As we stutter through the final few hours before tisha b'av, I feel like all of Israel, and all Jews everywhere, are holding their breath. I am nervous that the other shoe has not yet dropped.
There have been unprecedented levels of ahavat yisrael visible during the last few weeks. The whole country, when not in their bomb shelters, has been baking cookies, buying toiletries, ordering pizza, and doing any of a myriad other activities to support our soldiers, their families, and the residents of the south who have been displaced and traumatized by rocket fire and the fear of terror tunnel infiltrations. This followed 3 weeks of never-seen-before levels of prayer, tears, good deeds, pleading and hoping for the lives and well-being of Gil-ad, Naftali & Eyal. Many people have pointed out that our tears and prayers for our three boys were not wasted even though we later discovered that they had been killed soon after they were kidnapped. Miracles have happened again and again during Operation Tzok Eitan; the terror tunnels were discovered before they could be used for their diabolical purpose; a mysterious fog shrouded a group of soldiers during a mission, saving their lives; a missile headed for heavily populated Tel Aviv that could not be shot down suddenly and inexplicably turned aside and landed in an open area.
I see the hand of G-d in so many ways. I see it in the very beginning of this war. We now know about the miles of terror tunnels, and that Hamas had a chilling plan to use them in a coordinated attack on Rosh Hashanah that would have taken us entirely by surprise, during which they would kill or capture hundreds of men, women and children. And yet, despite knowing that this wonderful opportunity to destroy us was in their pocket, and that all they had to do was to wait, they chose to pull us into a ground invasion which we tried so hard to avoid, and through which we foiled their plot. How much this should remind us of Haman, who looked forward with glee to the seemingly inevitable destruction of every single Jew in all 127 lands of Achashverosh in just 11 months time, and yet who lost everything, everything, because he couldn't bear to wait that long to get just one Jew out of his way?
I have heard people who have lived in Israel for decades exclaiming that the morale and level of unity that is palpable here has not been experienced since the Six-Day War in 1967. At that time, there was a general feeling that Moshiach was on his way, that we were experiencing the ischalta d'geula, the birth pangs of Moshiach. And yet here we are, 47 years later, and he still isn't here. Now, again, I hear and see so many people pointing to the unity, the prayer, the Torah, the good deeds being done, and holding them up as a surety that Moshiach is nearly here. Surely, with new waves of anti-semitism sweeping the world, with the world media by and large swallowing falsehoods whole and refusing the sniff at the truth, Moshiach must be nearly here. I read this article, explaining in great detail why what was reported as a cruel Israeli strike on innocent civilians in a crowded market was really a Hamas-inflicted massacre, and was most chilled by this paragraph:
As I was looking for new corroboration that the market was closed, articles were changing between the moment I clicked the link and the page opened. It was like the Michael Douglas movie Disclosure, where he’s inside the virtual computer, and the files are disappearing before his eyes. The Telegraph’scached articles have been removed, so somebody thought it was really important to conceal the fact that the market was closed.
To me, this was scary. That news can be falsified today, in the era of mass information, that our enemies really do control the media - to the extent that they change previous news articles, so that only their version of events is reported and not the truth. It certainly seems to me that we live in a time of real sheker (falsehood).
And yet - Moshiach is not here.
And this is why I am nervous. Because clearly, we have not done enough. There is so much unity, so much kindness, so much prayer and so much Torah - but it's not enough. So much emunah that only G-d will save us, even from previously non-religious Israelis, who have seen miracles happen and recognize now that it is not 'our valour and the strength of our hands which have wrought this' but G-d alone.
It's all so good! But it's not good enough.
What more can we do? What more mehafechah, what bigger upheaval do we need to experience to bring us to the point of Moshiach's arrival?
It is my wont to turn to Tanach for guidance. I look for pattern and correlation between our days and the days of the prophets, and take comfort from seeing that there is reason and control over what we are experiencing. I look to Yeshayah (Isaiah) and Yirmiyah (Jeremiah), (sections of whom we read on the three Shabbatot preceding Tisha B'av, called the sheloshah d'poranuta, the three weeks of rebuke) and I think, perhaps herein lies our clue. Both these prophets follow a theme of social justice. In both books, you can read rebukes of the people who fasted on the fast days, brought their offerings to the Temple, ate the correct food and respected the holiness of holy things - but who oppressed the poor, the orphans and the widows. Both prophets warned the people that G-d does not want their sacrifices or their fasts, He wants their justice. And the Jewish people of the time just couldn't, couldn't understand this.
We, too, are not there yet. We fast, we pray, we say tehillim, we learn Torah, we bake cookies for soldiers and buy equipment to support them. But in Austria, there is a woman who is denied access to her neglected children by a man who is still supported by the rabbis of his town. In Israel, in America, in Europe, there are children who are sexually abused by teachers, rabbis, and family members, while the Torah establishment ignores their suffering and protects their tormentors. In America, when the IRS decides who to investigate for potential tax fraud, they use 'Torah' as one of their flag words, since people who claim their primary income from Torah sources are more likely to be evading taxes. In countries across the world, there is fraud, there is theft, there is injustice great and small committed by Jews, by 'frum' Jews and by irreligious ones, and we - the representatives of Torah - ignore it, avoid it, try to pretend it is not there.
Rabbi Menachem Leibtag, Tanach educator, teaches that the Beit Hamikdash had to be destroyed because the Jewish people had come to believe that it was something akin to a magic potion. That whatever we do, however badly we behave, if we fast and bring korbanot, G-d will save us. And so, eventually, G-d had to destroy it, even though we brought so many offerings and cried so hard, because we weren't behaving in a way which followed in His Image. We were not emulating G-d; instead, we were creating a chillul Hashem, and the 'frummer' we were while ignoring social justice, the bigger the desecration of G-d's Name.
Perhaps we, too, haven't yet learned the lesson of the destruction of the Temple. We have tried crying, and fasting, and praying, and learning, and even yes, doing good deeds. But more people have come out to protest the injustice of the media's treatment of Israel than came out to protest the injustice of child abuse, or mothers deprived of their children, or fraud. I'm nervous, this tisha b'av, because we still haven't learned this lesson. I believe that, just like in 1967, we stand beneath a window of opportunity, but that that window is closing. What more suffering do we need to experience to bring us to the place we need to be? I don't want to have to find out.
Monday, 4 August 2014
Saturday, 19 July 2014
Why My Diaspora Friends Think I Don't Care About Dead Palestinians
I have some friends, wonderful, committed Zionists and committed Jews, whom I love and who love me, who think that I might be in danger of turning into a monster, They think I am in danger of losing my humanity. They wonder why I, who they know to be so sensitive and sympathetic, seem to be losing that ability. They are alarmed that many of their other Israeli friends seem to be going the same way. They have wondered, complained, and expressed concern about the level of discourse that they perceive as coming out of Israel over this operation in Gaza. They have written on social media about their concern that Israel and Israelis are losing their humanity; that their friends in Israel are not showing enough/any sympathy for the innocent Palestinians who have been killed; and that every time they write about this, their friends in Israel respond quite negatively.
You see, I agree with you. We need to grab tight hold of our humanity with both hands in this situation. But there is a difference between us that you don't get. I love you, and i'm glad for you that you don't get it, but you just don;t.
I know that some of you have downloaded the Code Red app to your phone, and because you get disturbed by it all the freaking time, you think that you are showing solidarity with us. You are, you are. I appreciate it. But don;t think that just because your phone wakes you up in the middle of the night, you can therefore understand what we are going through. Because when your phone wakes you up in the middle of the night, do you jump out of bed, grab your children out of their beds, shout at your husband to grab the other children, race down the stairs, or out the door, or round the corner to reach your mamad within the 15-30-45-60-90 seconds that you've been allotted? Do you then go to spend 10 minutes in your safe room while checking the radio or social media to find out where else is being bombed? And do tell me how long it takes you to return to normal activities after you come out of your safe room and return your children to their beds.
Are your children grumpy every day because they are short of sleep, and jumpy every time a car revs up or an ambulance goes past? Are you exhausted because your children come into your bed at night, scared that there'll be another loud noise startling them awake? Does bedtime take you 2 hours because your children want you to stay in their rooms until they are asleep? Do you (And note, i'm talking about those of us in the 'quiet' areas. We're not even getting started about the Israelis who have just been told not to be further than 15 seconds away from their safe rooms.)
Those of us who live in Israel, our emotional hard drive is full. We have not even finished processing our sadness, mourning, and grief over the deaths of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaer & Eyal Yifrach. We are still so full of frustration and anger and disgust at discovering that Jews were capable of causing the cruel death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and now we - your Israel friends and family - are up to our necks with protecting our own children and families, It uses up so, so, so much emotional energy to be worrying about when the next siren will come (even here in my neck of the woods in Beit Shemesh, where it has been relatively quiet), with wondering if the Iron Dome will take out the next one too, with putting on a calm front, with weighing up the risks of rocket alerts along the route of each trip you want to take, with thinking hard about ways to help our children deal with this situation and to lessen their emotional and psychological upset - it takes just so damn much of our working hard drive to get these tasks done, that like my smartphone we - Israel - might just not have enough emotional energy to spare to cry and mourn the dead Palestinian children.
So yes, we are broken again that we have to harm innocents. We feel for the suffering of innocent Palestinians. but WE have been put in a situation where we have no choice; their blood is on the hands of hamas, not us.
My friends in the diaspora, I know that you mean well. You have the luxury of sharing the pain and suffering of the Palestinians, too. You have the luxury of coolly, rationally, and abstractly thinking about the situation here. You may have been influenced by the thinking that because we have the Iron Dome, things are pretty much ok. That because you also have the Code Red app on your phone, you are experiencing what we are experiencing. Perhaps you let our humour deceive you into believing that we really are all loving the opportunity to take more #bombshelterselfies. But let me be the one to tell you: Our emotional hard drive is full. We currently have so many emotional and psychological applications runnning that mourning and sighing for innocent Palestinians killed by their own leadership's cruelty is just that one more app that we do not have the space to run.
Monday, 7 July 2014
The Murder Of Mohammed Abu Khdeir & A Failure Of Godliness
I find that i'm still trying ot come to terms with the information i heard yesterday evening, that a small group (3? 6? A number between 3 and 6?) of Jewish Israelis were the ones who kidnapped, beat, burnt and killed Mohammed Abu Khdeir. It is so shocking to me, and i'm sure to us all, that Jews could be capable of such cruelty.
