Sderot

Ok, I apologize for taking so long, but life is busy, and I’m a lazy ass. Here is a full draft of the essay I’m turning in to the good people at Bina, an account of my stay in Sderot and what it meant to me. I’m opening the floor to any comments my readers may have about style, tone, etc. Email me or just comment below. Enjoy!

 

Moshe said to the people, “Remember this day, on which you left Egypt, the abode of slavery; because Adonai, by the strength of his hand, has brought you out of this place…For seven days you are to eat matzah, and the seventh day is to be a festival for Adonai…On that day you are to tell your son, ‘It is because of what Adonai did for me when I left Egypt.’” -from Exodus 13:3-8

I am a Pesach apostate.

I remember Pesach in my childhood: the lugubrious, endless readings and prayers of my beloved grandfather’s solemn German upbringing. I remember forgetting the Ashkenazic prohibition on corn and eating popcorn at a friend’s house, only to face recrimination at home. I remember my mother’s disastrous attempts at matzah pizza, and the matzah sandwiches we brought to school that defiantly crumbled in our hands and fell into sticky confetti in our laps. I remember hating the biting, shaming response to the wicked child in the Haggadah, hardly the way to bring a child who wishes to distance himself from his heritage back into the fold.

No other major Jewish holiday responds to the grief-stricken history of the Jewish people outside our land by requiring a physical penalty upon the individual. Even Yom Kippur, when we are commanded to abstain from all food and water for twenty-five hours, does not explicitly demand a punishment: we are also prohibited from showering, shaving, or wearing make-up or leather shoes. We are to stop the narratives of our lives mid-sentence to explore our conduct in a manner far too intense to extend throughout the year, no matter how self-aware we are. The deprivation is not the means by which we achieve clarity, it is simply a byproduct of the process. On Pesach, we are asked to continue an historical religious tradition of punishing the physical as a means to strengthen the spiritual, pitting one against the other as enemies rather than corresponding halves of a whole.

Last year, immersed in the final hell of an 80-page thesis, I observed only the first two days of Pesach.  All-nighters of Nietzsche and Freud deserved Easy Mac and donuts, I believed. This is probably not the strongest theological argument I have ever made. But it was the first time I found myself willing to ignore the laws of observance that had previously bound me to a practice I detested. At the college seder, I mentioned to those assembled how the usually disingenuous final words “next year in Jerusalem” meant something for me, because I would be in Israel the following year. But aside from that, I felt nothing for Pesach other than my annual resentment.

This year’s Pesach was the closest I have ever come to appreciating the holiday. I did not follow the grain restrictions, reveling in sandwiches and pasta and cereal. I avoided matzah, except at seders. My observance consisted of what I did do, rather than what I did not. I went to Sderot.

****

Sderot is a tiny border town, created as a settlement area for immigrants from former Soviet countries. It became a locus of conflict in the Second Intifada when Hamas began to shoot mortar fire and rockets called qassams over the border in Gaza. After the 2006 Israeli pullout from Gaza and the Hamas coup d’état that followed, Hamas was able to freely shell the border, focusing mostly on Sderot.  When Hamas opened the border with Egypt in February 2008, they were able to radically increase their supply of qassams and even the Russian-made katyusha rockets favored by Hezbollah (thus extending their rocket range to Ashkelon). During February and March they pounded Sderot with as many as 60 qassams a day.

In the seven and a half years since the rocket attacks began, the Israeli government has yet to build enough bomb shelters for all of the town’s residents to use, and their only help comes from an IDF blimp that flies above the border, transmitting a warning to the people, the Tzeva Adom (color red). When the Tzeva Adom—an alarm that blares from speakers all over town—goes off, people have approximately 30 seconds to find shelter before the impact. There is no alert for mortar fire, as it lands too quickly for people to respond to a warning.

When offered the opportunity to go, I wasn’t afraid, knowing that the chances of serious or fatal injury in Sderot were not high. In fact, once in Sderot we learned that the most common form of injury sustained during qassam attacks are from falling, which people do when they panic. But there were enough pictures and articles in the newspaper of children losing limbs, or houses destroyed, that by the time my volunteer group was ready to leave, I felt an anxiety I could not deny.

There were four other members of my Tel Aviv volunteer group: Dan, the other American, Tom, from Canada, Hanith, from Holland, and Maria, from Russia. We met early in the morning and trudged to the bus station with our bags, sleepy and unsociable in the morning haze. After hours on a bus, we began to near the town, and the countryside looked inconsistent with the images of pain and ruin from the news. There was something defiantly idyllic in the Impressionist coloring of the wheat fields, trees, bushes, and morning sky.

As the bus began to pull into Sderot, there was a palpable lack of action, movement, or even people. In my blue-collar neighborhood in Tel Aviv, the children home from school for Pesach were out riding bicycles and playing games in the street. There were women, old and wizened in their headscarves and housedresses or young and flecked with gold on jewelry, sneakers, and nails. There were men playing chess and smoking, shouting into their cell phones or gathering outside markets to talk and laugh and live. In Sderot, life happens indoors.

Driving through town on the bus, I had felt a sense of security that I later learned was absurd—broken glass and shrapnel are to be feared much more than the damage wrought by the qassams themselves, and when the Tzeva Adom breaks the silent stillness in the town all drivers rush out of their cars and lie on the pavement. But once we were off the bus, the reality of contact—the ground with my feet and the air with my skin and lungs—made this town different from the world surrounding it. Sderot is not usually a site of immediate, violent danger. But the place itself seems to know it could become one at any moment, and transmits a tension through the air that is inescapable, no matter how far one’s mind travels from it.

I expected, given the huge influx of volunteers and cash that had reportedly been flowing into Sderot in recent months, that the volunteer center in Sderot—housed in the matnas, or community center—would be a flurry of activity. However, there were only a few old men there. Our volunteer coordinator was an Israeli man with a very large mustache and a warm almost-smile who towered over us. His name was Ido, and he didn’t live in Sderot, but came down every week he could get off from work to help where he could. He spoke no English, and handed us a pamphlet. Dan translated:

“Welcome to Sderot! Below are some safety tips to remember while you are here. There are qassams, and we need to take care.

1. When a qassam is fired from Gaza, the safety alert will sound, and it is important to try to find a bomb shelter.

2. If you cannot find a bomb shelter, get inside. Stay away from windows.

3. If you cannot get inside, find a stairwell or a covered structure.

4. If you cannot find cover, lie down on the ground and put your hands over your head.

5. Whatever you do, don’t run, and don’t panic.”

****

            They took us to the bomb shelter where we would be staying. For that week, we would be the sole inhabitants, and Ido gave us a key. “Is there a shower?” I asked. “Ah,” said David, “That’s a weak point.” They promised us, however, that they would attempt to find us a place to shower at the end of each day.

