The More Things Change.....

Dalia Kibbutz, Yokne'am Maggido Region, 11 pm (3 pm CST)

So mostly I've been writing of my experiences observing things that have historically defined the Jews, Israel, Jerusalem. But today, only hours after the polls have closed in Israel on this Election Day (and national holiday; many get the day off), it seems appropriate to reflect on things of a more modern nature. And how the past manages to catch up to and confront Israel in even the most current of events.

As we've progressed through our trip we've gotten briefings about all sorts of matters affecting the country. Politics, social welfare, government, media. And also the way the United States and Israel relate to one another. Not just at a government level, but from a Jewish community perspective. Do we as Jews in America really tell the full and complete story of Israel, or do we reduce the conversation to the romanticized version -- the natural beauty, the Biblical significance, the entrancement of a nation in which it's actually possible to feel not only assimilated, but assimilated into the majority.

The "truth" of Israel is that there's not one truth. There's not one narrative. It's a complex nation with a formidable history and tremendous aspirations for the future. But those hopes could readily be dashed by problems that plague any number of nations... an underfunded and pedagogically challenged education system; an increasing split between the rich and poor (hmmm...does that sound familiar to any of you fellow Americans out there?); racial disparities between Jews and Arabs, and myriad assimilation issues for Jews who have emigrated to Israel from Russia, Ethiopia and elsewhere.

On the other hand, there's the great number of exceptional achievements. The country is a major creator and exporter of technology. Its cultural and arts institutions are highly regarded. The growth of the economy over only 61 years of national existence, despite big bumps along the way (such as the recession of five years ago) is extraordinary.

But vile and seething hatred threatens to derail the nation's future prospects. Never was this so evident as in today's elections. At this hour, the moderate Kadima party appears to have gained a modest and surprising victory over the rightist Likud, led by former PM Bibi Netanyahu. But this means nothing, because the party that will end up in power is the one deemed capable of creating a majority bloc, forging alliances with other parties with smaller numbers of seats won in the Knesset.

And therein lies the rub.

It is believed that Likud and Netanyahu will end up in power by building an alliance that includes a party called Yisrael Beitenu. Its leader, Avigdor Lieberman, has...um, how shall we say it...somewhat biased tendencies?

That's putting it mildly. Read this excerpt from today's London Telegraph:

"(Liberman)'s campaign slogan, 'No Loyalty, No Citizenship' has been seen as a rebuke of Israel's Arab citizens, who make up some 20 per cent of the country. Their solidarity with their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, especially during the recent war in Gaza, has made some Israeli Jews increasingly suspicious of their loyalties...
His platform called for citizens to take a loyalty oath. Those who refuse would lose the right to vote or to run for office. Another party tenant called for Israel to redraw its borders so that areas with large Arab concentrations would fall under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.(Emphasis added)."

So there is no confusion here, the party and party leader expressing the above view of the world will control over 10 percent of the seats in the Israeli parliamentary government, AND will have a major say in who becomes Prime Minister.

This is Israel, folks. Remember Israel? The nation established for the benefit of Jews, 6 million of whom perished in the Holocaust? Jews who have been persecuted throughout history because of their ethnic origins, their religious beliefs, what they look like, who their mother was? And now someone who is relying on ugly and insulting innuendo, on "it's either us or them" jingoism, is seen to be an effective player at a national level?

Yes, there was just a war. Yes, the the Jewish-Palestinian issues are real, terrible and have resulted in large numbers of deaths. Yes, there must be focus on finding effective solutions, solutions that include the permanent cessation of terrorism. But as yet, no one has explained to me in any sane manner how the way to combat racial and religious divisiveness is by creating more of it. This defies both logic and instinct. And it's patently offensive to boot.

I realize that a war has just been completed and security is top of mind for many Israelis. As with 9/11, this kind of environment musters support for hawkish views. But the best of Israel's future is in its hope and optimism, not in the ball and chain of hatred. Security, yes. A firm commitment to peace, yes. A fair debate about the best tactics by which to get there, yes.