As many people are saying, they are not the only ones culpable. Throughout our history as a nation, we have always been held responsible - by G-d - for the sins of a minority. In the book of Joshua, Achan is the only Jew who disobeys G-d's command to not touch any of the loot after the battle of Jericho. He takes some money and a cloak, secretly, with no one else knowing. As a result of his breach of conduct, the Jews lose their next battle and some 30,000 men die. I - and many others before and after me - ask myself, is this fair? Why should the whole nation be punished because one man couldn;t control his greed? The commentators answer that kol yisrael areivim zeh bazeh - all of Israel is mixed up one in the other. If all of Israel had been united in serving G-d, Achan could not have even thought of stealing. All of Israel deserved punishment, because there was something lacking in all of Israel that made his act possible.
And the trend has continued. A few books later, King David is pursuing Shim'i ben Geira. Shim'i takes shelter in a city, and David's captain Yoav demands that the city hand over Shim'i or else he will destroy the city. One wise woman recommends that they hand over Shim'i, who is a traitor to the King and deserves the punishment of death, and they do. Generations of scholars endorse her decision - if he had not been handed over, then all the town would have been killed along with him, since their decision to hide him effectively expresses their support for him against King David.
What is my point? There must be something lacking in our whole nation if some of our own people can behave with such cruelty, vengefulness, and bloodthirstiness. My rav, Rabbi Ari Kahn, explains that we are not allowed to kill simply because each person is created b'tselem Elokim - in the image of G-d - and thus when we kill a person, we wipe out a small expression of godliness in this world. It is only when we lose sight of a person's tselem Elokim - when we fail to remember that the other is also created in the image of G-d, when we are incapable of seeing the godly in another human being - that we are able to kill that person.
Clearly, whoever the Jewish murderers were had become unable to see the tselem Elokim in Muhammed Abu Khdeir. Their incapability of viewing him as a person is what enabled them to treat him with such cruelty. My thought is that this is the fault-line which is running through us all, and which made it possible for them to behave in this way. We are not just failing to view the tselem Elokim in Palestinians, we are failing to see it even in our fellow Jews. Just in my own town of Beit Shemesh, just in the last few months, we have done a very good job of blinding ourselves to each other's tselem Elokim. And it stretches across the nation and around the world. Across the religious spectrum; across the political spectrum; across the ethnic spectrum, Jews blind themselves to the godliness inherent in those with whom they disagree. This is the fault-line that was always present within us.
Over 18 fraught, hopeful, fearful days, Naftali, Eyal and Gilad formed a bridge across the fault-line. Charedi, dati, chiloni, right, left, center, in Israel, out of Israel, chassidish, litvish, sephardi, ashkenazi, man, woman and child - we davened and hoped and feared together. Their tselem Elokim threw our own into greater relief. We united on their behalf in a way that - i think - we haven;t achieved since before the Romans arose, let alone fell. They became OUR boys. That the murderers who made it clear just how great is our failure to recognise the tselem Elokim in each other did so as 'revenge' for Eyal Gilad & Naftali's death is painfully ironic. The fault-line is split into a chasm.
I'm neither a talmid chacham nor the daughter of a talmid chacham, and feel free to disagree. But i see a clear connection between our long-running failure to see the tselem Elokim in our brothers next door, and the failure of 3/6/3-6 Jews to see the tselem Elokim in Muhammed Abu Khdeir. And I speak to myself as much as to anyone - and i don't think it's easy. We need to restore our ability to see the godliness inherent in each other. Someone's gotta do it.
As many people are saying, they are not the only ones culpable. Throughout our history as a nation, we have always been held responsible - by G-d - for the sins of a minority. In the book of Joshua, Achan is the only Jew who disobeys G-d's command to not touch any of the loot after the battle of Jericho. He takes some money and a cloak, secretly, with no one else knowing. As a result of his breach of conduct, the Jews lose their next battle and some 30,000 men die. I - and many others before and after me - ask myself, is this fair? Why should the whole nation be punished because one man couldn;t control his greed? The commentators answer that kol yisrael areivim zeh bazeh - all of Israel is mixed up one in the other. If all of Israel had been united in serving G-d, Achan could not have even thought of stealing. All of Israel deserved punishment, because there was something lacking in all of Israel that made his act possible.
And the trend has continued. A few books later, King David is pursuing Shim'i ben Geira. Shim'i takes shelter in a city, and David's captain Yoav demands that the city hand over Shim'i or else he will destroy the city. One wise woman recommends that they hand over Shim'i, who is a traitor to the King and deserves the punishment of death, and they do. Generations of scholars endorse her decision - if he had not been handed over, then all the town would have been killed along with him, since their decision to hide him effectively expresses their support for him against King David.
What is my point? There must be something lacking in our whole nation if some of our own people can behave with such cruelty, vengefulness, and bloodthirstiness. My rav, Rabbi Ari Kahn, explains that we are not allowed to kill simply because each person is created b'tselem Elokim - in the image of G-d - and thus when we kill a person, we wipe out a small expression of godliness in this world. It is only when we lose sight of a person's tselem Elokim - when we fail to remember that the other is also created in the image of G-d, when we are incapable of seeing the godly in another human being - that we are able to kill that person.
Clearly, whoever the Jewish murderers were had become unable to see the tselem Elokim in Muhammed Abu Khdeir. Their incapability of viewing him as a person is what enabled them to treat him with such cruelty. My thought is that this is the fault-line which is running through us all, and which made it possible for them to behave in this way. We are not just failing to view the tselem Elokim in Palestinians, we are failing to see it even in our fellow Jews. Just in my own town of Beit Shemesh, just in the last few months, we have done a very good job of blinding ourselves to each other's tselem Elokim. And it stretches across the nation and around the world. Across the religious spectrum; across the political spectrum; across the ethnic spectrum, Jews blind themselves to the godliness inherent in those with whom they disagree. This is the fault-line that was always present within us.
Over 18 fraught, hopeful, fearful days, Naftali, Eyal and Gilad formed a bridge across the fault-line. Charedi, dati, chiloni, right, left, center, in Israel, out of Israel, chassidish, litvish, sephardi, ashkenazi, man, woman and child - we davened and hoped and feared together. Their tselem Elokim threw our own into greater relief. We united on their behalf in a way that - i think - we haven;t achieved since before the Romans arose, let alone fell. They became OUR boys. That the murderers who made it clear just how great is our failure to recognise the tselem Elokim in each other did so as 'revenge' for Eyal Gilad & Naftali's death is painfully ironic. The fault-line is split into a chasm.
I'm neither a talmid chacham nor the daughter of a talmid chacham, and feel free to disagree. But i see a clear connection between our long-running failure to see the tselem Elokim in our brothers next door, and the failure of 3/6/3-6 Jews to see the tselem Elokim in Muhammed Abu Khdeir. And I speak to myself as much as to anyone - and i don't think it's easy. We need to restore our ability to see the godliness inherent in each other. Someone's gotta do it.
Monday, 30 June 2014
Hashem took the best of us, and left only us
Today, along with all of am yisrael, i mourn the loss of 3 of our sons.
truly, i'm surprised by the depth of my pain and sadness. i had suspected for 18 days that it would end this way, as many of us did. but somehow, the loss of hope that maybe, just maybe, we'd get a message that they were found alive and ok, has been a harder blow than i expected.
i do not remember feeling such a sense of bereavement before. 18 days of praying, of tears, of my sons praying, of my daughter praying, of wondering, of hoping, has welded gilad, naftali and eyal onto my heart as though they were my own. Like so many of us, i looked each of my children in the eyes today and told them that i have sad news for them, that the 3 boys who were taken have been found dead. I told my 9 year old daughter that it's ok to be sad, that it's ok to cry, and hugged her while we both cried. I told my 6 year old son, who had just received his siddur a few days ago along with the heartening message that Hashem is our Father and our King, Who wants to give us everything and also can give us everything. I explained to him, in the words of Noam Wachsman, that like every father, sometimes Hashem says No.
it has not, really, been a good month. i heard the news about our sons' murder while i was attending a memorial marking the sheloshim of a friend who was also taken too young, too soon, too unjustly. Roughly equidistant between these two deaths was the death of my cousin, a man who had a lived a long, successful, and fruitful life, in which he achieved much, planted much, and left behind a long trail of good deeds, lives saved, and descendants who continue in his footsteps. Much as Eyal, Gilad & Naftali would have done, had they had the time. Much as Malka would have done, had she had the time.
Before each of these deaths i reel somewhat, stagger somewhat, set myself back on my feet with the reminder that 'yesh din v'yesh dayan' - there is justice and there is a Judge. But sometimes i stagger just that bit more, and it takes longer to regain my feet.
I read once about a teenage boy, just after the liberation of the camps after the holocaust. He came from a respected long line of rabbis and talmidei chachamim and used to be an ilui (child prodigy at talmud), but he had lost all his family and seen his father shot before his eyes, and was no longer interested in anything to do with G-d or Torah or Judaism. He was brought to the Klausenberger rebbe by someone, who hoped that the rebbe would be able to convince him to return to his roots. The rebbe talked to the boy for a few minutes, then he sat down next to the boy and began to cry. The rebbe cried and sobbed "G-d took the best ones, and left only us. He took the best, and left only us". The boy cried with him, and together they cried and repeated those same words for a long time. Eventually the rebbe put his arm around the boy, and said 'We are all that He left. We have to try our best.'.
These are the words i hear in my head, now: "He took the best of us, and left only ourselves. He took the best, and left only ourselves".
I find that i'm unable to join in calls for vengeance. I'm aware that i have no answers. i know that no amount of palestinian blood will bring back our boys or lessen my sadness, our sadness. I know that there is just one reason why they were killed: esav sonei et yaakov, esav hates jacob. Why does it have to be like this? Because.
