Some (very) random reflections

I still need to write about the second half of my Passover break, but I wanted to share with you some very brief and very random reflections I've had over the past few weeks.
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A few days after Passover break, my hevruta Naomi and I got through a relatively easy amud (one side of a page of gemarra) in one 3.5 hour study session, and pretty much understood most of it. We felt very proud and accomplished...until we realized that if we were to do Daf Yomi,* it would be a full time job. (And, we were using a Steinzaltz.**)
*Daf Yomi is a practice of studying one daf (a full page of gemarra, front and back) every day. A person doing Daf Yomi takes 7 years to complete the entire Talmud.
**the Steinzaltz is sort of a beginner's edition of the Talmud, with vowels and punctuation, extra commentary, and translations into Hebrew when the Aramaic gets tricky.
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A couple weeks ago, there was a duststorm, or maybe a sandstorm, I don't know. Outside, it was hot and windy, and the wind was hot. It felt pretty uncanny to have this wind blowing and have it not cool me off in the slightest. From the Pardes Bet Midrash on the third floor (4th if you count floors American-style) everything outside looked white. Like fog, except you could tell it wasn't fog.
Just another reminder that we're practically in the desert.
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Every time I walk into a mall or supermarket and the security guard checking my bag asks "יש לך נשק?" "Do you have a weapon?", my initial reaction is still to snort and think, "And if I had one, would I tell you?" As an American, my association with security checks is limited to airports, and a person attempting to carry a gun into a mall is probably concealing it--so it seemed to me that the security guard's question was a weird one. Until one day I realized that in this country, a lot of people carry guns; mostly soldiers in uniform with their uzzis, but every so often you see a random civilian with a gun on his belt. As strange as it seems to me, "Yes, and here's my ID" is probably a perfectly legitimate response to "יש לך נשק?"
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Two weeks ago, I went with my friend Miriam to her volunteer placement, an Ethiopian absorption community in Mevaseret Zion. Ethiopian immigrants live in the absorption community for the first two years that they are in Israel; after that they are expected to integrate into Israeli society. They often face discrimination, have low employment rates and high school dropout rates.
It is also interesting to note that because of concern about their Jewish status, Ethiopian immigrants are required to convert upon moving to Israel. Because conversions in Israel are controlled by the (Orthodox) Israeli Rabbinate, the Ethiopian immigrants are expected to live an Orthodox lifestyle, and their children must attend Orthodox religious schools. It was also interesting, as Miriam put it, "to see who reaches out to this community" (and who doesn't). The majority of the volunteers--aside from a few Pardes students and some Hebrew Union College students--are from religious youth movements.
I had a good time playing with 3 of the kids from Miriam's "family." It turns out that my Hebrew is basically pretty sufficient when talking to 5-year olds, at least. I even got my hair braided and tried my first injera.

Rewind to Pesach Break--Take 1: the North

So now that life is settling into its regular rhythm again, its time to back up and tell you about my Pesach break.

Pardes had a 3-day tiyul in the Golan (the little "finger" sticking up into Lebanon and Syria in the northern part of Israel). It was beautiful, and full of wildflowers--most of the year the Golan is completely brown, so our tour guides kept reminding us how lucky we were to see everything in full bloom. Like the last tiyul, it was so nice to be outdoors for several hours a day, in breathtaking scenery. (pictures: Iris is a rare Golan Iris, with a turtle in the background. City on a hill is the ancient city of Gamla. The rest is hiking scenery.)



























































After the tiyul, I traveled around the Galilee (northern) region for several days. Natalie (one of my roomates) and I went to Tiberias for a night; its the city where Jesus is believed to have walked on water, and where the Rambam (Maimonides) and several Tannaim (rabbis from the Mishnaic period) are supposedly buried. Visiting these graves was certainly more meaningful now that I have taken a class on the Rambam and have spent a year studying the Mishna. (I'm pretty sure when visited these graves on the Birthright trip I led last year, I didn't know what a Tanna was.)