I had thought that we would be doing something in construction work, but instead Ido told us that we would be painting the insides of apartments. They had put an advertisement in the newspaper asking if people wanted their houses painted before Pesach, and we would be painting rooms for those who had responded to the ad the fastest. This seemed far less noble and grand than the work we had imagined for ourselves, but we were in no position to tell them what to do, so we followed, and helped with paint buckets, brushes, and paint scrapers. Dan and Maria left to do a morning program with local children in the gan, or kindergarten, who were off for the holiday.

            The first apartment was, like all the other places we worked, in walking distance. Sderot is not a large town. The family was from Algeria. Throughout the afternoon, family members came and went. First the father, who offered us beer, then his wife, who offered us pita and salad, and then their youngest daughter, still going to university, who offered us cookies. We had no place in the bomb shelter we slept in to store perishable food, but as we discovered, this was not necessarily an obstacle towards being well fed.

            We finished the kitchen, bathroom, and girl’s room, and walked back to the matnas with the paints. Dan and Maria told us about the children from the morning; that they didn’t play outside because the kids could not move fast enough during the Tzeva Adom. They ran around the class calling out Tzeva Adom like it was a game, and at one point the teacher asked the children to teach Dan and Maria their ‘Tzeva Adom song.’ These children were five, and a world with qassams was all they knew.

            The next days passed in similar fashion. The family who owned the next apartment was from Azerbaijan; a single mother with three sons. The day after, we painted the kitchen and bedroom of an elderly woman from Morocco. The strange thing about each assignment was that each family had at least one if not many children old and strong enough to be doing this work themselves had they simply been given the paint. But we came to realize that had we been on our own building homes, perhaps with other volunteers, we would never have gotten to know so many families who lived there. In each home we were given a welcome like family and an opportunity to speak to them about their lives.

            We kept track of the news from the computers in the matnas, and initially everything was quiet. There had yet to be any qassams during the day, though there were several one night while we slept. Someone had mentioned that Hamas had a fondness for sending a barrage of qassams into Sderot during major holidays, and that perhaps they were simply saving their supply for next week when Pesach officially began. Then Tuesday there were some border skirmishes, and early morning Wednesday Hamas laid a trap for some IDF soldiers on the border. A few Hamas members pretended to set up a bomb, and when the Israelis went after them they walked into an ambush. Three soldiers died. And still no qassams.

****

            Wednesday morning began like all the others: Dan and Maria went to the camp, and Hanith, Tom, and I went to the matnas to get paints and a ride to the day’s home. Ido drove us to an apartment building three blocks over from our bomb shelter. We entered the apartment and saw a woman with fire-red hair, and a lovely, large-eyed daughter who appeared perhaps seventeen. A boy who looked ten years old peeked out at us from behind a door and a pair of round glasses. An elderly woman in a worn t-shirt sat on the sofa, smiling blankly, watching television.

            At lunch, I learned that the girl’s name was my own: Rachel. In Israel everyone has a grandmother named Rachel, they are so eager to tell me, but I had yet to meet one of my own generation. She was not seventeen, as I had thought, but fourteen. As she deftly chopped tomatoes and cucumber for the salad, she told us in remarkably good English about her life in Sderot. She goes to school until the afternoon, when she brings her brother home and helps him with his homework until four.  Then she goes with her mother to a cleaning job that lasts until ten at night. We could see that she shared a room with her brother, and that the elderly woman, presumably her grandmother, shared a double bed with her mother.

The television was on, and a news broadcast began. From video footage, we could tell they were covering Gaza, and the hay the IAF was making there in retaliation for the morning’s violence. The conversation drifted to Hamas, and Tom said that he couldn’t understand their behavior. I retorted that Hamas, whatever weaknesses they might have as governors, were able to instill pride in the people by their assault on the border. We began to argue, and it became clear that Rachel could no longer follow our conversation in English. She shook her head, and asked us what we were talking about. I said, “We are arguing about Hamas, and I think they succeed because they make the people in Gaza proud.” “Yes,” she replied, “I think so too.”

I asked her what she thought about the army, and if she wanted to serve. I imagined that her experiences in Sderot would make her hungry for a chance to respond to the aggressions against Israel with force, instead of the victim-hood that Sderot residents must bear: hiding in doorframes or stairwells, or even on the ground, hands over their heads. But I was surprised by her answer. “No,” she said, “if they don’t come here to protect us, why would I want to help them?” Fair enough, I thought, but wished it could really be so simple.

Talk moved to the qassams, and how hard it had been since Hamas had taken over the Strip. “I watched,” she said, “once, when a qassam fell on our apartment building, hitting the apartment next door. I sat at the window and watched.” They didn’t have a bomb shelter, she said. “What do you do when the Tzeva Adom sounds?” I asked. “We pray,” she said. She looked so much older than fourteen.

When Ido came to get us for the next apartment, I didn’t want to go. Rachel told us we should come back before leaving Sderot, and we told her, sincerely, that we would try.

The next apartment was in the same project yard that housed our bomb shelter. Ido told us that we were going to the home of an old woman. We climbed the steps to her apartment, unsure of what to expect. This was the first person alone we had met in the course of our volunteering, the first person to live without an inner community. An aging woman waited for us at the door, her hair dyed rust, and her smile forced. She led us into the apartment, where another woman, smaller, frailer, was lying in a fetal position on a weathered leather couch. The apartment was cast in an inexorable gloom: the walls, furniture, floors, and counters were all morose, sepia tones. And the smell of the place—a stink that first suggested an obvious smoking addiction but was also coupled with the sickly smell of rot—is one I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was all pervading, and I inhaled the paint fumes as we opened the containers, for at least that was something sterile and clean, if dizzyingly chemical.

The woman at the door asked us if we needed anything—tea, or perhaps some water—but we refused, unwilling to ingest any substance with contact to a thing inside this apartment. She and Ido left, closing the door behind them.  I turned my back to the woman lying on the sofa, looking for a brush, and when I stood again she had left the room. In the commotion of drop cloths and paint trays, I saw her only from behind when she returned, shuffling into the kitchen. “Did you see her?” Tom asked, horrified. “Yes,” I answered, confused, as she was a sad figure, but not quite deserving of the alarm within his voice.

The room from which she had emerged was across from the bedroom, and I walked to the corner and peered around through the doorway. The lights were off, but the light escaping the barrier of the blinds illuminated a space that appeared to be inhabited by a cyclone: marks on the walls, shattered glass, paint chips, and broken pieces of furniture scattered about the floor. There was an old Danish Modern vanity standing askew and bewildered in the center of the room. It was missing some handles and the glass in the vanity was smashed.  On the vanity counter were strewn countless tubes of makeup, some melting and spilling their gauche shades of red upon the countertop.