Before my daughter went to school, i told her that it's ok to cry, and ok to be sad, and it's also ok to enjoy the swimming that she has today, and to enjoy being with her friends. Because Hashem took the best of us, and left only ourselves. We have to try our best.
truly, i'm surprised by the depth of my pain and sadness. i had suspected for 18 days that it would end this way, as many of us did. but somehow, the loss of hope that maybe, just maybe, we'd get a message that they were found alive and ok, has been a harder blow than i expected.
i do not remember feeling such a sense of bereavement before. 18 days of praying, of tears, of my sons praying, of my daughter praying, of wondering, of hoping, has welded gilad, naftali and eyal onto my heart as though they were my own. Like so many of us, i looked each of my children in the eyes today and told them that i have sad news for them, that the 3 boys who were taken have been found dead. I told my 9 year old daughter that it's ok to be sad, that it's ok to cry, and hugged her while we both cried. I told my 6 year old son, who had just received his siddur a few days ago along with the heartening message that Hashem is our Father and our King, Who wants to give us everything and also can give us everything. I explained to him, in the words of Noam Wachsman, that like every father, sometimes Hashem says No.
it has not, really, been a good month. i heard the news about our sons' murder while i was attending a memorial marking the sheloshim of a friend who was also taken too young, too soon, too unjustly. Roughly equidistant between these two deaths was the death of my cousin, a man who had a lived a long, successful, and fruitful life, in which he achieved much, planted much, and left behind a long trail of good deeds, lives saved, and descendants who continue in his footsteps. Much as Eyal, Gilad & Naftali would have done, had they had the time. Much as Malka would have done, had she had the time.
Before each of these deaths i reel somewhat, stagger somewhat, set myself back on my feet with the reminder that 'yesh din v'yesh dayan' - there is justice and there is a Judge. But sometimes i stagger just that bit more, and it takes longer to regain my feet.
I read once about a teenage boy, just after the liberation of the camps after the holocaust. He came from a respected long line of rabbis and talmidei chachamim and used to be an ilui (child prodigy at talmud), but he had lost all his family and seen his father shot before his eyes, and was no longer interested in anything to do with G-d or Torah or Judaism. He was brought to the Klausenberger rebbe by someone, who hoped that the rebbe would be able to convince him to return to his roots. The rebbe talked to the boy for a few minutes, then he sat down next to the boy and began to cry. The rebbe cried and sobbed "G-d took the best ones, and left only us. He took the best, and left only us". The boy cried with him, and together they cried and repeated those same words for a long time. Eventually the rebbe put his arm around the boy, and said 'We are all that He left. We have to try our best.'.
These are the words i hear in my head, now: "He took the best of us, and left only ourselves. He took the best, and left only ourselves".
I find that i'm unable to join in calls for vengeance. I'm aware that i have no answers. i know that no amount of palestinian blood will bring back our boys or lessen my sadness, our sadness. I know that there is just one reason why they were killed: esav sonei et yaakov, esav hates jacob. Why does it have to be like this? Because.
Before my daughter went to school, i told her that it's ok to cry, and ok to be sad, and it's also ok to enjoy the swimming that she has today, and to enjoy being with her friends. Because Hashem took the best of us, and left only ourselves. We have to try our best.
Sunday, 1 June 2014
Mindfulness ... l'ilui nishmas Malka Baila
L'ilui nishmas Malka Baila
When Malka was so, so sick, I felt that I should be davening for her. It was reiterated recently, to daven again, or more, or renew the tefillos for her. And i did not know what to daven for her. I found it hard to daven for her to get better, and impossible to daven for her to be ... out of pain.
So although I did daven, i felt more heart and more comfort and more doing something when i did something else. Since I heard about Malka's death sentence, I have been trying my hardest to live for her.
It seemed so unfair to me that she would never marry, would never have children, would never clean her own dirty floors or feel that fear that one day, some awful illness would swoop down out of the clear blue nothing and claim her children. That not just had she never experienced that, but that the hope of one day experiencing them had suddenly been snatched away. That suddenly, there wasn;t a future ahead.
So every time I put on a wash-load, or exasperatedly picked up my children's shoes for the umpteenth time, or slowly plodded home with heavy shopping, I thought, 'Malka, this is for you. Malka, you'll never be able to feel this pain, this frustration, this irritation, and so I dedicate it to you. Malka, I swallow this retort as the retort that you will never get to swallow, in your zechus'.
Actually, i do not feel sure that 'in your zechus' is the right phrase. Ok i suppose it is, but what i felt, and still feel, was that i give this whole act over to you, Malka.
Mindfulness is a buzzword, nowadays. I try to avoid cliches, but sometimes they may be true.
For me, when Malka's days were numbered, I began trying to make mine count. But not in the ways you might think. Perhaps it's because it was Malka i was thinking of, and so something grand and brash and flashy would not be appropriate. Because she was never one of those peacock people, the one you noticed straight away, making a splash, achieving great glories. she was one of the unsung heros who deserved to be sung. She made a difference by being Malka. So i did not - do not - feel led to create some big and bright merit or memorial. I feel driven to just be. Just to be me, alive.
Malka, i kiss the children you'll never have. Malka, I live the mundane life that was stolen from you. Malka, the quiet moments and the busy ones, the slices of unremarkable time that together carve out my life, i give those over to you by trying my hardest to be aware of them.
I could create a beautiful dvar torah about Malka dying during the time of sefirat haomer. I could tell you about the significance of counting our days to make our days count. I could tell you that, although Malka was very drugged and asleep much of the time, she made sure to be awake at 9.30 (give or take) every night so that she could count the omer b'zman, which is something that will always stay with me.
But instead, i shall do what we all do. I'll live my life. I'll wash my floors, keep my own temper, fight my small battles and win, or lose, but in the small still voice of the day and the night, i'll think, Malka, this one's for you.
When Malka was so, so sick, I felt that I should be davening for her. It was reiterated recently, to daven again, or more, or renew the tefillos for her. And i did not know what to daven for her. I found it hard to daven for her to get better, and impossible to daven for her to be ... out of pain.
So although I did daven, i felt more heart and more comfort and more doing something when i did something else. Since I heard about Malka's death sentence, I have been trying my hardest to live for her.
It seemed so unfair to me that she would never marry, would never have children, would never clean her own dirty floors or feel that fear that one day, some awful illness would swoop down out of the clear blue nothing and claim her children. That not just had she never experienced that, but that the hope of one day experiencing them had suddenly been snatched away. That suddenly, there wasn;t a future ahead.
So every time I put on a wash-load, or exasperatedly picked up my children's shoes for the umpteenth time, or slowly plodded home with heavy shopping, I thought, 'Malka, this is for you. Malka, you'll never be able to feel this pain, this frustration, this irritation, and so I dedicate it to you. Malka, I swallow this retort as the retort that you will never get to swallow, in your zechus'.
Actually, i do not feel sure that 'in your zechus' is the right phrase. Ok i suppose it is, but what i felt, and still feel, was that i give this whole act over to you, Malka.
Mindfulness is a buzzword, nowadays. I try to avoid cliches, but sometimes they may be true.
For me, when Malka's days were numbered, I began trying to make mine count. But not in the ways you might think. Perhaps it's because it was Malka i was thinking of, and so something grand and brash and flashy would not be appropriate. Because she was never one of those peacock people, the one you noticed straight away, making a splash, achieving great glories. she was one of the unsung heros who deserved to be sung. She made a difference by being Malka. So i did not - do not - feel led to create some big and bright merit or memorial. I feel driven to just be. Just to be me, alive.
Malka, i kiss the children you'll never have. Malka, I live the mundane life that was stolen from you. Malka, the quiet moments and the busy ones, the slices of unremarkable time that together carve out my life, i give those over to you by trying my hardest to be aware of them.
I could create a beautiful dvar torah about Malka dying during the time of sefirat haomer. I could tell you about the significance of counting our days to make our days count. I could tell you that, although Malka was very drugged and asleep much of the time, she made sure to be awake at 9.30 (give or take) every night so that she could count the omer b'zman, which is something that will always stay with me.
But instead, i shall do what we all do. I'll live my life. I'll wash my floors, keep my own temper, fight my small battles and win, or lose, but in the small still voice of the day and the night, i'll think, Malka, this one's for you.
Monday, 12 May 2014
Who Is Lost In The Land Of Ashur?
I have just finished reading a most moving, eye-opening book. I recommend it to you all. It is called 'My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search For His Jewish Roots In Kurdish Iraq'. A few words of review about it, so that you'll understand all the rest of the points i want to make.
The writer, Ariel Sabar, describes in beautiful detail his father's childhood growing up in Zakho, an isolated town in Northern, Kurdish, Iraq, where his father's family had lived in the same town since they were exiled there in about the year 720 BCE by the terrifying empire of Assyria (Ashur). Where the local language is still the Aramaic that the Gemara was written in. He charts what happened to the town when Zionism rose, the State of Israel was declared, and finally, in retaliation, even the Jews of remote Zakho were declared stateless, possessionless, and encouraged to flee the country, forced to leave all their possessions behind. His father, his father's family, and all their town had to start over in an Israel that treated them as primitive, backwards hillbillies, and did all it could to stamp out their distinct, devout traditions.
I want to share some realisations it brought to me. It's clear to me, from reading this book, that when Zionists point to the millions of sephardi/mizrachi Jews who were thrown out of Arab lands, and say that this is why we need the State of Israel, to be able to receive them, so that no Jew will have nowhere to go, they are being either disingenuous or, more likely, ignorant of why Jews were thrown out of Arab lands in the first place.
Jews lived in Arab lands for centuries - millennia - with general average happiness and tolerance, certainly more, on the whole, than that extended to Jews in Europe. Perhaps it particularly hard for us to believe now, so used to looking at Arabs as our worst enemy, but Jews in Arab lands had much better lives than Jews in Christian lands. It was only the rise of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel which caused their Arab hosts to finally kick them out for good.
It was startling to me to realise for just how long Jews had lived in the one same town in Arab lands. In Europe, every couple of hundred years, Jews were thrown out of a neighbourhood, town, or whole country. If that. In Arab lands - and in particular in Kurdistan, the focus of the book - Jews lived in the same village for millennia, not just centuries. There was stability. Yes, there was intermittent friction with Arab neighbours, and certainly life was hard for most Jews, but the thought of leaving their country never crossed their minds. It was only Zionism that forced them to leave.