Natalie and I then met up with our friend Emily, and traveled to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, where we spent Shabbat. Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu is part of the religious kibbutz movement, which means that unlike on other kibbutzim, most of the kibbutz members are modern orthodox and keep Shabbat. We spent most of our time with the kibbutz volunteers and ulpan (Hebrew program participants). It was nice to get a glimpse into Kibbutz life...it reminded me a lot of camp, except with families.

Saturday night we headed to Haifa, and Sunday our friend Marcie joined us and my grandfather's cousin Dina showed us all around the city. I really liked Haifa, it's beautiful! The city is on a mountain, with the ocean at the bottom and the Baha'i gardens right in the middle of the city. It was also really refreshing to be in a city that's not Jerusalem--this could be my naivete at being a visitor for just a day, but I felt like Israelis and Arabs and Baha'i volunteers were all just going about their daily lives and it was no big deal, without the tension and self-segregation that occurs in Jerusalem.

Monday, we headed to Rosh HaNikra, limestone grottoes/caves carved out of the rock by the ocean, and then to Akko (Acre), where we wandered around the old city. Tuesday, we took a tour of the Baha'i gardens and went for a walk in Mt. Carmel national park, then headed back to Jerusalem! (Pictures: Baha'i gardens, Haifa bay, Rosh HaNikra, inside and outside of mosque in Akko, funky flowers in Mt. Carmel park, Khan al-Umdan, Akko)

יום הזיכרון ויום העצמאות! Days of Rememberance and Independence

This is spring in Israel: Passover, Yom HaShoah a week later, then Memorial and Independence days. These last two are right in a row; I found it to be kind of intense and quite an emotional roller coaster. Here are some brief reflections from Monday and Tuesday (pic is the front of my apt building all decked out for Independence Day):

Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day)
Sunday night, I went with a group of Pardes students to visit Ein Prat, an Israeli (I mean with Israeli students) post-college institution somewhat similar to Pardes. We began the evening with a class, on "The Torah of Babylonia vs the Torah of Israel". My hevruta (study partner) was Israeli, and I'm proud to say we hevruted (ok, so that's not really a verb) almost entirely in Hebrew. After dinner, we all gathered to stand for a memorial siren marking the start of Yom HaZikaron, and then had a small ceremony in honor of Israeli soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives. Part of the ceremony involved reading a list of names, all of whom were friends or family of people present, and then one of the Ein Prat students told a personal story of a friend from his unit he had lost. In a country where army service is mandatory, nearly everyone has lost someone.

Monday morning at 11am, Pardes gathered in the Beit Midrash for the sounding of the second siren of the day. This time, I was standing next to a window, and I watched cars, taxis, pedestrians--religious and secular and even a haredi-looking young man--all stop. I watched them stand, heads bowed, and I felt a tremendous sense of disconnect. Every single one of them has lost a father, husband, sister, friend, daughter, brother. It felt like a national, communal experience which I did not share. Then the siren stopped, and people instantaneously resumed their daily lives, got into their cars, began honking their horns, the frozen man with his groceries sprung into movement, bag swinging in hand.

We then had a panel of חיילים בודדים, or lone soldiers; in this case three Americans who had moved to Israel and served in the army, leaving their families at home. One of them made a point which particularly struck me; he said: "I imagine that many of you this year are searching. Figuring out who you are Jewishly, maybe considering making aliyah, starting families, searching for someone to start a family with. Whatever goals you are fulfilling this year, it is possible because of the soldiers who put your goals ahead of their own, who risked their lives for Israel." Obvious though it might be, it was an important reminder that however often I sometimes disagree with the actions of the Israeli army...well, I, Pardes, and the State of Israel wouldn't be here without it.

After the panel, I went to a class in which the dean's son, Shai, talked about moral issues in the army. He stressed that it is impossible to describe or prepare for what it is like to have to make split-second decisions under fire. He also gave examples of several ethical questions he personally faced serving in the war in Gaza last year; stories of seeing terrorists who he'd just watched fire a rocket into Sderot escape in an ambulance (he didn't fire at an ambulance), of seeing a Hamas gunman--while firing at him--pick up a schoolkid with a backpack to use as a shield as he ran through the range of Shai's soldiers (they didn't shoot, of course). Shai spoke incredibly eloquently, and reminded me of the complexity and the human element of the things we talk and debate about so theoretically.