I turned back into the room, and saw the woman, now sitting glumly on one of the chairs at her small table, and I understood what Tom had meant. She had teased up her hair with a comb into an oily mod bouffant. She had applied ghoulish black eyeliner, and had rubbed her cheeks with hot pink rouge.  And from one of the myriad red tubes from the vanity she had put some of the garish red lipstick on her mouth, a painted smile slathered far over the boundaries of her lips and belied by a grimace. She sat in her chair, watching us intently, her eyes moving over us, not in appraisal but in confusion and suspicion.

I smiled at her, desperate to see one in return, but she returned only her frozen scowl. I glanced into the bathroom. The tub was dusty and contained a potted plant and a cockroach, both dead. The toilet was filthy. I returned to the living room and rolled my brush with paint, slightly relieved by the sight of white covering the dirt and grease on the walls. I asked the woman a question in Hebrew, but she didn’t respond. “She speaks only Russian,” Hanith said. “Ido told us when we came in. She came here twenty years ago but she only speaks Russian.” We began to joke nervously about the possibility that tonight we would not have to search for dinner, because we would be dinner. The woman continued to observe us, chain smoking cigarette after cigarette and frowning miserably.

The older woman, who must have been a neighbor, returned with two bottles of water and plastic cups from a bodega. She asked if we wanted any, poured us cups, put the bottles on the table, and left again. Dan and Maria arrived, and Maria exchanged a few remarks in Russian with our host before finding a brush. “She is not right in the head,” Maria murmured, dipping her brush in the paint and touching up a corner.

All week, we had met families that lived in different degrees of poverty. The family we had spent the morning with was clearly the poorest, but their overwhelming commitment to survival and each other had made the space they inhabited safe and alive. This woman, alone in the world and able to communicate with strangers only through a language spoken in a land to which she will never return, was not merely poor; but decrepit. She was, in a sense, no longer alive. Her mind had long gone and the odor that had tortured us all afternoon was simply that of a human body decaying within a crypt that we were painting white, attempting to wash a place of death with the color of life and failing to make any difference.

And that is when the qassams began to fall.

            Inexplicably, I had thought the Tzeva Adom would be a calm, recorded voice similar to what one encounters when calling customer service. It didn’t have the qualities of a human voice at all, and as we heard the booming ‘Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom!’ I initially tuned it out as background noise, but Dan heard it and yelled at us to move away from the window. I gripped the bars of a chair, and waited. We heard a muffled explosion in the distance, and then felt a slight vibration in the floor. We waited for more, but there were none. I looked over to the woman. She had her arm extended, pointing at the window. She looked at us with her eyes fully open for the first time all afternoon, and a slight smile curled up at the ends of her mouth. Then she lowered her arm, turned, and shuffled into the kitchen.

            Again, ‘Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom! Tzeva Adom!’ This time we felt the impact as the qassam detonated, and the building shook.  I moved to the kitchen and began to roll the grimy walls with paint. On the wall above the table a match was stuck to the wall with grease and dirt. “Just paint over it,” Tom urged, “we need to get out of here.” I couldn’t breathe anymore. I put my roller in the paint tray and left the kitchen, calling out to the others that I needed a break. I choked on the air outside; it felt like cold water—and sat on a bench near the stairs. If the Tzeva Adom went off again I could reach them in time. The yard was deserted. I kept time with my phone, inhaling and exhaling methodically. Finally I could no longer justify remaining outside while the others continued to work in the apartment. I went back, and the smell washed over me again, cloying and sour.

            It took another half hour, but we finished what we could reach in the kitchen and packed our things. Most days we had showered in the apartments we painted, and Ido had suggested in the morning that we should shower in the second apartment, but he came to collect us and told us we were going somewhere else. “I understand,” he told us, “that you want to be clean after you take a shower.” He left us at the bomb shelter where we were staying, and called to suggest that two of us go to the first apartment. Dan and Tom left, and I went downstairs into the shelter with Hanith and Maria. I made a sandwich, and went back upstairs. Dan and Tom, still wearing their clothes from before, met me at the bench by the shelter entrance.

            “There was another qassam,” Dan said. “We ran into them, the woman and her daughter, in the stairs as they were leaving for work. Then the Tzeva Adom went off.”

            “Where did you go?” I asked. 

            “We sort of huddled with them in the stairwell,” he said. “That girl looked pretty scared.” Ido found us another place to shower, and there were two more qassams, one after another. Wet haired and wearing clean clothes, we met with our other volunteer coordinator, a younger man named Elan, who lived in Sderot. He had been asked to take us to the Gaza border.

            We drove to the border in silence, and some apprehension. Several weeks ago a sniper had shot and killed a volunteer, but Elan seemed unconcerned, and drove us to a section he promised was safe. We got out of the car. The sun had gone down, and in the twilight everything was grey and blue. To the right, we saw the north along the sea. To the left, we saw Egypt. Directly ahead was a water treatment facility, and beyond that was the tiny, destitute, volatile Gaza Strip. Elan pointed to the mass of buildings in the center, where there were more lights on that the rest of the area, and told us that was Gaza City. It looked like any Arab city in Israel, though certainly more impoverished and run-down. But, I thought to myself, this is where Hamas lives.

            Elan pointed out into the sky above Gaza, and swung his arm in an arc over to the direction of Sderot. “If they launched a qassam right now you would see it go up, like this,” he said. “I have seen it before from here.” We looked expectantly back to Gaza. Thankfully, Hamas did not contribute with a demonstration of their own.

We ate dinner next to the border, on a kibbutz whose name is never printed in the newspaper for security reasons.  Elan trains the horses there, and showed us the barn. Most of the barn dogs were tied up, as they were terribly shell shocked and did not take well to strangers. When we got home, we sat on the ground outside our bomb shelter, restless. All that had happened felt like the substance of weeks, not a single day.  Someone asked a question about the bus schedule going back to Tel Aviv, someone made a remark about a game of Snake. Then Tom had an idea. “We should go back,” he said, “to the family from this morning. They asked us to come back when they got home from work. Ten o’clock, that’s now. We should go back and talk to them some more.” We debated whether or not to go—they might have been tired from work.  But they had requested to see us again before we left, and we wanted to see them as well. We stopped at a convenience store and bought a honey cake to bring, and walked the three blocks to their apartment complex.