One of the side points that became clear in the book, which I was already aware of and sad and ashamed of, was the extent to which the Zionist leadership looked down on, derided and really failed Sephardi/Mizrahi Jewry. Zionism, it is clear, is an Ashkenazi solution to an Ashkenazi problem, the creation of Jews who have spent centuries being hounded from one town to another, one pogrom to another, who had seen one safe haven after another grow sour and reject them. They needed a State which would never throw them out. They needed a State of Israel. The Jews in Arab lands did not, really, need a State of Israel at all. In fact, Zionism and the creation of the State made life much worse for them. It was the direct cause of their having to leave their homes where they had lived for generations. much of their culture, language, folklore and traditions were lost and deliberately squashed by the arrogant and patronising Ashkenazi Zionist leadership. Sephardi Jews in Israel are really only just beginning to emerge from the trauma caused by the way that their mass aliyah was handled.
At first i though, how unfair. Sephardi/Mizrahi jews should not have had to leave their ancestral lands. they shouldn;t have had to be kicked out just because all these Ashkenazi Zionists had a nationalist dream. The State of Israel didn;t 'save' any Eastern Jew from being homeless and stateless - it made them be homeless and stateless in the first place. AND then the leadership in Israel deliberately disadvantaged, derided, and despised the very Jews whom they forced to come to Israel in the first place.
But then I thought again. I realise some people - many people - will think i've been very unfair on Zionists and Zionism. be that as it may. i do, though, consider the creation of the State of Israel to be a 'Good Thing'. I recognise that the creation of the State required far too many things to happen, in the right order, for it to be only the 'fault' of the Zionist movement. I do very much see the hand of G-d enabling the establishment of modern Israel. Zionism on its own, without divine approval, couldn;t have done this. Man could not have achieved this. So then, to my worldview, G-d wanted the State of Israel to be created. And while no one but the individuals in charge are responsible for the shameful, reprehensible way that Jews from Arab lands were treated when they made aliyah, the fact that they were kicked out of their land, caused directly by the creation of the State, must have been what G-d wanted too.
So i thought about this a bit more.
As i pondered the book, i thought about a verse which is quoted often in it, and which i have long loved and mused over.
ובאו אובדים מארץ אשור, והנדחים מארץ מצרים, והשתחוו לה' בהר קודש בירושלים"
and those lost in the land of Ashur (Assyria), and those detained in the land of Egypt, shall come and bow down to G-d in the holy mountain, in Jerusalem."
I've long been familiar with, and fond of, the explanation that there are 2 'types' of Jews who make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. Those lost in the land of Ashur are those who lost their way, forgot their destination as Jews, in the good lands, in the places of riches and success (ashur עשור means riches, while אשור, pronounced the same but spelt differently, means fortune, happiness). Those detained in the land of Egypt are those who were forcibly prevented, through hardship, suffering, physical detention, and the like, from returning to the Land (Egypt - mitzrayim מצרים in Bebrew - comes from the Hebrew root tzar- צר, meaning constricted, restricted, narrowed, hemmed in). Both those who forgot the desire to return home, and those who wished to come home but were unable to do so, will at the end of days come back to serve G-d in His temple in Jerusalem.
Rav Shlomo Carlebach used to quote this explanation, and add that those making aliyah from America are the ones lost in the land of Ashur, adrift in a sea of material success, who have managed to find their way out of the maze. And the refuseniks from Russia are the ones detained in Egypt-like hardship, restrictions and physical detention, but they have also managed to come back to the Land.
i still like his explanation. But having read about the jews of kurdistan, i realised another layer of meaning. The simple layer of meaning. Those lost in Ashur meant those who were lost in Ashur. The Jews of the Arab lands had stability. Only Zionism caused them to leave the homes they had lived in for millennia. It became v clear to me - G-d wanted the State of Israel to be created, not despite the hardship it would cause for these children of Israel, and not with their hardship being an un-foreseen side effect, but (in part) IN ORDER to cause them to be kicked out. Because nothing else was jolly well going to work! We are used, with our Western, patronising eyes, to looking at their often-primitive living conditions and thinking that they are the furthest you could get from people adrift in material success who had lost the desire to return home. Certainly the Jews of Zakho, as described in My Father's Paradise, were a very long way from material success, or even material average-ness. But remember, lost in Ashur actually is what and who they are. These are descendants of the Jews who didn;t return when Ezra led the first return to the Land to build the 2nd Temple. These are descendants of the original exiled Jews to Babylon and Assyria who just never came back home. Not when Ezra and Nehemia built the 2nd Temple. Not when the Maccabees rededicated it, or when Herod beautified it. The Ashkenazi Jews were detained in the land of Egypt, treated so harshly for generations across Europe, prevented by seas and deserts and hostile empires from returning to Israel. The journey was not quite so onerous for the Jews living already in Iran, Iraq, and the rest of the Arabian peninsula.
And i thought a bit more about the book. i thought about how Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews place so much emphasis on kabbalah and mysticism. It plays an integral role in their theology and dogma in a way that it just cannot in that of Ashkenazi thought. The Zohar, to a large extent, replaces the focus on the physical Jerusalem and temple with emphasis on a spiritual, mystical, conceptual one. The desire to return to the temple is not one of geography, but spirituality. For Jews in Arab lands, i wonder, which is cause and which is effect? Did their strong connection with the zohar cause them to assign their yearning for a return to Zion to a mystical 'yerushalayim shel maaleh', and thus cause their drive to return to the real Zion to wither? Or did their dwindling desire to return to the Land find in the mysticism of the Zohar a world-view and vocabulary that filled their need to replace a Land-centred dogma?
It was fascinating to me to realise that this is another - yet another - aspect of the pre-messianic era we live in, that even those lost in Ashur were finally dislodged. I wish their aliyah had played out differently. I wish they had been welcomed home positively. I wish so much that kibbutz galuyot - the ingathering of the exiles that was instigated as well as enabled by the creation of the State of Israel - could have happened/happen with more good feeling and acceptance of difference. But i'm glad they are here.
The writer, Ariel Sabar, describes in beautiful detail his father's childhood growing up in Zakho, an isolated town in Northern, Kurdish, Iraq, where his father's family had lived in the same town since they were exiled there in about the year 720 BCE by the terrifying empire of Assyria (Ashur). Where the local language is still the Aramaic that the Gemara was written in. He charts what happened to the town when Zionism rose, the State of Israel was declared, and finally, in retaliation, even the Jews of remote Zakho were declared stateless, possessionless, and encouraged to flee the country, forced to leave all their possessions behind. His father, his father's family, and all their town had to start over in an Israel that treated them as primitive, backwards hillbillies, and did all it could to stamp out their distinct, devout traditions.
I want to share some realisations it brought to me. It's clear to me, from reading this book, that when Zionists point to the millions of sephardi/mizrachi Jews who were thrown out of Arab lands, and say that this is why we need the State of Israel, to be able to receive them, so that no Jew will have nowhere to go, they are being either disingenuous or, more likely, ignorant of why Jews were thrown out of Arab lands in the first place.
Jews lived in Arab lands for centuries - millennia - with general average happiness and tolerance, certainly more, on the whole, than that extended to Jews in Europe. Perhaps it particularly hard for us to believe now, so used to looking at Arabs as our worst enemy, but Jews in Arab lands had much better lives than Jews in Christian lands. It was only the rise of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel which caused their Arab hosts to finally kick them out for good.
It was startling to me to realise for just how long Jews had lived in the one same town in Arab lands. In Europe, every couple of hundred years, Jews were thrown out of a neighbourhood, town, or whole country. If that. In Arab lands - and in particular in Kurdistan, the focus of the book - Jews lived in the same village for millennia, not just centuries. There was stability. Yes, there was intermittent friction with Arab neighbours, and certainly life was hard for most Jews, but the thought of leaving their country never crossed their minds. It was only Zionism that forced them to leave.
One of the side points that became clear in the book, which I was already aware of and sad and ashamed of, was the extent to which the Zionist leadership looked down on, derided and really failed Sephardi/Mizrahi Jewry. Zionism, it is clear, is an Ashkenazi solution to an Ashkenazi problem, the creation of Jews who have spent centuries being hounded from one town to another, one pogrom to another, who had seen one safe haven after another grow sour and reject them. They needed a State which would never throw them out. They needed a State of Israel. The Jews in Arab lands did not, really, need a State of Israel at all. In fact, Zionism and the creation of the State made life much worse for them. It was the direct cause of their having to leave their homes where they had lived for generations. much of their culture, language, folklore and traditions were lost and deliberately squashed by the arrogant and patronising Ashkenazi Zionist leadership. Sephardi Jews in Israel are really only just beginning to emerge from the trauma caused by the way that their mass aliyah was handled.
At first i though, how unfair. Sephardi/Mizrahi jews should not have had to leave their ancestral lands. they shouldn;t have had to be kicked out just because all these Ashkenazi Zionists had a nationalist dream. The State of Israel didn;t 'save' any Eastern Jew from being homeless and stateless - it made them be homeless and stateless in the first place. AND then the leadership in Israel deliberately disadvantaged, derided, and despised the very Jews whom they forced to come to Israel in the first place.
But then I thought again. I realise some people - many people - will think i've been very unfair on Zionists and Zionism. be that as it may. i do, though, consider the creation of the State of Israel to be a 'Good Thing'. I recognise that the creation of the State required far too many things to happen, in the right order, for it to be only the 'fault' of the Zionist movement. I do very much see the hand of G-d enabling the establishment of modern Israel. Zionism on its own, without divine approval, couldn;t have done this. Man could not have achieved this. So then, to my worldview, G-d wanted the State of Israel to be created. And while no one but the individuals in charge are responsible for the shameful, reprehensible way that Jews from Arab lands were treated when they made aliyah, the fact that they were kicked out of their land, caused directly by the creation of the State, must have been what G-d wanted too.
So i thought about this a bit more.
As i pondered the book, i thought about a verse which is quoted often in it, and which i have long loved and mused over.
ובאו אובדים מארץ אשור, והנדחים מארץ מצרים, והשתחוו לה' בהר קודש בירושלים"
and those lost in the land of Ashur (Assyria), and those detained in the land of Egypt, shall come and bow down to G-d in the holy mountain, in Jerusalem."
