Born in the USA

Had you seen me at about 9:30 that Shabbat morning, standing in front of our beit knesset, Mussar Avicha, chewing the fat with Ezra, you might have been inclined to wander over and inquire why the two of us were standing by our lonesome outside. Granted it was a beautiful morning: the last gasp of summer heat had seemed to dissipate. (It had rained in the early hours of the morning, although we hadn’t heard it. Someone’s car alarm had gone off, and as I lay awake in bed, I had fantasies of locating the offending vehicle, flattening its tire, and pouring fruit drink into its gas tank. Life is good, but not idyllic, here in Ma’ale Adumim.)

Still, why weren’t we inside with everybody else? Macrophobia, the fear of long waits, that’s the answer. Or at least one hitherto undiagnosed variety of it: the dread of hearing a rabbi announce that he has a “few words” to share and then prattle on for twenty minutes in the middle of the service to an essentially captive audience. I am usually willing, even eager, to hear a talk about the Torah reading or some aspect(s) of Jewish law. Just not when it’s without my consent – and especially when the davening is long enough anyway – even if the rabbi were speaking in English. I willingly concede that it’s not his fault that I cannot understand everything he’s saying in Hebrew. There are situations, though, when you need to understand mea ahuz (100%) or there’s no point. Imagine that you weren’t feeling well and you went to the doctor, who went on at great length and in greater detail about the status of your kidneys. And you left his office wondering, did he say I did or didn’t need an operation?

Anyway, there we were standing on the steps, when a fellow I thought maybe I had seen Friday night walked up and asked us (in English, of course) what time did davening start? I pointed out that the official starting time for shacharit was 8AM, but…..I shared with him my philosophy: whatever part of the service you have missed is less important than what is left; and if you do it right, you’ll finish at the same time as everyone else. By way of explaining his tardy arrival, the man – of indeterminate middle age – told us that he was still jet lagged; he had arrived back in The Land two days before after an absence of – what did he say? – thirty years.

Sure enough, the rabbi did f-i-n-a-l-l-y finish up, and we went back inside. When the service was over, I did my usual round of shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the usual cast of characters, starting inside the sanctuary and then out to the crowded lobby. I noticed the jet-lagged newcomer standing by himself, and there was absolutely no question in my mind that he was angling for a lunch invitation. And where was Jeff when we needed him? – alluding to our friend Jeff in Jerusalem, who has made it a good part of his life’s work to locate stragglers in shul and invite them back for whatever hospitality they might need. To my dismay, Jeff was home in Jerusalem and wasn’t available to come out of the dugout to pinch-hit. The previous Shabbat, the Torah reading was about the extraordinary hospitality of our patriarch Avraham; and we had just finished reading/hearing about how Avraham had sent his servant back to his old home town to find a wife for his son Yitzchok, finding Rivka, who offered water to the servant and his camels. Lessons there. It is not like me to start talking to perfect strangers – let alone imperfect ones – but…..There was nothing else for me to do but step up to the plate and swing the big bat. Being essentially by himself, the newcomer was delighted to join us for lunch. (‘Us’ being Barbara and me and our friends Richard and Barbara[2], who had come down from their hilltop in the western Galil, bringing with them a bag full of fine wine. Let me further digress by indicating that this ‘bag’ is one of the most important design innovations of recent times – a canvas shopping bag, about a foot high, with six compartments, each one designed to hold securely one bottle of wine. Amazing!)

Lunch. To go with our first cholent of the season, Barbara[2] had dipped into her wine bag and pulled out a 2005 ‘EverRed’ from the Ella Valley Vineyards, essentially a mixture of Cabernet, Merlot, and Petite Syrah grapes (We had enjoyed a similar, but lighter 2007 blend from the Kitron Winery the previous evening, to go with the chicken based ‘orange’ soup and the roasted chicken stuffed with lemons. Both bottles indicated that the grapes were harvested at night, picked by hand, and the wine was stored in oak caskets for fourteen months before being bottled. If either of these choices surfaces at a wine merchant near you, grab a bottle or two.)

We ate, we had something to drink, and we talked, which is what we do at our Shabbat table. We learned a little about what our guest had done during his first aliyah, and what he had done in The States after he left. I make it a point never to ask someone who has lived here and left, why he did so; and amazingly Barbara[1] didn’t ask either. Our guest did volunteer why he came back. When it came time to vote in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections and he was unable to vote for either candidate, he figured that he should consider that as an omen that it was time to leave. (Editor’s comment: at least everyone was spared having to hear what madness impelled him to vote for Obama.) Interesting reason; but then any reason to come to live in The Land for the first or second time is a good one as far as I am concerned. And so, without a permanent place to stay or any specific plans, he divested himself of thirty years worth of possessions, donating thousands of books to a local Jewish library, got on a plane, and arrived back in The Land – following some prearranged migratory pattern that he was unaware of, or perhaps succumbing to some inner need that could no longer be contained.

As we approached dessert (we still had half a bottle of Muscato to go with this course), I decided to share some Torah thoughts which I had downloaded and printed on Friday and perused during the morning’s davening. One of the writers I especially enjoy reading is Chief Rabbi (U.K) Lord Jonathan Sacks because his education has been extensive and he will bring in references to thinkers that most rabbis never heard of. His “Covenant and Conversation” article for this week, though, focused on a topic which I’m certain was talked about from pulpits the length and breadth of the Exile: Avraham’s efforts to bury his wife Sarah. Seven times in the Torah, G-d communicated with the patriarch, repeating the promise to give the land of Canaan – as far as he can walk – to him and his descendents. Great. Now it was tachlis time: he needed a small clump of earth, maybe three feet by six feet, and he didn’t even have that – just a Divine promise of what would be. I’m reminded of scenes in several films I’ve seen in which someone has something of enormous wealth, a check for one million dollars, a sack of gold, which, because of his situation, he cannot use, with tragic consequences. Our hero was made of sterner stuff; he would go out and deal with the locals, who were in essence willing to let him bury is wife on their land. It would be traumatic enough having to deal with the loss of a loved one who has suddenly died, and now you have to arrange the details of the funeral service and the burial on a moment’s notice. But how would you feel if, G-d forbid, you had to buy a cemetery plot for a loved one, and the management offered you instead only a ten year lease on the plot with an option to renew. That’s how Avraham felt. He insisted on buying the property, finally paying Ephron the Hittite a ‘pittance’ for it – what I understand would be the equivalent of a million dollars in today’s coins of the realm.

Rabbis go nuts with this story: why is it mentioned in such great detail?; what does it say about Avraham and his situation?; what is its significance for the Jewish people today?; on and on. At this point, Barbara[2] remembered that she had heard a similar casting of the story from a Chabad rabbi in New Jersey. I thought about what she said for a moment, and I responded something to this effect: I understand relating to this incident from the perspective of those of us living in The Land (and as we were sitting and gabbing, twenty five thousand Jews were gathering in Hebron, where this incident took place, as happens every year on the Shabbat when Chaya Sarah is read). But what does it mean to a rabbi in Cherry Hill – or London, for that matter? What is resonating in the mind of someone in the places where those of us sitting at the table had lived? How does one interpret this cautionary tale about living among strangers when one is living, willingly or unwillingly, among gentiles? Or perhaps one hasn’t internalized that, in the final analysis, those nice neighbors are not really part of one’s extended family?

After some heavy discussion and my share of a bottle of wine, it was definitely time for a Shabbat nap. I headed upstairs at about 1:30. Minchah, the afternoon service, wouldn’t start until 4:20. Plenty of time! When I woke up, it was 4PM; I must have been more tired than I thought……or maybe it was the wine. I could hear voices coming from the living room. Usually when I head downstairs after my Shabbat nap, I find Natania stretched out on the couch and Barbara[1] curled up in a chair. But there was Richard and our guest, still heavy at it; now joined by two other friends of ours. Party time!!!!! Except the three men needed to head back to Musar Avicha for mincha and Nachum’s weekly exercise in brilliance.

Shabbat was over and there was a division of the house; the newcomer was heading into Jerusalem to hear a concert by disciples of Shlomo Carlebach. The rest of an amorphous group were of two minds: 1)stay home and chill out (some people, like Richard and Barbara[2] having to get up at the crack of dawn to get to work); 2) head down to the ‘religious’ neighborhood, Mitzpe Nevo, and hear a concert, which was supposed to be outdoors but turned out to be indoors, by Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock – their first ever in Ma’ale Adumim. Exercising option 2, several of us did in fact take a cab down the big hill to the concert to join a throng of mostly middle aged folks who first heard Shlock Rock twenty or thirty years ago..