            Rachel answered the door. She looked surprised to see us; they clearly had not expected us to come back. But she smiled brightly and invited us in. They were sitting on the floor around the television eating a late dinner. Immediately we were worried that we had made a mistake; that we were invading their privacy, or causing them trouble. But Dan started to tell jokes in Hebrew, making Rachel’s mother laugh hysterically, and it seemed that they were enjoying our visit. And then again: the Tzeva Adom. I didn’t hear it, but the woman did, ushering us towards the wall. First came one explosion, and then another, and then quiet. They were farther away this time; we hadn’t felt the impact.

            Rachel smiled, embarrassed. “I was braver this time.” She turned to Tom, “you saw me this afternoon, I was scared.” We sat back down on the floor, and her mother opened the honey cake. Rachel began to tell us about a trip she had taken to the US with a group of students who tested well in English. “We were in New Jersey,” she told us, “And the houses were so big! Ten, fifteen rooms. I didn’t understand why they needed so many rooms in their houses, sometimes just for two people.” I laughed with her and agreed.

            Her mother asked Dan in Hebrew what we thought of Sderot, and we gave the most profuse compliments our Hebrew could cover. She told Dan something, and he translated for us. “The town’s heart beats together,” he said. It was starting to get late, so we excused ourselves and left.

            Everyone was tired, so we went to bed, but I could not sleep, so I lay in my cot and thought about the day.  I thought about sniper fire and qassams. I thought about the beautiful girl who shared my name but had lived a life so far from my own privileges that I could not measure the distance. I thought about that frightening, sad, crazy old woman in her filthy apartment. And then I thought about her neighbor, who went to the corner and bought us water, who let us in to the apartment and showed us where to paint. She had been a friend to her neighbor, performing the rites of hospitality that are sacrosanct in this culture, because her neighbor could not do them herself.  They could not have been close friends, as the woman in that apartment did not seem aware enough of this world to have relationships with other people in it. But her neighbor must have felt a kinship with her that exists beyond the responsibilities of emotional relationships. Sderot, abandoned by the government and isolated near the border, is a family unto itself. As this thought washed over me, I finally felt relaxed enough to assume that the day was over. But it wasn’t, not quite.

            They told us that if a qassam fell on the bomb shelter the noise would be simply deafening, though physically the shelter would stay intact. I somehow inferred from this that we could only hear qassams from a direct hit. But as I lay there, slowly drifting off to sleep, the stuffy tranquility was punctured by a noisy explosion. I sat up, amazed to see my roommates still deep in sleep. I sprang from my bed and ran up the stairs, where I found Tom, listening at the door. “Is it over,” I asked, “were there more?”

            “No,” he replied, and opened the door. There was a car in the street, headlights on, door open. The driver peered out from a reinforced bus stop, looking to see if the qassam had fallen in the street. We couldn’t see it, either. We sat outside for a few minutes, daring another one to fall, and it didn’t, so we went back in. I went to bed, unable to think any more.

            The last day passed quickly, as we had only one house, and the occupant wanted only the toilet painted. We met Dan and Maria at the shelter at noon, got our things, found our bus, and rode away.

****

            The morning that we left there was an article about Sderot on the front page of The Jerusalem Post, predicting a large-scale military operation in Gaza by early summer. The IDF wanted to wait, the article noted, until all foreign dignitaries attending 60^th anniversary celebrations had left the country and weather conditions became most favorable for an assault. Now it’s June, Hamas has actually killed three people with qassams in the past few weeks, and there are rumblings from the government that there will be an attack soon. What this means for Sderot, I cannot predict. Hopefully the assault will be successful, not claim too many lives, and make life easier for the people living in Sderot. But long term, this violence may not be in Sderot’s best interests. Time alone will decide.

            On Pesach, we are meant to commemorate the event that some people consider the establishment of the Jewish people.  This idea is predicated on the theory that we were not a united clan until were together amongst each other and alone as a group, subjugated and alien, and ultimately in transit, searching for our home.  There are many Jews who survived the horrors of Europe in the 30s and 40s who will tell you that Judaism was never as important to them as when it became the thing by which they were classified and labeled by those around them. The Holocaust was our enslavement in the 20^th century, and the profound Jewish migrations that followed were our modern exodus, a theory upon which many before me have expounded.

Israel, created in the wake of this second exodus, was meant to be the remedy to Diaspora persecution, and for many flowing in from the Soviet Union or Ethiopia it has been. But Sderot, merely a few miles from the Egyptian border, does not enjoy the opportunities given to the rest of Israel’s Jews. For the most part, the people who remain in Sderot are those who cannot afford to leave it. They have to stay, and their lives are ruled from above by the threat of qassam attacks. For the average person, the odds are that when a qassam hits they will certainly survive. But perhaps that qassam will be the one to destroy their car, or their living room. Perhaps it will be the one to detonate and cause burns, or wounds from shrapnel or glass. Perhaps it will take a limb from a beloved child or parent. Or perhaps that qassam will mean death. Each qassam holds the potential for any and all of these traumas, and every resident of Sderot must confront that possibility every time the Tzeva Adom sounds.

In 1948 David Ben Gurion and the thirty-seven other signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence decreed “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” I don’t believe this is what they envisioned. We shake our heads and cluck our tongues, and say, “how terrible.” But qassams keep falling and people in Sderot continue to suffer. And nothing changes.

On Pesach we sing jubilant songs of reclamation, cry out “Dayenu” for our miraculous rescue, and thank Adonai “[for what he] did for me when I left Egypt.” We abstain from all grain save matzah. We do so much to remember what happened to us in Egypt. We remember Egypt, but have we forgotten Sderot?

 

Rega, daka…

Ok, so, for those who don’t know, I was in Sderot! Painting houses, dodging rocket fire, etc. However, I won’t be posting on it in detail for a few days because:

A) It’s official kids, I did not get into law school (and while I deeply appreciate the desire to reassure me, if somebody uses the words ‘supposed to’ ‘fate’ ‘meant to be,’ etc one more time, I will seriously walk into the sea and not come out.) So the next few days I intend to spend mourning my failure at the beach and in my room watching

B) LOST, which I got hooked on yesterday. My roommate has the first 3 seasons on DVD.

So no wild tales for now, but I’ll get back on the horse by the end of the week, and I’ll write something up. Until then, keep yourself busy with this. Then you can be as depressed as I am!

Cowboys and Indians

So this weekend I went to another MASA Shabbaton in Jerusalem. This one was on the Israeli political system, and I now feel that I have a grip on how the government works, and why many issues go unresolved (not that I have the faintest clue as to how to fix any of them). It’s a very representative government, but the excess of parties (you only have to get 2 percent of the vote to get representation in the Knesset!) leads to crazy coalition building and thus sacrifices on the part of all the parties. Party A may want to pass legislation reforming the current marriage laws that will only give legal marriage licenses to 2 Jews being married by an Orthodox rabbi, but Party A needs the cooperation of Parties B and C to get it through the Knesset. If Parties B and C need Shas or Mafdal (two of the main religious parties) for legislation they want to pass, no dice. 

