trees are blowin' in the wind, whoosh!

though it was a couple of weeks ago, i still want to share some of the photos i took on tu bishvat. better late than never!
my mom was here visiting and we joined in with the פורום לצעירים (the young adults group of the israeli reform movement) for a hike in the sataf, a beautiful nature preserve just outside jerusalem. it was a sunshiney day, perfect for picture-taking!
our guide was my fantastic cousin/hevruta

the almond trees were blooming

we ran into a group from kolot having a tu bishvat seder

we got to see how local folks are using the ancient terraces to plant organic gardens (cool!!)

it was an all-around lovely mid-winter day in israel. a hint of spring to come!

oh, how i want to be in that number

last night/this morning, 13 crazy jerusalemites (mostly temporary jerusalemites, but...) gathered in my living room to watch superbowl XLIV at 1am. there was veggie chili and there were nachos, there was beer and there were quesapitas. a good time was had by all.

this über-american event, which follows visits from the majority of my parents, has allowed a little cloud of homesickness to settle in over me. 
i love being in israel. i feel better here than i did in my first couple years in philly. my life here is rich, full of wonderful people, intellectual growth, laughter, good food, nice weather, and i feel an ironic peacefulness in this war-torn place. but it's simply not home. 
it's my favorite place away from home, but home, it is not. for better or for worse, that spot in my heart is pretty much reserved for chicago. city of big shoulders and of my big family. in the not so distant future i'll be hoping to find gainful, satisfying, lasting employment as a rabbi in chicago. i invite you all to my superbowl XLVII party there.

come on baby, light my fire

so, my very generous family bought me a kindle!! i'm so excited. so far, reading on it has been just lovely. now, all i want to do is sit and read books on my fancy dancy new machine.
the first book i bought was the help, and i've clicked through 20% of the pages already :) (i have no idea what that translates to in paper page numbers.)
i am now opening up the comments section for suggestions of other books i should read. what have you read recently that knocked your socks off?

whoa! whoa! i gotta go!

putting together a course schedule is one of my absolute favorite activities. just ask my sister. she loves it too. so, though it was a little bit insane to try to put together a schedule at multiple institutions all of whom are on different calendars, i might have done it!

the goals i set out for this year in israel were threefold:

• improve my Hebrew to the point of (near) fluency
• meet fascinating people
• make personal and professional connections with israeli institutions that i think are cool

okay, maybe fourfold:

• have fun

my schedule, as is turns out, it perfectly styled to do just this. most of my classes are in hebrew, and are with israelis, and are in progressive settings, and i even get to study at some really innovative institutions like Elul and Alma!

since i'm studying at so many different places, some are still in the fall semester, and some have already started the spring. so, last night i went to a new class for the first time and tomorrow i have the last session of another class. :)


if all goes as planned, by the time we get deep into february and we're firing on all cylinders, my schedule will be:


sunday: zohar study group (hartman institute)
monday: halakha (HUC)
tuesday: talmud (HUC), israeli music as prayer (HUC), medieval thought (CY), rabbinical students program (Hartman)
wednesday: bet midrash elul, kabbalah (CY)
thursday: medieval jewish thought (alma in tel aviv!)
friday: free day!
saturday: shabbat!


i'm sooooo excited. :)

O little town of bethlehem

the other day i was chatting online with my friend rebecca and she told me about an interesting situation near our neighboring town of bethlehem. she then sent me the following e-mail: 

You are invited to a painting party at Osh Grab/Shdema (as the Women in Green like to call it).  OshGrab is a hill overlooking Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town that is next to Bethlehem.  When the Jordanians were in charge of the West Bank, the hill at OshGrab had a small military outpost on it.  In 1971 the Israeli's also decided to use the hill top as a military outpost.  They also decided to seize all the private land surrounding the outpost.  That land has been unavailable for development by its owners since that time.  Four years ago the Israeli military decided to pull out of Osh Grab and to no longer use the site for military needs.  However, the seizure order was never canceled, even though the military no longer has a use for the site.  Three years ago the mayor of Beit Sahour was approached by Cure International, an NGO that builds hospitals in needy places around the world.  Cure wanted to build a children's hospital in Beit Sahour.  Unfortunately most of Beit Sahour's historic municipal lands (ie the places where the town can grow into and use for development in general) have been annexed to Jerusalem, including what is now the "neighborhood" of Har Homa.  Beit Sahour is becoming hemmed in, leaving very few options for development.  One of the remaining options is developing the area around and on top of OshGrab.  The mayor spent several years trying to get planning permission from the Israeli army for the building of a hospital at the site.  But he did not succeed.  During that time he did get verbal permission to build a park on part of the hill.  The park is now threatened with demolition if the settlers get their way.