But not at the expense of respectful and moral governance and public dialogue. If the conversation is dragged into the gutter by leaders who evoke visceral responses of hate, particularly hate based on ethnic background, then haven't we pushed ourselves back over a half century to when those same arguments were being used to kill us?

As Jews, I hope and pray we're better than that. Israel's future peace and prosperity depends on it.

Tunnel Vision

Saturday, February 7, entrance to the Western Wall Tunnels
Sunday, February 8, Yad Vashem (Holocuast Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority)

Two tunnels in two days. One of them literally a tunnel, the other figuratively so. One of them ancient, the other fully modern. One of them touring backward through a painful history to the site of an Absolute Beginning, the other propelling forward through the worst tragedy of all to a Hopeful Future.

It was eerie at the entrance to the Western Wall Tunnels at 9:30 on a cool but pleasant Saturday evening. Dark and somber on one level, yet thrilling and inviting on another. I had been very excited for this opportunity.

Our tour guide Mark informed us that reservations for the underground visits must be made months in advance. This is hardly surprising, given that the Western Wall (Kotel) is to observant Jews the most significant site in the world.

Why is this so? Well consider the confluence of Biblical events that took place on or in the shadow of Mount Moriah (or the Temple Mount):

• The world is said to be created at the Foundation Stone atop the mountain;
• The first human, Adam, was created there;
• Abraham ascended the mountain in anticipation of sacrificing Isaac;
• Jacob was supposedly stopped at the mountain when he had his famous Dream of angels ascending to Heaven on a ladder;

After the First and Second Temples are constructed at this location (and ultimately destroyed), the Western Wall – of all the walls the most proximate to the “Holy of Holies,” the innermost sanctuary of the Temples – is the most sacred place to Jews.

Surely you don’t have to be a reverent person to appreciate the historical and archaeological significance of the Wall. As you wend your way through, the human phenomenons grab you as well. You ask yourself, how did people 2000 years ago move a 50- ton piece of stone? How are all these layers upon layers of wall constructed and supported? How did massive underground cisterms the size of a pretty decent sized house get built?

All that’s pretty interesting in a human sort of way. But here’s the thing—what starts with humans ends with G-d. Because as you wander through the tunnel, you notice that the Wall has progressively less height as it runs toward its intersection with Mount Moriah. And all of a sudden, instead of manmade blocks alongside where you’re walking, there’s the rough and natural edges of G-d’s creation.

I defer to my fellow and much more reverent Jews to know where exactly the most “sacred” point along the Wall is. I’m sure to most it’s the closest point to the H of H and to the onetime location of the Ark. But in a rather Benjamin Button sort of way, the Wall’s intersection with the mountain does it for me. If the goal is to express reverence for the wondrousness of G-d and his creations, there’s nothing more amazing to me than the confluence of something made purely and exclusively by G-d touching something that humans constructed and worship in utter appreciation, reverence and respect for G-d.

Call me an uninformed heretic, but I’m sticking to my story.

The new main building of Yad Vashem , on the other hand, is to me a tunnel that burrows through a dark time forward toward salvation.

The new museum complex is truly a work of paradoxical simplicity and complexity. Simplicity in the single main concourse off of which fork the utterly complex side halls that present progressively darker and darker stories of death and atrocity.

So why do I even dare suggest salvation? Am I insane, or simply stupid?

Probably a bit of both. But here’s why. As those who have attended are aware, the new Holocaust History Museum tells the story of genocide from the perspective of the people who both perished and survived. The narrative begins in the Germany and Europe of the early ‘30s; there are stories of proud members of German Jewry are presented, there are images of hopeful European Zionists.

The tale, as it wends its way through the ‘30s, is told a la Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a steady and maddening descent into insanity. To the German Jews along the timeline, until 1938 the ethnic hatred subcurrent initially seems oppressive yet manageable. Even after Kristallnacht, while the psychopathy of Hitler has become clear, no one wants to believe that something so hideous as the Final Solution could even be considered, let alone implemented.