That afternoon, we went on a tour of Har Herzl, the military cemetery. We could see the remains--flower bouquets, yardzeit candles--of the crowds who had been there at 11am for the siren, when every grave had a soldier stationed beside it and the cemetery was filled with families. We began with memorials of fighters who had lost their lives during the war of Independence and in the early years of Israel. It was very moving, especially only a week after Yom HaShoah, to look at the birthplaces on the stones and realize that many of these 1948 fighters were probably survivors of the Holocaust. From there, we moved through the cemetery, stopping at the grave of the Pardes secretary's brother, and ending with the newest part of the cemetery. This was the busiest part of the cemetery, and for me the most intense, with families and friends gathered in groups, crying, talking, remembering, singing. Here, the graves were only a few years old, and the men and women buried here--were they still alive--would have been more or less my age.

Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day)--62 years!

After Har Herzl, we had about 2 hours to mentally prepare for Yom HaAtzmaut. Like I said, and emotional roller coaster. The day (evening, since Jewish days begin at sundown) began with ceremonies happening in basically every neighborhood, followed by fireworks, parties, concerts...

All of downtown basically turned into one giant party. I went to Ben Yehuda St, the outdoor pedestrian mall, which was packed, with a DJ on Hillel St. People with giant blue and white blow up hammers, spraying each other with silly string, cotton candy, Israeli flags. After a pause to watch the fireworks, I and friends headed to the party in the Machane Yehuda shuk (produce market), which was even more packed, with a DJ and a bar set up in the middle of the shuk!

Then to Kikar Safra, where there was Israeli dancing. On our way, a giant block of yeshiva boys with black pants and white shirts and linked arms came dancing down the center of Yaffo street. It sounded like they were singing "Kfar Etzion Coev" (Kfar Etzion is in Pain)--earlier that day at Har Herzl, I had learned that Kfar Etzion, now part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, had actually been a Jewish settlement pre-1948. It was destroyed a day before Israeli Independence, and is apparently part of why they picked the day they did for Yom HaZikaron.

Kikar Safra was filled with both dancers and observers. I didn't know any of the dances, but it was fun to watch 17-year olds, 40-year olds, 80 year olds, men and women, all start dancing together as each song started. Apparently the dancing went until 3:30am. More yeshiva bachers on Yaffo St on our way out--happier songs this time. On our way home that night, we passed Gan HaPaamon (Liberty Bell Park), which was full of tents and people camping out for the night.

Tuesday was much more low key, but the entire city smelled like barbecue.

Yom HaShoah, Part II: Forgiveness

I also want to share a conversation my Peace and Conflict class had yesterday afternoon in preparation for Yom HaShoah. Our class was on the topic of forgiveness and reconciliation. We discussed the story Simon Wiesenthal shares in his book, The Sunflower. In a concentration camp, Wiesenthal was pulled out of work one day by a nurse who took him into a hospital room in which a Catholic SS officer is dying. The SS soldier begins explaining his life story to Wiesenthal, and then confesses to the atrocities he committed, the houses he burned down, the children he shot, ultimately asking Wiesenthal to forgive him. Wiesenthal, having listened for probably 2 hours, walks out of the room without responding.

But Wiesenthal's book doesn't end there. He ends his story by asking fifty-three people of different faiths; theologians, clergy, philosophers, etc the question, "What would you have done in my place?" and publishes their responses at the end of the book. My class read several Jewish sources (from Talmud, halacha, and liturgy) on the topic of forgiveness, and each person read a different response or two to Wiesenthal's question.

In our discussion, we read raised a lot of questions, among them:
-Can a person forgive on behalf of others?
-Can a person apologize on behalf of others?
-Can a person forgive unconditionally, i.e. whether or not the other person has apologized?
-Forgiving the person vs the act; forgiving the murderer vs the murder.
-What is the connection between time/distance and ability to forgive? Are we, the third generation after, in a particular position to forgive the Nazis (because we have that distance)? Are we, the third generation after, incapable of/unqualified to forgive the Nazis (because we have that distance)?

