It's 5785!

 We all have hopes for a new year on the Jewish calendar. This last one has been rough for me personally and for the Jewish community generally. Last year Simchat Torah, the end of the fall holidays, will be October 24 in Israel. Last year, it was October 7, and many of those who were not in synagogue were at the Nova Music Festival near the border with Gaza. Soldiers from Hamas broke through the border, murdered 1200 people at the festival and in nearby town, raped and mutilated many people and took over 200 hostages back to Gaza. This has been compared to Pearl Harbor or 9/11/2001 in the United States. Israel's government, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, retaliated with a pledge to destroy Hamas.

What I've heard from Israel is that people are angry that the government, filled with right-wingers and religious conservatives, had notice that this attack might happen but were unable to stop it. There have been protests against the government about this issue, and the failure to get most of the hostages back.

Meanwhile, college students and others in the United States, some of whom are Jewish, blame Israel for the attacks, for not acknowledging the national demands of the Arabs. I've heard lies from people on the left about how Israel was founded. It's called an "apartheid state," "settler colonialism" or that Jews have no right to live in "Palestine" and should go back where they came from. I grew up in a real apartheid state called "Maryland" and Israel is not like that at all. As for "settler colonialism," to say that as an American of European heritage is perhaps the ultimate chutzpah. And of course, people in Israel aren't just the descendants of Holocaust survivors, as many think. Even they, three generations later, are not going back to Germany or Poland. Many Jews were kicked out of Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Egypt, as well as other Arab countries, or came from Yemen or Ethiopia, where they were not safe. It bothers me that Jewish students at many colleges and in some large liberal cities do not feel safe. I've often thought we would be better off in Pittsburgh or New York than in Morgantown. There have been demonstrations here about the war in Gaza, but it has been respectful and law abiding. I understand the grief over the loss of life in Gaza and now in Lebanon, and I think Israel, with a different government, could have found a more humane way to meet its goals. The rest of the world could also have done a lot more to stop this bloodshed, or to ameliorate the suffering of Arabs. who are living in refugee camps for 76 years, with the delusion that they can return to Palestine.

On the other hand, I have friends who think Donald Trump could have solved this and blame President Biden and now Kamala Harris, for all the bloodshed. I'll just say they are delusional and leave it at that.

This wasn't supposed to be an essay about Israel's war or government policies. I had my own tsuris to deal with. In the summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with skin cancer and thyroid cancer. They cut out the cancer from my arm, and that's fixed, although now they want to take a non-cancerous (yet) mole off my leg. The thyroid cancer was a fairly big operation in November, with follow-up treatment that included a strict diet and a radioactive iodine pill. That also seems to be done now. I've been MRI, CT-scanned and echocardiogrammed the last few weeks. It all looks good, except they said my heart is "no worse than a year and a half ago." They also decided I have osteoporosis,  and need prostate medication. 

My knee was operated on September 10, for a "meniscus debridement," not as bad as expected, and I'm in physical therapy to deal with that. The eye doctor sent me to the clinic, where they will take out the wrinkled film on top of my left eye. It's all depressing, but when I go to any medical office or pharmacy or to physical therapy, I see people younger than I am, and in much worse shape. I also remind myself of the many gay friends I lost to AIDS when they were in their 30s and 40s, and the young women who died of cancer. I'll be 75 this month, and when I think about, I guess I should be grateful I lived this long.

The worst thing this year was the death of my sister, Robin Wendell Olson, on March 5. I think I've processed it and moved on, but then I wake up some nights and miss her terribly, or expect a phone call from her that doesn't come. At times, something happens that I want to share with her, that no one else would understand, or I need advice. I'm trying to arrange a date when Joe and I and my nephew in Colorado can do an unveiling, where family and friends go back to a cemetery to "unveil" the monument or plaque on the grave.

I did manage to travel in 5784, some on my own, in my project to visit one county per month within about 300 miles of Morgantown. Last October, I visited Hancock County, West Virginia, Hancock County, Ohio, and Harrison County, Ohio. My long-time friend Roann, who I met in Los Angeles in 1984, came down from Ann Arbor to meet me in Findlay, Ohio, in Hancock County. 

We flew to Memphis at Thanksgiving to be with Joe's family. It was great to see everyone, especially the now-grown up children of his first cousins, who, like their parents, are brilliant and beautiful, and seem to have made good matches for themselves. Joe's sister and brother were glad to see us, too. 

