Winter Friday in Rehovot

Nothing says Israel more than Friday noontime downtown. People are coming and going with their last minute purchases and there is a general feeling of rushing to get ready. By 3 PM (summer or winter) everything is closed or closing down. Religious and the not yet religious alike are winding things down in preparation for something that unites us all. Shabbat, shabbos, sabbath. This is Israel's day of rest. No matter how you define it. 

My daughter Racheli and I met for conversation, coffee and quiche on Friday. I met her on the busiest corner of  downtown Rehovot. The one where these three men have been singing for many years. They brighten even the grayest of Fridays making getting ready for Shabbat special. 

Racheli and I spent almost two hours at a lovely cafe and bakery a few blocks from this crosswalk where the proprietors had enlisted this gentlemen (dressed as I'm not so sure exactly what) to brighten our coffee date. 

Have a great week everyone!

Hair we go again!

This week's Haveil Havalim is here.
Chaviva of Kvetching Editor fame is doing a series called The Tzniut Project where Jewish women are answering questions about " their practices, people's assumptions, and more" regarding what is being called tzniut (modesty) but really in this context is about dress codes. One of her questions is: 

"What do you think other people infer from your clothing and hair covering choices? Has anyone ever said anything to you outright that expresses a judgment based on your appearance? (Ex: “You don’t cover your hair or wear skirts, so why do you keep kosher?”) 

Funny you should ask.
Last night the phone rang and it was a survey about a newspaper we subscribe to. I usually cooperate with phone surveys because it gives parnasa (support) to a Jew in Israel. So I tell him on a scale of 1 to5 what I think of various sections of the paper, whether on a scale of 1 to 4 I will subscribe again next year, on a scale of 1 to 7 whether I agree or disagree with certain political  and moral statements, etc., etc. And then the young man got to the demographic section. So, how do I define myself. Well, there was a really broad spectrum  from haredi, haredi leumi, dati leumi, dati, masorti leumi and several other configurations that I don't remember this morning. I picked one and then we went on to the next question obviously designed to further sharpen the demographic division:

How do you cover your hair? 

which was followed by a list of possibilities from 'always a wig' through 'sometimes a wig and sometimes a hat', 'only hats and scarves covering all or most of the head', 'hats and scarves covering most  but not all of the head' 'some of the head', sometimes, always, never???  The next question was about pants. 

Conclusion: around here there seems to be plenty to be inferred from my hair covering choices!

Memorial Day

Eli Solomon H"YD

Tonight we went to Rehovot's memorial service held in the "Defender's Park" where there is a memorial wall on which the names of Rehovotites who gave their lives for our country are inscribed. It was an impressive and moving tribute lasting over an hour and attended by hundreds of our fellow citizens. A man who lost his father, a Holocaust survivor, at the age of 4 in 1953 (which makes him exactly my age) shared his feelings about growing up without a father and slowly piecing together his father's legacy. He visited the cemetery yearly with his mother and younger brother, but no one talked about his father. Over the years he began asking about him and learning more about him. Nowadays, he comes to the cemetery with his brother and their families, wives, children and grandchildren, over twenty member of the generations. They tell of the heroic efforts of the Holocaust survivor to get an education and become a teacher in the new State of Israel. They pass on that legacy now to the fourth generation.

Chaim (Chuck) Hornstein  HY"D

The Chief Rabbi of Rehovot, Rav Simcha Hacohen Kook spoke passionately of his participation in the War of Independence as a member of the Moriah brigade in Jerusalem where they tried to get through to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and save the starving soldiers and residents. In the end they did not succeed and it took 20 years until Rav Kook was able to walk through the Mandlebaum gate, the house near the Eastern gates of th old city which he fled with his mother's family just before the Arabs blew it up killing Haganah defenders inside.Today he is, in addition to being chief Rabbi of Rehovot, the Rabbi of the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He ended with an emphatic statement that Jerusalem must remain in our hands.
Most of the speakers expressed the wish for a speedy return home in good health for Gilad Shalit . The ceremony ended with Kaddish, El Maleh Rahamim and the singing of Hatikva.
Of course the ceremony started with the siren and the minute of silence when each of us reflects on our memories Among those I think about are, of course, my two friends 'from the old country' Eli and Chuck. May God avenge their blood.

Take a few moments to watch this clip. It graphically represents the bereavement we remember today. 