Given the fact that a) I never voluntarily listen to contemporary pop music of any persuasion, and b) I am less than enthused by most of what is termed ‘Jewish music,’ you might come to the altogether reasonable conclusion that I would have no interest in a group that has spent all this time creating and performing Jewish parodies of pop songs, reggae, rap, etc. I have no explanation for why I have enjoyed Lennie, except that perhaps his enthusiasm is infectious and as other entertainers, for example Jimmy Durante, have done, he maximizes his talent with sheer personality. Maybe also, I like the idea that you can be serious about something, but not so serious that you take all the joy out of it. In the course of two or three benefit concerts for the Yavneh Academy I bought a bunch of tapes (that’s how far back we are talking) which I used to take with me into my darkroom and bop around during the long and tedious process of printing photographs. It is just as well that many of the songs he is parodying I have never heard, or I finally heard inadvertently well after I heard the Shlock Rock imitations. Even the original performers may be unknown to me. I have heard of Bruce Springsteen, but I don’t think I have ever heard him sing any of his songs. If I did, I wouldn’t recognize his voice.

Why am I mentioning Springsteen? Towards the end of the concert – a mixture of Lennie’s ‘oldies’ and some new stuff (he just recorded a collection of Shabbat songs played to the melodies of the Beatles’ – from Shalom Aleichem [With a Little Help from My Friends] to Havdalah [Imagine]) the group began playing their version of what I understand is a Springsteen classic, ‘Born in the USA,’ turned into “Born in the USA, Making aliyah today.”

If I had to have a theme song, that might be in the running. Born in the USA, went to The Bronx to stay (although in truth we were born in Manhattan and arrived in the northern borough when we were about six months old; there not being enough room in the apartment in the east 50’s for our parents, older sister, grandparents, and my brother and me). Born in the USA, raised on Mosholu Parkway (although anyone talks about this area, they mean the park, not the road; nobody hung out or walked their dog on the road). Born in the USA, crossed the Hudson to NJ (that’s ‘En-Jay’). Born in the USA, making aliyah today. Except that I’ve already done that. Except that on any morning when I rise and attempt to shine, and I look out through the doors that lead out to the little balcony off our bedroom, looking out to the hills this side of Jerusalem, I am once again making aliyah today. A few thousand years after Avraham Avinu, but that’s OK.

The Nest Keeps Getting Emptier

Unless we’re invited out for lunch on Shabbat, most of the time (85%), Barbara won’t make it out of the house, and almost never (99%), will Natania. So usually, both of them have been willing to put on their shoes and accompany me back to shul for mincha, the afternoon prayers. Both of them can use the exercise after a big lunch and an afternoon nap. Besides which, who knows what manner of spooks and goblins might be lurking behind the garbage dumpsters to accost me on the way if I don’t have an escort? We will part ways once we get in front of the beit knesset. I go inside, stay for Nachum’s weekly exercise in brilliance, and come home after the evening prayers. My females take a stroll and are back home before I return.
The previous Shabbat, both of them were still sleeping, so I was on my own to get back to shul. The solitude of this short journey reinforced my sense of impending separation. Once Shabbat was over, Natania would be moving out into her new apartment in the French Hill area, near the Hebrew University campus, where she will be studying this coming year.
Once she finished her army service last spring and was accepted into the mechinah program, a one year preparatory program for students who did not graduate from a high school in Israel, she made it clear that she was ‘moving out’ once school started. She sent in an application for a room in one of the campus dormitories. It did not concern her, as the months went by, that she had not heard anything from the housing department. Barbara and I, taking a more jaundiced view of Israeli bureaucratic efficiency, were more troubled by this lack of communication. Natania hadn’t even been told how much accommodations would cost. She was working, and then she got sick; plus we hate to be 24/7 naggers, so we didn’t press the issue.
Perhaps it was because the mechinah program is part of the Rothenberg International School, and her housing application had to be sent from office to office, or perhaps it was simply ‘because,’ but Natania’s application disappeared into that vast black hole where lost forms become etherized. When she realized what had happened at the end of August, she had to start all over again and fill out another form; at least then she was told how much it would cost, about 1300NIS a month plus utilities.
It was all for the best. Just about this time, a notice appeared on the Nefesh B’Nefesh e-mail list, which I saw, and on Janglo (a community website for the Jerusalem Anglo community), which Natania saw. Two young female shomer Shabbat students were looking for a third to share an apartment near Hebrew U., the monthly rent being 1300 NIS. Even though she would also have to pay utilities and arnona (the tax everyone pays for not being homeless), she figured – correctly – that she would be better off living in an apartment than a dorm room. For one thing, she could prepare her own meals and not be at the mercy of the food court at the student center or whatever fast food establishments French Hill has to offer. In short, she agreed to join the two other young ladies, both newly arrived citizens of The Land, one from England and one from France.
Now the race was on. Get everything that was needed done before the Holidays in September and after that the start of the school year on October 10. Beg, borrow, and, in a pinch, buy whatever you need to move into your own place. Overcome every bureaucratic obstacle to get the utilities registered in your and your roommates names – so you don’t have to deal with it months later when you’re trying to study for midterms. But this is Israel, where nothing is simple (exciting and rewarding, yes; but simple no). You can get almost nothing done by going to one office one time (One remarkable exception is getting an Israeli passport, which you deal with in less than ten minutes.) Natania spent several days running around from the bituach leumi (health insurance) office to the Arnona people to determine exactly how much she would have to pay each month for the privilege of not being homeless. Here’s where it gets interesting. Normally you would pay through the nose if you lived in Jerusalem, just as you pay ridiculous amounts of taxes to live in New York or London. But there are exceptions. Natania’s two roommates, being new arrivees, get a reduction on their rate – for one year, and only on the first hundred meters (the rate is calculated by the size of an apartment, and it doesn’t matter if you own it or you’re renting). Natania, having served in the army, gets an even bigger discount (for how long is not clear; she has to go back at the beginning of 2011). Of course, Natania had to fill out a bunch of forms and bring her paystubs from the army because the army computers don’t communicate with other government computers. In the end, she won the race, getting as much as she could done before school started, but it was nip and tuck for quite a while. Anyway, she had been moving her stuff little by little, and that Saturday night was to be the “nice knowing you; I’m outa here” event.
This may shock you, but there was a bit of ambivalence on the part of the parents. Natania had spent one term at Ithaca College and two years in the IDF, but neither of these two excursions away from the nest had the ring of finality; there was always the sense that our daughter was temporarily absent, home was still first on Cranford Place in Teaneck and then in Ma’ale Adumim. (Make no mistake: we’re not renting out her room, just as we have a room designated for Tina and David for the occasional Shabbat they spend with us; but we’re guessing that we’ll need to change Natania’s sheets and towels much less frequently.) But now it was, no question-about-it, “time.” Natania needs to get on with her life, away from the we-can’t help-it supervision of her parents who are always ‘reminding’ her to do this, or worrying on her behalf about that. She needs to be where she will meet new people and make new friends. But the truth is, we will miss her. Besides being fun to be with, she has taken a lot of the culinary burden off my back and is usually good for a trip to the superrrrrrrr; she’s strong, she’s handy, and she’s good for computer related tech-support. Most important, on those rare occasions when Barbara has forgotten to enumerate my failings down to the last detail, Natania has taken on herself the exhausting burden of providing backup. What will I do without her?
This may or may not shock you, but we could detect a wee bit of ambivalence on Natania’s part as well. She had taken a respectable quantity of goods to her new apartment (people have made aliyah with less!); all that was missing was her. Technically, she could have moved in the first week in September – that’s when their rental contract took effect, and the other girls moved in. But she didn’t. She could have moved in as soon as the Holidays were over and done with. But she didn’t. She was moving in the Saturday night before the first day of classes. I expected her to be on the first bus out of Ma’ale Adumim; but, no, there was still a little bit of laundry left to go into the washing machine and dryer………
Perhaps,, just perhaps, Natania’s situation can be seen – only by those who want to – as a paradigm for what other individuals and communities do – or don’t do. Life is good if you are a daughter chez Barbara and Fred: you get room and board, laundry service, plus a lot of other perks. The service couldn’t be better. And you can stay as long as you want; no questions asked. Very tempting, considering how daunting it is out there in a cold, cruel world with all its expectations and demands. Nonetheless, sometimes you have to leave your comfortable surroundings, move on, and strike out on your own. Or you can keep saying you will and never do. Or make excuses why you really don’t need to. Or you can go half way: move your belongings, your possessions, your money, just not yourself. You see where I’m going with this? Not to keep you in suspense, Natania did catch a bus somewhere around 10PM – clean laundry and all.
Now it was just the two of us, along with our geriatric cat Mimi, whose physical deterioration was continuing at an alarming pace. By that Friday, we would take her – in the same little blue traveling case in which she made aliyah three years and some months ago – back to the vet for what would be her Final Mile. We had called Natania and told her what was likely to happen; she insisted on meeting us so she could say goodbye. Donny, our regular vet, wasn’t there, and we dealt with his partner, originally a Francophone, in Hebrew.
Marc the vet was explaining to us our limited options, all the while holding Mimi under her mid-section, so that her head and forepaws were sticking out the top and her hind legs were dangling below, until I walked over and put my hand under her back paws for support. All the while, Mimi, one of the most placid of cats, didn’t move a muscle. That image of our little black and white cat suspended in mid-air, waiting patiently for her fate to be decided, will stick with me forever because it was sooooooo typical of our her.
One of the things which causes pet owners the most anguish when dealing with their terminally ill animals is that you can’t articulate a proper good-bye. Even if she would have understood, you couldn’t explain to Mimi what was going on because, as I have probably mentioned in previous articles, she was for the last few years, stone deaf. (To my knowledge, no one has thought to come up with a sign language for aurally challenged animals. ‘Rover, the urinal is outside, not inside.’ ‘Smoochie, it’s time for your medicine; come down from on top of the curtain.’) But if we could have had a last minute heart-to-heart with our cat, it would have been something like this: “Mimi, you weren’t the picture of health when you came to live with us seven years ago, and we’ve given you the best medical care possible; but we’re running out of options. What this nice man who is holding you so awkwardly is telling us in Hebrew is that IF we can convince you to keep eating, you might make it for another month; and if we can’t, it will be a few days. Even with all your infirmities, you don’t seem to be suffering, but it’s all downhill from here. Your balance is gone, and we might come home one day and find that you fell down the stairs and hurt yourself. You might have a stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage in the middle of the night. We’re not back in New Jersey where we could get in our car and take you at 2AM to the emergency vet in Caldwell. We would have to sit by and watch you suffer. How fun is that? Your ‘family’ is gathered here to say goodbye and let you go while you still have your dignity. We have enjoyed your company immensely , and we will really miss you.”
Marc the vet turned to us for our decision. Barbara and Natania agreed that the time had come. Fred, the wimp, acquiesced to their decision. Barbara and Natania stayed with Mimi for her final moments. Fred, the wimp, gave the cat her last pat, picked up the little blue traveling case, and headed outside to wait.
Barbara and Natania came out minutes later, and the three of us headed to the mall. There wasn’t much to say. We still had to buy a cake for the couple who was hosting us for Friday night dinner. I thought perhaps we could stop and have a cup of hafuk; Natania rarely turns down an opportunity to have coffee – especially if it’s on mommy and daddy’s dime. But no, she had to get a bus back to her apartment. Fridays here are short this time of year – what with our being on Standard Time, and she had cooking to do.
Earlier in the week, the bookmakers in London had quoted even odds on whether or not Natania would come back to Ma’ale Adumim for her first Shabbat away from home. That was before she sat down with her two roommates, and the three of them decided to spend their first Shabbat together – whereupon an ever growing group of the roommates’ friends decided to join them, one bringing challah, another a bottle of wine, etc. That Thursday, I got a call from our daughter at the shuk. “Daddy, where do you buy your chicken and meat?” I invariably go to one family-run business, not because the products there are better than anywhere else, but because the storekeepers are genuinely happy to see me.
While Natania was eager to get back to her cooking, Barbara and I were in no such hurry. By a quirk of scheduling, we were invited out for both dinner and Shabbat lunch. A Friday with no cooking! Our original plan was to spend a few hours at the Israel Museum (we are now members). But the art work could wait; Mimi couldn’t.
With a cake from Maafe Ne’eman and an iced coffee from a cheaper place, we returned home to ‘remove the evidence’; i.e., all of Mimi’s paraphernalia: her plate of uneaten food, her water bowl, the measuring cup and eyedropper in the bathroom – used to clean her ears, the stool so Mimi could get on our bed, the plastic tray that Barbara had placed at the top of her bed so Mimi wouldn’t fall through, of course her litter box. Mimi’s own bed and heating pad were in storage for the summer in our machsan, so those things didn’t need to be moved. The unopened cans of food we will give away or return; the opened can in the refrigerator I brought down to the kittens in the yard. One of them took a portion that it would have taken our cat five minutes to consume and inhaled it in less than three seconds. Both Barbara and I understand that it will take a while for us to stop expecting Mimi to start clumping down the stairs because she is hungry.
Our large apartment suddenly seemed even larger, ridiculously large for two people; six people had lived here at one time. Families twice that size are living in smaller apartments than ours. Barbara reminded me of an incident that happened when we were moving out of our first apartment in Jackson Heights, and a family from downstairs came up to check it out. We were living in a fairly modest accommodation: one decent size bedroom, one bath, an area that served as a living room with enough space to put up a folding table on Shabbat, an apartment sized kitchen, a small room off the kitchen – small even by Israeli standards – big enough for a nursery or an office (I turned it into a darkroom). One of the children in this family, a girl of about eight, took one look at our apartment, and her eyes got bigger and bigger. It was as if she were standing in the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Our apartment was modest, but it was bigger than the one bedroom apartment her family had, with their several children crowded together. It happens that some people have more than we do; some less – and I can accept both possibilities with equanimity. Just as I won’t get jealous of those who have more than I do, so I won’t feel guilty about having more than others. And I certainly won’t let a bunch of Nosey Parkers tell me, tell us, that what we have is too much. Especially The Land we live on. Another paradigm.

