Thanksgiving in Jerusalem

We organized a Thanksgiving dinner at the CY, or as close as we could get, given it was a meat-free space and no one had access to cranberries. Lots of roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and other comfort foods, all served on long tables decorated with huge rosemary branches snapped off the colossal bushes outside the CY. Warm pie and rocking out to Taylor Swift with these friends who feel like family, and a bit of Skyping with my actual family back home.

Middle Ages

I look forward to Kotel morning all week. This morning, two added treats: lovely flute playing by my friend Sam during psukei de zimra, and having enough time to dash over to the women’s section to actually touch the Western Wall for the first time in 18 years. Grateful for all the elements that made for a meaningful communion with God this morning. And once I got to class, I was overwhelmed with classmates treating me to good chocolate and letters telling me how awesome I am, teachers singing happy birthday, just an outpouring of love and welcome that burst my heart at the seams.

But I also wanted to take a moment to plant my flag and own the term “middle age.”

I’m not at the beginning of my life. I’m not trying to figure out who I am. I have knowledge and skill and perspective that only come with experience. The challenges I’m struggling with are things like how to be comfortable wielding power and claiming authority, how to deepen and strengthen the core elements of myself, taking concrete steps towards a life’s work I can be proud of. I’m not a beginner. I’m proud to be in the midst of my life.

And, you know, actual classes

I haven’t talked much about classes at the CY, but they are amazing. The dance parties in my Chumash (Bible) class are the least of it; that teacher actually makes biblical grammar fascinating. My Gender and Judaism class is always mindblowing, but a recent rare gift of that class was spending hours thoughtfully discussing how Jewish law understands intersex and gender non-binary folk and the implications of living within a system that only imperfectly acknowledges the realities of one’s existence. And then there’s halakhah, where we talk honestly and painfully about our experiences following or not following Jewish law in different areas. And a class on the history of the non-Jew in the Jewish State from ancient to modern Israel. Just extraordinary. I’m so glad I chose to do this year in Israel.

 

40

I’m feeling so bowled over by the wonderful birthday bash my friend Andrew organized for my 40th: Dinner at a great restaurant, a deaf theater troupe’s performance of Children of a Lesser God, an AirBnB in the coolest part of town, breakfast at a local patisserie, and an amble through the local shuk and nearby crafts fair. Plus, as befits two meaning-makers, writing prompts to spark deep conversation about past, present, and future.

The shifts between old-world and Art Deco architecture interspersed with graffiti in Tel Aviv was fascinating and kept us awake to every moment. The street art was absolutely gorgeous, in so many different styles. I often felt, walking around, that I was wandering through a city that someone had drawn in their sketchbook and then layered with other drawings.

My heart is full and I’m excited for what the future brings.

Hebron

I’ve wrestled with whether or not to post memories of my trip to Hevron with Truah and Breaking the Silence. The timing was and is bad—reports of the mass shooting in Pittsburgh came mere hours after the trip, and I waited more than a week out of respect, only to encounter more bad timing in the form of attacks to and from Gaza in response to an Israeli military action. At this moment, I’m thinking that, as with gun violence, there will never be a perfect time to talk about it, and I need to discuss what I saw before time blunts the memories.

Hebron is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which includes both a synagogue and a mosque where visitors can pay their respects to the graves of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah (as well as, according to legend, Adam and Eve). Needless to say, it’s a contested space whose tensions radiate out from the tomb to the town. It’s the space where the issues of the Occupation are at their most blatant and awful.

At the edge of a pretty public park in Hevron is the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 more at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The grave is adorned with artfully arranged stones, mementos of respect left by visitors who see him as a martyr, which are regularly renewed and rearranged. The inscription on the stone reads, in part, “He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land.”

Israeli security orders mean that some streets in Gaza are closed to cars, others even to foot traffic, and some are completely purged of residents, all in the name of protecting Israeli settlers. As each neighborhood is purged, settlers move in and take the empty houses, necessitating the purging of ever-widening rings of the city for security. Once a week, settlers apparently dress in white to honor the coming Sabbath and get military escorts to protect them while they march through the Muslim neighborhoods harassing the residents. For me, this was an unexpected and sickening inversion of Jewish values.

Everywhere I looked, there were stark contrasts that hammered home who has security, who has access to water and transportation. The Israeli homes had lush greenery in the backyards. Palestinians must use mesh to protect their balconies from Israeli settlers throwing rocks. Balconies in the Middle East are like the porches of the American South, a necessary part of every home and a way to connect with the neighbors, so the isolation this causes is intense. Additionally, because Palestinian foot traffic is forbidden on several streets, the residents have had to break through their back walls to create new ways in and out of their buildings. On the first floor, Israelis have posted giant, official-looking plaques in English and Hebrew with their version of why this area belongs to them, since the Palestinians who own the buildings can’t access their own front doors to remove such signs. 

Most painful of all, when we arrived, we saw a settler family moving into a purged Palestinian home. By the time we made our way around the neighborhood, they’d unpacked their car and made themselves at home.

Understand, I believe 100% in the need for a Jewish state, and in the importance of our historical connection to this land. But the ways in which the Occupation has stripped Palestinians of their rights, their homes, and their humanity hurt me on a deep level. I truly believe that the test of Israel is to prove that when we have power and agency, we do better than those who oppressed us. And right now, we are failing that test.

Rocket fire

Rockets are being fired into Israel right now. Hundreds. Thousands. They just keep coming, more every second. I put the alerts on my phone, then take the app off because they’re never near me and they’re sending my stress levels through the roof. Both parents in the family I’m staying with are out of the country, so I walk home, listening for sirens, and channel my nerves into doing dishes and laundry for the kids, trying to make order out of chaos, trying to be a presence for them. I’m not really scared; right now it’s a matter of news reports and text alerts, just as it would be if the attacks were on the other side of the world–it doesn’t feel completely real yet. And my brain keeps reminding me that the chances anyone is going to target Jerusalem are vanishingly small. So a little part of me is on alert, ready for the kids and the dog to sprint into my room (the apartment’s designated bomb shelter) with mere seconds’ warning if the siren blares, but most of me is just thinking about all the families on both sides of the border who are getting pummeled tonight, particularly the Palestinians who have no bomb shelters, no Iron Dome defense system. Feeling helpless to affect any of it.

The war to end all wars

I’m trying to take in the fact that today marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. Trying to imagine what people felt.

I think about the explorers who survived brutal expeditions to the Arctic only to die in the trenches weeks after their return home. I think of the survivor of the Las Vegas massacre who was murdered in a mass shooting in his hometown a year later, and I wonder what it would be to have someone announce that there would never again be such deaths. I long for that armistice.

Learning the hard way

Even having seen many, many first-year rabbinical students go through moments of feeling overwhelmed and like they’ll never understand the material, like they don’t belong, even having watched every single one of them push through those feelings and become incredibly learned, wise rabbis, I still go through moments where I feel overwhelmed and think everyone but me knows what they’re doing and that I’ll never catch up. I’m feeling deeply grateful to the people who held my vulnerability today and said, “It’s normal to feel this way, we all go through it.” I’m really lucky to be learning in such a caring community where we can talk so honestly and lovingly.