I've long been familiar with, and fond of, the explanation that there are 2 'types' of Jews who make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. Those lost in the land of Ashur are those who lost their way, forgot their destination as Jews, in the good lands, in the places of riches and success (ashur עשור means riches, while אשור, pronounced the same but spelt differently, means fortune, happiness). Those detained in the land of Egypt are those who were forcibly prevented, through hardship, suffering, physical detention, and the like, from returning to the Land (Egypt - mitzrayim מצרים in Bebrew - comes from the Hebrew root tzar- צר, meaning constricted, restricted, narrowed, hemmed in). Both those who forgot the desire to return home, and those who wished to come home but were unable to do so, will at the end of days come back to serve G-d in His temple in Jerusalem.
Rav Shlomo Carlebach used to quote this explanation, and add that those making aliyah from America are the ones lost in the land of Ashur, adrift in a sea of material success, who have managed to find their way out of the maze. And the refuseniks from Russia are the ones detained in Egypt-like hardship, restrictions and physical detention, but they have also managed to come back to the Land.
i still like his explanation. But having read about the jews of kurdistan, i realised another layer of meaning. The simple layer of meaning. Those lost in Ashur meant those who were lost in Ashur. The Jews of the Arab lands had stability. Only Zionism caused them to leave the homes they had lived in for millennia. It became v clear to me - G-d wanted the State of Israel to be created, not despite the hardship it would cause for these children of Israel, and not with their hardship being an un-foreseen side effect, but (in part) IN ORDER to cause them to be kicked out. Because nothing else was jolly well going to work! We are used, with our Western, patronising eyes, to looking at their often-primitive living conditions and thinking that they are the furthest you could get from people adrift in material success who had lost the desire to return home. Certainly the Jews of Zakho, as described in My Father's Paradise, were a very long way from material success, or even material average-ness. But remember, lost in Ashur actually is what and who they are. These are descendants of the Jews who didn;t return when Ezra led the first return to the Land to build the 2nd Temple. These are descendants of the original exiled Jews to Babylon and Assyria who just never came back home. Not when Ezra and Nehemia built the 2nd Temple. Not when the Maccabees rededicated it, or when Herod beautified it. The Ashkenazi Jews were detained in the land of Egypt, treated so harshly for generations across Europe, prevented by seas and deserts and hostile empires from returning to Israel. The journey was not quite so onerous for the Jews living already in Iran, Iraq, and the rest of the Arabian peninsula.
And i thought a bit more about the book. i thought about how Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews place so much emphasis on kabbalah and mysticism. It plays an integral role in their theology and dogma in a way that it just cannot in that of Ashkenazi thought. The Zohar, to a large extent, replaces the focus on the physical Jerusalem and temple with emphasis on a spiritual, mystical, conceptual one. The desire to return to the temple is not one of geography, but spirituality. For Jews in Arab lands, i wonder, which is cause and which is effect? Did their strong connection with the zohar cause them to assign their yearning for a return to Zion to a mystical 'yerushalayim shel maaleh', and thus cause their drive to return to the real Zion to wither? Or did their dwindling desire to return to the Land find in the mysticism of the Zohar a world-view and vocabulary that filled their need to replace a Land-centred dogma?
It was fascinating to me to realise that this is another - yet another - aspect of the pre-messianic era we live in, that even those lost in Ashur were finally dislodged. I wish their aliyah had played out differently. I wish they had been welcomed home positively. I wish so much that kibbutz galuyot - the ingathering of the exiles that was instigated as well as enabled by the creation of the State of Israel - could have happened/happen with more good feeling and acceptance of difference. But i'm glad they are here.
Sunday, 27 April 2014
Yom Hashoah - Surviving
Yom hashoah. A day to remember the 6 million individuals who were killed for no reason other than that they were Jews. Over the years i've learned such a lot about the holocaust, tried so hard to come to terms with what happened, tried to find different ways to internalise, analyse, realise what happened to us. One year in school, a teacher said that we should draw a million candles, just to get an idea of how many six million is, because we just bandy the number around until it loses all relevance in our minds. So i actually started drawing little dots in the margin of my paper as he was talking, intending to get to six million. I thought,like a teenager, well, i'm only doing dots, not an actual drawing, so it won't actually take me that long.
I carried on in every lesson, dotting on this one piece of paper instead of doodling in some other way (as kids in school do). I got to about 100,000 in about a week, i think, before i ran out of interest and abandoned the project. it had made it's point, as far as i was concerned - if it took me that long just to get to 100,000 dots, then i begin to understand that six million is a really, really, really large number.
I just read this haunting and expressive post by Aryeh Myers on his blog InsomniacMedic (it's ok, go read it, i'll still be here when you come back. it's worth it). It got me thinking about survivors.
When we talk about 6 million lost, i think we should also remember those who survived. The survivors, like Rosa, who will always define themselves in relation to the terror and horror which they survived. The ones who are still surviving, the ones who died in the last few years - few decades - with families and jobs and, well, lives behind them. Although they survived, part of them died, too. And perhaps, part of each and every one of us died also.
And because perhaps i can;t help casting about for wider patterns and ways of thinking, i think back to other traumas we have survived. We are all survivors. we, as a nation, have been through so much trauma. i remember that a teacher (i think it was in Midreshet Lindenbaum and it may have been R' Menachem Leibtag, but may not have been. i wish i could say it in the name of the original expounder) pointed out that at different stages in our history, the Jews who did not make a particular decision became irrelevant to the nation. Thus all of us now identifying as Jews today are the remnant who survived the tortures of Egypt and made it out; who entered the Land of Israel; who lived on the West Bank of the Jordan; who lived in Binyamin and Yehuda and not the other 10 tribes; who went to Babylon with the first wave of exile or are from the few who survived the massacre and forced marches of the second wave of babylonian exile, and did not stay in the Land to flee to Egypt and be lost; who chose to return to Israel with Ezra or Nechemia and did not stay in Persia or others of her 127 provinces; who survived the greek and roman massacres; who did not fall to the lure of Hellenism or nascent Christianity or any of the number of other possibilities that have been offered to us over the centuries; who survived pogroms and martyrdoms and crusades...and now this holocaust. We really have been whittled down so much over the generations.
The concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is only about a hundred years old, and it's a similar amount of time since Freud began the psycho-analytic approach and showed how much we are impacted by the experiences we go through, even when we do not realise it. I don't know about the whole concept of previous lives, but i think that we, as individuals who are part of this nation, carry with us a large and largely unnoticed psychological baggage from the lives that preceded our own. My mother says that the reason why no Jewish mother can go off on a trip without making sure that she has plenty of food is a sub-conscious response to the trauma that we all suffered when we left Egypt in such a hurry that we had nothing to eat but the dough that baked on our backs. Even now, however many centuries and generations later, we practise behaviour that was shaped by a trauma inflicted on our great-to-the-power-of-fifty-grandparents.
I think about how the Torah repeats so many times 'because you were slaves in Egypt'. The unconscious psychological baggage may be more intentional than it at first seems. There are behaviours and emotional responses that are expected of us because we suffered. Because we know what it's like to be beaten, to not be trusted, to be hunted and tortured and treated as expendable, and so we have to survive. Not to recover from it. When we say the slogan of 'we will forgive but not forget', is this why? Because we are survivors, and that shapes us differently. We were once slaves in Egypt - and Babylon - and Persia - and Greece - and Rome - and Spain - and Poland - and Germany - and Hungary. The trauma of those times cannot be wiped away. No amount of time, no amount of reparations, no amount of revenge can ever remove the scars of those experiences. It would be unfair, unreasonable, possibly insulting to expect us to grieve, accept, move on. Instead we have a framework that holds onto the trauma, the scars and the pain. We don't celebrate it, but we acknowledge it, and we acknowledge that it will never go away and SHOULD never go away. Every year we bring it out again, we revisit it and retell it and make sure that we never forget it, that even in 1000 years if we Moshiach has not come we will be reopening those wounds and crying again.
I think that tisha b'av, and yom hashoah, is not there for the dead. It's to make sure that we, too ,view ourselves as though we came out of Egypt - not for the salvation, but for the pain. Is yom hashoah there for the sake of the dead, that we remember them, or is it for us, that we remember them?
I carried on in every lesson, dotting on this one piece of paper instead of doodling in some other way (as kids in school do). I got to about 100,000 in about a week, i think, before i ran out of interest and abandoned the project. it had made it's point, as far as i was concerned - if it took me that long just to get to 100,000 dots, then i begin to understand that six million is a really, really, really large number.
I just read this haunting and expressive post by Aryeh Myers on his blog InsomniacMedic (it's ok, go read it, i'll still be here when you come back. it's worth it). It got me thinking about survivors.
When we talk about 6 million lost, i think we should also remember those who survived. The survivors, like Rosa, who will always define themselves in relation to the terror and horror which they survived. The ones who are still surviving, the ones who died in the last few years - few decades - with families and jobs and, well, lives behind them. Although they survived, part of them died, too. And perhaps, part of each and every one of us died also.
And because perhaps i can;t help casting about for wider patterns and ways of thinking, i think back to other traumas we have survived. We are all survivors. we, as a nation, have been through so much trauma. i remember that a teacher (i think it was in Midreshet Lindenbaum and it may have been R' Menachem Leibtag, but may not have been. i wish i could say it in the name of the original expounder) pointed out that at different stages in our history, the Jews who did not make a particular decision became irrelevant to the nation. Thus all of us now identifying as Jews today are the remnant who survived the tortures of Egypt and made it out; who entered the Land of Israel; who lived on the West Bank of the Jordan; who lived in Binyamin and Yehuda and not the other 10 tribes; who went to Babylon with the first wave of exile or are from the few who survived the massacre and forced marches of the second wave of babylonian exile, and did not stay in the Land to flee to Egypt and be lost; who chose to return to Israel with Ezra or Nechemia and did not stay in Persia or others of her 127 provinces; who survived the greek and roman massacres; who did not fall to the lure of Hellenism or nascent Christianity or any of the number of other possibilities that have been offered to us over the centuries; who survived pogroms and martyrdoms and crusades...and now this holocaust. We really have been whittled down so much over the generations.
The concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is only about a hundred years old, and it's a similar amount of time since Freud began the psycho-analytic approach and showed how much we are impacted by the experiences we go through, even when we do not realise it. I don't know about the whole concept of previous lives, but i think that we, as individuals who are part of this nation, carry with us a large and largely unnoticed psychological baggage from the lives that preceded our own. My mother says that the reason why no Jewish mother can go off on a trip without making sure that she has plenty of food is a sub-conscious response to the trauma that we all suffered when we left Egypt in such a hurry that we had nothing to eat but the dough that baked on our backs. Even now, however many centuries and generations later, we practise behaviour that was shaped by a trauma inflicted on our great-to-the-power-of-fifty-grandparents.
I think about how the Torah repeats so many times 'because you were slaves in Egypt'. The unconscious psychological baggage may be more intentional than it at first seems. There are behaviours and emotional responses that are expected of us because we suffered. Because we know what it's like to be beaten, to not be trusted, to be hunted and tortured and treated as expendable, and so we have to survive. Not to recover from it. When we say the slogan of 'we will forgive but not forget', is this why? Because we are survivors, and that shapes us differently. We were once slaves in Egypt - and Babylon - and Persia - and Greece - and Rome - and Spain - and Poland - and Germany - and Hungary. The trauma of those times cannot be wiped away. No amount of time, no amount of reparations, no amount of revenge can ever remove the scars of those experiences. It would be unfair, unreasonable, possibly insulting to expect us to grieve, accept, move on. Instead we have a framework that holds onto the trauma, the scars and the pain. We don't celebrate it, but we acknowledge it, and we acknowledge that it will never go away and SHOULD never go away. Every year we bring it out again, we revisit it and retell it and make sure that we never forget it, that even in 1000 years if we Moshiach has not come we will be reopening those wounds and crying again.
I think that tisha b'av, and yom hashoah, is not there for the dead. It's to make sure that we, too ,view ourselves as though we came out of Egypt - not for the salvation, but for the pain. Is yom hashoah there for the sake of the dead, that we remember them, or is it for us, that we remember them?
Saturday, 15 March 2014
The Real Chillul Hashem
As a religious, Torah-respecting, semi-demi-hemi charedi, there is one aspect to last week's elections which still bothers me. in a sentence, it is this: the corrupt Abutbul election campaign has tarred by association a great number of talmidei chachamim whom i respect. had respected. not yet sure which.
You see, I who live in the eye of this particular storm know that the charedi mayor and his coterie are corrupt.
(Note: i do not want to say that chareidim as a group are corrupt. this is not true and an insult to the many many chareidim who are beautiful examples of G-d-fearing Torah-observing menstchen (and frauen). Also: those who do not live here need to know that Abutbul is the puppet at the tip of the iceberg, to woefully mix my metaphors. He is not calling the shots. If he was not there, someone else would be. This does not excuse his behaviour, though - he is a willing lackey).
And the vast majority of my fellow-townspeople know this too. even the ones who voted for him. (they just found different ways to make their own terms with it, some by saying 'it's irrelevant, i follow the gedolim', some by saying 'it's irrelevant because he is charedi' and some by claiming that the corruption is either practically irrelevant (eg 'only 36 fraudulent votes were actually cast and abutbul himself didn't know about it, so the Election Mark I should stand' - thus ignoring both the import of any sort of fraud, and the fact that it is the charedi-abutbul coterie who did it), or that it is a conspiratorial lie.)
I should note too that i am using the term 'corruption' in a very broad way. The Abutbul coterie (by which i mean not just the man himself but the group of people who surround him and direct him, & most especially directed his campaign) deliberately lied about past events; they deliberately misquoted and twisted the words of Eli Cohen; they lied about his intentions; they blackmailed individuals to vote for him using religious & communal coercion; they broke the laws of election campaigning repeatedly and ignored reprimands; they bribed individuals to vote for him; they gave him credit for achievements which were not his own; they used inciteful language to whip up hate; they falsely claimed that individuals who would appeal to particular communities supported him. I could give a longer and more detailed list, but that would be boring. Suffice to say: lies, cheating, blackmail, bribery, defamation, slander, incitement to violence.
So far, so bad enough - there is a large corrupt streak running through the charedi world, and abutbul and his coterie are major representatives of it. Thanks to the elections round one, and also various other infamous episodes in recent history, everyone knows that there are corrupt chareidim around.
However, it seems that some people do not know about this corruption: certain talmidei chachamim. And this is the crux of the matter.
The corrupt Abutbul coterie brought in numerous 'outside' talmidei chachamim (whom they termed 'gedolim') to tell the masses that they MUST vote Abutbul. Here's a partial list, off the top of my head: Rav Obadya Yosef z"l; Rav Chaim Kaneivsky; Rav Nebenzahl; Rav Tau; Rav Aron Feldman; Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky; the Novominsker Rebbe; Rav Ahron Leib Steinman; Rabbi Orlowek; Rabbi Leff; Rebbetzin Tzipora Heller, Rabbi David (? i think this was his first name) Abuchatzeira. By associating these individuals with the corrupt Abutbul campaign, his coterie besmirched them all with their own corruption. I can think of no greater chillul Hashem than to have made Torah and Torah scholars appear corrupt, through inducing them to support corruption.
So, all of us who care about Torah and her teachers face a problem: respected, knoweldgeable, wise talmidei chachamim who know so much Torah and give such good advice, have supported a corrupt group of political schemers.
It's a conflict: how do we resolve this?
I've read many individuals who've said that this just proves that all the aforementioned chareidi talmidei chachamim are corrupt themselves.
I've heard people say that all these Torah powerhouses are foolish, naive and ignorant indivuals who know only Torah but nothing of anything beyond the daled amos of their own beis medrash, and so were easily manipulated into saying whatever some bearded askan wished them to say.
I've heard still others say that this shows how unjust the 'gedolim' are, that they did not bother to check out the facts and speak to people on both sides of the mayoral race, but only listened to the chareidi one who asked them for support.
I've seen too the argument that all these gedolim were lied to by their gabboim and shamashim to convince them to support Abutbul, and/or that letters of support were forged, and so you can not believe anything a 'gadol' says, because they are manipulated by their gabboim and shamashim.
And many people say that this shows that the whole concept of 'Daas Torah' is a load of lies and placebos, because Daas Torah even see corruption when it was right before their eyes.
Others, who are more nuanced in their thought, are more conflicted. We feel betrayed and let down. How can someone so knowledgeable in Torah be so easily hoodwinked? How can someone we respected as thoughtful and wise decide to support one side in an election without properly investigating the whole situation? How can so much Torah knowledge leave one so foolish?
I don't really have any answers yet, but i have a few thoughts.
1. Some of the gedolim in question really do not know much about what goes on outside of their beis medrash. Some are particularly old and frail and reliant on their gabboim/shamashim to guide them.
2. Some letters of support really were forged (see: corruption).
3. A few years ago, my husband and I went to meet with Rabbi Orlowek (as mentioned above). He is well-known for his almost prophetic insight into children's characters and their educational/parenting needs: you bring him a photograph of your child, and he'll tell you about that child's nature and how best to help him. So we did this, we brought him photos of our three children. Before he began, R' Orlowek cautioned us that he is not a navi (prophet). This is not nevuah (prophecy), this is just his years of experience and his close reading of body language and facial cues that enable him to pick up on a person's feelings. He told us that, as he is not a navi, he is not infallible. These are your children, he said. You know them best. If i say something which does not sound right to you, then listen to yourselves, not to me, because you know them best. And sure enough, while what he told us was 95% accurate and 100% helpful and useful, there were a couple of times when we exchagned glances with each other and said no, that's not really what he/she's like at all. No, that's not a problem he/she has. And he said right, well it's your child and you know them best, i am not a navi.
And so now i remember this, and I think, if that was the case for our children, for their whole chinuch and discipline and life path, then why can that not be true too for our town? Perhaps here, too, neither Rabbi Orlowek nor the other 'gedolim' are neviim, and they are all, again, wrong about our town, because it is our town, and we know it best? We do not really believe that rabbis are infallible; can we just accept that they were wrong here, that yes, they were misled, that they did not dig deeply enough into the issue, that they were lied to and believed those lies - but can we still continue to trust and respect them as talmidei chachamim and wise Torah teachers despite the fact that they are human? It's a thought.
4. Perhaps, like many of us once did, these talmidei chachamim trusted chareidim to be honest. Perhaps they believed the apparently frum, G-d-fearing people who approached them and begged them hard to do what they can to convince people to vote for the chareidi candidate because of the chillul Hashem that would otherwise ensue.
This doesn;t solve it for me. I still ask myself why they chose to get involved; why they did not use their seichel to speak to both sides and check out the situation for themselves; why they were so naive that they could be taken in in this way; why their Torah learning did not make them wiser than this. I continue to try to retain my respect for talmidei chachamim, both in general and in the specifics listed above. I remind myself about shabtai zvi and the number of rabbonim at the time who believed him, too. I think of Rav Yaakov Emden and Rav Yonatan Eibeschutz, who had a fierce quarrel which bore very little in common with hillel and shammai, but we still learn and value both their Torah. I think about how the Dubner Maggid so misjudged the Vilna Gaon in giving him eitzah - but we still appreciate his teachings. I think too about Rabbenu Yonah, who did passionate teshuvah years after his scathing condemnation of the writings of the Rambam. Perhaps just not enough time has passed yet.
Perhaps, too, we just have to learn to live with the questions and confusion. It is Purim, after all.
You see, I who live in the eye of this particular storm know that the charedi mayor and his coterie are corrupt.
(Note: i do not want to say that chareidim as a group are corrupt. this is not true and an insult to the many many chareidim who are beautiful examples of G-d-fearing Torah-observing menstchen (and frauen). Also: those who do not live here need to know that Abutbul is the puppet at the tip of the iceberg, to woefully mix my metaphors. He is not calling the shots. If he was not there, someone else would be. This does not excuse his behaviour, though - he is a willing lackey).
And the vast majority of my fellow-townspeople know this too. even the ones who voted for him. (they just found different ways to make their own terms with it, some by saying 'it's irrelevant, i follow the gedolim', some by saying 'it's irrelevant because he is charedi' and some by claiming that the corruption is either practically irrelevant (eg 'only 36 fraudulent votes were actually cast and abutbul himself didn't know about it, so the Election Mark I should stand' - thus ignoring both the import of any sort of fraud, and the fact that it is the charedi-abutbul coterie who did it), or that it is a conspiratorial lie.)