Don't Press Your Luck

I keep coming back to the Mahane Yehuda shuk – both in person with my shopping bags as well as in my writing. A few weeks ago, I was doing business (half in English, half in Hebrew) with a fellow in a store that sells olive oil. They have some connection with the spice store a few stands away, and they sell some Pereg products. I had agreed to buy a container of Sumsumia (‘a healthy spread with the taste of halvah’) just to try it out (we haven’t so far), but the salesman was trying to get me to buy a second jar. I looked at him and said, “There’s an expression in English, ‘Don’t press your luck.’” He thought that was the most wonderful thing he had ever heard, and he began translating that into Hebrew for his assistant. He put my olive oil and Sumsumia into a bag, and I paid him his fifty something shekels. In other words, he got the message, quit while you’re ahead. You just made a sale, don’t louse it up. Good advice anywhere, anytime. How does this vignette relate to the rest of my story? As usual, you’ll need a little Israeli savlanut (patience), and all will be revealed.
Rosh Hashana was a ‘three day yuntif’ here in The Land. No surprise; that’s what it was everywhere else in the world, Thursday and Friday followed by Shabbat; although the way people here over-shop the days before, one might think it was going to last a week or more. Look who’s talking: Natania and I made enough food to feed everyone in the building. While I was slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen that Wednesday, I though back to what it would be like if we were still living in Teaneck. For one thing, I would have had to stop everything that afternoon and run over to the high school down the block to help set up. The synagogue we went to, Congregation Beth Aaron, had nowhere enough seats for everyone for the ‘High Holidays,’ so the auditorium at Teaneck High got rented every year for the overflow minyan (the shul is spending two or three million on a renovation, and there still won’t be enough seats; but that’s no longer my concern). We would put together a divider between the men’s and women’s section which would take forever and do all manner of other things to make the place user-friendly and halachically acceptable. It involved at least a dozen people and a multitude of vehicles to transport all the equipment, the prayer books (and the supplements to the prayer books because there was something which the ArtScroll people left out which we just had to say), and the extremely heavy aron (the closet to hold the Torah scroll), then to carry everything up the back steps into the auditorium. In a good year, we could start assembling everything on time; in a bad year, we would have to wait until the rehearsal for some student performance was finished. All this time, the cooking I needed to do wasn’t getting done.
Here in The Land, my responsibilities to the shul are greatly reduced. Like everyone else at Musar Avicha, I get in line to buy our seats; this year I gave Steven, the financial person, a check for a thousand shekels, half of which covered my year’s dues and four seats, the rest of the money being a contribution to the building fund. That would pretty much be all from my wallet for the entire year. When I would arrive the evening of Rosh Hashana, there would be a seating chart in the lobby as well as a name tag on the seats we had reserved. Life can be simple.
Of course, there are drawbacks. The mis-matched seats here are not very comfortable, to say the least; they look as if they were filched from some shteibel in south Tel Aviv. A few of us have individual shtenders (I inherited the one I use from someone who no longer goes to the shul); but most people have no place to put their stuff. Nobody gets paid to lead the service, and the quality depends on who is doing it. This year, so far, things have gone very well. In Teaneck, on the other hand, I always knew what to expect. Larry Y. was the sheliach tzibbur in the overflow minyan every year, and for my money you couldn’t ask for anybody better. I only wished that he didn’t have to ‘perform’ in a high school auditorium, an enormous hall which our congregation couldn’t possibly fill. There is something about leading the service in a small, cozy shul, the intimacy of which improves the nature of the davening. And there is something about having services in the local high school, essentially foreign turf, to remind you where you are – on foreign turf.
Back in New Jersey, I always felt that, no matter how holy a day was for me, ‘life’ for the rest of the 98% of the population was going on as usual. Every morning, the newspapers would arrive; later on, the mail. Other people were going to work; from where we were, we could see the traffic flowing on route 4. Just looking at the cars passing by, you would never know that there was something special about the day. I always seem to focus on the negatives of life in The Exile. But there is one positive aspect which shouldn’t be overlooked. For a Jew in New Jersey, observing The Holidays in any way, shape, or form means having made a conscious decision to be a two percenter rather than a ninety-eight percenter. And there is something wonderfully ennobling about something you do because you choose to, in spite of the world around you ignoring you.
That’s an experience you will never have here in The Land where Rosh Hashana envelops you whether you like it or not. Everything comes to a grinding halt. Schools are closed; stores are closed, offices and factories are closed; there’s no mail, no newspapers. Decisions both small and monumental are put off until ‘after the hagim,’ which means until after Sukkot. Cut off for three days from any sources of information unrelated to the holiday, I was oblivious to the vagaries of the financial markets, to the winners and losers at the U.S. Open tennis matches or Yankee Stadium, to any and all foreign intrigues and the fulminations of foreign leaders. Only on Sunday did I realize that the holy Shabbat which had just passed was indeed 9/11, the importance of which was magnified this year, I understand, because of the brouhaha over plans to build a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.
Returning to the news of the days that followed, I found three items, two from Haaretz, that made me stop and wonder what was going on. The first, from a columnist whose name I didn’t recognize, extolled the virtues of Yom Kippur – if not as a Divine commandment, at least as an ecological boon. Here in The Land, there really is very little vehicular traffic on this one day of the year; you could stand in the middle of major thoroughfares without worrying about being run over. Usually in an article in Haaretz, they would somehow find a way to chalk this up to some kind of plot by ‘the religious.’ Somebody had sabotaged all the pumps at the gas stations, or the like. But no, our writer opined that the holiday from the roads was by common consent of the populace, and it was a wonderful thing for the environment. She sort of mentioned that Shabbat served the same purpose, as a day of rest, although she stopped short of actually endorsing that we all take advantage of it.
One such article……., a blip on the radar screen. But a second one? I think it’s safe to say that Haaretz has less than fond feelings for those of us who live over ‘The Green Line,’ and a hearty antipathy for those of us ‘settlers’ who are motivated, even in part, by ideological and/or religious reasons. But they really have it in for the collection of rabbis who form the National Religious leadership. One of their favorite whipping boys is Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who heads a yeshiva in Jerusalem and is the chief rabbi of the small community of Beit El; him they love to malign as often as they can find an excuse to do so. So imagine my surprise when they made him their hero of the day: “Leading rabbi joins animal rights group’s campaign against kaparot” trumpeted the headline on in the lower right columns of page 1 the day after Rosh Hashana. At the request of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Israel, Rav Aviner “issued a religious ruling that, rather than slaughtering an animal, giving money to the poor is a better method of absolving oneself of transgressions.”
My mentor, Nachum, firmly believes that avoda za’ara (pagan practices) is alive and well in the Jewish community. If you asked him for specific examples to demonstrate his point, I’m certain that he wouldn’t get very far into the conversation before he would mention this curious custom which a lot of otherwise normal Jewish folk do, taking a live chicken and swinging it over your head. Somehow, this is supposed to transfer your sins, at least ceremonially, to the chicken. A lot of people who do this then give the chicken to a poor person to eat or eat the chicken themselves, leaving one to wonder if you’re not re-digesting the sins you were so eager to get rid of. Of course, Nachum would modestly tell you that it’s not him making this negative judgment, it’s a huge number of medieval commentators calling this practice darchei emori (the ways of the pagans). Personally, I have never read any of the commentators, and until recently I didn’t focus on its pagan connections, but it always seemed obvious to me that there was a difference between correcting the things I have done wrong and scaring the living daylights out of a hapless fowl. It has also been obvious to me that donating money to worthy causes would be good for me as well as the recipient. So hooray for Rav Aviner, and hooray for the left-wing in Israel (the SPCA and Haaretz) for giving credit where credit is due, in a universal campaign against absurdity, obscurantism, and the promulgation of customs that were better off forgotten.