When the Women in Green learned that Beit Sahour had submitted plans for developing the land at OshGrab they decided that the land belonged to Israel and Israel should not give it up.  They have launched a campaign for the hill top to become a Zionist Cultural Center (on the edge of a Palestinian village and partially on land seized from local towns people).  Their campaign has been libelous against the local community, rude and threatening, and occasionally violent both towards locals and the Israeli military.  If you want to see the tenor of the campaign you can visit their website at http://www.womeningreen.org/.  The video they have produced accuses the local population of terrorism.  Beit Sahour is an 80% Christian village with a history of non-violent protest against the military occupation.  Its citizens have stood up against oppression courageously a number of times.  During the first intifada the community decided to refuse to pay taxes to the Israeli military.  They ran their campaign under the slogan, "No taxation without representation."  Unfortunately the military came and confiscated property in leu of the taxes but this example shows the kind of approach taken by the community.

So my plan.  There are abandoned buildings at OshGrab that the settlers are using for by-monthly art shows and concerts and speeches by Israeli Knesset members and Rabbis from Efrat and other surrounding settlements.  I want us to paint quotes from Jewish sources that speak about the Jewish values that the settlers are failing to live by.  I want us to remind them of their obligations as Jews to live in ways that will promote peace and are in line with justice.  I have some texts that I have collected.  I would love it if you all wanted to bring texts that you want to write on the walls.  I think we should write in English, Hebrew and Arabic (if we can).  Please bring the texts that you have to contribute with you.

so, we did!

 well, we made our way to bethlehem and when we arrived, we found out that the settlers had gathered at the site, making it not a safe place for us to go paint peaceful torah messages. ironic. neither derek nor i had ever been to bethlehem before, so we decided to do some touristing in order to not waste the day away and in hopes that the settlers would leave and we would still have time to paint before heading back to jerusalem for shabbat.first we went to the church of the nativity. it reminded me (quite logically) or the church of the holy sepulchre. i love going to other religions' holy sites and seeing how they move people.

then we went to the milk grotto, where crusaders set up in the spot they claim mary spilled some breast milk while she was suckling baby jesus. we loving called this the boob church. it was also beautiful.

we met up with bethany and steve who took us back to the church of the nativity to show and explain some more, and to take us to the cell where jerome translated the vulgate and coined the term apocrypha, but there were some franciscans processing so we got to see them instead.

en route to lunch, we got word that the settlers were gone, so we switched courses, bought some food and paint, and headed up the hill. this is what we found:

so we got to painting:

this was my first act of graffiti not on the Wash U underpass, and I mostly did white paint over things the settler folk had painted. things like "we are freedom fighters for israel!" and "kahane was right!" while my friends painted biblical and rabbinic texts.

and then my camera died, so no more pictures. we also don't know what the reaction of the settlers will be, but we're hoping that the words of peace that we painted in hebrew, english, and arabic will be understood by both the settlers and the surrounding arab villages.

they're the people that you meet when you're walking down the street

the gilad shalit vigil is no longer alone. 
since bibi declared a 10-month settlement freeze. we've had a big protest: 

and now a tent has been set up with folks there all day and sometimes at night (but not on shabbos!):

it's hard to see two issues to which i have such very different emotional reactions side by side. i walk past the gilad shalit table and feel sadness for his family and hope for his return.
i walk past the settlers and feel mostly anger and frustration. there they are with their posters that say "we will continue to build in the west bank!" and my blood just boils.
like any political decision in Israel, the settlement freeze seems to have made lots of people unhappy. the very right wing is upset that there is any kind of halt to building in land they want to claim as jewish. the very left wing isn't satisfied unless the freeze is permanent, settlements are dismantled, and east jerusalem is included in the discussion.
here in this land that has been contested for millennia, emotions run high, opinions are many, and solutions are few.

