The Morgantowner: Israel

We’re on the plane on our way back from Israel a week after we left to go there. It’s almost ten P.M. in Israel now, three P.M. in New York, our next stop.

I had my doubts about this trip-not that we would be stabbed by an Arab teenager in Jerusalem, or that I would object to everything Israel stands for. People asked if we would be able to get decent food there, and the truth is that the food there is healthier and fresher than the stuff we eat in the United States.

I was worried more about the traveling itself. Two eleven hour plane rides in eight days is not my idea of fun, and we were to switch hotels in the middle of the trip-three nights in Jerusalem and three in Tel Aviv. I didn’t register for the convention, since I’m not a rabbi, only married to one, and I wasn’t sure what I would do while Joe was praying, studying text, visiting all over the country and meeting with dignitaries.

What I did is what I often do when I’m in a strange city (not entirely strange, as it turns out, because I visited Israel in 1985 and 2007). I took my camera and wandered around. There is certainly plenty to see.

We arrived in Jerusalem Monday morning, the middle of the night in America’s Eastern time zone. We went walking in the cold rain, looking for something to eat. We found a little place run by young Orthodox Jewish men. I ordered my usual chicken and rice, in this case a skewer of marinated roasted chicken. We were served ten little plates of salad first: cucumbers, olives, pickles, hummus, beets, carrots, and other delicacies. I tried to explain in Hebrew that we had only just arrived in the morning.

I brought no winter clothes with me, assuming we would have only warm weather. It was in the 40s, raining and windy when we arrived in Jerusalem. The plane was delayed because there was a storm in Tel Aviv.

The conference actually started Tuesday afternoon. Joe and I spent Tuesday morning walking through the Old City, part of Jordan before the June 1967 war, now annexed by Israel. My politically-correct self didn’t want to go there, thinking of the Jews who feel we should rebuild the Temple. Never mind that there has been a mosque on the site for over a thousand years. We preach in Judaism about God being everywhere, yet people revere that spot as Judaism’s holiest. I suggest that like God, we don’t need a specific place, and should leave The Temple Mount to the Moslems.The Old City was quiet on a rainy Tuesday in February, the shopkeepers, selling religious items to Jews, Christians and Moslems, patriotic kitsch to both Israel’s fans and those who hope for an independent Palestine, begging us to come into their stores.

One of my friends suggested that the emptiness of the place was not from the time of the year or the weather, but that people are afraid to travel to Israel because of a series of stabbings by Arab youth, and some drivers deliberately running over Jewish pedestrians. Our hotel, in a residential neighborhood, and not one of the palatial hotels in town, was full. But the visitors were American Christians, not Jews. They seem to be less fearful than our fellow American Jews.

We visited the Western Wall, the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, the last piece of ancient work still intact there. It’s a ritual to write a request on a piece of paper and put it in a crack in the wall. There has been some contention at the wall. For a number of years, there have been separate men’s and women’s sections, since Orthodox Jewish men do not pray with women. But a group of women, called Women of the Wall, or Nashot Hakotel in Hebrew, have defied tradition by bringing a Torah scroll to their section, wearing traditionally male prayer shawls and reading from the Scroll. They have been roundly vilified by the Orthodox masters at the wall, and often arrested by the police. A new compromise is that a different section has been marked off for men and women to pray together, as a sop to the Conservative and Reform Jews who make up the majority of American Jews, and whose numbers are increasing in Israel.

We approached the men’s section of the wall, nearly empty, as it was not time for traditional prayers, and I think Joe wrote something to put in one of the cracks between stones, and said a prayer. I stood there, not praying, but I felt a vibration from the place. There is a Presence there, and I imagine Jews, Moslems and Christians all feel the same vibrations. We got lost in the Old City (easy to do) but eventually found our way out and headed back. It was nearly one and Joe had to attend the opening of the conference. He went off to his meeting, and I visited a supermarket near our hotel. I bought a roll, a container of yogurt (which turned out to be made from goat milk, and delicious) and an apple. I returned to our room to eat and sleep. A lot of sleep. The conference visited the new space along the wall, but at 6:30 Wednesday. We didn’t rush out to go.

The big news while we were in Jerusalem was how three hundred Reform rabbis from America visited the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and met with many of the members. This was probably the most important political thing that happened. The Netanyahu government is in coalition with the so-called religious parties. These are the Haredi (black hat) Orthodox and some of the settler groups in the territories who claim a right to live there based on Abraham’s purchase of land close to 4,000 years ago. These religious groups make sure that Reform and Conservative rabbis cannot perform legal weddings or convert people to Judaism in Israel. They are against rights for women, for LGBT people, and for non-Jews. They maintain power by uniting with secular right-wing groups and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party. For a swarm of liberal rabbis from America to come to Israel to confront the Knesset about these issues was a huge deal.