Now if these two articles, in which Haaretz for a brief moment called off its campaign of religious vilification, moved my socks downward slightly to my ankles, you can understand that the third thing I read virtually ‘knocked my socks off.’ That was the comments, widely reported, by Fidel Castro (THE Fidel Castro) in which he took the Iranian dictator Ahmadinejad to task for his denial of the Holocaust. In an amazing article which appeared in the American periodical, Atlantic, Castro stated in part, “Over 2,000 years they were subject to terrible persecution and then to pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation. The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” Kind of stops you in your tracks. Who would expect aid and comfort from a source like this? Certainly not me. Not in a world in which self-proclaimed lesbians march in support of regimes which would stone them to death, and atheists support radical Islam and yell Allahu Akbar.
It can’t last. This apparent cease fire from the minions of the left can’t last. It’s like the sun for the briefest moment shining through when the sky is filled with ominous rainclouds. Short of Moshiach’s imminent arrival, things have to get worse. Sooner or later, everything will go back to ‘normal:’ boycotts, bombardments, bombast, belligerence. The in-fighting amongst ourselves and the out-fighting between us and our neighbors. But who says we shouldn’t savor this respite, brief as it may be? Here’s an idea that is definitely out of the box, but it might just work. As soon as the hagim are over, announce that the year 5771 is officially over and done with, signed, sealed, and delivered, and in the record books for anyone to see. And it was definitely a shanah tova for all of us. 5772? We’ll worry about that later. Maybe, we shouldn’t press our luck. Maybe, we should quit while we’re ahead. What do you think?

"Here's the Plan," or A Jaunt on the Temple Mount

“She made me do it!” Blaming one’s wife for whatever has happened is the oldest documented excuse known to the human species. So one should be sparing in its usage. In my relationship with my wife, it is usually closer to the truth to say, “She encouraged me to do it!” That is how I wound up on the Temple Mount this past Thursday: out of a clear, blue sky (and there is a lot of that this time of year in The Land), Barbara laid on me that she was planning to go on a tiyul up to what we consider the holiest spot in the world, and wouldn’t I like to join her on this venture?
Up until that moment, I had pretty much decided to keep off the Temple Mount, at least out of respect for the position of many rabbis who oppose the practice at this time – even if that position made absolutely no sense to me. And what would be the point? You have to make special preparations before you go; you get hassled, can even get even arrested, by the Israeli authorities and/or the Muslims if they think you are doing anything wild, like praying, or looking like you’re praying, or possessing any book or object that would assist you in praying. And when all is said and done, what is there to see? All remnants of what was important to us has been destroyed or removed either a long time ago by the Romans or very recently by the Muslims. So what force of logic, nature, or destiny brought me to the site of our holy Temples-past and future? Herein lies the tale.
What initially prompted me to reconsider was Barbara’s retelling of her conversation with N.K., the guide leading the tour. He told her that this was going to be a small group and if she knew of other people who might be interested…… Now N.K does not charge for any of his tiyulim (contributions to the several tzedekah funds he is involved with are of course appreciated), so it wasn’t a matter of how much money he would pocket for his labors. As he put, it’s important that as many Jews as possible visit the Temple Mount, “to show the government that we still care.” Well, if you put it that way… I have long since come to realize how much of what goes on here in The Land is a complicated battle over turf, bragging rights, and religious ideology; and sometimes the value of putting your heinie down somewhere – just because – is enough of a reason for doing something. Plus, I’m just as ornery and cranky as ever; if you tell me that I shouldn’t do something, you had better have a darn good reason – and I’m still waiting for something more cogent than “It’s forbidden because it’s forbidden.”
I have spoken with people here who say that they will not ascend to the Temple Mount because their rabbi forbids it. Fine. I respect their respect for rabbinic authority. But that has nothing to do with my decision. The rules for who may or may not be on Har Habayit and where one may go were pretty well established when there was a Beit Hamikdash, and it’s not clear to me who gets to override those rules just because a Temple is not now available for business and its attendant services have been temporarily discontinued. We also have some ‘heavy hitters’ who do permit this venture on our ‘Yes You May Dream Team.’ Our infield is made up of the great Rabbi Akiva and his three illustrious colleagues, Rabban Gamliel, R. Elazar ben Azariah, and R. Yehoshua, who were there together shortly after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., checking out the wildlife and speculating about better times ahead. A millennium later (in the year 1165C.E. to be precise), our center fielder, the Rambam, a giant among giants, did his own tour of the area. He is joined in the outfield by the Meiri, roughly his contemporary, who approvingly attests to visits there, and the 16th century Rabbi, David ben Zimra, the Radvaz, whose opinion on the location of the Holy of Holies was uncontested. Our catcher is the former Chief Rabbi Goren, who not only stood on the Temple Mount in 1967, right after the eastern part of Jerusalem was liberated, but held prayer services there with a Torah scroll and a shofar. Our starting pitcher? How about the great halachic decisor Rabbi Moshe Feinstein; while he never make the journey himself, he gave his approval to his son-in-law, Rabbi Tendler, who has made several trips when he has visited The Land. Oh, and R. Tendler will be available to come out of the bullpen. I almost forgot; we’ll need a designated hitter. How about Ovadia of Bartenura, who visited in 1448C.E.?
The manager of the No Team has not yet released his scorecard, so we don’t know for sure who his lineup will be. But I gotta tell you, I like our team’s chances in a seven game series.
But let’s take the opinion of the objecting rabbis at face value. Let’s accept for the moment the idea that we should not go up to the Temple Mount because we do not know the exact location of the Beit Hamikdash and the Holy of Holies, and therefore we run the risk of profaning the holiest spot on earth. OK. So we can’t be there, even though we may have made all the proper preparations and will take all the necessary precautions. But what about the Arab kids up there playing soccer? They get to stay? How does that work out?
For all these years, we were helpless (an understatement!) to prevent the ongoing destruction and desecration of this sacred spot; but now, it’s “in our hands,” and, in theory, we can do whatever we want. I don’t see or hear anybody, not rabbis of the National Religious camp or the Hareidim, clamoring to close down the Temple Mount so that the entire area will remain undisturbed until we once again have a High Priest and a sense of certainty as to what’s what and where’s where. Declare the whole area off limits and keep the invading hordes from trampling through it: “Construction Zone; No Trespassing. Future Home of the Bessie and Morris Cohen (Third) Beit Hamikdash. Work To Begin Upon the Arrival of the Moshiach, May It Be Speedily in Our Day, Amen.” Practically speaking, this may not be such a good idea, and don’t put me down as recommending it. But you get the point. As they used to say (although not in The Bronx), what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I can’t say that I understand the logic here. Imagine a street with fifty cars double-parked, and a cop comes along and the only one he gives a ticket to is – his wife. And he wonders why traffic doesn’t get any better? We are in theory ‘in charge,’ and all we’re doing is policing ourselves, and then only some of ourselves. Everyone else can park wherever they choose. As for other objections, let me deal with them as I continue this saga.