And this, children, is why nothing gets better. 

The MK they got to come speak was very right wing, which was actually really cool because most of the time we hear from lefties and he was really really not left. The one thing he said that seemed (terrifyingly) fair to me was his logistical objection to the proposed Palestinian State in what is now the West Bank. Israel left Gaza, he said, and Hamas took over the territory. They have successfully used Gaza to consolidate their power and launch Qassams into Israel. The IDF wants to intervene, but they recognize that if they invade Gaza they will not be able to leave in the foreseeable future (like us in Iraq). So, the West Bank is a lot bigger than Gaza. What the hell kind of security threat will Israel be leaving behind if they end the occupation there? 

Tonight at the yeshiva we had a speaker from Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF soldiers who served in the West Bank and go around giving accounts of what the occupation is like. As he described it, the IDF occupation is like the Stanford Prison Experiment on a wider scale. Decent, normal guys are given really large guns and told to make sure that the population respects/fears them. They are made to understand that they can essentially do whatever they want (short of murder) to any Palestinian without repercussions. We saw photos of IDF soldiers raiding a house because they wanted to watch the World Cup and this family had a television. Any real communication between the soldiers and the people is inhibited because to a Palestinian any IDF soldier is a potential abuser and to an IDF soldier any Palestinian is a potential terrorist. Below is a picture of children in the West Bank playing a game, and it really affected me. The Palestinian children with sticks are playing IDF soldiers. The Palestinian children with their hands against the wall are playing… Palestinians.

Things to Think About

1. First, it’s been a year today since Laura Jahnke passed away, and I’m sure all who knew her will have her in their thoughts. Laura inspired me, not just because of her courage or her faith, but because she seemed to be the most fully alive person I’ve ever met. I will always admire her ability to constantly radiate that energy and vitality to those around her. Mazel to her sister, who’s expecting her first child any day now.

2. Good piece in Haaretz on the blindness of those who unilaterally condemn Israelis, including the sizable portion of those who are actively lobbying for positive change regarding the Palestinians.

I think the group that has brought the most shame upon themselves are the academics and artists/writers, as cited in the piece, who have idiotically rejected some of the most powerful voices against the current situation. Usually when I hear a rant about “liberal elitist academics” I want to put my fist through a wall, because 9 times out of 10 that sentiment says much more about the arrogant ignorance of the speaker than it does the subject. But I certainly feel that those within the academic community who rave about the evils Israel has committed whilst completely ignoring the very real contribution that Palestinians have made to their own political/socio-economic misery are in the wrong. Just because it’s fun to shout things and make t-shirts and wave/burn flags in the name of *THE OPPRESSED VICTIMS* (whomever they happen to be today) doesn’t mean you should, professor.

When the IDF rains vengeance down upon Gaza for the Hamas assault against Sderot and the other border towns, it only serves to unite the Palestinians with their leaders against Israel–regardless of whether Hamas is in all other areas of governance a hindrance to its people. Israeli artists like A.B Yehoshua (omg you should read the Woman in Jerusalem) and David Grossman are probably better equipped to respond to the boycotts without defecting from their peacenik positions, but still–their movement in the cause for peace is not aided by these senseless attacks.

Can’t we all grow up, please? And kudos to Burston for the “pre-pubescent football fan” thing. Hi-larious.

3. Been doing some research in human trafficking for Bina. It turns out that of the approximate 7.5-9 billion USD made annually in the international trafficking industry, teeny-tiny Israel has about a 1 billion slice of the pie. The government had to be bullied into doing anything whatsoever by the US. The State Dept threatened to blacklist Israel and thus deny them any international aid unless they got their act together, and so they passed some legislation and started prosecuting traffickers.

A week ago at the Corner I was explaining slavery (in the context of Black History Month) to my kiddies–who, bless them, found the concept that you could own people totally alien–and I said that this ended over a hundred years ago. “We don’t do this anymore,” I said. I read 2 op-eds in the Times this morning, one by Morris Davis, chief prosecutor over at Guantanamo for a while. He talks about a CIA agent telling one of his jailers in Iran (regarding torture), “We don’t do that.” Then another piece by Bob Herbert about how underage prostitutes are treated as criminals by the justice system while the exploitative men who use them are set free. It’s been cooking around in my brain all day. I watched “Trade,” and did some research, and was really surprised to see how consistent the film was with the stories news publications and NGOs are putting out there on the issue. The truth is, we *do* do that. It’s not expressly condoned, but it’s allowed, and often the victims are treated as criminals by the justice systems responsible for making it right.

I can’t go to synagogue in the Jewish State because it’s against G-d’s law to make people drive buses on the sabbath, but the shiksas who came here to be nannies and found themselves working 18 hour shifts behind bars in brothels near the Old Central Bus Station aren’t worthy of the Knesset’s time. Unless billions of $$$ in US aid are at stake, of course.

4. Sweet and sad story. I was at work at the Corner the other day, sitting with the lovely Tamar and discussing next week’s club activities, when one of our kids walked in. I won’t say his name, but he’s one of my favorites. He had been hoping that the club was this week, but we were having a planning session. He sat down at the desk with us, and started to talk about what he thought we should talk about (music and meerkats, it turns out). Tamar asked him what he was carrying in the large plastic bag he was holding. He got very red in the face, and smiled, awkwardly. “Is it a present,” Tamar asked him, and he nervously nodded. “Ooh, is it a present for a girl?” we asked, and again, a reticent yes. “You can’t tell anyone!” he demanded, “and don’t laugh at me!” We prodded him a bit longer about why it was a secret, and all we got were some funny facial expressions and silence. Then Tamar asked him “is it because she’s Muslim?” He nodded. It kind of broke my heart.

“I speak English, you speak English, we speak English!”

Every once in a while I wonder to myself whether or not I an really qualified to be teaching these innocent children–whether I have what it takes to really help them learn the English language. Today I realized that I do not, because I did not even know that ‘AX’ was a letter. I am a disgrace to Bina, Sweet Briar, and the public education system.

That is all.

Also Also

In the process of cleaning out my super-hip blue MASA backback for use during the trip, I found the MASA “Lexicon of Zionist Terms and Phrases.” Here is the entry for #10, Racism:

“Racism is a mindset or behavioral pattern that discriminates against people based on their skin color, or their ethnic, national or religious background. The most extreme example of racism was invoked by the Nazi movement in Germany. The Nazis positioned themselves (the Aryan race) at the top of the human ladder, and all the other races were considered inferior. The lowest rung of the ladder was occupied by the Jews.