Wild flowers, spring and hopes for better times

Wild flowers

Yesterday we fasted the 'Fast of Esther' commemorating the fast Esther and the Jews kept before she risked her life to go to the king and get Haman's decree revoked. Tonight we will be lighting Shabbat candles and tomorrow we will read the 'Zachor' describing the attack by Amalek on the weakest of the travelling Israelites during the travels in the Sinai after leaving Egypt. The tradition is that Haman, the villain of the Purim story, was descended from Amalek and so we read this portion which includes a commandment to remember (zachor זכור means remember) the attack by Amalek and wipe out Amalek.  This public reading is done on the Shabbat before Purim and both men and women are required to hear the reading. Then on Saturday night we will be reading the Purim story and celebrating yet another deliverance. 
In the Megilat Esther (the Purim story is read from a scroll named after Esther) there is not one mention of the name of God. How could that be? How could there have been deliverance without God's intervention. There have been many many interpretations given through years but the one that rings especially true this year is that God is not mentioned in order to show us that the evil decree is an example of hester panim (when God figuratively hides his face) as the word hester is alluded to in the name of the queen Esther. The deliverance came not by supernatural miracle - as in the parting of the Red Sea - but through Esther's brave deed along with the moral support of Mordechai all the Jewish people. This teaches us to look at all of life as a miracle through which God manifests his presence in the world. Sometimes his plans for the world are in tune with our expectations and we consider that state 'natural' and other times it is harder for us to accept events because we fail to see their meaning. This week has been one of those weeks when it is difficult for us to understand God's presence in our world. 

This week began with the funeral of the Fogel family of Itamar.Over 20,000 people accompanied them to their graves. It was difficult even to watch the broadcast and I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be there in person. All the eulogies were emotional and raw reflecting the shock of the brutality. The former Chief Rabbi of Israel Rav Yisrael Meir Lau, who was the youngest survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp (7 years old at the liberation) said

"it appeared as though the cycle of terror closed 66 years ago, when the blood of infants was spilled like water, when a million an a half children were trampled at the hands of beastly people.  "Sixty-six years have passed. We announced a State, we achieved independence. We established the magnificent Israel Defense Forces. And still, this cycle of terror and the river of blood flows, and we stand here helplessly." 

In addition he addressed remarks to twelve year old Tamar Fogel saying that she will now take on a role of 'little mother' to her surviving brothers (8 and 2 years old) who will have to be the 'kaddish' for their parents' memory in the years to come.  I noticed many well-meaning folks, mostly women, who felt that this thought was out of place. Let the little girl remain a child. Don't burden her with this responsibility. Would that we could! But Rav Lau knows different. His life is a testimony to to just how resilient a child can be. But no matter how much everyone wants to help, and will help, those children will ultimately share with each other an emotional tie that is like no other. .
(If you haven't read his autobiography אל תשלח ידך בנער in Hebrew you will apparently be able to read it soon in English and everyone should read it!) 

Cyclamen

And in another one of those weird 'only in Israel' ironies an IDF army medic saved a new born Arab baby girl in the Neve Zuf settlement where the Fogel's parents are sitting shiva. 

It's been a sad week for us in Israel and around the world. The earthquake in Japan and the bad to worse condition of the nuclear power plants have yet to be fully understood. When we empathize we usually call upon a similar emotion or reaction in our memory to help us feel the pain of others. But the horror that is happening in Japan, I have no parallel experience to call upon. I can only imagine. Japan is the only country to have experienced nuclear fall-out and that was in wartime. I always imagine that what Japanese must feel towards nuclear destruction is similar to the horror which we feel about the Holocaust. I am trying to imagine an earthquake killing thousands followed by a Holocaust and no end in sight.

Anemones

And so it goes. Life is made of cycles, grief and danger, joy and deliverance. Through all of it certain things stay the same. The winter is drawing to a close and next week is spring solstice. There are wild flowers blooming in Rehovot and as the seasons change the flowers bring hope of nature's renewal.
And now we can only pray that God bring order back into our lives and give us strength to go forward. 
עושה שלום במרומיו 
He who keeps the peace in his world 
הוא יעשה שלום עלינו
He will bring peace (and order) upon all of us 
ועל כל ישראל
And on all Israel 
ונאמר אמן
And we will say amen!

International Wormen's Day - We Could Be Doing A Lot Better!