Barbara had already been in contact with a rabbi here in Ma’ale Adumim who moonlights as a librarian, someone with ‘Har Habayit experience,’ for information and advice on this project. He e-mailed me some material including “Guide to Ascending the Temple Mount for Men, Written by the rabbis of the ‘El Har Hamor’ Association in collaboration with HaRav Dov Lior.”, which includes copious information and very detailed instructions on appropriate preparation, going to a mikveh, etc., all of which I carefully perused before making a final decision. I knew that I was not supposed to wear leather shoes, a la Yom Kippur, and that I need to go to a ritual bath, but where would I find one for men around here? (Understand that my time in a mikveh is roughly equivalent to the lifespan of a canary in a Chinese coal mine.) No worries (or something to that effect), said the rabbi/librarian, there is one in Mitzpeh Nevo, the religious area. Just show up there – and he told me where it was – with seven shekels in coin of the realm and a towel, and you’re in. The best time to dunk yourself is right before the excursion, but just to play it safe, I got on the bus (it would be at least a half an hour walk in the hot sun) the day before. What I found out was, you can get into this self-service mikveh with your seven shekels between the hours of 4AM and 6:30AM. After that, you need seven shekels in coins of the realm PLUS a key-chain sized transponder – which you can purchase from a gentleman named Shelly for an undisclosed fee. I just want to go up to the Temple Mount tomorrow; I’m not planning on making this activity my life’s work; i.e., I wasn’t going to add anything to my keychain. I could somehow arrange to get to the bottom of Mitzpeh Nevo before sunrise the next day – a dubious proposition at best – or find an alternate plan. What to do? Speak with my mentor, Nachum, whose face lit up when I mentioned our planned venture. Turns out that every time one of their kids gets married off, they make it a family outing to go to the Temple Mount. Why don’t you go to the men’s mikveh in the Old City? Because I don’t know where that is. I will tell you where it is, which he proceeded to do. And so, at approximately 6:45 on D-Day, I could be found wandering through alleyways a few blocks from the Hurvah plaza in the Jewish Quarter (for those of you who know the area), looking for the place. Fortunately, there are people up and about at that hour in the Old City, and I found a nice man who showed me the way – to a doorway which I had passed twice without realizing that it was the place (there is no sign saying “This way to the men’s mikveh.”) Imagine a tiny locker-room area (minus the gym or the athletic field) next to another room with showers and two little pools filled with hot water. And a bunch of strange dudes who, for some reason, feel the need to immerse themselves at seven o’clock in the morning. Nachum was correct though : the place was clean, although a note for the future: bring toilet paper and soap. I said that the preparations wouldn’t be all that easy!
A quick search for a cup of tea, and then over to the main entrance to the Kotel plaza to meet Barbara and a friend and to rendezvous with the group and N.K., our fearless leader (We would recognize him in the white cap; actually it was off-white, but I’m willing to cut him a little slack). Why the white cap? We’re trying to be inconspicuous.
A friend back in The States had sent me a well-written article by the son of other friends about his “’Legal’ Trip To Har Ha-Bayit.” His leader had a very different approach from ours (and I’m not suggesting that either one is more valid), one more confrontational. This rabbi knew where one could pray secretly without getting caught, and he encouraged the young man, a Cohen, to recite the priestly blessing when they were as close as possible to where the Holy of Holies had been. This was not what N.K. had in mind. What he wants to do is to create a steady, but growing, stream of Jews of all factions and persuasions – properly prepared, of course – going up to the Temple Mount just to be there, to bear witness to our right to be there; and the cumulative effect of that will be (in theory) greater than the pious prayers of a handful of our most worthy brethren . His experience from over a hundred similar excursions was that if you look like you just came from your caravan on some remote hilltop in the Judean Hills, you will definitely be stopped, first by the Israeli security people, and your ID scrutinized very carefully. Assuming they let you through, the Arab security people on top will take over and dog you every step of the way. We saw such a group, and we witnessed the difference in the treatment we received. Our group (baseball caps, tzitzit tucked in, cameras in hand, just an ordinary bunch of tourists with no particular agenda) assembled at the separate entrance, all the way to the right at the main plaza. We went through the security, essentially the same as the regular check to get to the Kotel, without any trouble. Nobody stopped any of us, nobody asked for any ID; unless the x-ray machines would pick it up, nobody searched us for contraband like prayer books or the like. We walked up the new temporary ramp, the one whose planned replacement a few years ago caused such a ruckus, and there we were, on top of the Temple Mount, possible the most contested piece of property in the world, at 8AM, which, even during Ramadan, was pretty much deserted.
Perhaps at this point I should clear up a common misconception, that the terms ‘Har Habayit’ and ‘Temple Mount’ mean the same thing. As any number of people have pointed out to me, Har Habayit refers to the har, the hilltop on which the First Temple and then the Second Temple were built. During the reign of Herod ‘The Great,’ right before the beginning of the Common Era, the area around the Temple was doubled in size by building huge retaining walls – the Kotel being part of the western one – and filling in the area to create an enormous plaza, roughly thirty five acres, which I believe is the equivalent of thirty or thirty two American football fields. The Beit Hamikdash now became only a small part of the total area, most of which was used to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who came to bring sacrifices on the three yearly festivals. It is this enlarged area, Har Habayit and what Herod added, that now constitutes the Temple Mount.
There are those who insist that insofar as we cannot be certain exactly where the Beit Hamikdash was, and consequently we cannot be certain where the Holy of Holies was, we have no business taking the chance of violating the area’s sanctity. As one person I heard said in rebuttal, we may not know exactly where it was, but we certainly do know where it wasn’t: the area that Herod added on. That’s where we, and anybody else who is careful, walked – around the periphery. I had imagined that we would be, in effect, hugging the outer walls. In fact, there are paved paths, and one can easily circumnavigate the area counter-clockwise as we did; or if you feel like being contrary, you can do it clock-wise instead as one small group we met up with was doing (for the same reason as it is a custom to sit in a different seat in shul when you are in mourning.)
The first thing that you notice, once you have gotten over the “Oh my Gosh, I’m actually standing on top of the Temple Mount, I can’t believe this is happening” feeling and you begin to get your bearings, once you’ve been introduced to the cast of characters lurking around: a few well armed Israeli soldiers – who I’m sure were hoping that nothing ‘exciting’ happened while they were on duty, several members of the Israeli security police, and most important, the Muslim guards in their unofficial uniforms, blue shirts and dark pants, the guys who really run the show and whom you have to keep your eye out for – as they are doing to you; as I said, the first thing you notice once all that happens and you start to look around, is how enormous this place is and that it looks nothing like a place where our holy Temples once stood. Right by the southern wall, on your right, is the Al-Aqsa Mosque; don’t even try to get too close because you’ll be shooed away in an instant. Between that and the Dome of the Rock, all the way to your left is a rather spacious plaza in which there were maybe in total a dozen Muslim men engrossed in prayer. There were a couple of guys taking out plastic chairs from the Al-Aqsa to this plaza; why our guide couldn’t imagine because the Muslims prostrate themselves on their prayer rugs when they ‘daven.’ Once you walk past the mosque, you see on your right a collection of column fragments, ruins from Herod’s temple. I’m not sure whether they were there all the time, or whether they were part of the recent Arab excavation, their effort to obliterate as much as possible any and all traces of a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount.
At this point, the ‘game’ became obvious. The Muslim Thought Police were not going to follow us too closely; they had no reason too. But quietly, discretely, they were everywhere. Our guide had a lot to say – sometimes a little too much, a common fault among guides who do know more about a place than they can possibly share. Every time we lingered a tad too long in one spot, one of them would mosey over to where we were standing to make sure we weren’t doing something subversive.