In early December, I visited Clarksburg and vicinity, in Harrison County, not far from here, so I spent most of a day and came home. There's a mall in Bridgeport, the other city in the county, that was mobbed with people carrying packages. The economy must be better than people think.

At Christmas, we visited my sister in Greenbelt, Maryland. She found us a Jewish deli in Howard County, just north of where she lives, and took us to Nordstrom Rack and bought us both clothes. We had Chinese food in Beltsville, and streamed both "Maestro' and "Oppenheimer." 

In January, I visited Richmond, Virginia, and surrounding Henrico County. I was supposed to take an extra day to visit Hanover County, just to the north, but came home to avoid a pending storm. I got back to Hanover County in February. 

We were in Greenbelt again when my sister died in March, and stayed for the funeral and three days of mourning. We had another service at our home once we got back, and we were grateful that 30 people came to grieve with us.

In April, I fell off my bicycle onto the grass on the side of the road. I was almost home, but it was a hot, humid, day and I had drunk all the water I brought with me. I hadn't ridden my bike in a month, and there was a lot of traffic as I was trying to slow down and look back to see if I could make a left turn. I fell, and couldn't get up. Two women came out of a restaurant to help me, and insisted on calling 911. I was in emergency for three or four hours, and got eleven stitches in my leg. They bandaged my bleeding arm with sterile tape strips. I haven't been on my bicycle since. Not that I can't ride, I just can't fall and bleed like I did. After my sister's death, this was the second saddest thing that happened. I've been a bicyclist since I was five, and now I can't do it. 

Joe and I were invited to a Memorial Day weekend bat mitzvah in New York for the daughter of one of his classmates, who is now the rabbi at the synagogue off Central Park West. We were adventurous and took AMTRAK, which meant driving 60 miles to Greensburg, Pennsylvania to get the train. It seems to take forever, but we could move around, get food in the dining car and go the bathroom whenever we wanted. We also didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars for parking. There were three days of events at the temple, and people we knew were glad to see us. We also made some new friends. While we were there, we saw two of my cousins, and Joe's stepmother and half-brother, the famous Zack Hample. Our last night there, we dined with a friend Joe knew from high school. I loved being in New York. It was intimidating at first with the crowds and the traffic, but after a day, I calmed down and enjoyed being there. 

Less than two weeks later, we drove to a wedding, the son of one of Joe's long-time friends, to his girlfriend of many years. The ceremony was Jewish, although the bride is not. The older guests, many of whom go back decades with Joe, were fun, they had a fabulous soul band and great food. Before the wedding, we spent some time exploring and got a tour of a fire museum and and ate outdoors at a French-Thai  restaurant in Somerville. 

Later in June, I visited Harford County, Maryland, the last of the twelve I scheduled for the period of July 20213-June 2024. I saw Bel Air, Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, and some rural parts of the county. 

July was our big trip to California. We had six days in Los Angeles and six in San Francisco. Almost all of the time was seeing friends, not so much touring. People cooked for us or took us to restaurants. I lived more than two decades in Los Angeles; Joe lived in San Francisco about the same length of time. We had a car in Los Angeles, but not in San Francisco. Our first day in Los Angeles, we attended the funeral of someone I knew form BCC, the temple I joined in 1987, and where I met and married Joe. We visited the graves of some of my pals in that cemetery. We went to services there Friday night, also. We moved away in 2010, so of course, there have been lots of changes. Our friend were happy to see us, and I still think Los Angeles is beautiful, despite the ubiquitous homeless encampments and trash on many of the streets.

In San Francisco, we were treated well by Joe's long-time friends. We had some time on our own, and explored a bit. When we visited The Castro, the central gay neighborhood, I was thrilled to see so may older gay men, many of them in couples, out on the street. We were not outsiders there. One day, we saw my people. We went out to Contra Costa County on BART to see my cousin Eric, who is close to my age, his wife Karen, two of their three children, and all four grandchildren. They call Eric "Poppy," which is what he and I called our mutual grandfather. Their daughter and her husband had just gotten back from a month-long hiking trip with their 13 and 10 year old daughters on the north coast of Australia. Eric and Karen's son and his wife had taken their 7 and 4 -years old to Italy for a month. Eric and I reminisced about how hard it was to get our parents to take us anywhere. It was lovely to see all of them. Eric pointed out that he is 75, and his father, my mother's brother, died at 78. We hadn't seen them in three years, and I think it occurred to us both that we might not live to visit again.

