It's Complicated

How is it possible that it is so easy to be Jewish here, and so complicated too?

Easy, and beautiful, and fun. Even the “secular” folks say “Shabbat Shalom” to you as you walk to shul on Friday night. There’s a shul on every corner, one for every “flavour” of Jew, not-yet-Jew, tourist, citizen; one for every kind of davenning you want: Reform neo-Chasidic, Reform classic, Reform-American, Reform-Carlebach yababababidibim; Conservadox, Conservative-American style, Conservative-European; Orthodox-lite, Orthodox-egalitarian, Orthodox-Brooklyn, modern and not-so-modern Orthodox, Orthodox-Carlebach yababababidibim, frum Orthodox, really frum Orthodox and even frummer Orthodox; over-the-top frum and out-of-this-world frum. Blessings come spontaneously: when we finish buying new dishes in the Machane Yehuda market we get an outpouring and heartfelt blessing not over the dishes, but over our being here. The cook at the soup kitchen where we volunteer doesn’t bother learning our names, he just calls each one “my righteous one.” Young people daven their morning prayers freely, without embarrassment, on the public bus going downtown. Friday night is quiet, and everyone finds a family to be with. Saturday night is one big boisterous party, and Israelis stay up really late. “I won’t be able to do this till much later” is translated into Hebrew as “after the holidays” (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, that is.) The newscaster uses the expression “a word to the wise is sufficient” straight from its Talmudic source—in Aramaic.

Difficult, and sometimes ugly, and exhausting. Two gay teenagers are murdered in a “safe haven” community centre in Tel Aviv and while the “hip” shul I go to on Friday night makes a whole big deal out of it with readings and prayers and outreach to the LGBT community in Jerusalem, the “hip” synagogue I go to on Saturday morning doesn’t say a word. A story on the news reports that not only do we now have gender segregated buses in the religious community, (women in the back—just like in the good old days in Selma, Alabama where blacks had to sit in the back and that was actually legal) but there is now one neighborhood with gender separated sidewalks. Yes, you read that right—gender separated sidewalks. (I wish tourists would stop going to the “quaint” religious neighborhoods where such practices will soon become common.)

Even though there is a shul on every corner, I quickly discover that they all have politics just like back home—it was easier to be an unknowing tourist here, for sure. I find myself growing tired of the constant “G-d sent you to me” or “G-d sent me this idea” or “G-d made sure I did this” from the wide-eyed and bushy-tailed newly religious (baaley teshuva) keeners, and I find myself angry at the growing number of times I’ve been missionized by Jews for Jesus who find fertile ground in this spiritually complex place. And yes, this is the country where 50 Rabbis and Kabbalists circled over Israel in a chartered airplane blowing shofarot and praying against swine flu. "The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it," Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying. And just this week posters went up around the Central Bus Station letting us know that the internet equals cancer in gematria (Jewish numerology.) Gotta love it.


And yet, and yet, and yet...the weather! (Sunny with a chance of more sunny.) The beauty of the land- green sprouting out of desert, the lush flowers, walking past olive trees, pomegranate trees and lemon trees in the middle of the city. The sense of spontaneity of Israelis (no one plans far in advance, and people just “pop” over for a visit. And you can usually get tickets to a concert the night of.) The encounters with people from every corner of the globe. (Its a really different Jerusalem from 20 years ago when there wasn’t a black, Thai, or Chinese face. Now you can get injera, the Ethiopian bread, in the market, and see Thai kids in army uniforms and kipot.) The easy relationships with our Arab neighbors (we live near Abu Tor, a mixed neighborhood) even through all the politics. The immense number of groups working for peace, for interfaith understanding, for Arab-Jewish reconciliation, for the environment, for social justice, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, “rescuing” food. The fact that just about every Israeli volunteers for something and the society is still more “we” than “me.” That people talk about their society, question it, examine it, reflect a lot on how to make it better; that everyone cares enough to have an opinion— even I you don’t agree with it. (When the news comes on, the bus drivers turn up the volume and everyone quiets down to listen.) That the first few seats on the bus don’t just say “Leave these seats for those who need” but have a verse from the Torah that commands you to give up your seat. (“Thou shalt rise before the grey-haired person.”) That there are now lots of joint religious-secular clubs and even one school. That there is more than one Arab-Jewish neighborhood and school. And, personally, the liberation from having to explain/label myself all the time (“I’m a trans-denominational observant liberal religiously right-wing politically left-wing Jewish feminist vegetarian”—yeah, yeah, those are a dime a dozen here. We get it.) And the intensity of life here—but, we also don't like that one. It's complicated. That's a favourite word of Israelis, we're learning. Zeh Mi-su-bach.

Destruction and Restoration

Arriving in Israel just the day before Tisha B'av, the somber fast day commemorating the destruction of the two Temples, I was struck with the fact that everyone noticed, and everyone commented, on our timing. "Just in time for Tisha B'av" the cashier at the organics store said. "Wow-just before Tisha B'av" our new neighbor mentioned. Even the most secular Israeli knows the Jewish calender—but more than that—relates to it as a marker of time in their daily life. Yes indeed, we arrived just the day before Tisha B’av, which meant that not only did we get the chance to observe it in the very city where it happened, but also got to experience the mad rush for groceries in the supermarket occasioned by the upcoming fast.