We also read an article* by Yehudith Aurbach. Aurbach claims that forgiveness is "basically a spiritual-moral phenomenon" and therefore that religious-cultural context shapes our understanding of forgiveness. It is more difficult, she argues, for us to reconcile with a party who has a different religious-cultural understanding of forgiveness than we do.

According to Aurbach, "forgiveness is one of the cornerstones of Christian theology," because Christians are supposed to model themselves after Jesus, "who forgave his enemies on the Cross without even waiting for them to ask for forgiveness." This is in contrast to Judaism, which "has stricter rules regarding forgiveness. Forgiveness can be asked only from the victim himself, and only the victim can forgive...Without Teshuva [repentance] there is no forgiveness." The Islamic approach, she argues, is more similar to the Jewish one: "Tawba (repentance), like its Jewish equivalent Teshuva...is considered a necessary condition for ghufran - forgiveness granted by God to the repenting sinner."

Aurbach claims that these different religious-cultural approaches influenced the different responses to Wiesenthal's question. All of the Jewish respondents, she said, agreed that Wiesenthal was right in not answering; all of those who said they would have forgiven the Nazi were Catholic or Buddhist. She quotes one respondent who said, "My whole instinct is to forgive. Perhaps that is because I am a Catholic priest...I sit in a confessional for hours and forgive everyone who comes in..."

I found Aurbach's article incredibly though-provoking, partly because of my interest in interfaith work, and partly because I fall exactly into her description of the Jewish approach to forgiveness. To me, one can only forgive on behalf of oneself. The idea of a Catholic priest forgiving someone (particularly for a sin he/she committed against a fellow person) has never made sense to me. Had the SS officer asked me/Wiesenthal to forgive specific crimes he had committed against me personally, I have no idea how I would have responded, but it would at least have been a question I could consider. But to ask me/Wiesenthal to forgive him for the crimes he committed against other Jews, is completely and absolutely out of my capability.

And, so I'm wondering, what do you think, especially in light of Aurbach's article? I'm especially interested in hearing from my non-Jewish friends, and from those of you with different perspectives than what Aurbach describes as the Jewish approach to forgiveness. Please comment!

* Aurbach, Yehudith (2004). The Role of Forgiveness in Reconciliation. In Bar-Siman-Tov, Y. (Ed.). From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, [p. 158-160] The Religious-Cultural Context

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Rememberance Day, Part I

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Rememberance day. At 10am, all of Pardes gathered in the Beit Midrash to hear the siren that was sounded all over the city (and the country). I wasn't standing near the windows, but my friends who were said that all the cars and buses stopped, and people got out of their cars to stand where they were.

Standing for the siren reminded me a lot of listening to the shofar blasts on Rosh HaShanah. Like the shofar, it was a call to listen, to pay heed, to remember, to reflect. And like I often feel as I stand for the sounding of the shofar, I couldn't quite figure out what emotion(s) I was or should be experiencing. It was hard to connect to such an enormous tragedy that happened before my lifetime and that I didn't personally experience, and it was hard to feel sadness/be moved at a proscribed, set minute in time.

After the siren, we had two presentations in a row: a powerpoint on 8 famous/important Jewish figures and the vibrancy of Polish Jewish life before the Holocaust, and a presentation by Morris Wyszogrod, an artist and survivor who had been in the Warsaw ghetto and in the camps and who shared his story with us (he also wrote about it in his book, A Brush with Death). During lunch, I went to a third presentation given my some of my fellow students who had gone on a Pardes trip to Poland during spring break.

Before lunch/mincha, we recited El Malei Rachamim, a prayer for the dead, and read out loud the names of family members submitted by Pardes students and family who had been killed in the Holocaust. As the names were read and I looked around the room, I was very moved. It reminded me, as I stood with a community of over 100 Jews (most of us from Eastern-European descent), that pretty much each and every one of us has several or more family members who were destroyed in the Holocaust.

After lunch, classes resumed as normal. I think it took all of us in my Philosophy of Halacha class a while to readjust, after such an intense morning. Our faculty stressed that having normal classes in the beginning and end of the day was intentional, though: For some, Jewish learning is a way to attempt to make up for what was lost. For others, having normal classes was a reminder of the importance not only of mourning the past, but also of looking towards the future.