this song that wishes that those who come may also go in peace. It is my hope that Yisrael heard us singing and was calmed by it and that his journey into whatever it is that comes after life was peaceful. We blessed the wine, each took a sip. Amira dipped her finger into the cup and placed the wine-dripping fingertip to the lips of her husband's mouth, struggling to lift the elastic band of the oxygen bag.
And, as every Friday night, and every Shabbat, when the prayers were finished, she wished all of us a "Shabbat Shalom U'mevurakh", a peaceful and blessed Shabbat. And as every other Shabbat, she kissed each of us, Eitan, Yaakov, Ronit, Yisrael and me, Heidi, wishing us luck on our way and more blessings. I couldn't imagine a more beautiful farewell for a loved one.
In the hallway a small table was set up for the pairs of lit Shabbat candles blessed by other family members of other hospital patients. Sometimes it is the most subtle things that remind me of where I am. Shabbat candles in the hospital corridor.
A few hours after Eitan's father passed, we sat with his body in a room until the family was ready to leave him. Eitan went to look at his father and called to his sister to show her the smile that had appeared on his wan and weary face. There was no more struggle, his ever-thinning face in that past months revealed a very noble bone structure that gave him much dignity throughout his illness and into his death.
As it was Shabbat when Yisrael left his family, the funeral was held on Sunday morning. We gathered at a cemetery in Rishon LeTzion, where Yisrael's mother was buried, where Amira, one day far from now, will rest beside him.
In Israel, the Jewish funeral is simple, as is the burial, it is a humble admission of the frailty and brevity of our human experience. Friends and family gathered at 2:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, June 21, 2009, the first day of summer, to honor the memory of Eitan's father and to support the family, because that is the job of the Jewish community in times of death as well as celebration.
Yisrael was brought out on a simple black stretcher, carried by Eitan, his father's co-workers and friends. His small, emaciated, frail shell was wrapped in a tallit, a prayer shawl. I was indescribably moved by this simple shroud, so symbolic in its form. The tallit helps to bring one, in prayer, to a place of concentration, to help one elevate the spirit to the Creator, to arrive at a place of reflection, redemption, wonder and atonement. When we say the Shema and the V'ahavta, two of the most quintessential and beautiful prayers of the Jewish liturgy, the four corners of fringes, tzitzit, of the tallit are wrapped around the index finger of the right hand, symbolizing the four corners of the earth, that we gather everything and everyone in our prayer, as we are reminded that we are commanded to love and know the unity of creation, of humanity, with all of our hearts and all of our souls.
The rabbi officiating began his chanting. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...He took an exacto knife to the shirts of Eitan and Yaakov, creating a tear to indicate the loss of a loved one. A woman did the same to Amira and Ronit. They were officially in mourning. Eitan gave a moving eulogy about his father, who came to Israel, who struggled throughout his life, who wanted to have a family with a Jewish identity, freely and safely in this land, where his children would never be beaten for being Jewish. Would not be hungry from the deprivations of life under Communist rule, and could achieve the dreams he could not realize for himself.
The pall bearers carried Yisrael's body to his grave site. His body was lowered into the grave. And two by two or three by three, friends helped the Harod family to bury their father and husband in the rust-colored dirt just unearthed to make space for Yisrael's body to rest. They were not alone in this shattering moment. Gathered around were friends and superiors of Eitan from the army, in a variety of uniforms and ranks, friends of his from high school and from childhood. They came from the North and from the South. Yaakov's friends and teachers from the Haredi yeshiva that he attends in the black hats and dark suits. Ronit's friends and old boyfriends. The small and intimate sides of the family of Yisrael and Amira. My international friends and their Israeli boyfriends who came to support me as well as Eitan. All of us young people, dressed in our youth, in our dresses and tank tops, our shorts and our flipflops, our lives ahead of us, the child inside of us taking a moment to imagine ourselves in Eitan's place.
The rabbi continued his blessings...The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...the Mourner's Kaddish was recited. Rocks were picked up off the ground and placed on the gravesite with memorial candles and wreaths of flowers from Eitan's army colleagues and his father's co-workers from the electrical engineering plant that he worked at for decades.