All along the way the story is told in part by the people of the Holocaust. This is the device that is so compelling to me. Hearing the voices of survivors describe what they witnessed and experienced, how they barely skirted death while their loved ones were killed en masse, makes the reality of it all undeniable. They are the eyewitnesses to the Crime.

If it happened to them, and they’re looking us right in the eye through the camera, then it could happen to any of us. And of course, that’s the point.

Except hearing their voices, their voices of now, not then, their voices of The Living, ultimately get us through the dark times as well. For listening to survivors sends the clear message to the demons of the past that, no matter how many of us you killed, you didn’t kill us all. And you didn’t kill us off. And you won’t, you never will, no matter how hard you try. Our spirit is indefatigable, our energy is persistent, our voices are insistent. We provide testimony as to what happened, and we will provide it again and again, as many times as it takes, to let the world know we won’t surrender. Never. Never again.

Two tunnels. One looking back, prior to catastrophe, back to the True Beginning. One looking forward beyond catastrophe, breaking through to a New Beginning. Both are part of us and always will be.

And Centuries to Go Before I Sleep, And Centuries to Go Before I Sleep

Ok, so hopefully Robert Frost won’t take offense. But every adventure, every visit on this trip so far turns up something so mind-boggling in the context of human/religious/cultural/Jewish history. It’s all I can do to record impressions, the smart stuff (at least what I’m capable of) will have to come later.

Off to Masada with our tour guide on Shabbat. The city’s streets are of course mostly empty as we zip through Jerusalem in his little wagon. Our guide, call him Mike, would make Boston drivers proud, navigating the curves with the alacrity and tenaciousness of a bird of prey. Soon we’re on route 1 to the east, the landscape turns to desert, the Bedouin tents alongside the road predominate for awhile, the drive through the West Bank as Israeiis and Palestinians share the road, then quickly, quickly descending almost a mile to the Dead Sea and environs.

I don’t know if you can comprehend the rapidity of the physical and cultural changes unless you’ve experienced it elsewhere. And there aren’t a lot of places to experience it. This isn’t like the gradual ascent from Eastern Kansas flatland to Western Kansas high plain to Denver plateau. This isn’t 3 hours from the Grand Canyon’s down to Zion’s up. This is 25 minutes from city hills to over a thousand feet under sea level. This is 25 minutes across Jewish, nomadic, Palestinian. This is like real world Epcot Center without a laser show.

But Masada does in fact have a light show, though we missed it. Not that it needs one. This mountain fortress of over 600 meters across hovering above the Dead Sea is still another example of complexity. Always complexity in this Place of Israel. Tough, resilient, challenging complexity about history, peoples, times.

History. There’s the Masada of legend, with the supposed mass suicide of a thousand to avoid enslavement by the Romans. At least that’s what Flavius reported in his journaling. But would such a pious group as the Jews have so violated the Laws of Moses, even indirectly by killing each other? It seems incredible.

But that’s only the Jewish story. Not the story of the Byzantian Christians who later built a place of worship within Masada. Nor the tale of the Israeli archaeologists who painstakingly deduced the histories (plural) of this strange and magnificent place after 1948.

Always multiple times, multiple stories. Like I said, too much to grasp all at one.

Environment. Will the Dead Sea, 45 percent salt, shrink out of existence? The hash marks on the stone risings, dozens and dozens of feet about the current level of the salty brine, tell the tale of where the Dead Sea rose to just some 90 years ago. Evaporating, slowly, mercilessly? Losing a historic resource and a source of (very expensive and time consuming to desalinate) water? Time will tell.
And the beauty of environment, too. After a kibbutz-prepared lunch, a hike up the lusciously lovely rocky hills of En Gedi, with its invigorating waterfalls and swimming hole, its small furry critters hanging around because…why else…fresh waters are relatively abundant.