From Eric's, we took the BART back all the way across San Francisco to see my friend Art and his wife. Our parents were friends before we were born, so we've known each other forever. His older brother was in town for his grandson's 9th birthday, so we met all of them at a cold and windy park. We saw the two brothers, the brother's daughter and her son, and the daughter's mother. We went back to Art's, bonded with the cats and went out to dinner. They booked us a WAYMO, a driverless taxi, to take us back to the hotel. It was a sci-fi experience, but went off without a hitch.

One more word about San Francisco. We had dinner at the home of a college friend of Joe and his husband, out at the west end of San Francisco. We came back to the hotel on the Geary bus, the main east-west bus. A lot of people got on who looked be Cental American. They were  probably hotel and restaurant workers getting off work, and seemed friendly and upbeat, laughing and joking with each other. They mostly got off a few blocks before our hotel, in The Tenderloin, a place known for homeless people and drug users, and probably one of the few places these people could afford to live. It burns me that one of the candidates for President makes demonizing immigrants the centerpiece of his campaign. 

I took two more trips in August on my own, determined, despite my leg problems, to get back to what I like. I visited Martinsville, an independent city surrounded by Henry County, Virginia and Monterey, in Highland County, Virginia's least populated county, in Appalachia, adjacent to West Virginia. My later trip was to Highland County, Ohio, and to Fayette County, which I missed a few years ago because of the pandemic. I enjoy being out on my own, exploring an unfamiliar town.

I had surgery on my bad knee on September 10, and my physical therapy is helping. Tomorrow, October 9, they will fix my eye, and with new glasses, I should be all set. 

It's been hard, but there was fun, too. I'll be seventy-five later this month, and I;m determined to enjoy whatever time I have left, and as my sister Robin said, quoting (loosely) Michelle Obama, "Whatever comes up, you get through it and keep going." We might move in two years when Joe retires. I might not be able to a big trip like we did to California this year. I'm hoping we can get to Memphis for Thanksgiving.

On the world scale, I'm hoping that Israel can live in peace, and that all people in that part of the world can live freely and without the tyranny many have had to deal with.

Shana Tova!

October, 2023

 I haven't posted much on this blog lately. I used to write about all the places I visited, one or two a month, and post lots of pictures, mostly of historic places. It took hours, and at most 20 people would read what I wrote. Lately, I've been putting a few pictures on Facebook, without much commentary, and 75 or 80 people give me a "like" or make a comment. 

I've also gotten a lot more private about how I'm feeling and what I'm doing. I was diagnosed, long ago, with "mild, chronic depression," whatever that means, But turning 74 last week really hurt. I know I'm in better shape than most men my age, the ones who haven' t died yet, anyway, and when I look in the mirror, I think I look better than most my age. Still, I've had two cancer diagnoses since the summer, one a skin cancer thing that was ugly, but is fixed except for a scar. I'm scheduled for an operation to remove my thyroid gland this Friday, November 3, and that is stressing me out. The doctors thought they saw something on my pancreas this summer, but after an endoscopy, said it wasn't a big deal, "come back in six months" and have it rechecked. Then they called two weeks later to tell me they wanted to take another look. My mother lived with pancreatic cancer for fifteen months. She was diagnosed at the age I was in August. She said at the time "How long was I going to live anyway?" I think about that a lot. She and I too, don't want to end up in a nursing home, like her mother, my grandmother, with no memory of anything. And I feel like my time has come and gone. The world is not what it was and, while at one time I had some power in it, now I don't think I do.

I ran for Congress last year against a MAGA-Republican hack who had not done anything in several terms of office, who beat a more rational Republican in a primary with signs that had his name over Trump's. He never appeared in this area, which was new to him, refused to debate, and didn't run a campaign. We did an interview together with the Morgantown Dominion-Post where we could only answer questions, not debate. I didn't think he had anything to say, and the paper endorsed me. I won only in this county. The race wasn't close, only closer than predicted. He's now running for Senate against our Governor, Jim Justice, a shameless liar, deadbeat and grifter, originally elected as a Democrat, who switched to the Republican Party in short order. I was at the state convention where he was nominated, and almost no one at the convention liked him, in fact, most of us there walked out of his speech. Joe Manchin wanted him, so that's who we got. He has a high popularity rating in the state. Don't ask me how that is possible.