The Reform rabbis meet every year, and every seventh year, they go to Jerusalem. This year we also visited Tel Aviv, the much bigger, more Jewish, largely secular city on the Mediterranean coast. Tel Aviv is often ranked as one of the best gay vacation spots in the world, and is a center for high tech. Our last night, we met the mayor of Tel Aviv and the American ambassador, who is based there. I found it refreshing to be in a modern city, a pioneer city, still a little rough around the edges. We stayed in Jaffa, or Yafo, walking distance from Tel Aviv, but older, and with a distinctive character. When I visited there in 1985, it was almost all Arab and in a serious state of decay. It seems to be better economically, but like formerly poor neighborhoods in New York or San Francisco, it has been invaded by hipsters, who will probably soon be pushed out by gentrification.

For Shabbat, they split us into groups visiting fourteen different congregations outside of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We visited Kehillat Hashachar, in the community of Even Yehuda, a town of 14,000, off the coast and north of Tel Aviv. There are twenty synagogues in the town, mostly Orthodox and subsidized by the government. This Reform congregation meets in the town’s museum. We were supposed to be there early on our bus, but we were only on time because of the horrendous traffic coming out of Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon. It reminded me of Los Angeles. The people of the synagogue welcomed us. Many of them spoke English, some had lived in the United States, some had come from other parts of the English-speaking world and the former Soviet Union. Many of the people had roots in the area going back to the 1920s and earlier. They had a lovely service with a singer, guitarist and keyboard, singing mostly American tunes to the traditional prayers. Joe and I could easily follow the Hebrew service and knew most of the tunes. Neither of us are able to converse easily in modern Hebrew.

The congregation provided a wonderful potluck dinner, all dairy and vegetable, with pastas, salads, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Joe and I sat separately to meet more people and compare notes.I explained to the people at my table that I am not a rabbi, but live in West Virginia with a man I am married to. They were surprised, but not judgmental. They have a woman rabbi, a natural-looking, 70s style “earth mother” type. What we heard from the people was gratitude that we Americans would come to their little synagogue. Reform Judaism is growing quickly in Israel, but it is still a novelty to many people. The members told us they liked it because women and children are welcome at services, the music is lively, and there is a spirituality and friendliness that appeals to them. Many of them expressed fear of the future of Israel. They disapprove of the West Bank settlements, the violence often committed against Arabs and the antagonism they feel from the right-wing and the Orthodox. I feel a lot of the same worries about the United States- the harsh anti-Moslem, anti-gay, fundamentalist politicians who don’t believe in diversity. It was good for them and for us, that we meet each other. We have much more in common than we would have thought. The Shabbat evening experience made me feel closer to Israel generally.

I have three friends in Israel. My friend Arlan, whom I met at BCC, the temple in Los Angeles where I met Joe, lives in Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel. Arlan and I have known each other more than twenty years ago. He and his spouse, David, moved to Israel ten years ago. David died last year. I thought I might visit Arlan. When we talked on Facebook, he suggested flying, as it is an eight-hour bus ride from Jerusalem. It was more than I could handle, so Joe and I promised we would visit there next time, we should all live and be well.

My friend Bonnie was born in Israel, but her American parents came back when she was a baby. Bonnie used to teach Israeli dance, and she was my dance partner for many years. Her daughter has become Orthodox and now lives in north-central Israel with her husband and four children under age five. Bonnie moved to Israel to be near her daughter and lives in Modi’in, a completely new town of 80,000 between Tel Aviv and Haifa. She came to Jerusalem on the bus to meet me Wednesday, and we took the new light rail line, then a bus to Modi’in, then a new train from there to Benyamin and another bus to Zichron Ya’acov, a trendy resort town in the north, a kind of Santa Fe of trendy shops and restaurants. The weather was noticeably better, sunny and 65 F. It took three hours to get there and three hours back; we were in town eating, shopping, and seeing historic sites for another three hours. Bonnie left me at Modi’in, and I had to take two buses back to our hotel in Jerusalem after dark. I changed buses on the edge of Mea Shearim, the most Orthodox section of Jerusalem, Not that I have never seen black-hatted men with side curls before, but I had never been on a crowded bus where almost everyone was like that, with the women in scarves or wigs and long skirts and lots of children. I suppose I felt threatened, but I wasn’t really. I was just different. Eventually the bus left that area, and was repopulated by the elderly and the young hipsters who inhabit central Jerusalem.