Amira insisted that we leave, it was time to leave Yisrael alone. "He told me so!" she said, as she handed out coins for all of us to give to the man collecting charity as we exited the cemetery.
For the past week, the Harod family household has been in strict mourning. The mirrors are covered, there has been prayer three times a day, a Torah has sat in a holy ark in the living room for the shacharit (morning) service and Torah reading. The family has not changed its clothes, nor washed, nor left the house. A time to reconnect, a time to mourn, a time to allow the community to serve and comfort them.
Eitan has not had to worry about work. Nor Ronit, nor Yaakov. It is understood in the state of the Jews that in times of rites of passage, caring for the soul, carrying out the rituals of over 5,000 years of history is the most important thing to do. We can do this here, without penalty, in perfect observance according to our own needs, from the most fanatic and finicky, to whatever comforts the bereaved. We can immerse ourselves in the practices of the ancestors and find solace in the cycle of life, that death happens and when it does, we have methods to attend to our grief, to our loss, to the most permanent thing that happens in our impermanent existence.
May the memory of Yisrael Harod be for a blessing...
Having watched my own grandfather slip away from the world of the living just eight months ago, I promised Eitan that once the struggle finished, he would see his father at peace, there would be no more worry in his brow or pain in his clenched jaw. Just as my grandfather let go of all of us with a tear and a smile, so too would his abba.
The death of my boyfriend's father is not a likely topic for a blog that seeks to explore truths on the journey to resolution. But after a year of studying the history of the Middle East, I'm not so sure that resolution is an option, but the truths are still important for the hope that someday something will change. And so, after witnessing the death, burial and mourning rituals for Eitan's father, I believe that there is a truth to be told, a truth of Israel as the state for the Jewish people, to be Jewish in sorrow and in joy.
Eitan's father came from Romania to Israel in the 1960s. Much of his family was killed in the Holocaust, he was born in 1949, one year after the birth of the State of Israel. Yisrael Harod grew up in Yash, a small Romanian city, perhaps even a village. He grew up in an abusive household until his mother left his father for a better life. Yisrael and his mother were poor, very poor. Many of his meals were bread and sometimes onions that made the meal seem like a feast. As a boy at school, as a Jewish boy, he was often beat up and made fun of. He could not always play with other children for fear of his safety. I imagine the fact that he was destitute did not help the situation either. He managed to get small jobs here and there and he saved his meager earnings so that he could purchase for himself a brand new screwdriver, a shiny tool that he never actually used. He would once in awhile remove the tool from its box, admire and polish the specimen, the reward of his hard work and a glimpse into the value and respect he placed in his hard-earned belongings from unceasing work in the future.
When Yisrael Harod arrived in Israel, escaping the clutches of Ceaucescu, he was placed with other new immigrants, in tents, where he would stay with his mother until more permanent arrangements could be made. He learned Hebrew. He joined the army as was his national duty. He met Amira, Eitan's mother. He knew he wanted to marry her very early on in knowing her. She thought he was interested in her friend or her sister, but he had eyes only for her and told her as much.
Only 39 years later, a moment in time, three children later, two of them married, two grandchildren, only 60 years of life, I watched Amira gently smooth the tensed skin of her husband's forehead. His eyes had already rolled back into his head, or perhaps directed heavenward and into the abyss of eternity.
The sun began to lower onto the horizon line of Petach Tikvah, a city of Israel that dates back to the late 19th century. One of the first Jewish settlements in what was then a province of the Ottoman Empire, where Russian immigrants came to escape pogroms, to make real an ideology that sought a safe haven for self-determination of the Jewish people.
We gathered around Yisrael's bed on this Friday night, as though we were standing around the dining room table in his home in Holon, just 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv. Eitan's older brother Yaakov led us in the kiddush. Usually he pours a special grape juice into the kiddush cup. On this night he poured a glass of the sweetest Shabbat wine. We started singing together Shalom Aleichem, welcoming the Shabbat. There is a verse in this song that wishes that those who come may also go in peace. It is my hope that Yisrael heard us singing and was calmed by it and that his journey into whatever it is that comes after life was peaceful. We blessed the wine, each took a sip. Amira dipped her finger into the cup and placed the wine-dripping fingertip to the lips of her husband's mouth, struggling to lift the elastic band of the oxygen bag.