Today racism is considered one of the most central crimes against humanity. Israel has ratified the international covenant against all forms of Discrimination and Racism.”

I think Avigdor Lieberman wrote that? He should know, ‘cuz he’s got racist AIDS. Most fun propaganda ever. Fuck you MASA, fuck you and your blue backpack.

Goodnight!

Also (Gam):

Also, Gail Collins is really my favorite op-ed writer at the Times:

“Every candidacy has one [implicit selling point]. Barack’s is about the child of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya whose very lineage makes him the vehicle for a transcendent national unity. Hillary’s isn’t how the smart girl from Illinois… overcame every obstacle fate could throw at her to become the first woman president. Instead, it’s a version of the story we love best of all, about second chances and the American capacity to turn failure into redemption…

The implicit promise of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy was that she had learned from Clinton I. In her, Americans would have a candidate who had been in the very center of White House decision-making. And the very fact that so much had gone wrong was added value. She is nothing if not a good learner, and — the story went — she had discovered at great price where all the landmines lay, both in the presidency and her own character. And she had forged a separate political identity in seven years in the Senate. During an era when the challenges to a new president could be sudden and overwhelming — and here Hillary isn’t ashamed to play the terror card — she was uniquely prepared to hit the ground running and achieve the greatest do-over in American history.

Now, Bill’s role as Chief Attack Dog undermines all that. If he’s all over her campaign, he’s going to be all over her administration. Instead of the original promise of the thoroughly educated Hillary, we’re being offered the worst-case scenario — that the pair of them are going to return to Pennsylvania Avenue and recreate the old Clinton chaos.

A lot of people are O.K. with that. (After all, we’ve lived for seven years with a disciplined Oval Office that runs like clockwork while it spreads chaos everywhere else.) Only it’s not change, it’s not a breakthrough moment in American history. It’s just a nervous decision that we’d rather go back than risk going forward.”

Randomness (choser tachlit)

1. These are the two best articles on the conflict with the Palestinians that I have read thus far:

A test to evaluate whether or not you’re a fanatic. Some good observations on the many facets of fanaticism both as regards the conflict, and in general. Highlights:

“The family constitutes the fundamental building-block of Palestinian society. Family status is largely dependent upon its honor, much of which is determined by the respectability of its daughters, who can damage it irreparably by the perceived misuse of their sexuality.”

It’s an issue almost never associated with the plight/offenses of the Palestinians. Those who think it’s not a problem should see ‘Thirst’ (Atash) if they’re looking for a film to kill any potential for joy or happiness in their evening.

“In Israel, there is an elaborate, multi-tiered pecking helix of racism and mutual hatreds, among them the Ashkenazi-Sephardi divide, the Jewish-Arab divide, and local feuds along such ethic lines as Jews of Russian, Moroccan and Ethiopian origin.”

This so accurately (and concisely! and eloquently!) describes the cultural situation here. I’ve got a little refugee from Darfur in my 5th grade class at Nofim, and the kids treat her like she’s diseased because she’s black and not Jewish. My Hebrew is not up to explaining why that’s SO WRONG OMG and the teacher couldn’t care less.

And:

A recent editorial in the Times about the blockade in Gaza.

Highlights:

“We are deeply concerned about the many innocent Israelis who live along the border with Gaza and must suffer through the constant bombardment. But Israel’s response — shutting off power and other essential supplies — is a collective punishment that will only feed anger and extremism.”

It’s the sad truth. At the end of the day, the Palestinians won’t blame Hamas, though they should, for this punishment. They’ll blame Israel, and the conflict will become just a little more entrenched within this tortured land.

2. Tomorrow we’re going to Kibbutz Mezer to (illegally, because it’s shmita, the seventh year when you are not supposed to plant) plant trees with these cool dudes, Rabbis for Human Rights. It’s near Nazareth. We’re staying in a monastery that has been converted into a hotel. Saturday we’ll have a tour of Nazareth and a hike at the Zipori park. Seriously, if I come back sick from this one I’m giving up on trips in Israel.

3. Countdown to Mom’s visit- one week!! Woot woot!!

4. RIP, Heath  Ledger. You were a really attractive man. And a great actor, but that’s tangential, right?

5. I have throw pillows. Yesh (Hebrish word that you can figure out the meaning of)!
6. I learned a new word today: box (kupat). Thus my ability to say inappropriate things in Hebrew is greater than yesterday.

7. It was warm and sunny and lovely today.  I had a talk about this the other day with Zeke- our theory about why moderate cold is so hard to handle here is that it’s never cold for more than a few hours or days, so you never get used to it. It’s 50 degrees at 9 am and 68 degrees at noon. Yesterday a high of 55, today a high of 67.  Poo. Come on, spring!

8. Pray for South Carolina. Barack Barack Barack Barack Barack!

9. Shabbat Shalom!

Dvarim

So it’s been a while since I posted here! I’ve been busy, but I guess that’s no excuse. I thought about it a lot, and decided not to write the last part of that series. I don’t feel in a position right now to expound upon Lech Lecha (go to yourself/to this place), because I’m feeling really uncertain about just where ‘myself’ is in this place.

But I’ve been up to other things besides existential quandaries. I’ve learned a few things since I last posted, among them:

1. The Israeli Post Office trumps Dick Cheney, Kim Jong-il, Ann Coulter, and Satan, for (current) most evil presence in the world.

 2. Don’t believe the massive global conspiracy that tells you Eilat is beachy paradise. It’s cold and horrible. Maybe just in December. Still.

3. You can have Jew-Christmas in the Jewish homeland if your madricha is really cool.

 4. “Ani Kar” (I am frigid) should not be confused with “Kar-li” (I am cold).

Nofim continues to be just awful. Sylvia is the most burned out person I’ve ever met. She hates teaching and is mean to the kids, and they give it right back to her. Twice this week girls were crying in the hall- one because she thought the other kids didn’t like her, one because she got a poor grade on the test and didn’t want to study English anymore. These are 3^rd graders. What did Sylvia do? Scream at them to get back in the class.

In the 6^th grade, I’ve kind of taken over the education of a girl whose mother was in prison and thus her childhood/education has been kind of unstable. Sylvia doesn’t even know her name—she calls her ‘that girl,’ punctuated by an eye roll. We started working out in the hall, but I decided to take her outside and sit in the sunshine when we can. We do exercises and play games, and she’s made so much progress. When we started she couldn’t recognize any letters at all. I gave her a test on Monday and she got 11 out of the 16 letters I gave her right.  I was so proud of her.  She’s having so much trouble with E, I, D, B, and T.  We’ll repeat for an hour and she still won’t remember it. Anybody got any bright ideas as to how to fix the sound with the letter?

