I couldn’t write about my experience of Masada, which I had planned to post to my blog about Israel, ShlomosIsrael. I couldn’t get out my Drash on Behar, because I just didn’t like what I was writing. It just couldn’t come together into something.
I’ve had a case of writer’s block and I didn’t understand why. I’m not completely sure it’s over yet.
Last week, I came back to the States a few hours before Shabbat, and immediately fell into my Shabbat practices, even renewing one of my more nutty traditions: wearing Hawaiian Shirts on Shabbos.
Experiencing my regular Shabbat after Israel showed me how much I had changed. I had known of some changes, some of those were what I wanted to write about in my experiences at Masada and the Golan Heights, but those thoughts haven’t completely gelled yet into something I feel comfortable writing.
What I did notice this weekend was other differences. This trip has been a series of odd coincidences, such that I can only believe that Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu scripted them. Purely by accidents of scheduling, our tour bus entered Jerusalem for that segment of the tour on Erev Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Memorial day. We spent that next day at Yad B’shem, the Holocaust Memorial, and the last tour bus to enter the area before Israeli security cordoned the area for Memorial Day events at nearby Mount Herzl. Due to those same security measures instead of seeing the big monuments on Mt. Herzl, we walked among the graves watching thousands saying Kaddish, or laying flowers on the graves of their lost loved ones. The next day, Independence Day, we spent in the Old city. A poignant moment was while we were just entering the area of the Kotel, the Israeli version of the Blue Angels flew stunts nearby.
At the wall I put a small piece of paper with a prayer and a request. Part of that request was to have my eyes opened to the qualities of really attractive women. As I touched the wall, I closed my eyes. I began to cry. A still small voice recited to me
My dove in concealment of the cliff,
in steep hiding places
Show me your appearance,
Let me hear your Voice
For your voice is sweet
and your appearance beautiful [Song of Songs 2:14]
As I opened my eyes and looked up through my tear drenched eyes, I cried some more. Looking up I saw something I had not before. A white dove had made her home high up in a crack in the wall, the cleft of this rock. What surprised me was she was not the only one. All along the wall there were nests of turtle doves, pigeons and even two ravens. I had never noticed till now. The beginning of the answer to my prayer was there in front of me. As I spent time in the streets of Tel Aviv, Eilat, and Jerusalem I suddenly noticed how beautiful the women were in Israel. Prior to this in Tel Aviv I had noticed how many were thin and shapely, but now I realized what really made them beautiful was a look in their eyes and faces, one I rarely see here in the States.
Back in the States last Shabbat, in another one of those coincidences, we had a pair of Rabbis who run a congregation outside of Jerusalem as the visiting Scholars. There were several questions in our usual Shabbat study period where people often voice their opinions to the question brought out by this weeks reading. One question this rabbi asked went unanswered directly, but I felt like it was answered indirectly. He asked whether Israel spoke a different language than those in the Diaspora. Those who answered his questions about the Sabbatical year showed that most of those who answered thought Israelis were just like Americans living in a land as abundant and secure. Interestingly, many there, some of whom were Israelis, and some who have visited Israel on many occasions remained silent, not correcting many of the false assumptions there.
Indeed this week’s portion is the first to say that those in the land are different than those in it. It is this week’s portion that first threatens, or maybe prophesizes that there will be a Diaspora.
