Don't Gel Too Soon

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 DAY EIGHT: WEDDING SONGS, ARTISTS, MUSIC AND MEMORIES — THE BEST ARE THE THINGS YOU WEREN’T LOOKING FOR

You know it’s true: we never know the best things are coming until they’re there. I can read this! It’s Kol Nishma, a song I really wanted to learn. I’ve twice heard it sung as a groom makes his way to his bride surrounded by friends — all singing (hollering) with energy and joy. A friend found the title for me, our Hebrew teacher typed out the lyrics in nice, big, first-grader font – and I can read it – even sing it in the limited tune-carrying that passes for me singing. Wasn’t expecting that one…

Later we visited the studio of a designer whose work we thought we might like. He shares his gallery with his 80 year old mother, whose extraordinary art hangs over tables where his is displayed. It’s quite a scene. That artist, Malla Carl, whose work was enchanting, grew up in Switzerland after her family fled the Nazis and landed in Lucerne.

Her father, she told us, had been a Chasidic rabbi. Even so, he gave her permission to go to art school – quite revolutionary at the time for an Orthodox Jewish girl. When I asked how this was possible in such a traditional environment, she explained, a bit tongue-in-cheek, that the chief Rabbi of Lucerne had come “from Berlin” – dramatic pause – and been influenced by Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch. The father of Modern Orthodoxy, Hirsch apparently believed even then that women should be educated and gladly gave his permission for her to continue her studies.

I wish I could describe the animation, the humor and charm, the sheer joy of our time with this spectacular woman. She told us great stories; some, involving others, I’m not able to relay. Suffice it to say she’s a pistol. She took us through folders of her work – not as customers but fascinated visitors – and her content and execution are memorable and evocative. They are not the work of an “old” person but of one always alive and aware.

We just went on and on — asking questions and receiving remarkable responses. Somehow our conversation moved to facts surrounding our move toward Orthodox Judaism. She was pretty shocked. As we prepared to leave, our newly purchased print rolled up safely in a tube, the story of our gradual move from no affiliation to such a commanding observance fascinated her. Finally, we left. From the top of the stairs, after giving us farewell greetings (a kiss for Rick, a motherly caress for me because I have a cold and she couldn’t hug me) Mrs. Carl continued our conversation. Upon learning, from one flight down, that Rick and I have a Kosher home, she saluted! I don’t know if I have the skills to describe it: A small, grey haired woman in glasses, standing in the dim light of the stair well, saluting us for embarking on this stage of life with such a radically different reality. The whole scene represents an idea dear to Baby Boomers like me — and the basis for the title of this blog. Whatever you do, DON’T stand still. Grow and change and explore and wonder and respond. Not so dramatic; just be alive while you’re living. The drama was reserved for a tiny woman, learning of our journey of discovery — (sometimes so so hard) — and saluting. It took about a block to be able to speak; both of us were enormously moved. Honored, too, not only by her gesture, but by the opportunity, however brief, to share the reality of such a gigantic life. They say Jerusalem is full of history – and it isn’t all built into the stones and walls. Every person leaving the old country and coming here to build a new life — every one of them is a figure of history. Today we met one of the best. You’d know it, too, if you’d been with us, seeing her grand salute from the shadows at the top of the stairs. I never expected that, either.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 DAY SEVEN

We had four hours of class this morning and two of Hebrew this afternoon so I’m making this short. Just know that the Pardes classes were once again remarkable. It’s hard to explain spending two hours over a Torah concept but today our great teacher, Rabbi Reuben Grodner, brought us a eulogy that a revered rabbi and teacher Joseph B. Soloveitchik gave for the wife of the Talne Rabbi, another major force in his community. The purpose for reading it, Rabbi Grodner said, was to demonstrate this pioneering rabbi’s understanding of the value of the moral and intellectual leadership of women, as well as men. He also founded Maimonides School, the first school where girls and boys could learn Talmud together – and for women, learn it at all.