This last weekend Zeke and I went on a retreat to Shlomi, up north, with the kids from College for All, their parents, and the other Arab madrichim, who we hadn’t met yet. It was really an interesting experience. I was glad to see a lot of fathers there, and especially fathers with their daughters. Jaffa has been getting more conservative in recent years, to the point that 2 of our girls in CfA veil.  According to our madricha, this was previously unheard of with pre-pubescent girls.  The mother of one, we learned this weekend, is completely covered so that only her eyes show under her burkah. When she stepped out of the car she had a black scarf tied over her veil like Hamas gunmen you see on television, and my breath kind of caught in my throat, but she took it off when we got on the bus and didn’t wear it for the rest of the trip.

The parents were all really warm and welcoming to us, and we had a great time, though it was completely exhausting. Zeke and I were told to prepare an activity, and we assumed they wanted an English instructional game like the ones we always have for the kids. However, standing before a class of the younger kids who haven’t started English yet, and their solely Arabic speaking parents, some improvisation was required.

One thing I wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure how, was whether they considered themselves Israeli. If a peace were to be brokered and a Palestinian state created, would they want to stay here, in this country that for some justified (though unfair) and some unjustified reasons treats them like second class citizens? 

I learned how to count to 10 in Arabic- wahad, hnan, telaten, arba-ah, chamsa, sita, sab-ah, temanya, tesa, ashara. I learned cold, hot, good morning, good night, I, and strawberry. “Tut” (strawberry) was already my favorite word in Hebrew, but knowing it’s identical in Arabic makes me love it more. I’m hoping to be able to master the alphabet by the time I leave, but it looks pretty damn challenging. The letters look so much alike compared to both print and script in Hebrew. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t been looking at them since the age of 5.

It was an amazing trip. I’ve never been quite so obviously in the minority before—Zeke and I felt like the world’s biggest honkies. This is an important thing, I think, for any upper-middle class white person to experience. But the important thing is that they didn’t treat us any differently than they treated each other: smiling, with respect and friendship.

48 hours later Shlomi was hit with 2 katyusha rockets from Lebanon. That, friends, is the way it goes in Israel.

Taking Up Tikun, Camping in the Kinneret, Remembering Rabin, and Lech Lecha, Part 2

Originally I intended to write this piece solely about Yitzhak Rabin, but the lengthy amount of time I’ve had to reflect on this post before finishing it has changed my mind.

 

This past Sunday I found myself back in Rabin Square, standing where I had been 3 weeks earlier to remember Rabin’s murder at the massive memorial rally they hold annually on the anniversary according to the Roman calendar. (The official memorial date is based on the Jewish calendar). I found the memorial interesting as a first-timer, especially as most of the crowd, Haaretz critically observed, “was, as always, the same: self-described Ashkenazi, secular, leftist and peace-loving. How good and pleasant it is to stand in the square once a year and feel a part of this warm family…” They called out the event organizers for producing a parade of “pop stars and empty clichés,” and I wasn’t terribly surprised by it. Last year’s memorial, Haaretz wrote, was highlighted by a very stirring speech by Israeli writer David Grossman who had just lost his son in the war with Lebanon. In it, he cried out to Olmert:

“Mister Prime Minister, I am not saying these words out of feelings of rage or revenge. I have waited long enough to avoid responding on impulse. You will not be able to dismiss my words tonight by saying a grieving man cannot be judged. Certainly I am grieving, but I am more pained than angry. This country and what you and your friends are doing to it pains me.

Trust me, your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on our ability to act. Yitzhak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians, not because he possessed great affection for them or their leaders. Even then, as you recall, common belief was that we had no partner and we had nothing to discuss with them.

Rabin decided to act, because he discerned very wisely that Israeli society would not be able to sustain itself endlessly in a state of an unresolved conflict. He realized long before many others that life in a climate of violence, occupation, terror, anxiety and hopelessness, extracts a price Israel cannot afford…

By our sword we shall live and by our sword we shall die and the sword shall devour forever. Maybe this would explain the indifference with which we accept the utter failure of the peace process, a failure that has lasted for years and claims more and more victims.”

 

Two years ago, I wrote an essay for a writing workshop about my birthright trip, framed by a discussion of Israeli politics and the emotional impact of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. For those who don’t know, Rabin rose from the ranks of the Palmach (the regular fighting force of the Hagganah) to become one of Israel’s most important generals, and was appointed Chief of Staff of the IDF in the 1960s. He served as Prime Minister after Golda Meir in the 1970s, and then was elected to a second term in 1992. He won the Nobel Peace Price with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat for creating the Oslo Accords, which recognized the PLO and gave it some governing authority over Gaza and the West Bank.

 

Yitzhak Rabin’s politics were controversial, but most Israelis believed him to be a man free from the corruptions of power that authority confers, and that his devotion to and passion for Israel transcended politics. In the current American debate over the 2008 election, many of those supporting Obama do so because his leadership style makes people hope, care, and believe in the power of government to make a meaningful impact upon people’s lives. This is how people felt about Rabin. They looked up to him as one of their own, a man who rose from nothing, who did not go to university, who spent his life fighting for the Israeli people.

 

Unfortunately, however, there is an element of Israeli society that has yet to emerge into adult political discourse from the playground of infantile egocentrism: the religious right. The Haredim, as they are called in Hebrew, are an ultra-Orthodox sect that makes up about 10-15% of the population. For the most part, the men live to study, and the women live to make babies. Most men don’t work and thus their families live below the poverty line, expecting (and, infuriatingly, receiving) tax dollars from the secular Jews they decry. They largely don’t serve in the army, but expect those who do to protect them from the violence resulting from their presence in settlements along and in the Palestinian territories. They do not believe in compromise with the Palestinians, because they believe that Palestinians are incapable of honest agreement, and because they believe that the entirety of this land belongs to the Jewish people as promised to Abraham in Genesis 12-17, or parshat Lech Lecha (much more on this on part 3).

 

These ‘holy’ people attack those marching in the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade and the police who protect them. They spit on women who walk the streets with their knees, elbows, and collarbones proudly bare. A month ago they attacked a woman and a soldier on a bus. They asked the woman to move to the back so they could sit near the front and not be in the presence of a woman, and she refused, and asked the soldier to come to her aid. He did, and the Haredim beat them both until the police intervened. At least in Montgomery they were decent enough to arrest Rosa Parks, instead of assaulting her. You know you’re pretty despicable when you make Southern racism look good.