I should note too that i am using the term 'corruption' in a very broad way. The Abutbul coterie (by which i mean not just the man himself but the group of people who surround him and direct him, & most especially directed his campaign) deliberately lied about past events; they deliberately misquoted and twisted the words of Eli Cohen; they lied about his intentions; they blackmailed individuals to vote for him using religious & communal coercion; they broke the laws of election campaigning repeatedly and ignored reprimands; they bribed individuals to vote for him; they gave him credit for achievements which were not his own; they used inciteful language to whip up hate; they falsely claimed that individuals who would appeal to particular communities supported him. I could give a longer and more detailed list, but that would be boring. Suffice to say: lies, cheating, blackmail, bribery, defamation, slander, incitement to violence.
So far, so bad enough - there is a large corrupt streak running through the charedi world, and abutbul and his coterie are major representatives of it. Thanks to the elections round one, and also various other infamous episodes in recent history, everyone knows that there are corrupt chareidim around.
However, it seems that some people do not know about this corruption: certain talmidei chachamim. And this is the crux of the matter.
The corrupt Abutbul coterie brought in numerous 'outside' talmidei chachamim (whom they termed 'gedolim') to tell the masses that they MUST vote Abutbul. Here's a partial list, off the top of my head: Rav Obadya Yosef z"l; Rav Chaim Kaneivsky; Rav Nebenzahl; Rav Tau; Rav Aron Feldman; Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky; the Novominsker Rebbe; Rav Ahron Leib Steinman; Rabbi Orlowek; Rabbi Leff; Rebbetzin Tzipora Heller, Rabbi David (? i think this was his first name) Abuchatzeira. By associating these individuals with the corrupt Abutbul campaign, his coterie besmirched them all with their own corruption. I can think of no greater chillul Hashem than to have made Torah and Torah scholars appear corrupt, through inducing them to support corruption.
So, all of us who care about Torah and her teachers face a problem: respected, knoweldgeable, wise talmidei chachamim who know so much Torah and give such good advice, have supported a corrupt group of political schemers.
It's a conflict: how do we resolve this?
I've read many individuals who've said that this just proves that all the aforementioned chareidi talmidei chachamim are corrupt themselves.
I've heard people say that all these Torah powerhouses are foolish, naive and ignorant indivuals who know only Torah but nothing of anything beyond the daled amos of their own beis medrash, and so were easily manipulated into saying whatever some bearded askan wished them to say.
I've heard still others say that this shows how unjust the 'gedolim' are, that they did not bother to check out the facts and speak to people on both sides of the mayoral race, but only listened to the chareidi one who asked them for support.
I've seen too the argument that all these gedolim were lied to by their gabboim and shamashim to convince them to support Abutbul, and/or that letters of support were forged, and so you can not believe anything a 'gadol' says, because they are manipulated by their gabboim and shamashim.
And many people say that this shows that the whole concept of 'Daas Torah' is a load of lies and placebos, because Daas Torah even see corruption when it was right before their eyes.
Others, who are more nuanced in their thought, are more conflicted. We feel betrayed and let down. How can someone so knowledgeable in Torah be so easily hoodwinked? How can someone we respected as thoughtful and wise decide to support one side in an election without properly investigating the whole situation? How can so much Torah knowledge leave one so foolish?
I don't really have any answers yet, but i have a few thoughts.
1. Some of the gedolim in question really do not know much about what goes on outside of their beis medrash. Some are particularly old and frail and reliant on their gabboim/shamashim to guide them.
2. Some letters of support really were forged (see: corruption).
3. A few years ago, my husband and I went to meet with Rabbi Orlowek (as mentioned above). He is well-known for his almost prophetic insight into children's characters and their educational/parenting needs: you bring him a photograph of your child, and he'll tell you about that child's nature and how best to help him. So we did this, we brought him photos of our three children. Before he began, R' Orlowek cautioned us that he is not a navi (prophet). This is not nevuah (prophecy), this is just his years of experience and his close reading of body language and facial cues that enable him to pick up on a person's feelings. He told us that, as he is not a navi, he is not infallible. These are your children, he said. You know them best. If i say something which does not sound right to you, then listen to yourselves, not to me, because you know them best. And sure enough, while what he told us was 95% accurate and 100% helpful and useful, there were a couple of times when we exchagned glances with each other and said no, that's not really what he/she's like at all. No, that's not a problem he/she has. And he said right, well it's your child and you know them best, i am not a navi.
And so now i remember this, and I think, if that was the case for our children, for their whole chinuch and discipline and life path, then why can that not be true too for our town? Perhaps here, too, neither Rabbi Orlowek nor the other 'gedolim' are neviim, and they are all, again, wrong about our town, because it is our town, and we know it best? We do not really believe that rabbis are infallible; can we just accept that they were wrong here, that yes, they were misled, that they did not dig deeply enough into the issue, that they were lied to and believed those lies - but can we still continue to trust and respect them as talmidei chachamim and wise Torah teachers despite the fact that they are human? It's a thought.
4. Perhaps, like many of us once did, these talmidei chachamim trusted chareidim to be honest. Perhaps they believed the apparently frum, G-d-fearing people who approached them and begged them hard to do what they can to convince people to vote for the chareidi candidate because of the chillul Hashem that would otherwise ensue.
This doesn;t solve it for me. I still ask myself why they chose to get involved; why they did not use their seichel to speak to both sides and check out the situation for themselves; why they were so naive that they could be taken in in this way; why their Torah learning did not make them wiser than this. I continue to try to retain my respect for talmidei chachamim, both in general and in the specifics listed above. I remind myself about shabtai zvi and the number of rabbonim at the time who believed him, too. I think of Rav Yaakov Emden and Rav Yonatan Eibeschutz, who had a fierce quarrel which bore very little in common with hillel and shammai, but we still learn and value both their Torah. I think about how the Dubner Maggid so misjudged the Vilna Gaon in giving him eitzah - but we still appreciate his teachings. I think too about Rabbenu Yonah, who did passionate teshuvah years after his scathing condemnation of the writings of the Rambam. Perhaps just not enough time has passed yet.
Perhaps, too, we just have to learn to live with the questions and confusion. It is Purim, after all.
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
For the want of some backbone, the country was lost
The more I mull over the results of yesterday's elections, the more i realise just how much was lost.
Had Eli Cohen won, he would, by his actions over the next 5 years of office, have shown Charedim that they have nothing to fear from living under a non-charedi mayor. Through his even-handedness in allocating resources, his respect for Torah and for Heaven, chareidim could gradually have learned that they had nothing to fear from a mesorati sephardi Jew. With violent extremists reined in, chareidim along with datiim and chilonim would have lived with more fear of Heaven than fear of their neighbour. Beit Shemesh could have become a model of peaceful co-existence, where charedi, dati, chiloni, masorati, ashkenazi and sepharadi and everything in between lived according to their own minhagim and rabbanim, but without fear of the Other.
We had the opportunity, yesterday, to open up a whole new chapter in Israeli history. We could have begun a period when, slowly, with trepidation and uncertainty at first, all sects and swathes of Jews could have discovered that different viewpoints need not lead to war. If Beit Shemesh had chosen differently, we could have had a mayor who would do the best thing for all groups within our divided little town, and slowly, each group would have come to feel valued and respected and accepted. And all the rest of the country, whose eyes are on us already, would have seen that a sepharadi masorati mayor does not have it in for chareidim, and would have seen that each group begins to feel secure despite the disparate nature of the town, that different types of Jews really can all live together in the same town, that violent religious extremists can be stopped without punishing their peaceable fellow ideologues. And across the rest of the country, chareidim would not fear moving into a dati-leumi neighbourhood, and dati-leumiim would not fear when chareidim did move in, because they would all have seen that it is possible for them to co-exist without the one group swallowing another.
And at a time when the Shaked law was just passed, when chareidim call other Jews amalek, and chilonim call chareidim parasites, and datiim think that everyone else just wants their children to risk their lives, we more than at any time before need somewhere to show us all that we don't have to fear. I do not exaggerate when i say that, had Eli Cohen won last night, it would have made a difference not just to Beit Shemesh, but to the whole country.
And i am all the more sad that this opportunity was thrown away. It won't come around again.
Instead, chareidi leadership has shown its most corrupt side. It has demonstrated that it believes it may lie, cheat, threaten and blackmail in the name of Torah, and through its victory, it believes that more than ever. It has shown no consideration for either the law or for their fellow Jews. It has taken talmidei chachamim and used them as - not a shovel, but as a carrot and a stick, to achieve their own ends. Even the extreme kannoim, who had a certain consistency in refusing to ever have anything to do with the State, have shown that they too have no ideals - when pressured enough, they too will vote.
And I am so disappointed in my fellow anglo-chareidim, who (by and large, this is drawn with a blunt pencil), let them, and let themselves down immensely in the process. I speak not about those who, out of their own consideration, concluded that Abutbul would be the better mayor. I believe they are in the minority amongst his voters. I am thinking instead about those who in all naivete and pashtus obeyed their rabbis and closed their eyes to what stared them in the face. Those who truly believed that they were voting for yiras shamayim, for Torah, for their children's Jewish future. Their naivete, trust, and peshute emunah (not a typo) was misplaced and, in my non-halachic opinion, halachically wrong. They bought into the Israeli-chareidi model of believing that one must follow the opinion of the 'gadol' in all things regardless of circumstances, and accepted that chareidi leadership is worth deceit and fraud. At a moment when the corrupt streak running through chareidi leadership could have been checked, the anglo-chareidi world gave them a mandate to continue to bludgeon, browbeat, blackmail and bribe their way to power l'shem shamayim. Oh, the irony.
When Eli Cohen lost the election last night, it was more than clean streets, pre-planned infrastructure, and responsible leadership that went with him. It was the chance to change the face of the whole country, at a time when tensions have never been higher.
It is for this, that I mourn.