How to deal with Tisha B’av? To fast and cry about our victimhood and remember “they tried to kill us” while we are living in perhaps the most miraculous time in Jewish history ever, when there is a sovereign Jewish state? To mourn the loss of a Temple, priesthood, and cult of animal sacrifices, and pray for the day when they will be restored (and don’t even go there as a woman and vegetarian…)? Had the Temple not been destroyed, there might be no Rabbinic Judaism, no Talmud, no yeshivas, no Kabbalah, no Chasidim, no modern Judaism at all, and we would likely have gone the way of other ancient religions that did not adapt to new realities, a blip of history’s memory, a civilization lost. The diaspora created the Jewish people, and thus exile and return are both part and parcel of Jewish identity. To pray for the Messianic time when the Dome of the Rock will be replaced by the Third Temple? Maybe, as Arthur Waskow suggests, the Third Temple IS the Dome of the Rock- meaning that the Messiah will come when there is true interreligious cooperation and understanding. Or maybe the Third Temple is our longing for it. Or the Third Temple will be a virtual Temple, one built brick by brick every time a Jew joins the community in some way. Oh, and one more thing about Tishe B’av. Can I feel real pain over a loss 2,000 years old when the Holocaust is still fresh in my generation’s memory? Do I want to make Tishe B’av more “relevant” by turning it into another Yom Hashoah?

But (there’s always “on the other hand” in Judaism) Tisha B’av is also about how we have lost the connection with the Shechinah who was in our midst every day when we had the Temple, about how we have lost the “grounding” and unity the Temple once gave us, about how we lost the Temple due to Jewish infighting that so plagues us today, and about all the destructions we bring upon ourselves and upon others with our power. Totally relevant from that point of view.

So, we went on a walking tour with Beit Shmuel, the Reform movement’s centre in Jerusalem. The theme of the walk was “Destruction and Restoration” and it presented a really interesting take on Tisha B’av: we looked at buildings in which the original facade was preserved but the inside of the building was new and modern. An apt metaphor for this whole city, which is a conglomeration of seemingly old structures (you can still see Ottoman Turkish writing on walls, ancient arches inside upscale clothing stores, and museums of “Theodore Herzl slept here” inside cafes) and incredibly up-to-the-minute Moshe Safdi architecture. Isn’t that what our Judaism is (or should be) in the modern period: the old facade—i.e. traditions, rituals, life cycle events— with a new inside—the service itself, Reform/ Conservative/ Reconstructionist/ Renewal prayerbooks, egalitarianism, Shabbat elevators??? The tour started with two readings, one from the Tanach and one from the poet Yehuda Amichai- again, a great metaphor for the mix of old and new that make up our lives as Jews.

What a scene in the Old City! Families walking in socks or barefoot (the prohibition against wearing leather) carrying low stools on their shoulders (like shiva, the tradition is to sit low or on the ground) and streams of hundreds and hundreds of people walking toward the Kotel while the muezzin calls Muslims for their evening prayer. Guys wearing literally sackcloths and ashes, lying on the ground weeping. And also lots of hippies in turbans and socializing youth groups.

Tisha B’av itself we spent as a day of meditation and reflection, talking about what we saw, what we felt. Tishe B’av gives us all alot of “food for thought” whether we fast or not and was a great beginning to our families “year of living thoughtfully.”

Thoughts on "Spiritual Aliyah"

Yehuda Halevi wrote, "My heart is in the East, but I am at the ends of the West..." I’ve often felt that I wanted to be in two places at once— Jerusalem and Toronto—since I don’t think the Diaspora is vapid and meaningless and the only place to live a full Jewish life is Israel. After all, the Talmud we use as authoritative was written in Babylonia, and our own vibrant Jewish community is a centre of Jewish life no less than any other Diaspora community has been for two thousand years, producing Jewish poetry, art, music, food, culture and identity. No amount of “you should make aliyah” guilt will inspire those who feel most at home here, who believe in the imperative to make that home an example of the best Judaism can offer: with synagogues, day schools, community centres, adult education institutes, Jewish film festivals, walks for Israel, charitable fundraising, and more. Bravo to those who keep the mitzvah to live in Eretz Yisrael, and bravo to those who build and sustain Jewish life here, and bravo to those who live somewhere in the middle.

So, let's think about aliyah in different terms. I was truly excited to hear of a new idea from my colleague Rabbi Stanley Davids, who coined the term aliyat hanefesh, or spiritual aliyah. Rabbi Paul Kipnes writes about this concept in the most recent Reform Rabbis newsletter and calls it “...a soul driven aliyah that places love for Israel near the centre of our lives. Aliyat hanefesh could be expressed by visits for study and for vacations, by making certain that our children and grandchildren have extensive personal experiences of Israel, by becoming informed advocates for Israel and by personally making certain to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut as a religious holiday each May.” This notion of spiritual aliyah makes our frequent or even infrequent visits to Israel that much more meaningful. We aren’t just tourists, we are spiritual pilgrims. It conceptualizes and frames every letter to the editor, a trip to the wine store to counter-protest, the choice of Israel for winter break over Cancun, dancing with an Israeli flag at a rally, supporting a candidate for a Birthright trip. Each act is a soul driven aliyah that may or may not lead to settling in the land, but it is a “going up” all the same.

There are many texts in Rabbinic sources that point toward making physical aliyah. The Rabbis could never have imagined, though, the kind of flowering, safe diaspora we live in here in North America. So perhaps, for us, "spiritual aliyah" is a way of acknowledging that we have two children without having to choose which one we love better.