Hannah Katsman brought a few quotes from  an interview with Tzipi Hotovely in HaAretz over at A Mother in Israel along with a reaction by Elana Stzockman. 

The interview is the of the genre we've been seeing for the past few days leading up ti Internation Women's Day. You know, that day when at work they give you a rose and the  the newspapers and radio (probably TV too) are busy hurling statistics at us. So we've heard this week that over more than a century of  Zionist civilization women in Israel are living longer than men but earning less (here). It's painfully obvious that although women have had the vote from just about the start of the Zionist movement there are still only 23 women in our 120 member Knesset. And on the managerial fron: of 4,820 positions on corporate directorates in Israel 590 are women (more statistics here in Hebrew).
So, Ha'Aretz asks the 32 year old Rehovot resident Knesset member Tzipi Hotovely if she has come up against a glass ceiling. Well, they may have found the one of the very few women around who hasn't (yet) hit the glass ceiling. The young legislator also says that when she has a family of her own it will be necessary to set different priorities where her career is concerned. This really enrages Stzockman who calls Hotovely naive and condescending and ignores a lot of important bills she and others have introduced to ensure quality daycare and more reasonable maternity benefits. I would send her over to read Avirama Golan's brilliant description of a 33 year old pregnant woman getting ready to join the ranks of those "combining a career and family" in Israel:

"This nasty phrase is the front for an entire system of social codes, all of which demand the young woman be an exemplary mother who will nurse her baby, take him to all the developmental groups, and swimming and yoga classes; that she be an excellent cook and a sweet wife; but also that she keep her trim figure by taking exercise classes, and give off an aura of sexiness (but not too much, of course ) and charm - and all of this without losing the momentum of her success at work." 

and concludes 

"Instead of a holiday, could we perhaps just have a little rest?" 

 We have a long way to go. We need to make it possible for women with young children to work outside their homes and earn more than it costs to keep their children in daycare. We need to recognize that professions like teaching and social work deserve compensation that equals hi-tech, advertising and engineering, and that keeping society educated and stable is at least as important as keeping the electricity flowing.

25 Years Since Natan Sharansky Returned Home

Don't forget Haveil Havalim at The Rebbitzin's Husband!
So where were you on February 11, 1986? Me? I was living on a farm in the Golan Heights raising 5 kids and wondering how it would all work out. I had been living in Israel almost twenty years. I'd seen the euphoria of the aftermath of the Six Day War turn into the pessimistic depression of the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. In 1975 we moved to Ramat Magshimim where all six of our kids were born.
The seventies ended with the upheaval caused by the Likud's Menachem Begin forming the first ever government not run by Labor. They made peace with Egypt and instituted far reaching economic changes. Our middlemost daughter (at the time our youngest) was a few months old when the whole moshav (or just about) went down to Yamit on Chanuka to express our solidarity with the settlers there on the eve of their eviction.   The twins were born the following year during the first Lebanon war which we called Shalom HaGalil (שלום הגליל) and it was meant to bring peace and quiet to the settlements along the northern border. By 1986 Peres (Labor again) was Prime Minister and Yitzhak Shamir was Foreign Minister. Inflation was rampant and we were in need of some good news.
In February 1986 the Kinar resort on the northeastern shore of the Kinnert was just being finished and had not yet opened for business. My older daughter (8 at the time) and her friend were taken down there one afternoon a few weeks after Sharansky came home and she was very excited when she came home because she and her friend had seen Natan and Avital walking along the beach. (She told me, they didn't go over to them because they knew that they needed to be alone together and it was a secret that they were there.) When she told me the story you could see that it was as if she had glimpsed the fairy princess and her prince charming. Such is the Zionist mythology. For us, this is our nobility.

An ironic footnote. Sharansky was released in exchange for two Russian spies handed over the US. It was about two and a half months after Jonathan Pollard and his wife were arrested. Pollard remains in jail in the US. 

Song Worth 1,000 words!

I've got to admit that US President Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton's  reaction to the 'student unrest' in Egypt came across to us ex-pats here in Rehovot (representative sample of 2, me & David) as being only randomly tangential with reality. It was a flower children view of 'protest' conjuring up Pete Seeger-esque scenes. Sandy Cash, who is maybe a tad young to remember the sixties has captured the spirit of our response in this lovely ditty she posted on Youtube.
Apropos Sandy here's a personal favorite of mine.(non-political) Enjoy!