If you keep going, you’re right next to another large plaza, presently covered with an enormous green tarpaulin, a giant size version of what we have on our merpeset, most likely there for Ramadan. This is the area where the kids usually congregate to play soccer. From there, you head north, then west, and then south, and you will have circled the Temple Mount. You will also have gone completely around the Dome of the Rock, an enormous, imposing structure. You can walk up the stairs close to the entrance, but there’s no way you can get inside. Actually, this is just as well because, even though this is now a Muslim shrine, only the Kohen Gadol (ours, not theirs) should be walking around inside, and only on Yom Kippur because this is where the Beit Hamikdash once stood, and this is where the Holy of Holies was located. To quote from the ‘El Har HaMor’ Association, “The central and most established position of both halachic authorities and archaeologists identify the stone under the Dome of the Rock as Even HaShtiah (the Foundation Stone) under which the Kodesh Kodashim was built. This is the position of the Radvaz and quoted by later halachic authorities.”
There is an enormous amount of written material documenting the assertion that the Holy of Holies remains under this Muslim building, from the testimony of the twelfth century C.E. traveler Benjamin of Tudela, to obscure material in the Cairo geniza (a burial place for holy material that is physically unfit for use), to non-Jewish sources. You can find references to this material in several websites. But, you know something: if you just stood on the Temple Mount (or looked carefully at an aerial photo) and noticed where the Dome is and then looked at any of the replications of Herod’s Temple, you might figure out this connection all by yourself. Their similarity of location relative to the four retaining walls sort of hits you in the face.. And why should that come as any surprise? By all accounts, the Muslims intended to build the Dome on the same site as the Temple; and when the Dome was built around the year 700 C.E., there was a lot more physical evidence and a lot more of a tradition where the Temple stood than there is now. But then was then, and now is now. Thirteen hundred years ago, the Muslims were eager to exploit the connection to our holy Temple; today, their authorities are just as determined to prove that we were never, ever, there. So there is the irony, funny and sad at the same time. All this talk about the Kodesh Kodeshim and how we might desecrate it. You can’t get near it. You would have to create a scene from an action movie: a SWAT team parachutes down onto the Temple Mount, sprays some debilitating gas to immobilize the Muslims, breaks open the imposing entrance to the Dome, and scatters through the whole building, concentrating on the central area where a piece of bedrock is exposed. But in real life, the chances in today’s political climate of a Jew planting his brogans on this hallowed spot is probably less than being hit by lightning or winning the Jackpot lottery. The Muslims? That’s a different story. They walk through there every day, and there are few of us who seem to mind this intrusion.
One more point. I recently read a statement by a prominent local rabbi which I found rather problematic. His argument against ascending the Temple Mount, beside the fact that it’s forbidden because Rabbinic authorities forbid it (except for those who don’t!), was that we are not ready to build the Third Beit Hamikdash. Personally, I have nothing against straw men; Indeed, I have fond memories of Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz. But there is a limit to their value, especially in an argument. Esteemed rabbi, you know full well that there is no connection, none, less than none, even more less than none, between Jewish people walking where we have an halachic right to be and an actual attempt, tools in hand, to start the building process as part of the Final Redemption – of course, first knocking down whatever structures are in the way. There are probably more people wandering around the area near the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, thinking they are the Messiah, than there are having delusions of building the Temple in the next week and a half (we are not discussing the possibility that the building may miraculously descend from on high – our Heavenly Father having given up all hope that we will ever get our act together.) So what’s up with this not-to-be-taken-seriously line of reasoning?
Our tiyul was at an end, about two and a half hours after we began. Rather than return the way we had come, using the ramp in the Kotel plaza, we exited by one of the many side entrances (you can go out, but you can’t get back in – unless you’re an Arab kid with a soccer ball). There’s no ramp to go down because here the ground is level; the Turks long ago built up the surrounding area so that it would be as high as the Temple Mount. Our group walked through a part of the Arab shuk, and Barbara, our friend, and I wended our way back to the Jewish quarter, right near where I had begun the morning with a dunking, for some bagels with tuna fish and iced coffee. From there, Barbara left for her Thursday morning packing, and I left for Mahane Yehuda. Shabbat would be coming, and we sure as shooting were planning on eating. That would give me enough time to go home, take my nap, and be ready that evening for the Beer Festival. (Remember the Beer Festival???!!!)
So you might be inclined to ask, “OK, Fred, now that you did it, what do you think you accomplished – besides being able to get some good photographs and having something to write about?” Great question. This is the answer from the El Har Hamor Association, the umbrella group of Israeli rabbis who encourage visiting the Temple Mount, “The police have attested that having significant numbers of Jews visiting Har HaBayit has enabled them to have a strong presence there and prevent damage (such as resulted from the construction of a huge underground mosque during the years when Jews were banned from the Mount) and control outbreaks of Arab violence. Our physical presence is a claim, before Heaven and earth, of our unique relationship to this hallowed site.” I rest my case (and then I rested my body).
Postscript One: While we were walking on the Temple Mount, or better still, OUR Temple Mount with the oh-so-grudging approval of the local Muslim authorities, back in the Big Apple, there is a controversy over the advisability of building a mosque in the shadow of the WTC site. I am not going to opine (at least here) on whether or not it should be built, but I have fairly good idea what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot.
Postscript Two: Our friend Jeff, ever on the alert, sent me a link to a clip from a NYC TV station. Our mutual old stomping grounds, Teaneck, NJ, with its large Orthodox Jewish population, has a Muslim mayor. (The voters elect a City Council, who in turn votes for a semi-ceremonial mayor) So the TV station sent its crew across the Hudson to highlight a town in which everyone ‘gets along,’ and why can’t everybody else do the same? I recognized the streets and the storefronts, even some of the people who were interviewed. And I recognized the central thesis, that there is no Muslim or Jewish or Mormon way of collecting garbage, which is a spin-off from there is no Democratic or Republican way of doing the same. Point conceded. However, it is very easy to ‘get along’ PROVIDED that there is no bone of contention, no sticking point, or, to put it as plainly as possible, nothing remotely worth disagreeing about. Milton Votee Park has no special signficance for any group or faction, so there is no need, reason, or provocation for a holy war. It gets trickier to ‘get along’ when there is a dispute over something of relative importance, let alone when there is a site which two sides covet more than life itself.
Postscript Three: The Beer Festival (at last!) Not like the wine festival of two weeks before, at which we wandered around the garden at the Israel Museum, sipping free samples of local offerings out of crystal goblets. Here the customers bought their beer, served generally in plastic cups, and walked around the huge parking lot of the old train station, drinking as much as they could consume. Much more proletarian. The idea was for me to hook up with my friend Ian and his boss, Ken. I assumed that Ken was a good guy, but I didn’t know anything about him except that, like Ian, he was employed by the American government in the design and construction of their new consulate in Jerusalem. From the get-go, Ken pulled out his wallet and insisted on paying for several rounds (I made no attempt to match the two of them; I probably consumed one third of what they did). In general, I am reluctant to discuss religion or politics with people I don’t know because you don’t know what kind of a hornets’ nest you’re getting yourself into; but as the three of us began to converse – standing in the middle of the parking lot, with no place to lean our elbows – first about our families, and then about the world in general, It began to dawn on me that Ian’s boss is more right-wing than just about anyone I know. Ken gets posted all over the world. He was probably a philo-Semite before, but after his last assignment…..in Saudi Arabia, of all places, that really clinched it. Israel, where you can have a beer festival, seemed like Gan Eden with an unlimited supply of suds. But there are things that Ken doesn’t understand. I began talking about the events of the day and our journey up to the Temple Mount. That’s the problem, Ken opined. We (referring to the Christian world in general, of which he is a non-believing member) have our spot; they (referring to the Islamic world) have their spot. You guys (those of us of the Hebraic persuasion) don’t have your spot. You gotta get your spot. You guys are wimps. Here’s the plan. First thing you have to do is take back Gaza. Then you go and tell Abbas that this is your land and there isn’t anything to negotiate. He asked us how he would do as head of our negotiating team. My suspicion is that he would be a lot more resolute than the team we have now; unfortunately, there would be a few obstacles in his way, some due to his status and some because of our incoherency as a people. But, you have to admit, the man has a plan.