Had Eli Cohen won, he would, by his actions over the next 5 years of office, have shown Charedim that they have nothing to fear from living under a non-charedi mayor. Through his even-handedness in allocating resources, his respect for Torah and for Heaven, chareidim could gradually have learned that they had nothing to fear from a mesorati sephardi Jew. With violent extremists reined in, chareidim along with datiim and chilonim would have lived with more fear of Heaven than fear of their neighbour. Beit Shemesh could have become a model of peaceful co-existence, where charedi, dati, chiloni, masorati, ashkenazi and sepharadi and everything in between lived according to their own minhagim and rabbanim, but without fear of the Other.
We had the opportunity, yesterday, to open up a whole new chapter in Israeli history. We could have begun a period when, slowly, with trepidation and uncertainty at first, all sects and swathes of Jews could have discovered that different viewpoints need not lead to war. If Beit Shemesh had chosen differently, we could have had a mayor who would do the best thing for all groups within our divided little town, and slowly, each group would have come to feel valued and respected and accepted. And all the rest of the country, whose eyes are on us already, would have seen that a sepharadi masorati mayor does not have it in for chareidim, and would have seen that each group begins to feel secure despite the disparate nature of the town, that different types of Jews really can all live together in the same town, that violent religious extremists can be stopped without punishing their peaceable fellow ideologues. And across the rest of the country, chareidim would not fear moving into a dati-leumi neighbourhood, and dati-leumiim would not fear when chareidim did move in, because they would all have seen that it is possible for them to co-exist without the one group swallowing another.
And at a time when the Shaked law was just passed, when chareidim call other Jews amalek, and chilonim call chareidim parasites, and datiim think that everyone else just wants their children to risk their lives, we more than at any time before need somewhere to show us all that we don't have to fear. I do not exaggerate when i say that, had Eli Cohen won last night, it would have made a difference not just to Beit Shemesh, but to the whole country.
And i am all the more sad that this opportunity was thrown away. It won't come around again.
Instead, chareidi leadership has shown its most corrupt side. It has demonstrated that it believes it may lie, cheat, threaten and blackmail in the name of Torah, and through its victory, it believes that more than ever. It has shown no consideration for either the law or for their fellow Jews. It has taken talmidei chachamim and used them as - not a shovel, but as a carrot and a stick, to achieve their own ends. Even the extreme kannoim, who had a certain consistency in refusing to ever have anything to do with the State, have shown that they too have no ideals - when pressured enough, they too will vote.
And I am so disappointed in my fellow anglo-chareidim, who (by and large, this is drawn with a blunt pencil), let them, and let themselves down immensely in the process. I speak not about those who, out of their own consideration, concluded that Abutbul would be the better mayor. I believe they are in the minority amongst his voters. I am thinking instead about those who in all naivete and pashtus obeyed their rabbis and closed their eyes to what stared them in the face. Those who truly believed that they were voting for yiras shamayim, for Torah, for their children's Jewish future. Their naivete, trust, and peshute emunah (not a typo) was misplaced and, in my non-halachic opinion, halachically wrong. They bought into the Israeli-chareidi model of believing that one must follow the opinion of the 'gadol' in all things regardless of circumstances, and accepted that chareidi leadership is worth deceit and fraud. At a moment when the corrupt streak running through chareidi leadership could have been checked, the anglo-chareidi world gave them a mandate to continue to bludgeon, browbeat, blackmail and bribe their way to power l'shem shamayim. Oh, the irony.
When Eli Cohen lost the election last night, it was more than clean streets, pre-planned infrastructure, and responsible leadership that went with him. It was the chance to change the face of the whole country, at a time when tensions have never been higher.
It is for this, that I mourn.
Sunday, 8 December 2013
Wonder, & no wonder.
I've been meaning to write a kind of 'chanukah reflections - year 2' post. i guess i am a little late. i won't take up much of your time.
It's interesting to see how much year 2 is different to year 1. on the whole, better. 300% better. And it makes year 2 stand out in its own way, since at every landmark on the path of time, we're remembering how it felt this time last year, and feeling thankful that we no longer feel that way any more.
Sometimes, as i walk down the street to pick up yc from school, and i gaze across at the undeniably Judean hills that march across the horizon, and pick out the site of an biblical canaanite kingdom in the distance, and reflect that i really am living here, walking one-two-three-mitzvah! on holy soil, and i feel the need to pinch myself. So many years i wished i was here, i asked Hashem why i couldn;t be doing exactly what i am doing now, and it's hard to believe that it really happened. is happening, every minute.
and yet sometimes, i take it all for granted. sometimes i am just living my life, cooking dinner, helping with homework, doing the shopping, working, looking after my children, and i just somehow slip between the moments of wonder without quite touching them. and i pull myself up and ask how i just went past that vista, the view i love the best from ramat aleph, where, on a clear day, i can see ashdod, and yet today i just went past without noticing. and i am so grateful for that, too. i am so grateful that living in the holy land can feel so normal. so much like real life. and that i can get so accustomed to it (although i do try to live more mindfully).
some moments are still full of wonder. when our daughter has no qualms about picking up the phone to call an israeli friend to arrange a playdate in ivrit. when i realise that our children sat down and did their homework in ivrit in a reasonable amount of time, and that i didn;t once have to translate a question. when i remember that this day a year ago, there were tears and fears that we would never understand and never feel at home. when it's a cloudy day and i think, hang on, the sun's not shining, that's really unusual. i still find it exciting when the buses say 'shabbat shalom' or 'chag sameach'.
some things are so so special about living here, and many of them are not the things i thought would be, or even was aware of, when we made aliyah.
i love that our children are in school with children who speak russian, ethiopian (amharic), french, spanish, english, or hebrew at home, but they are all israelis together in school and play together in ivrit.
i love that if i forget to take maaser from our home-grown fruits before shabbat, we will have to spend 25 hours looking regretfully at the mound of clementinas that we can't eat.
because i come from a country with very few towns with sizeable jewish communities, i love that even small villages can have shuls, mikvaot, kosher stores, and orthodox jews.
i love having major archaeological finds made almost on my doorstep.
i love how astonishingly, blurringly fast plants grow here, so that i haven;t yet slipped into the rhythm of when to expect to see fruits and vegetables in the shops (whoever heard of strawberries being ripe in december? wimbledon hasn;t even begun yet!).
i also, because i have friends from so many different points in my life and quite a few different countries, love that so many dropped threads and old friendships can be picked up again here, now that we are in the same country again.
i love the small things that remind me that we are all jews together keeping the same (or very similar) minhagim, like that the local supermarkets not only had special offers on oil and candles and potatoes before chanukah, but also on icing sugar, jam, and super-absorbent kitchen towels.
i love that the shop assistants chide my daughter not to suck her thumb, because we are all one family, after all.
and so, we move on to the next stage of aliyah. that of living life, the same as ever before, but this time in the right place. we move slowly into finding a new balance between wonder & excitement, and routine & the common-place. because we are no longer tourists or olim chadashim, pointing excitedly at every israeli experience. but we are & always yehudim, who are so grateful that we are blessed to live in our own holy land that we try to hold on to that wide-eyed, fresh-off-the-boat astonishment that all this could be real.
Baruch Hashem.
It's interesting to see how much year 2 is different to year 1. on the whole, better. 300% better. And it makes year 2 stand out in its own way, since at every landmark on the path of time, we're remembering how it felt this time last year, and feeling thankful that we no longer feel that way any more.
Sometimes, as i walk down the street to pick up yc from school, and i gaze across at the undeniably Judean hills that march across the horizon, and pick out the site of an biblical canaanite kingdom in the distance, and reflect that i really am living here, walking one-two-three-mitzvah! on holy soil, and i feel the need to pinch myself. So many years i wished i was here, i asked Hashem why i couldn;t be doing exactly what i am doing now, and it's hard to believe that it really happened. is happening, every minute.
and yet sometimes, i take it all for granted. sometimes i am just living my life, cooking dinner, helping with homework, doing the shopping, working, looking after my children, and i just somehow slip between the moments of wonder without quite touching them. and i pull myself up and ask how i just went past that vista, the view i love the best from ramat aleph, where, on a clear day, i can see ashdod, and yet today i just went past without noticing. and i am so grateful for that, too. i am so grateful that living in the holy land can feel so normal. so much like real life. and that i can get so accustomed to it (although i do try to live more mindfully).
some moments are still full of wonder. when our daughter has no qualms about picking up the phone to call an israeli friend to arrange a playdate in ivrit. when i realise that our children sat down and did their homework in ivrit in a reasonable amount of time, and that i didn;t once have to translate a question. when i remember that this day a year ago, there were tears and fears that we would never understand and never feel at home. when it's a cloudy day and i think, hang on, the sun's not shining, that's really unusual. i still find it exciting when the buses say 'shabbat shalom' or 'chag sameach'.
some things are so so special about living here, and many of them are not the things i thought would be, or even was aware of, when we made aliyah.
i love that our children are in school with children who speak russian, ethiopian (amharic), french, spanish, english, or hebrew at home, but they are all israelis together in school and play together in ivrit.
i love that if i forget to take maaser from our home-grown fruits before shabbat, we will have to spend 25 hours looking regretfully at the mound of clementinas that we can't eat.
because i come from a country with very few towns with sizeable jewish communities, i love that even small villages can have shuls, mikvaot, kosher stores, and orthodox jews.
i love having major archaeological finds made almost on my doorstep.
i love how astonishingly, blurringly fast plants grow here, so that i haven;t yet slipped into the rhythm of when to expect to see fruits and vegetables in the shops (whoever heard of strawberries being ripe in december? wimbledon hasn;t even begun yet!).
i also, because i have friends from so many different points in my life and quite a few different countries, love that so many dropped threads and old friendships can be picked up again here, now that we are in the same country again.
i love the small things that remind me that we are all jews together keeping the same (or very similar) minhagim, like that the local supermarkets not only had special offers on oil and candles and potatoes before chanukah, but also on icing sugar, jam, and super-absorbent kitchen towels.
i love that the shop assistants chide my daughter not to suck her thumb, because we are all one family, after all.
and so, we move on to the next stage of aliyah. that of living life, the same as ever before, but this time in the right place. we move slowly into finding a new balance between wonder & excitement, and routine & the common-place. because we are no longer tourists or olim chadashim, pointing excitedly at every israeli experience. but we are & always yehudim, who are so grateful that we are blessed to live in our own holy land that we try to hold on to that wide-eyed, fresh-off-the-boat astonishment that all this could be real.
Baruch Hashem.
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