Back to town after a day of Changes and Mysteries. A wonderful speaker over dinner and resultant discussion about how to educate and engage American Jews about how to talk and think about Israel. Far too complex to describe in a blog, but fodder for further musings and great educational and context for framing issues.

Next……Tunnel Vision…to be continued….

A Jerusalem Dream Awake

Ok, so this is what the first two days here in Jerusalem kind of remind me of….

About six years ago, I participated in the strategic planning team for the Ladue School District. The exercise was performed with 30 participants and led by a well respected educational consultant. The first day was incredibly long, and included four small groups working to create a mission statement for the district. After the entire team of 30 decided the first four efforts captured some, but not all of the essence of the district, a fifth and final team of half a dozen, myself included, traipsed off to take the other groups’ ideas and synthesize them into a satisfactory whole.

Problem was, it was about 11:30 at night, and we were, to put it mildly, drop dead tired. We’d been working on all sorts of conceptual themes all day, and our heads were achy and full of fatigue. But strangely, with our defenses down and our commitment to the team up, we stormed with our brains and hearts toward a creative and passionate solution. By one am, the mission statement was accomplished!

It was only much later that I figured out the consultant’s game—he knew darn well that the final group would be utterly exhausted when they took the ball and ran (ok, dragged) with it. But the special nature of tired thinking is how it transforms from conscious (analytical, lineal, etc) to unconscious (heartfelt, creative, visceral). And it was that deep-down tired that permeated the group, and allowed us to cease worrying about how the mission statement would be perceived and whether it was “just so,” and instead to focus on how we related to the district in a very organic and instinctual manner.

And so it was with Day 1 in Jerusalem. Not intentionally so….the organizers were not relying on my total body collapse from only 5 of the past 43 hours being devoted to sleep. But there I was, hitting the ground running at 10 am on Friday with our tourguide Mark, as we ascended the walls of the Old City for a breathtakingly panoramic view of Jerusalem.

So before I left, I mused in my column for the paper whether things would hit me intellectually or emotionally. I’m going to say it was really most like an exceptional Impressionist painting – as though Claude Monet were carrying me atop the city on his shoulders.

And so that was how it was as I first laid my eyes (in person anyway) on the Jewish Quarter and Mount Scopus and Hebrew University and the Dome on the Rock and the King David Hotel and the Armenian Quarter and and and and….

It’s not that there weren’t details. Mark was an exceptional font of knowledge, but the amount and extent of it washed over me like waves. I felt like I was surfing and everytime I thought I was gonna ride the Big Kahuna I was toppled by another bout of semi-consciousness and a feeling of “this must really be happening to someone else, not me.”

I wish the pictures could capture that essence. Maybe telling you I almost fell asleep into my lunchplate by midday and one of my traveling companions told me I was snoring while Mark was further educating us about the things we had seen in the morning (sorry, Mark!).

And then the Western Wall on Shabbat on sundown! There, having captured a mini-second wind, I was thinking more clearly and was able to at least pose some questions and observations to myself. Like, are all those different types of Jews really standing next to each other? Do they truly acknowledge the existence of each other? Or, to loosely borrow a phrase typically applied to 2 year olds, were they just engaged in “Parallel Pray,” all drawn to the locale for its religious significance but with little connection between and among them? I wasn’t sure at all. But I was awake enough to know that whatever it is, it’s unique and incredible and something that most, if not all, Jews can relate to in some fashion.

But the most touching moment there, I thought, was when a group of Israeli soldiers entered the secured area near the Wall, en route to praying. And our tourguide, Mark, indicated what an exceptional sight that was, these young adults fulfilling their personal and physical commitment and sacrifice to Israel and simultaneously fulfilling their spiritual and emotional selves with Shabbat prayer. The emotion in Mark’s voice as he talked about it was potent indeed.