Musings That Began at a Brit Milah

The following episode was told to a few of us by the son of our friends Jeff and .June. Aaron family was supposed to move out of their apartment on Tuesday – in other words, one day before we were told the story. They had been looking and looking for a new place for months, even considering our neck of the woods, Ma’ale Adumim, which, as everybody knows, is a little bit east of Yerushalayim. They had found nothing, and had decided to focus their search in certain areas in the city: Baka, Katamon, etc. Nothing doing. It was now Sunday and they had one more place to look at. Wouldn’t you know, it was overall the best apartment they had seen. They called up a moving company. “Can you move us….tomorrow?” So on Monday, while they were negotiating the details of a contract with the new landlord, the movers were carting our their belongings from the old apartment. When the contract was signed, they called the movers to bring everything over to the new apartment.
Aaron told us this story without any outward signs of acute anxiety. I leaned over the table and said to Abby and Steve, “That is so Israel!” We all agreed that an episode of this kind would almost never happen in New Jersey, but it occurs all the time here in The Land. We’ve always wondered about a certain national nonchalance, a loosey-goosey-ness, when it comes to a roof over one’s head, as compared to the need-to-plan, need-to-know months in advance that I’m familiar with. The people from whom we bought our apartment didn’t made any serious effort to find a rental in the city until absolutely the last minute. Of course, they found something. We, on the other hand, made a special trip here in May 2007 to find our first apartment, even though our aliyah wasn’t scheduled until August 1. We were perfectly happy to pay the two and a half month’s rent for an apartment before we were going to occupy it; it was worth the money to have our peace of mind, and we couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. I’m beginning to think that there must be a yekke cloud that covers the rest of the world that we know – like an ozone layer – which the Divine Illumination burns away over The Land. The problem is that sometimes we forget where we are and worry about things as if we were back in Exile. A perfect example: a post on one of the e-mail groups from a recent olah, wondering if she should start being concerned about getting herself a sukkah – which she won’t be using for another six weeks. That’s a lifetime away here in The Land. She might as well be shopping for a new rain hat or a pair of gloves!
The apartment that the junior Glazers found was conveniently located a few blocks away from where we were gathered when we heard the story, a facility named Yakar – a beit knesset and a place of learning – where the grandson of other friends, Arvin and Gila, was enduring his brit milah. The fact that I was present at this august occasion is in and of itself newsworthy because, as a rule, for a variety of reasons, some of them aesthetic, I don’t ‘do’ britot; only if it involves the families of very, very, special friends. Even so, I could be found scrunched against a wall, as far from ‘the action’ as I could get – without being outside – which was a good thing, as we were up on the second floor. But I could hear the goings-on. There is, of course, a prescribed ritual for this event – even more extensive here in The Land; and most of the attendees knew the words and the melodies by heart. I’d better bone up on all this if I ever have a grandson (no pressure!).
The deal is that after an eight day old Jewish boy’s foreskin is removed, everyone gets to eat. (Try explaining why watching this ritual should make anybody hungry.) So everyone went downstairs to the refreshments (where we got to hear the aforementioned story), catered, as is often the case, by Holy Bagel. In fact, that’s how we found the place, tucked away as it is on a small side street; we just looked for the Holy Bagel truck, and we knew we were there. Speaking again across the table to Steve and Abby, I suggested – only half in jest – that Holy Bagel should become an official sponsor of the Nefesh B’Nefesh flights. This outfit is part of the burgeoning Anglo economy here in The Land. What distinguishes them from Tal Bagels or Sam’s Bagels, or Eliyahu Hanavi’s Bagels, is that they do a thriving catering business – perfect for smaller, informal affairs: britot milah, sheva brachot, house parties, even an occasional Monday or Thursday bar mitzvah. And who’s ordering bagels, assorted spreads, cheeses, and stuff like quiches and lasagna? Moroccans? Ethiopians? Everyone coming off an NBN flight is a future Holy Bagel customer – as well as one more fact on the ground, one more potential procreator of a brit milah candidate – or a relative or friend of same.
It was one of those rare weeks when we seemed to be ‘out’ every evening. We were, though, in that ‘in-between’ time, the days between Tisha B’Av and the beginning of the next month, Elul, and even up to the weeks before Rosh Hashana. Here in The Land, these days happen when they happen; they’re not smushed in between July 4th and Labor Day. Most of the summer events are programmed for these somewhat relaxed days. Not all: the Jerusalem Film Festival with all its interesting movies is scheduled by its blatantly secular organizers to coincide with The Nine Days (leading up to Tisha B’Av) when a lot of us don’t go to movies. But that’s the exception. The grand reopening of the renovated and expanded Israel Museum was scheduled about a week later with all the appropriate hoopla, which will continue for the next several weeks.
This is also an ‘in-between’ time for us personally. Everything was essentially on hold for about a month while our daughter Natania was suffering from migraine-strength headaches with accompanying nausea. We still don’t know what caused it; possibly some mysterious virus. She is fully recovered now and back to her charming but acerbic self. She has begun writing about her travails in her own blog, and I’ll let her tell her story in her own well-chosen words. It’s not yet finished, but if anyone is interested, the link to her opus is http://nataniacasden.blogspot.com/.
To make things even more stressful, not only was our daughter unable to keep any food down, our geriatric cat was refusing to eat. While Natania was sleeping on the couch in the living room, Mimi was wandering around the apartment in search of food she didn’t want. In desperation, we changed her diet from the special food prescribed for older cats with weak kidneys to equally expensive ‘gourmet cat food,’ Fancy Feast Turkey and Giblets Feast. Then we somehow figured out that she was unhappy with the metal pet food bowls she had been eating out of for years. Barbara got her some plastic bowls with a pretty design; no good. We seem to have settled on two blue plastic plates which gratify Mimi’s aesthetic sensibilities. Being old and small, she cannot eat a lot at any one time, and if the cat food stays out too long in this heat, it dries up, and someone can’t eat it. So every hour or so, we put out a tablespoon of food, mixed with her medicine and occasionally some chicken fat. When she wants more, she lets us know. We are thinking of getting her a dinner bell.
Next week, Barbara will be heading back to The States, once again to help her mother, now moved to a semi-assisted-living program in Maryland, try to settle in. So in this ‘in-between’ time, we have a few weeks to do some fun things, and, yes, we will do them, by golly, by gumbo!.
We started out with a bang that Monday at the International Arts and Crafts Festival, which has been held for the last thirty-five years at Khutsot Hayotser,. As far as I can figure out, ‘Khutsot’ means open spaces, and that just about describes it: a lot of room for artists and craftspeople, located south of the Old City walls, adjacent to the tower of David. They need lots of room because there are 150 participating Israeli artists, plus exhibits from thirty countries, plus a lot of food (a lot of food!), plus a number of stages for musical performances, plus the main venue, an amphitheater in the area called the Sultan’s Pool (don’t ask me what sultan or what pool) where they have a featured concert every night. That’s a lot of room for a lot of people to wander around in, and you’re sure to meet somebody you know – even your family doctor. This year we kept running into people we knew from Teaneck; I guess it is an international festival after all.
You just walk around. If you see something that is really intriguing, you can buy it; if not, there are all these temporary displays where you can go window shopping for ceramics, jewelry, works in metal, glass, leather, fabric, or wood; plus funky stuff like hammocks or exotic doorbells. When you get hungry, you can stop to eat; when you get tired, you can stop and listen to a jazz ensemble, or a band from Colombia or Poland. When you’ve had enough, you leave; no matter when that is, more people will be arriving. I do not know the official attendance, but if you told me that over the two weeks they’re open a quarter of a million people show up, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
The next night at the office of Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, the crowd was a little smaller; just a tad. Their new quarters in Talpiot has a lot of wall space and they are using that as an art gallery – a precious commodity anywhere, especially here. The current exhibition features the work of a water colorist, a digital photographer, and a young man who is doing cabbalistic drawings as part of his effort to find his place in the Jewish world. The official opening of the exhibit was several weeks ago, but this was an ‘Artists Speak’ evening – an effort to bring in additional people to see the work. Was it worth it, all the work involved to attract fifteen or twenty people? That’s the question I posed to Donna, the woman in charge of ‘the committee,’ after the formal presentations were over. During our conversation, Donna figured out that she could use someone who has had experience working with other artists and mounting exhibitions, so, with no effort on my part, I managed to get myself drafted onto her committee.
I must be working on the principle that the more fingers you have in the pie, the more you’ll get done (or at least, the stickier your hands will be). As of March, I had one project on the fire: revising the translations Rabbi M. is doing for a yeshiva here. In April I took on a second task, tutoring students at Hebrew U. in the intricacies of the English language, one of the few things I know for sure. Then last month, I again stepped up to the plate; a well-know non-profit organization took out an ad in the Jerusalem Post asking for writers to help them make their English language material literate. It’s too late for what’s on their website now, but I’m supposed to be working with them the next go around.