And, as every Friday night, and every Shabbat, when the prayers were finished, she wished all of us a "Shabbat Shalom U'mevurakh", a peaceful and blessed Shabbat. And as every other Shabbat, she kissed each of us, Eitan, Yaakov, Ronit, Yisrael and me, Heidi, wishing us luck on our way and more blessings. I couldn't imagine a more beautiful farewell for a loved one.
In the hallway a small table was set up for the pairs of lit Shabbat candles blessed by other family members of other hospital patients. Sometimes it is the most subtle things that remind me of where I am. Shabbat candles in the hospital corridor.
A few hours after Eitan's father passed, we sat with his body in a room until the family was ready to leave him. Eitan went to look at his father and called to his sister to show her the smile that had appeared on his wan and weary face. There was no more struggle, his ever-thinning face in that past months revealed a very noble bone structure that gave him much dignity throughout his illness and into his death.
As it was Shabbat when Yisrael left his family, the funeral was held on Sunday morning. We gathered at a cemetery in Rishon LeTzion, where Yisrael's mother was buried, where Amira, one day far from now, will rest beside him.
In Israel, the Jewish funeral is simple, as is the burial, it is a humble admission of the frailty and brevity of our human experience. Friends and family gathered at 2:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, June 21, 2009, the first day of summer, to honor the memory of Eitan's father and to support the family, because that is the job of the Jewish community in times of death as well as celebration.
Yisrael was brought out on a simple black stretcher, carried by Eitan, his father's co-workers and friends. His small, emaciated, frail shell was wrapped in a tallit, a prayer shawl. I was indescribably moved by this simple shroud, so symbolic in its form. The tallit helps to bring one, in prayer, to a place of concentration, to help one elevate the spirit to the Creator, to arrive at a place of reflection, redemption, wonder and atonement. When we say the Shema and the V'ahavta, two of the most quintessential and beautiful prayers of the Jewish liturgy, the four corners of fringes, tzitzit, of the tallit are wrapped around the index finger of the right hand, symbolizing the four corners of the earth, that we gather everything and everyone in our prayer, as we are reminded that we are commanded to love and know the unity of creation, of humanity, with all of our hearts and all of our souls.
The rabbi officiating began his chanting. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...He took an exacto knife to the shirts of Eitan and Yaakov, creating a tear to indicate the loss of a loved one. A woman did the same to Amira and Ronit. They were officially in mourning. Eitan gave a moving eulogy about his father, who came to Israel, who struggled throughout his life, who wanted to have a family with a Jewish identity, freely and safely in this land, where his children would never be beaten for being Jewish. Would not be hungry from the deprivations of life under Communist rule, and could achieve the dreams he could not realize for himself.
The pall bearers carried Yisrael's body to his grave site. His body was lowered into the grave. And two by two or three by three, friends helped the Harod family to bury their father and husband in the rust-colored dirt just unearthed to make space for Yisrael's body to rest. They were not alone in this shattering moment. Gathered around were friends and superiors of Eitan from the army, in a variety of uniforms and ranks, friends of his from high school and from childhood. They came from the North and from the South. Yaakov's friends and teachers from the Haredi yeshiva that he attends in the black hats and dark suits. Ronit's friends and old boyfriends. The small and intimate sides of the family of Yisrael and Amira. My international friends and their Israeli boyfriends who came to support me as well as Eitan. All of us young people, dressed in our youth, in our dresses and tank tops, our shorts and our flipflops, our lives ahead of us, the child inside of us taking a moment to imagine ourselves in Eitan's place.
The rabbi continued his blessings...The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...the Mourner's Kaddish was recited. Rocks were picked up off the ground and placed on the gravesite with memorial candles and wreaths of flowers from Eitan's army colleagues and his father's co-workers from the electrical engineering plant that he worked at for decades.
Amira insisted that we leave, it was time to leave Yisrael alone. "He told me so!" she said, as she handed out coins for all of us to give to the man collecting charity as we exited the cemetery.
For the past week, the Harod family household has been in strict mourning. The mirrors are covered, there has been prayer three times a day, a Torah has sat in a holy ark in the living room for the shacharit (morning) service and Torah reading. The family has not changed its clothes, nor washed, nor left the house. A time to reconnect, a time to mourn, a time to allow the community to serve and comfort them.