Anyway it was very exciting as was the rest of the day. I took the photo you see here on a tony Jerusalem street called Emek Rafaim -a combination of Soho and Columbus Avenue. These young soldiers were doing security patrols and stopped for lunch – so their ever-present semi-automatics were in their laps (look just below the table edge.)

What I’m trying to demonstrate with these daily security photos is NOT that Israel is dangerous because it really isn’t, unless you go to disputed areas, but that this is what life is like here – that people make their way and raise their kids and go to the movies and jog along the Old City walls, and these folks protect them as they do. When I think about what we complain about at home — well — ever since 911 people have complained that the president never asked us to make sacrifices and we subsequently don’t have the same investment in the outcome. If you want to see the kinds of quiet courage that emerge from shared responsibility, this is one place to look.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 DAY SIX: LEARNING HEBREW ON A SUNDAY IN JERUSALEM

Here’s your security photo for today – a little blurry-artsy because I took it through a window at Cafe Hillel on Emek Rafaim late Saturday night. Most of the men who do restaurant and store security prefer not to be photographed so I’ve been shooting through windows while at a table inside. A friend who reads this blog has, a couple of times, emailed me to remember that the guards are here to keep us safe. I think she believes I’m complaining by posting these daily photographs. On the contrary – I just want to show you what it is like to be an Israeli in 2007. This is the least of it but it’s so universal and so visible that it seems a good example. So.
Now on to today.
This is Orly Ganor, the founder of Ulpan-Or, the extraordinary school where we’re learning Hebrew. A charismatic visionary, she’s created a very exciting way to learn the language (that includes audio – and a very positive attitude) and we’re really benefiting from it. We’ve worked with her and several other young women who are stunning as people and teachers.

Today Shira Carmel, who will be the Ani deFranco of Israel very soon, taught both Rick and me. She demonstrated that in the right hands, even the alphabet can be fun. It’s difficult to learn a new alphabet at my age, but she showed me something quite valuable about learning to read and although it’s been partially debunked, most of it emerges from "urban legend" to probably true. If you read a paragraph where only the first and last words are accurately spelled you still make sense of it intuitively because you know the words. When you learn a new alphabet you can’t skim along like that or you make mistakes (which was what I was doing, big time) because you can’t trust any of your assumptions of what the next word, or even letter, will be. She convinced me to really sound out each one. I discovered that after several tragic failures at trying to learn to read this ancient language I MAY actually do it! I’m irrationally excited about it.

ONE MORE THING – Because – as usual on this trip – I’m really really (really) tired! I’ve written quite a bit here about Mea Shearim and forgot to post this picture of a sign in the window of a tiny story there. So here it is. More tomorrow.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY FIVE – SCENES POSTED IN ADVANCE – SHABBAT SHALOM FROM THE CITY OF GOLD

I wrote this Thursday night to go up on Shabbat. You know how in movies the credits say "No animals were harmed during this filming?" Well no work was done on Shabbat during this post. I’m just sending you some Jerusalem visions. More tomorrow.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY FOUR – THE SOTAH AND MEA SHEARIM

Thursday morning I sent myself an email that said this: We are just leaving Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and I am so freaked out. Maybe the SOTAH story had more impact than I realized. I told my husband that I was close to tears, that my chest was tight and I was someplace between scared and angry and he said – "You mean you felt like the Sotah, huh?" Well.

She does haunt me. Even now, when I have learned so much that mitigates the horrors of her treatment, I can see her, standing there, as they pull off her hair covering and stand her before God (and the priests), forced to drink the waters full of dirt and ashes. And what does that have to do with Mea Shearim? I’m the intruder there; the very Orthodox residents who choose to remain largely on the outskirts of the rest of the world and live a highly structured and mostly literal interpretation of every law and passage in the Torah – didn’t invite me to go wandering around looking at them while my husband bought a new Tallit (prayer shawl.) Even so, for some reason every time I go there I get so sad.