It's not just this state. The Republicans, who have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, just elected a speaker, without Democratic support. He has railed against same-gender marriage and abortion rights, which one might expect from a radical Christofascist, but he also is open to cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, against aid to Ukraine, and wrote many of Trump's lawsuits arguing, falsely, that he won the 2020 election. This is what the United States has come to. 

Meanwhile, there is a war in Israel-Gaza-Palestine. My friends on the right blame Obama and Biden and say Trump would have taken care of this. My friends on the left think Israel is totally the villain here, that the country is a "colonial power," engages in "apartheid" and "genocide." I grew up in an apartheid state called "Maryland" and as to genocide and "colonialism" if you're an American of European origin, you need to tread carefully, given our history on this continent. Yes, Israel could conform to international law and not risk murdering innocent civilians, But Hamas has to go. There should have been a reckoning a long time ago among the nations about Palestine, but no one wants to touch it. Israel took in Jewish refugees from Iraq, Iran, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, yet Palestinians cling to the false hope that they will be able to turn back the clock, and they've lived in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt for 75 years. The Jewish homeland is in Israel/Palestine. There is nowhere else. I've seen signs that say "Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism." It's a thin line. Jewish students at Cornell are afraid to leave their rooms, and in a former Soviet republic, protestors attacked a plane from Tel Aviv, looking for Jews to beat up. It's scary now for all of us. When I was in high school, a speaker came to my Jewish youth group. He was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and had been in college in Poland in the 1930s. He was probably only 45 at the time he spoke to us, but he told us that Jews were treated badly by other Polish students and faculty at his campus. I am reminded of that by the events today.

I'm out of patience with everyone. While on City Council, I was called a "centrist" which was a high insult to the person who lobbed that word at me. I still consider myself on the left, but I don't really fit in that community anymore. The Republican Party would love to reach out to me and profess how they "Love Israel." It's American Jews they don't much care for, especially those of us in same-gender marriages who also think corporations have too much power.

You might notice that I'm not relaxed. I'm working on it. Tonight is Halloween, and I'll give out candy to the goblins and ghouls who come to our door. Tomorrow, November 1, is the 15th anniversary of my marriage to Joe Hample, and we'll celebrate that milestone. Friday is my operation, and I'm told that the prognosis is good. 

I still want to live, I'm just not sure I want to continue to interact with the rest of the world. Maybe I'll just fade away as I continue to age. I'll update this when/if I recover.

More pics from Israel

Mosque on the sea at the entrance to Tel Aviv

Soldiers at McDonald's in Yafo.

Ruth Daniel Residence, where we stayed in Yafo. An American tourist was stabbed to death on this street March 8.

Graffiti and flyer in Neve Tsedek, between Tel Aviv and Yafo. The flyer is in memory of someone on the anniversary of their death. The stencil in English says "There is no pride in occupation."

A street in Neve Tsedek

Someone photographing an Ethiopian Wedding, Botanical Garden, Tel Aviv

Russian Church from The Botanical Garden, Tel Aviv

Café scene, Neve Tsedek, Saturday afternoon

Hipster hangout, Yafo

Yafo on the coast, looking at Tel Aviv's skyline

New housing, Tel Aviv, from Neve Tsedek

Carpets for sale in the shuk, or market, in Yafo

The view from our hotel, Yafo

Dinner at a "Tripolitan" (from Tripoli, Libya) restaurant with our friend Arieh David Scharnberg, from Humboldt County, California, now living in Yafo.

English-language ad for luxury condos, Yafo. Draw your own conclusions.

Poster for "Man of the Hour" a dance performance, Neve Tsedek.

Seaside mosque, Yafo

These are the pictures from Tel Aviv-Yafo (Jaffa) that I promised last week in my blog post "Israel."

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.

A dance troupe on a street at night

A Middle eastern combo playing at a hair salon at 9:30 P.M.

The King David Hotel

A street scene

The park near the Old City

Near the Old City

Early spring tree in bloom

In the Old City near Jaffa Gate

A street in the Old City

Above the Kotel, the Western Wall

Below the Temple Mount, a Moslem holy site for 1500 years. We chose not to go there.