One Melody - Two Renditions

Modzitz is well known as THE most prolific and melodious of the chassidic dynasties. The founder Reb Yechezkel of Kuzmir zt"l was a student of the Baal Shem Tov. the founder of the chassidic movement. The history of the group is fascinating and you can read more about it here in English. The second Modzitzer Rebbe, Reb Shaul Yedidya Elazer Taub zt'l escaped Poland to the US in 1940 where he remained until 1947 when he came to the Land of Israel to join his son Reb Samuel Eliahu Taub zt'l, with whom he had traveled to Eretz Yisrael in 1935 and who had remained in Tel Aviv with his family. Reb Shaul arrived in 1947 to join his son and lead the chassidut. He took ill and died on November 29, 1947, the very day that the UN voted on partition. He was immediately buried on Har Hazeitim (Mt. of Olives). He was the last Jew to be buried there and his family did not even have a chance to put a stone over the grave. It was not until Jerusalem was re-unified in 1967 that the family was able to do this. The musical chassidic court thrived in Tel Aviv and later moved its headquarters to Bnai Brak.
Over the years the rebbes and their followers have composed and sung hundreds of melodies. But, as happens with folklore, the melodies were sung but not written down (none of the rebbes had musical training). All that is changing now. There is a group (site only in Hebrew) which is recording the melodies and archiving them. They are collecting tapes and interviewing chassidim and have published two disks already.
Both David and I like this kind of music. A few weeks ago we attended a concert in Tel Aviv by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Yuval Cantors Choir and five guest cantors in a program of chassidic music. It was amazing! The clip below is of a Modzitz melody. (recorded with my still camera acting as a video so the quality leaves much to be desired but you get the idea)

Now, listen to real chassidim singing the same melody celebrating Tu B'shvat. (The melody starts around 5 minutes into the video right after the l'chaim.)

Enjoy!

Creativity in the face of challenge

Raise Your Spirits Theatre is a community theater group in Gush Etzion founded by Sharon Katz and Toby Klein Greenwald. The group puts on shows which involve many women in the planning, production and performance. Any profits are channeled toward helping victims of terror, families in need, emergency medical equipment and other needs.                                                                                   

"In 2001, amidst an atmosphere of grief and terror,a group of women in Gush Etzion joined together to the raise spirits of their community and all of Israel. Rather than succumb to the depression caused by daily terror attacks, they decided to start a project that would give them a positive outlet and something wonderful to look forward to. They decided to put on a show. The rest, as they say, is history. (from their website)"

Orthodox Jewish women don't have a lot outlets for their creativity if they are talented in the performing arts. But in the last generation there have been some serious efforts to encourage more opportunities. Emunah Teachers College in Jerusalem has a drama department and Orot Israel College in Elkana has a dance department. The graduates of these programs have been working in girls schools around the country setting up classes and in some cases departments where the girls of the religious Zionist community can learn, practice and perform.
The Raise Your Spirits group is different. This group is a group of everywomen or at least a nice cross-section of ages and interests. Some families even had three generations participating.
The book of Judges שופטים is the story of the early years after the Jews entered the Land of Israel and is about their struggle to conquer and rule the land. After Joshua's time there was a lack of central leadership and ups and downs regarding faith and unity among the people of Israel. Many see parallels to our situation today.
The Song of Devora is an upbeat story of charismatic leadership, faith and inspiration. The writers Toby Klein Greenwald and Yael Valier reach out and ignite our imaginations and the music by Mitch Clyman makes you want to get up and dance. Speaking of dance Sara Orenstein is an honors graduate of the Orot Israel dance and education program and did a fantastic job.
The performance is a patchwork of scenes which set the background to the story and then introduce each character center stage all leading to the great confrontation. The performers, some have professional training but most are just regular folks, carry this off beautifully. All through the show, besides performing admirably they show us that they are not just individual performers but a cohesive unit and most of all they seem to be having a really good time.
After all the finales we were asked to stand for Hatikvah and Ani Ma'amin. The auditorium at the community center in Gush Etzion became a very intimate place as the dozens of players and production helpers who were on stage face the scores of women in the audience and sang together. In those moments you could feel the unity and faith that is the common denominator for all of us there. It was very very special and I hope to see more of these moments.