 

On November 4, 1995, Rabin attended a rally for peace in what was then known as Malchei Yisrael Square in Tel Aviv, and sang the standard “Shir LaShalom” (song for peace) with famous Israeli singer Miri Aloni. As he exited the stage, a law student and right wing extremist named Yigal Amir emerged from steps and shot him to death. They found the song lyrics in Rabin’s pocket, stained with blood.

 

It is assumed that Amir was counseled that his actions were not murder, but killing in the name of G-d, but no conspirators were ever convicted. Amir was sentenced to life in prison for Rabin’s murder, and a law was passed seven years ago supposedly making it impossible for an Israeli president to pardon anyone convicted of killing a prime minister for the expressed purpose of keeping Amir in jail. However, the movement to free him is gaining ground.

 

After his incarceration Amir married a woman named Larissa Trembovoler and after long drawn-out legal battles won the right to a 10-hour conjugal visit so that they could conceive a child, whose due-date was October 24, the official day of mourning for Rabin (it is observed on the anniversary in the Hebrew calender, which is the 12^th of Heshvan, rather than the 4^th of November). The baby was actually born on the 28^th, but still managed to generate controversy because the bris, which must occur 8 days after the birth, was held on the anniversary of Rabin’s death according to the Roman calendar. Of course, Amir won permission to have the bris conducted in prison so he could be there.

 

A recent poll reveals that 20% of those who classify themselves as religious in this country support Amir’s release. His supporters launched a campaign in recent months with the goal of getting him out by his son’s birth. Their argument is that if we’re willing to release Palestinian prisoners for peace, we should be willing to release Amir for protecting the state of Israel from Rabin’s cooperating hands.

 

The high point of the memorial on the 4^th was a speech by Rabin’s son Yuval, who spoke about how the murder was not merely terrible because he lost a father and Israel lost a leader, but because it was an affront to the rule of law. Israel is supposed to be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, a civilized society unlike the fundamentalist terror of Afghanistan or Iran.

 

And this brings me to a larger issue that confronts Israel today—a problem that will still plague the State of Israel even if or when peace is achieved. I returned to Rabin Square last Sunday to attend a huge rally held by the teachers’ union that has now been on strike for months, demanding that government listen to them. 100,000 people attended, which compared to the 150,000 who came for Rabin’s memorial is pretty extraordinary. The education system in Israel is so complex that I can’t even really explain it in full. There are many different kinds of schools, often segregated by religion and nationality (Jews and Muslims don’t usually go to school together; Russians have their own schools; the Haredim have carte blanche to teach their children whatever they want, which is usually nothing at all…).

 

There is no single teachers’ union. The upper school teachers have their unions, and the lower school teachers have theirs. One of the reasons the teachers are striking is that another union successfully negotiated much higher benefits from the government. It’s arbitrary and unfair. Teachers here are paid less than the janitors who clean their classes. They are paid so little that many of them have to work as many as 5 extra jobs just to make end’s meat. They are given classrooms of 40 students, none of whom have been taught to respect them. I see it already at Nofim- the teacher spends at least half the class attempting to create order. Children are violent and cruel, and nobody cares.

 

A friend mentioned to me a few weeks ago that he thought Israel had lost its soul when it began abandoning its socialism in favor of modern capitalism, and I thought he was being a little overdramatic. But now I am beginning to agree. Free, excellent education was a staple of the socialism Israel was founded upon, and 30 years ago they had one of the best school systems in the world. Today they are at the bottom of the rankings.

 

The secular poor, the dark skinned, and the non-Jew have been abandoned in this great modern Democracy. I watch it at Nofim, as the teacher to whom I’ve been assigned consistently ignores the two new Ethiopian immigrant children who can recognize English when spoken but cannot read. They need help, and when I try to do it she tells me sit with someone else.

 

Our madricha works at one of our Tikun Olam volunteer places, an underground kindergarten called Mesila. The children of illegal immigrants have nobody to look after them while their parents desperately struggle to survive, so Mesila tries to help. I went with her once, to see it. It’s in this dilapidated building near the central bus station, in the worst part of town. Walking up the ancient industrial staircase, I thought to myself that it would not be surprising at all if I were to be grabbed and sold to a sweat-shop, or a brothel. When our program director met with the director of Taglit a few weeks ago, he brought up Mesila as an example of the differences between Bina and Taglit that hindered their partnership. He asked her why on earth we were wasting our time helping people who aren’t Jewish.

 

Grossman spoke of this last year:

“…these are partly the cause of Israel’s quick descent into the heartless, essentially brutal treatment of its poor and suffering. This indifference to the fate of the hungry, the elderly, the sick and the disabled, all those who are weak, this equanimity of the State of Israel in the face of human trafficking or the appalling employment conditions of our foreign workers, which border on slavery, to the deeply ingrained institutionalized racism against the Arab minority.

When this takes place here so naturally, without shock, without protest, as though it were obvious, that we would never be able to get the wheel back on track, when all of this takes place, I begin to fear that even if peace were to arrive tomorrow, and even if we ever regained some normalcy, we may have lost our chance for full recovery.”

Surely there is no defense money to spare, especially as Syria bares its teeth and Iran coyly flashes the promise of its nuclear progress. But the money spent on religious fanatics in this country could be spent on efforts to improve life for people who deserve it. The religious right has a disproportionate amount of influence over the government, and I still have not figured out how a minority of %20 exerts such willpower over a willfully secular culture, other than their control of the diamond trade (you may remember this piece in the Times about how the Chabad* Israeli Lev Leviev broke the DeBeers international diamond cartel).

 

Honestly, I’ve come to take an even far more negative view of Orthodox Judaism over the last few months than I previously had. The core of Jewish spirituality lies in the ethical commitment we have made to promote social justice in the world; to repair the world (tikun olam). How then, can these people contribute to that mission if the tenets of their observance require them to wholly segregate themselves from the world population? How can they be promoting justice when they abuse people who have chosen different paths from theirs?

 

A friend reminded me once that those who disagree with me think I’m as crazy as I perceive them to be. Sometimes it’s true that two sides of an argument have equally valid biases that influence their point of view. But this is different. I would never spit on an Orthodox man for growing peyot (side-locks), or an Orthodox woman for covering her body from tip to toe. I believe these are their individual choices to make, choices that should be available in a free and open society. Why, then, do I have to cover my knees to go to the Kotel? I’m a Jew, it’s my wall, too. Why am I prevented from access to public transportation on the Sabbath if I choose to go downtown? Why are my neighbors sitting at home while their teachers beg for enough money to live when settlers are being paid to have larger families than they can afford and do nothing to give back to society? And why does an overwhelmingly secular population allow this stupidity to continue?

 

Hopefully, in time, I will have some answers. For now, all I can do is call it a balagan and go back to work.

 

Part 3 to come in a week or two.

 

*nutty, messainic right wing Orthodox sect