Eitan has not had to worry about work. Nor Ronit, nor Yaakov. It is understood in the state of the Jews that in times of rites of passage, caring for the soul, carrying out the rituals of over 5,000 years of history is the most important thing to do. We can do this here, without penalty, in perfect observance according to our own needs, from the most fanatic and finicky, to whatever comforts the bereaved. We can immerse ourselves in the practices of the ancestors and find solace in the cycle of life, that death happens and when it does, we have methods to attend to our grief, to our loss, to the most permanent thing that happens in our impermanent existence.
May the memory of Yisrael Harod be for a blessing...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Tristan Anderson
This afternoon, I received an e-mail message from a fellow member of the online organization mepeace.org. In it was a link to an event that took place on Friday, March 13, 2009 in the West Bank city of Nil'in.
Nil'in and Bil'in are often in international news media as two cities which have been divided by the separation fence/security wall/apartheid wall, as you see fit to call it. I choose the first, the separation fence plus the addition of separation wall.
Every Friday, various international, including Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations gather at Nil'in to protest the wall and the damage it has caused to the livelihoods of the residents there. Often there are clashes between I.D.F. soldiers and nonviolent activists.
Apparently, this past Friday the 13th, Tristan Anderson, a resident of Oakland, California, a peace activist and a journalist was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at the protesters by I.D.F. forces. Tristan suffered serious wounds to his head and is currently receiving treatment at the Sheba Medical Center located at the Tel HaShomer army base near to Tel Aviv. The hospital at Tel HaShomer often makes it into the headlines as it is the hospital where many Israelis, Palestinians and internationals receive treatment following conflict-induced injuries.
As far as Google tells me, no major news networks, until the last half hour, have picked up this story, although it happened already nearly three days ago. The Jerusalem Post now features a story stating that Tristan's condition is stable, although he is on a respirator.
I have a few questions.
According to the group Anarchists Against the Wall, the fact that Tristan was hit in the head by a tear gas canister is not that surprising. This group claims that it is becoming a recurring event that I.D.F. troops fire these canisters directly at protesters instead of in an arch so as to avoid direct hits.
If this is true, why are I.D.F. troops doing this?
If these protesters are nonviolent demonstrators, why are I.D.F. troops firing weapons at them at all?
Are the protestors warned?
If so, how are they warned?
If warned, how much time do they receive after warning to move out of the designated target area?
Are there regulations as to what kind of weapons can be fired at nonviolent protesters?
If rocks are thrown or catapults used, at what point does the army decide to use weapons?
What security breach or territorial breach are the protesters making, if any, which warrants a military action against them?
What is the responsibility of the occupying army to protect internationals in such a zone as the West Bank?
Another issue. There was a delay in transporting Tristan to Tel HaShomer because he was first attended to by medics of a Red Crescent ambulance and not an Israeli Magen David Adom or other ambulance service. Unable to cross the checkpoint, Tristan waited fifteen minutes before the Israeli ambulance arrived, transferred him from the Red Crescent ambulance to the Israeli ambulance and then he was on his way to the hospital. Israeli activists on the scene called the Israeli ambulance and I say, fortunately, Tristan was picked up in a timely fashion and swiftly carried to the Sheba Medical Center. Red Crescent ambulances are not permitted past certain areas in Israel because of the fear that they are a disguise for weapons and terrorists. People lose their lives pretty regularly here because of these past experiences and realities and the perpetual fear.
I live in Israel. I can say with all of my heart and soul that a person in this country is free to demonstrate, to protest, to libel and to slander the State of Israel with immense rage, freely and openly without fear of bodily harm.
Every year, in spite of threats from the Ultra Orthodox residents of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem that they will bomb buses if the Gay Pride Parade will take place, the Pride Parade proudly occurs with growing numbers every year.
Within Israel's borders, I am willing to say that things are normal for better and for worse, just like any other country in which the people are decision makers in the country's processes and actions.
However, when it comes to the Territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it seems to me that everything changes. It is the wild, wild west, it is hell and there is no order and only chaos. And I can only discuss what I know from hearsay and from photographs and from links on the internet.