What I noticed in Israel was that people just assume I am Jewish. I look like traditional Eastern European Jews look, but I think there was less instant judgement of people by their looks than in West Virginia. I used to brag about Los Angeles, where I could pass for Armenian, Mexican or Filipino, and maybe “slightly” Negro, allowing me to travel freely anywhere incognito.. I find that in Appalachia, full of blonds and redheads and pale people, I stand out more and get suspicious looks sometimes. I try to defuse that by speaking perfect American English, with a not-hard-to-fake local accent, only slightly different from my native Baltimorese. It reminds me of BCC, where we were mostly gay and lesbian, thus taking that away as an issue. We didn't have to talk about it or defend it. In Israel, where being Jewish is the norm, even though there are wide differences politically and religiously among Jews, that most people are Jewish means it is already assumed.

Our third friend in Israel is Arieh David Scharnberg. I’ve become friends with him on Facebook, although we only met a few times when we lived in Crescent City. His father was the rabbi in Arcata, the college town seventy-five miles south of us. Rabbi Scharnberg came to Crescent City once or twice a month to teach and lead services.

Arieh is a model of a young hipster, tall, a little unkempt and working in the film industry in Tel Aviv. He lives in Yafo, not far from where we stayed. We met him at our hotel Thursday night and walked to a Libyan restaurant nearby. The food was good, unpretentious and interesting. I had meatballs made with chicken and spinach, Arieh and Joe had fish a in a red sauce. Arieh told us he moved to Yafo because it is a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood, but what he has found is hostility from many of the Arab residents, and a process of gentrification, where Jews are displacing Arabs and newer buildings will not rent to Arab families. He worked against Netanyahu in the last election, and was disappointed in the results. He worships at a modern Orthodox synagogue, and asked us to join him. We didn't. The conference had a Reform Saturday morning service at theTel Aviv Art Museum. Joe went. I went back to sleep. Arieh is not certain he will stay in Israel. There are family issues in Northern California, and he may need to go back. I admire his commitment to Judaism, his grasp of the issues there, and his ability to express them.

Among liberals and leftists, and I count myself as one, there has been talk about Israel as an apartheid state. I’ve even read this from Israeli commentators. The Netanyahu government has no intention of giving anything to the Arabs. New settlements for Jews are being built in the West Bank.We traveled from the airport to Jerusalem on Route 443, a short-cut through the West Bank. There is a checkpoint along the road, staffed with soldiers, and one can see Arab communities behind the walls along the road. The Arab communities have no access to this highway. I asked Ari, our driver, about this situation, and how he expected it to end. He didn't expect anything to change. He remembers the intifada, more than ten years ago, when things were more open, and suicide bombers from the West Bank came into Israel with the purpose of killing as many people as possible. He doesn't think the Arabs want peace. The walling off of Arab lands stopped the suicide bombers.

Joe went out to the West Bank as part of the conference to speak to both Arabs and Jewish settlers. Ask him what he learned when you see him. Much of the help in the restaurants and hotels are Arabs. Yasmine, who staffed the front desk at our hotel, is pretty, dresses modern-style with makeup and hair exposed. She speaks fluent Arabic, Hebrew and English, at least, and was unfailingly polite. A more traditional looking woman chatted up me and Bonnie on the bus. She is learning English and practiced on us. There are Moslem and Christian people throughout Jerusalem. My impression is that most people, like folks everywhere, want to make a decent living, and be with their families. Still, places like Modi'in are Jewish only, so I don't think the apartheid label is wrong. Our last night in Tel Aviv, we ate with a retired rabbi from Virginia, in an Arab restaurant in Jaffa. They had menus in Hebrew, Arabic and English,and although they may have looked at us askance, we were treated well and the food was plentiful and good. Our waiter wore an Armani Exchange t-shirt.

We loved our time in Israel, despite our frustration with some Orthodox rabbis condemning the Reform movement, with the politics of apartheid in the West Bank, the walls cutting off communities, and the segregation in many places. Still, it was something to not feel a stranger, even with our difficulty speaking the language.

There were ads around, in English, in parts of both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, advertising expensive condos in Israel, clearly aimed at wealthy Jews in New York, Los Angeles, London and Johannesburg. Many of these people, I imagine, would use these million dollar condos as a second and third home. Some of the older, much smaller apartment houses in both cities were being torn down to build the new buildings. Maybe it's wishful thinking, based on my support for Bernie Sanders in the United States, that this gentrification (ilut, a new Hebrew word) will bring together the groups that are at odds in Israel: the Orthodox, the young hipsters and the Arabs, to try to preserve their neighborhoods. Just a thought.

Although I started this post Sunday on the plane from Ben Gurion Airport to Newark, I'm just finishing it and posting pictures Thursday afternoon. If you see me or Rabbi Joe, ask us questions about this trip. I'm grateful to Joe for insisting I go with him. He is correct that it was important that we travel together in Israel. I hope now that we can do it again.

These are pictures from Jerusalem. I will post more pictures... soon.