My husband once accused me of "overidentification with the oppressed." Maybe that’s it. The men are so clearly the ones with the power here, walking by in 2’s and 3’s while harried mothers and kids run errands and see to 3 or 4 children under 5. I have no right to consider them opressed. Or unhappy. Or anything else. What happens is that I imagine myself – stubborn, curious, eager to see and know everything – growing up here and wonder what would have become of me. Maybe I would have had a peaceful and loving life, but my projections won’t let me think about that. I just struggle with the stories I write in my mind about these families (these women) and their lives.

I have always loved The Chosen, and I have great respect for Chassidic Jews, for the most part. But there is something about this infinitely old, infinitely tired part of Jerusalem that just breaks my heart. As I write this, I suddenly wonder if perhaps it has more to do with me and my issues — that their lives are their own and I’m not sure that’s true of mine.

I’m writing this Thursday night in case I can’t finish it before Shabbat tomorrow — so Shabbat Shalom.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0: DAY THREE EMERGENCY CORRECTION SOTAH AND PUNISHMENT***

In yesterday’s post I wrote, about the trial and punishment mandated for the wife suspected of adultery, "Basically,it seems that asking a woman accused of adultery to stand before God to be judged (the only time God concerned Himself in this way with the laws of men), to drink water mixed with dirt from the Temple floor and the ashes of the burned paper accusing her, and then to wait to see if her belly swelled up or not (yes was a sign of guilt) seems to subjecte her to something both terrifying and humiliating. But once past that, even if she was guilty, there was no physical punishment, only a mandated divorce – and her lover was also punished."

My wonderful teacher, Tovah Leah Nachmani, read my blog(!!!) and noted gently that:
you wrote that no harm befalls her if she is guilty, after drinking the waters. but that isn’t the case.

1. if she confesses guilt before drinking the waters, then no harm befalls her and her partner in crime, but she and her husband divorce. and she can’t marry the partner.

2. but if she drinks the waters and is found guilty, she suffers the deforming of her body, or- according to other commentators -death, and so does her partner suffer either deforming or death.
in addition (if she doesn’t die) she is divorced from her husband.

3. one last point: if her husband is also guilty of any sexual offenses, even if the wife is guilty, the waters do not harm her.

So. I stand corrected and apologize. I was so tired; she had indeed taught us about the deformity but I just plain forgot. I’m grateful for the chance to fix it – it’s important.

Oh and here are your security photos for today:
At the place where we had lunch, and

the place where we had dinner.

I hope you’re getting the idea; it’s a part of life here to guard against terrorism in a way that affects every person, every minute, every day. It’s a brave place.

More trip diary tomorrow before Shabbat. Erev Tov.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY TWO (CORRECTED): THE SOTAH, THE HEBREW AND THE MEANDERINGS OF THE DAY

Isn’t this funny? We passed it walking home from dinner tonight and I just thought I’d share it. We’ve had quite a day, one that I’ve already written about once and then, somehow, allowed the post to be devoured by the ethers of the Internet. I’m going to try again but far more briefly as it’s getting late.

First, here’s my daily security photo – from outside the coffee shop where we had breakfast. And yes, this young man is patrolling THE MALL with a machine gun.

After that well-guarded breakfast we went to our first class of this trip at Pardes, a wonderful educational entity that’s tough to describe and even tougher not to love. Our teacher today, as she was last year, was Tovah Leah Nachmani (she’s on the left.) She’s an inspired and inspiring teacher and we had a blast discussing the laws of the Sotah (a woman accused of adultery) and, according to the Book of Numbers (Bamidbar), what should happen to her. You can read it here – beginning with verse 11. It’s fairly horrifying on first (or second or third) reading but this time we ended up with an unusual perspective.