We finished the first day with dinner and a discussion about the many meanings of Jerusalem, how it’s seen, why it’s important, what is unique about it. Too many ideas to share here, but so interesting to see that the beauty and challenge of Jerusalem is clearly in the beholder’s eye….its timeliness, its religious significance to so many different groups, its layers upon layers of civilization’s history, its rich-poor splits, its utter and vast complexity.

By the time I hit my pillow, I felt like I had survived a wind tunnel of sorts. But rather than feeling beat up, my reaction was more like…what a rush!

And this was only day 1……..(to be continued)

interim visit

Thursday, Feb 5, 11:30 EST, Newark Liberty International Airport:

Not that a stopover at Newark airport is any great shakes (no insults to Newarkites intended), but it is a nice reflection point to comment on the great folks I'm with.  We certainly will have no shortage of laughs and smiles during our trip.  I'm sure most of them will come at my expense! 

This morning the NY Times ran a story about how the Vatican is now insisting that the reinstated Bishop Williamson recant his patently offensive comments in which he claimed there was no gassing of Jews during the Holocaust.   It's gratifying that the Pope and Church have paid heed to international animus about the reinstatement.  Yet this whole story line is particularly galling as the world is in the throes of a potential Great Depression II.  The potential perils of Jews in this period are particularly noteworthy, as chapter upon chapter provide the opportunity for rabid anti-Semitism to pronounce itself:

• Financial firms with Jewish surnames such as Lehmann, Goldman et al in the news;
  
• The disastrous Madoff scandal;
  
• The battle in Gaza and the absurdly biased media coverage that often barely points out the 6,000 plus rockets that have shelled Israel over the past several years;
• The Holocaust denials of Williamson

Etc etc etc and on and on.

I'm particularly wondering about how folks I meet in Israel react to these items in these times.  To us in America, we tend to perceive anti-Semitism as rearing its head through incidents--Nazi marches, hate crimes, whispered vulgarities. But in Israel, the citizens--the Jewish ones, anyway--feel the weight of a macro-anti-Semitism, the weight of the collective world offenses toward Jews. Is this a true distinction and if so, does it shape one's reaction to hatred differently? I'm such a babe on so many of these issues I'm trying to wrestle through them in a personal, meaningful way.

And more to write as we go.......

Why I write...

When I’m in Israel for the first time this week, I’m going to keep you posted via blog. Kindly allow me to tell you why.

I once had an assistant at work, we’ll call her Sue, who was about to take a trip with her family to Disney World. For weeks she was downright giddy about the vacation.

The day before she left, we walked out of our offices together and she seemed surprisingly subdued. I asked her why, and this is the essence of her response:

“Well,” she sighed, “looking forward to it is probably the best part of going on vacation. Once it happens, you’re there for a few days and then it’s over.”

Knowing the end of the story — she had a great time while there, and fond memories upon her return — I think her sentiment was a tad exaggerated. But the lesson I took away from that conversation with Sue is that any planned event in one’s life really comprises three parts — anticipation, experience and recollection.

I’ll be embarking for Israel around the time you read this, and true to Sue’s sage words, the anticipation is practically as palpable as touching down and tramping on Israeli soil.

Through a generous grant by the Lubin-Green Foundation to the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, 10 local agency execs will visit Jerusalem, our sister city region of Yokneam/Maggido, Tel Aviv and points in between. And during the trip, we’ll have contact time with Israeli professionals to foster ongoing relationships and develop an understanding of each other’s challenges and opportunities.

As one representing a news organization, I of course have great interest in current events. Arriving on the heels of the Gaza battle (with the embers still burning white hot), and a few days before the national elections that will matter gravely in the direction of any peace initiative, there’s no lack of relevant immediate content.

But I also approach this trip as a member of the world Jewish community, with a thirst to grasp “Israel” in a visceral way. Certainly one of the many reasons for such a mission trip as this is a hope by the sponsors that the newbie will engage at a deep spiritual and religious level, one that builds an intractable emotional bond to the Jewish State.