And if for a moment anyone wonders why Israelis don't rise up against the immorality that occurs on both sides of the wall, it is important to know that they are either so cynical and jaded by decades of conflict that they don't believe it, even the video footage, or, they are afraid, scared and willing to consent to anything that tells them the actions are necessary for security.
I wasn't there. I didn't see Tristan receive the blow by the tear gas canister. I watched the video clip. And I have questions. I don't know who will answer them.
Nil'in and Bil'in are often in international news media as two cities which have been divided by the separation fence/security wall/apartheid wall, as you see fit to call it. I choose the first, the separation fence plus the addition of separation wall.
Every Friday, various international, including Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations gather at Nil'in to protest the wall and the damage it has caused to the livelihoods of the residents there. Often there are clashes between I.D.F. soldiers and nonviolent activists.
Apparently, this past Friday the 13th, Tristan Anderson, a resident of Oakland, California, a peace activist and a journalist was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at the protesters by I.D.F. forces. Tristan suffered serious wounds to his head and is currently receiving treatment at the Sheba Medical Center located at the Tel HaShomer army base near to Tel Aviv. The hospital at Tel HaShomer often makes it into the headlines as it is the hospital where many Israelis, Palestinians and internationals receive treatment following conflict-induced injuries.
As far as Google tells me, no major news networks, until the last half hour, have picked up this story, although it happened already nearly three days ago. The Jerusalem Post now features a story stating that Tristan's condition is stable, although he is on a respirator.
I have a few questions.
According to the group Anarchists Against the Wall, the fact that Tristan was hit in the head by a tear gas canister is not that surprising. This group claims that it is becoming a recurring event that I.D.F. troops fire these canisters directly at protesters instead of in an arch so as to avoid direct hits.
If this is true, why are I.D.F. troops doing this?
If these protesters are nonviolent demonstrators, why are I.D.F. troops firing weapons at them at all?
Are the protestors warned?
If so, how are they warned?
If warned, how much time do they receive after warning to move out of the designated target area?
Are there regulations as to what kind of weapons can be fired at nonviolent protesters?
If rocks are thrown or catapults used, at what point does the army decide to use weapons?
What security breach or territorial breach are the protesters making, if any, which warrants a military action against them?
What is the responsibility of the occupying army to protect internationals in such a zone as the West Bank?
Another issue. There was a delay in transporting Tristan to Tel HaShomer because he was first attended to by medics of a Red Crescent ambulance and not an Israeli Magen David Adom or other ambulance service. Unable to cross the checkpoint, Tristan waited fifteen minutes before the Israeli ambulance arrived, transferred him from the Red Crescent ambulance to the Israeli ambulance and then he was on his way to the hospital. Israeli activists on the scene called the Israeli ambulance and I say, fortunately, Tristan was picked up in a timely fashion and swiftly carried to the Sheba Medical Center. Red Crescent ambulances are not permitted past certain areas in Israel because of the fear that they are a disguise for weapons and terrorists. People lose their lives pretty regularly here because of these past experiences and realities and the perpetual fear.
I live in Israel. I can say with all of my heart and soul that a person in this country is free to demonstrate, to protest, to libel and to slander the State of Israel with immense rage, freely and openly without fear of bodily harm.
Every year, in spite of threats from the Ultra Orthodox residents of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem that they will bomb buses if the Gay Pride Parade will take place, the Pride Parade proudly occurs with growing numbers every year.
Within Israel's borders, I am willing to say that things are normal for better and for worse, just like any other country in which the people are decision makers in the country's processes and actions.
However, when it comes to the Territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it seems to me that everything changes. It is the wild, wild west, it is hell and there is no order and only chaos. And I can only discuss what I know from hearsay and from photographs and from links on the internet.
And if for a moment anyone wonders why Israelis don't rise up against the immorality that occurs on both sides of the wall, it is important to know that they are either so cynical and jaded by decades of conflict that they don't believe it, even the video footage, or, they are afraid, scared and willing to consent to anything that tells them the actions are necessary for security.
I wasn't there. I didn't see Tristan receive the blow by the tear gas canister. I watched the video clip. And I have questions. I don't know who will answer them.
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