Tovah sent us out with our Chevruta (study partner – mine was my husband) to try to figure out what the commentators were asking themselves as they wrote about this passage -and how they answered. As we did so, a strange perspective emerged. SEE DAY THREE POST FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO THIS: Basically,it seems that asking a woman accused of adultery to stand before God to be judged (the only time God concerned Himself in this way with the laws of men), to drink water mixed with dirt from the Temple floor and the ashes of the burned paper accusing her, and then to wait to see if her belly swelled up or not (yes was a sign of guilt) seems to subjecte her to something both terrifying and humiliating. But once past that, even if she was guilty, there was no physical punishment, only a mandated divorce – and her lover was also punished. SEE DAY THREE POST FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO THIS

There’s more to it though: if his possibly adulterous wife stands before God to be judged, no husband however outraged is going to play God and punish her himself -by killing her ashe could in so many other cultures or even by beating her. The ordeal in fact protects her from worse. In addition, it’s clear to all that the preservation of the family was so important that only God could adjudicate when it was so jeopardized.

There’s lots more to it but it’s really late. Suffice it to say that it was exciting to learn how much more lay behind this disturbing ritual. Even so, it’s all of a piece. )Our hair is dangerous, our voices are dangerous, even the potential for adulterous behavior is dangerous. WE are dangerous. And it’s not, mostly, for what we might do but for what we might cause to be done that is the big issue. Granted, the Sotah has to have been formally warned in advance by her husband that she shouldn’t hang around alone with a specific man he suspects of having designs on her – and she can only be tried if she has done just that, but even so, these rules don’t apply equally to husbands.

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned in the couple of years since I began studying this stuff, however, is that you can’t read it only from the perspective of the present. The culture of the times is a critical variable in the mission and outcome of divine commandments and their enforcement. And of what we can allow ourselves to learn as we read.

Enough already. We also had an amazing walk around the city, bought me an orange hat and had a three hour Hebrew lesson. But that’s for another day. Goodnight for now… and, as I learned today – erev tov.

JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY ONE: LIVING WITH SECURITY -EVERY MINUTE, EVERY DAY

This is the Jerusalem we all love to imagine, and there’s plenty of it that’s just like that. Usually, that’s where we spend most of our time — biblical Jerusalem. It’s thrilling.

This time, though, we’re here to study, and for the first time, instead of staying in a hotel, we’re in an apartment in a real neighborhood (Bak’ah for those of you who know it). We arrived this afternoon after flying from 5 PM Monday DC time through to 2:30 PM Tuesday Jerusalem time. That’s a total of 14.5 hours with the layover in Frankfurt. So, exhausted and eager to get to bed, we spent the evening wandering around the neighborhood instead of going immediately to the Old City as we have in the past.

We needed coffee, milk and some other things so we stopped first at the supermarket just blocks from our "house." But guess what? Before we could get inside, we were stopped at the door, my bag was searched and we were sort of assessed before entering. Nicely, matter-of-factly, but for real. I took this photo of the security guys on the sly, that’s why it’s so blurry. But there you are. Need apple juice? Prepare to have the diaper bag searched.

Bags in tow, we went on to dinner at a wonderful grill/salad place. There are photos of both the salads and the place on the left, but guess what? Before we could go in we had to check in with the guard at the entrance. He asked me not to take his picture, but he was there. Hungry? Meeting friends for coffee? Prepare to be checked out not by the cuties at the next table, but by the guard at the door.

Wandering around after dinner, we found a sweet coffee place. Everyone was sitting outside; the traffic was buzzing by beyond the sidewalk, the coffee was great and we were in a great place – living a neighborhood life in another country — one of particular importance to us. But guess what? The coffee place is part of a local mall, along with a drugstore and some not-very-expensive (almost cheap) apparel stores. And guess who were sitting outside the doors, on stools, on the sidewalk? Yup – security guards. A quick check of our bags of coffee and bottled water, and of my back pack, and we were good to go. But there you are. Going for diapers or hand lotion? Prepare to be searched at the door.