31. And I will lay your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. 32. And I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. 33. And I will scatter you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities laid waste.[Leviticus 26:31-33]
The text continues with a remembrance of the covenant for those outside of the land:
44. And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor will I loathe them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. 45. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God; I am the Lord.[Leviticus 26:44-45]
Since Jeremiah’s time, during the first wave of exiles, there had been not a tale of one set of Jews but two. There has been the Diaspora and the Land. What is true spiritually and socially today has been true for millennia. We have used different names for the two. In the Babylonian Talmud we hear the term “In the west” for Israel and in Israel we hear the term “in Babylon” for the Disapora. Even the greatest of Sages were known to makes this distinction:
When they told R. Johanan that there were old men in Babylon, he showed astonishment and said: Why, it is written: That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land; but not outside the land [of Israel]! [Ber 8a]
While most are not familiar with it, there are not one but two Talmuds, the Balvi and Yerushalmi. The Balvi, or Bablyonian Talmud, is the perspective of the Diaspora, the Yerushalmi, of those in the Land. The outlook of the Diaspora is different than the one in the Israel. It shows on people’s faces, particularly young people. As I was looking more at them, I noticed it most in the multitudes of young attractive women.
Thinking about it this weekend I wondered what makes the language of the Land what I’ll call Lashon haartez different than the language of the Diaspora, Lashon HaGalut. I don’t think it’s just an American thing: Given 60th Independence Day celebrations, I saw enough Jews from Spain and Latin America to know it’s not just something about America. It’s something else.
A key to that something else was something that did disturb and startle me the first few times I saw it. Young people in their late teens and early twenties were carrying rather large firearms slung around their back or over their shoulder like it was a backpack or purse. These kids in civilian clothes are off-duty IDF soldiers. Israel out of necessity has a compulsory military service for virtually all its citizens, starting at Age 18. While American kids can spend their next few years after High school in college, for most Israelis, before college is military service, or a mixture of college and military service. Part of that service is that your firearm is completely your responsibility. Hence a lot of kids watch their guns with as much care as moms and dads watch their children, taking them everywhere.
Yet in a Chicago California Pizza Kitchen the other day, kids not much older or younger we so different. Watching one rather interesting table it was not guns that every gal had, but iPods, sitting at a table with each other yakking yet each listening to their own music at the same time. While Both Israelis and Americans love their cell phones, watching a cabdriver in Israel carry on four conversations on different phones at the some time was not just amusing but instructive. Watching a group of people at a outdoor coffee kiosk on Ben Gurion Street in Tel Aviv one guy sitting at a table with several of looked liked his friends was on the phone with someone. While not understanding Hebrew, I could tell the guy holding the phone and whoever it was on the other end were all part of that group conversation. This is so different from the cell phone users I see everywhere in the United States. To use your cell phone means no one else in the world matters – an invisible phone booth goes up.
There is one thing about this place called Israel; there is a sense of purpose found in a sense of community. Be it very early education in the communal setting of a Kibbutz, or the compulsory community of military service, Israelis know everyone is part of a bigger purpose. Such things provide a sense of confidence and even optimism even in the worst of conditions. Women with a sense of purpose, showing such self confidence like this become incredibly attractive in a way I find so rarely here in the States, where individualism so isolates us and leaves so often thinking only of ourselves, and intentionally shutting out others. The country that venerates “We the People” more often than not is about “I the person.” It shows on people faces and the invisible walls around them as I walked around downtown Chicago last weekend. To be honest both men and women young and old all too often have this up.
Many people wonder if the fruit in the Garden of Eden was a setup. Given the of this weeks portion, I wonder if the Diaspora was as well. God had to have known we would fail. Why God did create a situation where there was a Diaspora, why were we not commanded all to enter the land at the time of Ezra? Thinking back on my trip and on my return to my regular life, I think the answer is that we need each other. Judaism is never complete unless people are speaking both Lashon Haaretz and Lashon Galut. Both together synthesize into something more. What that more is will takes months for me to understand.
I’m still trying to figure out my trip. Some people had told me ahead of time how I would feel when I got back. Some would simply say “you’re going to enjoy it” others “you might go as a tourist, but come back a pilgrim” Neither were quite my experience. The best advice I was given was not to expect anything because whatever I expected would turn out different than that.
That was my Experience, even when I expected it. What I did come back with was a bit of the eye opening I wanted standing in tears at the Kotel, I know more who the dove in the cleft rock is.
No comments:
Post a Comment