well it's been a long, been a long, been a along, been a long day

i forgive myself in advance for how long it has been since i last blogged. you see, i've been planning to write about all of the wonderful people who have come to visit and all of the fascinating things i've been observing here in the holy land. i even take pictures specifically to post on the blog. but then, i do things like socialize and sleep and watch tv on the internet instead. so, it's 2010 and this will be the year of the blog.

the jury (a.k.a. me, myself, and i) is still out on whether i will backtrack and write in detail about all the things that you (the people of the internet) missed, or whether i'll just start from here. for now, i'll just post some highlights and photos and maybe fill in later.

here's what has happened since the phillies lost the world series:

hey, chicago, whaddya say?

neither of my chicago teams made it to the world series, therefore my allegiance now lies with the philadelphia phillies. this is partially because i "live" in philadelphia and partially because i just don't like the yankees. it is also lots of fun to cheer them on with my roomie, who is a big huge phillies fan.
it takes a great degree of dedication to watch the world series in israel since last week's games began at 2am and this week, thanks to daylight savings time, it's 3am. i have managed to fall asleep before games i was intending to stay up to watch, and to fall asleep during games i was actually watching, but have not yet successfully watched a whole game. this might be better for me, since the phillies are struggling in this series.
i, the eternal optimist, have high hopes regardless of the fact that the yankees are up 3 games to 1.
i leave you with a few photos from the gathering we had the night of the first game. i made a cake :) 
let's go phils!

give me your hand, let’s go

last sunday night, MASA put on an idan raichel concert. masa is a program of the jewish agency that gives young people (ages 18-30) money to come to israel, emphasizing long term programs. i am technically masa eligible, but not taking any money from them this year, because i’m not studying at any one institution for enough time to qualify. most of my friends here are indeed taking advantage of the generosity of the jewish agency.

so, masa put on this concert the other night, offering tickets to all of their beneficiaries in jerusalem. this included not only my rabbinical student colleagues but also (and it seemed, mostly) younger folks, probably on gap year programs.

the evening started with speeches. 

now, i understand that there is a lot of money flowing from the dudes making the speeches to the rowdy youngsters in the audience, and this is their chance to acknowledge that fact. but, getting 3000 people together, telling them it’s going to be a concert, and then talking at them for half an hour is not, in my opinion, the best plan.

also, it was full out propaganda. there were russian dancers.

there were smiling, dancing israeli teenagers in the colors of benetton.

there were pyrotechnics.

there was natan sharansky telling everyone they should make aliyah.

there was a video highlighting three different recipients and their stories of how much they love Israel and how happy their parents are to send them here.

oh yeah, and eventually there was the idan raichel project, you know, the advertised event. after i shook off the ickies of the pre-show presentation, i could settle in to appreciating an exceptionally diverse collection of folks who make excellent music together. they put on a great show – dynamic, engaging, full of highs and lows in all the right places. mixing languages, colors, moods, and melodies with skill, grace, and ease. 

but their music seems much more suited to an intimate setting with tables and wine, rather than a big auditorium with stage-rushing and flag-waving. maybe next time i'll skip the sponsored events and go right to the small scale music scene.

the concert did inspire me to head out to my favorite music store to discover new artists and i've been happily listening to my acquisitions: Michael Greilsammer and the new Mayim Shketim (sorry, can't find a link for them!).

i've got something to say about it. and it goes something like this...

people here are very passionate about their beliefs. surprise surprise! i just happen to live in the same neighborhood as the Prime Minister, a block away, in fact, so in addition to the frequent traffic issues this causes, our little pocket of Jerusalem is also a popular site for protesters to set up camp. 


this summer, while walking around looking at apartments, i noticed the Gilad Shalit vigil. a white tent with a sign counting how many days he had been held in captivity, a table with informational flyers. a banner proclaiming הצילו (rescue him). since that visit, we passed the 3 year anniversary of his capture, and the release of a video of him in captivity. the protest has ramped up significantly.

across the street, protestors have images and signs against "freeing terrorists." this likely refers to prisoner exchange, which is one of the ways israel has previously secured the return of captive soldiers. 

we are also host to protests about the occupation. these seniors gather every friday:

i don't feel the same palpable tension in the air as i did when i was here in 1996, when Rabin had just been assassinated and buses were being bombed frequently. 