I’m not writing this to complain. Today I just felt, in a different way, what it’s like to live here. Whatever your politics, the idea of a people so under siege that no grocery store or bowling alley or retail mall can exist without security guards checking everyone who enters, is creepy and sad. I know, I know, a grave portion of our globe is at some kind of risk. And I’d probably react the same way witnessing their struggles. But this is where I am, this is where I’ve come to study, this is where I look into the eyes of mothers in the baby food aisle and old ladies squeezing tomatoes and crews of students buying up unthinkable quantities of fast food. And as they move through their lives, relief from their sense of danger, of vulnerability, is possible, sustainable, only until the next time they walk out the front door. And that’s a hell of a way to live.

How I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT THE IDEA OF A BRIS

Many of the Jewish kids I know were circumcised but never had a bris (a ritual circumcision – complete with ceremony and prayers.) That was true in our family. I always thought it as barbaric. I have come to see the ceremony as one of the loveliest in Judaism. I’ve just come from one for our rabbi’s fifth child. The ceremony begins as the families of the new child line up at the door to the shul and pass him along toward the bimah, with all the congregation singing a song of congratulations. Many family members – aunts, uncles, grandparents and siblings, have a role — blessings to say, children to hold, passages to mark. Each older sister and brother gets a gift.

There is of course a serious ceremony within the celebration – the honoring of the covenant that God ordered and Abraham honored. The physical idea of the circumcision is tough – even for deep believers, I think, but it’s interesting that research in sexually transmitted diseases – even AIDS, shows that circumcised men contract and transmit these diseases less frequently. Of course there’s no hard evidence that there’s a connection but it adds to the considerations about the process itself.

The most important part, to me, is the welcoming of the child into the community both the broad of those who worship as observant Jews and of the closer extended family that surrounds the synagogue. There were kids hanging off the railings at the front of the synagogue, family members gathered to the side (that’s the photo), singing, crying and lots of reunions of people from far away who’d come together to celebrate. The little boy was named for his parent’s cousin who died, at 23, of Muscular Dystrophy. As the Rabbi spoke about him, he struggled not to weep – the combination of joy at the safe arrival of his son and memory of the loss of the man whose name this child now bears – were almost overwhelming. Many of us felt it too.

It’s taken me quite a journey to come to comprehension of it all and I’m sure I haven’t made it clear enough to you – but I guess the bottom line is that the combination of faith, joy, timeless ritual, love and friendship is a powerful gift — tough to learn to accept but, ultimately, something to treasure.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH AND OUR FUTURE

OK. So I’m way behind a lot of people – including the Oscars voters, in finally seeing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It’s a horrifying presentation, scary and fascinating. As a video producer I’m knocked out by the craft that makes such a dry topic so interesting. As some one who’s always been politically involved, I’m mortified that this film still needs to exist and bewildered that I haven’t been more drawn into this issue. It sounds crazy, but I’ve always been so obsessed with human rights and civil rights, education and integration, war peace and poverty, that I kind of left all this to someone else.

You can’t watch this film, though, and remain untouched. A friend says that the research is too new, that other "natural" phenomena come in cycles and that we haven’t had time to be certain that this is not just part of the next one. I respect this woman enormously but I watched this film, thinking of her, and of the power of modern technology compared to the "natural" impact that generated previous cycles and I can’t make myself believe that this isn’t an emergency.

I read a lot of science fiction, and much of it is dark and apocalyptic. Resource wars, water wars, data wars — it is the future that causes the pain. But it’s also the future that’s made by us – and if even half of this film is true, we are permitting what appears to be a horrific future to emerge, despite our ability to prevent it. I’ve followed Al Gore a long time. I remember his honorable environmental advocacy all the way back to his days in the House. He’s for real, using his position in the world to turn this huge air craft carrier of an issue around. In his film, he uses the history of the smoking issue (More Doctors Smoke Camels ads that ran just after the first Surgeon General’s Report) ont he dangers of snoking, to prove that we can change minds.

He’s won the Nobel Peace Prize for his commitment and impact. Some say the Nobel committee is just poliical and that this is a lefty-gesture. But I say hats off. Where else do we have political leaders consistently leading on an issue that has no personal reward, where the only "up side" is that we might stop cooking our planet? I haven’t seen any latery.