I thought I had enough to do, but wouldn’t you know it: a recent olah remembered that one of the works I had edited was a haggadah for ‘the yeshiva here.’ She must have a good memory because that was two years ago and the printed version has still not arrived at the bookstores. Anyway, she works with publishers in The States, and a small outfit there was also looking for an editor for their haggadah; would I, she asked, be interested, hinting that I might even get paid for this project. “Paid, what a novel idea!” Once again, I will be dealing with terminology like “process of rectification” and “Divine concealment,” and concepts like “attributes of justice” which are always getting into an argument about how long the yidden were supposed to be in Egypt. As long as I still have time for my afternoon nap……
Back to my story. We have disposed of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. Thursday would be the topper, the annual wine festival in the sculpture garden at the Israel Museum. Oh joy! But first, there were some every day type activities to attend to. I would head into Jerusalem for my monthly trip to the chiropractor, who would attend to my chronically stiff lower back and loosen my right arm – the one that spends long hours massaging a wireless mouse. Then around the corner to Mahane Yehuda, to buy the victuals to feed, nay, to stuff family and friends who join us for a Shabbat meal. I have written copiously about the wonders of the shuk and how it is slowly changing. What I saw this day says it all. But you have to cooperate and imagine you’re seeing what I’m going to describe to you. As you would expect, it was a hot day. No, it was a very hot day, and in the middle of my shopping I stopped for an iced coffee at a new stall which sells specialty ice cream and slushy drinks.. I was in the ‘closed’ part of the shuk – covered with an ancient plastic roof – where the passageway is never more than fifteen feet wide; and I was standing on the side, trying to keep from being knocked over by the on-coming traffic. On my left was one of the newest businesses, purveyors of high end jewelry – the only one of its kind. And the owners have fixed it up beautifully: it’s the only stall in the shuk with parquet wooden floors. It could just as easily be in Tel Aviv or the Upper East Side of Manhattan. (Imagine what it looks like.) Diagonally opposite is a fish store, not the only one of its kind, in fact, a typical fish store that you find in the shuk or a lot of other places. (Imagine what this must look like.) One of the men who works there is a burly guy in a tee-shirt. And what is he doing as I’m watching and slurping my iced coffee: he has taken the hose, the one that is used to wash off the fish, and he is spraying water over his head. (I said it was a very hot day!)
On to the wine festival!!! (Who’s excited?) OK, there are other wine tastings I’ve been to that I remember fondly, especially the ones in Teaneck. We would go over to Beth Aaron on a Sunday night, and there would be a bunch of distributors with kosher wines from all over the world. They’d give you a plastic cup and, for a half an hour or an hour, you’d walk around the room sampling this and that; and at some point, either than evening or later, you’d place your order. You’d get a discount; the shul would get a cut. If you were smart enough to show up near the end, you might get to take home a few half empty bottles of good wine; a nice touch.
At the Jerusalem festival, you pay sixty shekels to get in. But…….with your admission, you are given a large crystal wine goblet (courtesy of the Avi Ben wine shops) which you use all through the evening and which you take home with you (no one, absolutely no one, leaves his behind). Crystal goblet in hand, you are free to spend the entire evening – up until 11PM – wandering through the sculpture gardens and environs, chatting with friends (and we had many friends there), eating the cheeses which you brought from home or you bought there (or the sushi or the cupcakes and chocolates), listening to American jazz (thank G-d, no Israeli music!), admiring the view of Yerushalayim, and sampling as much wine as you are able to consume – without dropping your crystal goblet. Let me give you two numbers to consider. There were thirty two Israeli wineries at the festival, which is almost all of the important ones. If I counted correctly from my program, there were one hundred and forty two different wines available to sample. If anybody was able to get to every booth and try every one of the one hundred and forty two , he’s a better man than I am. (It’s actually slightly less because a few of the wineries are not kosher.) One of the reasons I never get plastered is that my body shuts down at a certain point – whether it’s Scotch or wine – and I can’t drink anymore, so some of the booths were unvisited and many of the offerings went unsampled. (Plus, I have to be in shape for the Jerusalem Beer Festival next week which features 100 types of beer from all over the world.) Whether other people have this built in mechanism, I can’t say. What I can say is that there were a lot of seriously mellow people there. Thursday night is date night all over Israel, and there were so many young couples enjoying a romantic evening. The trick for people of my generation is, if you have enough wine, you don’t mind being the oldest person (well, one of the oldest) in the throng. Nobody else, young or old, was wearing an official wine tasting t-shirt [“sophisticated, complex, with lots of character (enough about me – let’s drink wine)”]. One fellow was so impressed, he asked if he could take a picture of my shirt with his cell phone. If I ever get a call on my cell from another t-shirt, I’ll know what it’s all about.
My original plan was to end this article right about here, but something of note came up, and I must, simply must, comment on it. It was the following Monday afternoon, and I was doing whatever I was doing when the phone rang. It was my wife and chief push-me-out-of-the-house-er. Did I want to head over to Mahane Yehuda for the larger-than-life puppet show? Well, who wouldn’t. So Barbara, Natania, and I reconnoitered for a light repast at our favorite smaller-than-our-dining-room, vegetarian Indian restaurant, just outside the shuk. The area was already more crowded than you’d like it to be as I arrived, and by the time we finished eating and turned our attention to the attraction at hand, it was more crowded than you thought it was possible to be. A small price to pay for a lesson in the care and feeding of do-it-yourself almost-as-big-as-a-dirigible sized puppets. We are talking about objects that are fifteen to twenty feet tall and which need a handful of people each to maneuver and to operate them. And…..we are talking about objects made almost exclusively from items found or purchased in the shuk itself: plastic baskets and kitchen ware, fabrics, used containers and discarded pickle and olive tins. There was one puppet made entirely out of oddly shaped loaves of bread and another made of discarded cartons that looked like a refugee from one of the refuse carts that trample their way through the alleyways picking up garbage and removing peoples’ toes. All of these dinosaur sized Muppets gamboled around the wider open shuk, to the delight of the assembled throngs. The rest of the shuk, the smaller Etz Chaim Street and the connecting alleyways were all mobbed with people. When we decided that we had had enough, it took us twenty minutes to make our way to the iced coffee place, a two to five minute journey. I asked the server for a BIG container; I figured that I had deserved it.
You can always find a larger meaning in things, if you work at it—especially if your mind works at warp speed the way mine does. As I postulated several thousand words ago, ‘that is so Israel.’ One can take things that no one else wants, things that would seem to have no intrinsic value, and make something from that, and everyone goes “ooh” and “ah.” That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the modern State of Israel. That is what has been going on here in The Land for two thousand years and more. Everyone – the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims – understood that there was something very special about Jerusalem, and something very, very, special about the Temple Mount. That holiness they certainly wanted one way or another, either to trash it or to bring in their own brand of worship. But The Land itself? Whether you ascribe it to a Divine Decree or an inherent lack of interest by the Nations, it is unquestionable that The Land remained desolate and fallow during all the centuries when we were not here to tend the garden. It is also unquestionable that the sudden interest the Nations took in this tiny, decrepit bit of land coincided roughly with an ingathering that began with the followers the Baal Shem Tov and the Vilna Gaon around 1840 CE and has continued until this very day. The common explanation for the European involvement is that, seeing the obvious weakening of the Byzantine Empire, each country wanted to get a foothold in Jerusalem, and that’s why they acquired land and established a presence here. Fine. But how does that explain why was there so much effort put into missionary work to convert the impoverished Jewish community in Jerusalem? Why was it so important that Jews not be here?
The way I see it, the instant that the Nations noticed that we were showing an interest in returning to our Homeland, they became interested too. If we wanted it, it must be worth something – even if they couldn’t figure out what it was. And once we showed them what could be done with what is essentially a rock filled sand pile………… Obviously, there’s more to the world’s current obsession with condemning Israel for anything and everything, but that is, to my mind, a healthy (or better, an unhealthy) part of the reason.
We’re back in the shuk watching the oversized puppets – made from who-knows-what with a lot of time and effort. Suddenly, a bunch of people who were standing around, not doing much of anything, come over and start insisting that it’s their puppets because some of the olive tins and discarded containers had been theirs, and they keep repeating mantra-like that the puppets belong to them. At first, few people pay attention, but after a while people begin to fall in line with the Puppet Liberation Organization. Soon committees are being formed to divvy up the puppets; it’s only fair, isn’t it? Someone draws a line down the middle of Mahane Yehuda; anything on this side belongs to this group; anything on that side……….
Would someone do me a HUGE favor. Wake me up and tell me I’m dreaming.