and i don't feel the easy hopefulness i felt when i was here in 1999, when the peace process seemed to be clicking along. 

i feel some wounded hesitation, and i see many more visual representations of the frustration israelis are feeling at the political situation.

more tomorrow...

hmmm...watcha say?

okay, i love Obama as much as your average upper middle class left-wing arugula-eating democrat from Chicago. i think he's just the bees knees. but a nobel peace prize!?! he hasn't even done anything yet! if there was a nobel prize for potential, sure, give it to the man, but...really!?! what will we do when he actually achieves world peace!?

on another note, our refrigerator was broken but now it's fixed, so we got to go shopping at the shuk!

you gotta have friends

arriving in Israel could have been a culture shocky experience, and/or a jet-laggy experience. but mostly, it has just been great. i was picked up at the airport by my awesome cousin, who whisked me immediately to eat some hummus in abu gosh.

i unpacked quickly in order to head out to dinner with the RRC gang. being with such a dynamic and fun group of students is going to make this year in Jerusalem really special. it feels like home already with so many folks here i know. so the challenge might be to really embrace and appreciate and seek out ways to make it distinct, to not hang only with these wonderful folks but also to find new friends, new places to be and see. i'm sure that when classes start and i am here for more than a day that will just naturally happen. i'll let you know.

also had my first ice cafe today. so now i'm really here.

there's a thousand words that I could say

today i depart for a year(ish) in Israel. i have an apartment, an idea of where i'll be studying, and i'm even done packing up all my stuff! still, it doesn't feel real yet.

anyone who is visiting this blog is probably doing so for the first time right about now, since I finally came out of the blog closet by way of a mass e-mail. for the 2 or 3 of you who already knew I had a blog: get ready for lots more entries! and instead of random spurts of brainarrhea, I'm converting this blog into a place for pictures and stories, thoughts and reflections.

anticipating the question about the name of the blog, please see my very first entry!

it's all about the wordplay

i've been wordling.
here is my resume:

and here is my masters capstone paper:



and some notes from rabbinic civ class:

Can’t help loving that levir of mine

Sunday night's Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-tv movie, Loving Leah, combined many of my favorite things - Lauren Ambrose (of Six Feet Under), Michael Buble songs, (Everything!) cheesy stories of improbable love, and Jews. The basic plot of Leah, based on the play by Pnenah Goldstein, is that a young orthodox woman in Brooklyn loses her rabbi husband and ends up marrying his brother, a non-practicing Reform Jew (but he’s a cardiologist, so….). Throw in Ricki Lake as the Reform rabbi who counsels them both, Tonye Patano (of Weeds fame) as the wise and sassy housekeeper and you’ve got yourself a Hallmark movie.
Unlike some movies and TV shows (I’m looking at you Seventh Heaven), I’d say this one actually did a relatively good job on the Jewish content. We got an accurate shabbos: motzi in a Reform synagogue, candlelighting, baking challah; home life: kashering the oven (“a man is coming to use a blow torch on your oven today” was one line that had me in stitches), head & hair covering; and funeral customs: rending garments, funeral and unveiling, with a dash of yibum (levirate marriage) featuring the halitza shoe!
The women’s fashion, in particular, was spot-on. Leah transitions from ultra-frum with a sheitel to modern orthodox with a hippy head scarf. Even her choices when dipping her toe into the waters of mainstream clothing and below-the-knee-but-above-the-ankle length skirts seemed totally believable. I have nothing to say about the rebbes and their generous beards.
I only caught a few missteps in their portrayal of Jewish practices and customs. I gasped when they ordered in and ate out Chinese food. I had expected them to make a point of mentioning that the restaurant had a hekhsher, or turning it into another moment of conflict – “I can’t eat those egg rolls! Vey Zmir!” Rabbi Ricki also gave a strange attempt at explaining the afterlife, which no rabbi should ever try to do ‘on one foot.’
The elephant in the room, however, was named Yibum. This biblical commandment is where the movie gets its romantic underpinnings. This custom in which a childless widow must marry her deceased husband’s brother-in-law in order to carry on his family’s name was troublesome even for characters in the Torah. These days, as Loving Leah’s gloriously bearded rabbi appropriately explained is mostly a formality and it is a foregone conclusion that halitza will happen and both parties will be released from this obligation. The romanticizing of this ritual irked me. Jake and Leah could have found themselves in some dangerous, abusive territory. Trapping your sister-in-law into marrying you and moving her away from her friends and family doesn't necessarily end up a smoothly soundtracked love story.
But most of all, I was irritated because, like in so many movies that have come before it, there was a distinct message: people are happier if they are not so darn religious. In Loving Leah, like in Renee Zellweger’s Price Above Rubies and a Melanie Griffith’s A Stranger Among Us, the orthodox world is insular, stifling, and ultimately, wrong for the heroine. The Orthodox Woman, we learn, is secretly yearning to break out of her prison so she can let her hair down, wear brighter colors and date sexy non-rabbis. I do know some folks who did feel repressed and imprisoned and are much happier since they have left that world, but I also know people who have become their best selves since they took on more mitzvot and became part of a religious community. Are there movies that don't present religious women in this way?

is it worth it? let me work it!

it was seven months ago that i said i was going to get my shit together and yet it took me until this week to start making it happen. but hey, it's happening. so...yay! i found an excellent weight watchers meeting this week and am hoping that i will find another great leader and group at the same location but a different time next semester. i went to my gym three times this week (!), found a new workout buddy in my friend N, and found out my ww buddy in chicago serendipitously started up again too. it is on!
getting into a healthier body is feeling more worth it than it has felt in a while, more possible than it has felt in a while, and more necessary than it has felt in a while. i am committed to turning 30 in better mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional shape than when i was 25. because 25 sucked, and i am convinced that 30 is going to be fabulous. and i am going to look gooooood.

i was born by the river in a little tent

somehow i woke up thinking yesterday would already be radically different after such a phenomenal tuesday. that ended up making me mostly grumpy, since it ended up being just a wednesday. but today does feel different. after lots of door-knocking, phone-calling, e-mail sending, and impulsive donation-making, my favorite presidential candidate ever made some serious history. i cried like a pitiful freak on tuesday night (which by the time he came out to the massive crowds in Grant Park, was actually wednesday morning). i sobbed for ten minutes straight, just letting the pride and wonder and shock and gratitude and relief and satisfaction wash over me. now i've cried on election night before. but not like this. it was some serious ugly cry. he better be worth it.

VOTE

I haven't written on this bad boy in a long time, and not for lack of thinking about stuff that could/should be written. But if anybody out there actually reads this thing (I'm talking to you two!) GO VOTE!

it's the same old song (but with a different meaning since you've been gone)

tonight i had the slightly random experience of listening to a brief performance of the University of Delaware Y Chromes. now, when i was in college it became painfully clear to me that the all male a cappella group at my school very rarely arranged new material. songs that were not new to people who preceded me in the group were still being performed the last time a saw the group a couple years ago (that's at least 10 years of the same material). it got to the point where if one more new guy earnestly sang "flashdance" my head was going to explode.
anyway, i thought this was just the lazy group culture of these particular guys. this theory was called into question on this lovely evening in delaware, when we were serenaded to tunes including "bright lights" and "you're a god." seriously, are these songs still cool? or are they also using ancient arrangements from their glory days? it's not like they are musical masterpieces or songs for the ages. it's vertical horizon, people. come on.
perhaps i am an a cappella snob, but part of what we loved doing was arranging and performing our own material. it's what made the group ours, what kept our alumni interested, and what made us family. arrangements were a source of pride and an avenue for us to grow as musicians. i actually feel bad that those guys missed out on that experience. as for the y chromes...i guess we'll never know.

another and another

inspired by dooce's up close and awesome picture of jeff tweedy from the outside lands festival, i would like to share a little bit about why i am in love with glenn kotche: the drummer from wilco:

1. he is hot. he looks a little bit like brian from queer as folk, but without the assholiness.
2. he is a ridiculously good drummer. i don't really know anything about drumming, but he can be playing one thing with each foot, and then have two drumsticks in one hand and some mallets or some shit in another. and that looks really difficult.
   
3. he gets all sweaty every time they play. so sweaty his shirt is always soaked at the end (please refer to item #1).
4. even though he isn't one of the singers, he often sings along and smiles because he's just having such a good time.
5. he is funny and smart.
6. he was in marching band.
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hS15pujPSk

i rest my case.