Ruins of the Roman main street, now in The Old City's Jewish Quarter

posters on a wall

The Jerusalem light rail line was under construction on my last visit in 2007

A plaza in West Jerusalem

A new park near City Hall

Putin Pub

Park

Russian Church, Central Jerusalem

Depression

On my chart at Kaiser in L.A., it said I had chronic moderate depression. I don't really take it seriously. I think of it as part of life. Yesterday I saw my cardiologist for a second followup to my new stents from the end of September. The numbers looked good, but the doctor asked about doing a new echocardiogram. If the echo isn't better than the one before the stents went in, he may want to put in a defibrillator. Monday, I had a basal cell carcinoma removed on my face. Medical issues could be a lot worse. I don't like to be reminded that I am no longer young.

The doctor asked how I felt and I said "Lousy." Part of that was that my face was still swollen from Monday, but what I said was "I'm a sixty-six year old gay man. How could I not be depressed?" The doctor thought that things are better than they were, but at thirty-eight, and not gay (as far as I know) he hasn't been through what those of us who are older have dealt with.

And of course, in West Virginia, we have our elected officials, who just today (February 11) are scheduled to vote on "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act." This bill would allow people to object to the state for making them do something they object to because of their religion. Rupie Phillips, a delegate from a rural place in southern West Virginia, and a Democrat, admitted that this bill, which he supports, is a response to the Supreme Court making same-gender marriage legal in all states. The bill would allow denial of public accommodations to gays, particularly in couples, because of religious principle. It will probably pass, despite opposition from Chambers of Commerce in Charleston and Morgantown, West Virginia University Faculty and Student Senates, and many national hotel chains.

It was reported in the Charleston Gazette-Mail today that two women applied for a  marriage license in Gilmer County yesterday and were screamed at by Deputy County Clerk Debbie Allen. "Abomination!" she said. I'm waiting to hear if this clerk is fired, but I doubt it. There's lots of hand-wringing about why young people leave this state in droves, but who wants to live in a place like this? Gilmer County has a state college and a population of less than 10,000 people. It is about eighty-five miles from Morgantown to Glenville, the town in Gilmer County.

Our four Republican delegates in our district pretty much think like this. We have one liberal Democrat, much beloved. Had she lost in the last election, I would have insisted to Joe that we move to Pennsylvania, only ten miles from downtown Morgantown. Her reelection, and all the people we have met from temple who hired Joe in the first place, and have been kind to us, give me some hope that there is an element of really good people here. That's who I wish to represent as delegate.

The election campaign is going slowly for me. I have not raised much money. I answered questionnaires from the teachers' union, the statewide AFL-CIO and the local carpenters' union , and also a state-wide anti-abortion group. I didn't agree with the anti-abortion group's agenda, but I sent them a note with their form suggesting that "pro-life" should mean restricting guns, making maternity and parental leave mandatory, increasing SNAP benefits, favoring comprehensive sex ed including birth control, and talking about th responsibility of men in causing a pregnancy. I've been to a number of Democratic Party events and Bernie Sanders events as well. Tonight, I'll be at the watch party for the Democratic debate sponsored by Morgantown for Bernie Sanders. There will be time for people to ask questions of the eight candidates running for five slots in the Democratic primary May 10.

We are headed to Israel at the end of the month for the CCAR (Reform rabbis) convention in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When I was last in Israel, in 2007, I was with a congregational tour from our temple in L.A. I wished that I could have been with Joe on the tour, as he spent a year in Jerusalem as part of his rabbinic training. I worry some about terrorism, but more about my health, the logistics of getting there and back, and my role, since I won't be attending the conference.

I've been reading opinion pieces from Israeli Jews, stating that the West Bank occupation has turned into an annexation, and an apartheid state. There is not even a pretense that there might be an Arab state in the West Bank, or that Arabs in that area, who are not citizens, have any rights at all. Arabs in Israel proper have citizenship, but there is no official acknowledgement that they are part of Israeli society, not  even an "Arab History Month." Yes, I understand that they could have had a state in 1948, 1990, and 2000, but wouldn't accept peace, that Gaza was given back, and Hamas has created a terrorist state. I understand Israel shares a border with Syria, where a Holocaust of sorts is going on. Still, it's hard for me to defend everything Israel does. Of course, I shouldn't have to. I've always loved the United States, even if the George W.Bush administration embarrassed me. I stii love Israel, just not the current government. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being in Israel at this moment.

Meanwhile, we've had more snow most of this week, and temperatures in the teens the last few days. The sun came out today for the first time in a long time, even as the temperature dropped. I am a sun-lover, even as a ne skin cancer survivor.

The Omer period is one of semi-mourning in Judaism. I have my own Omer period, February 6- to March 27. It commemorates that period in 2003, when I was living in Los Angeles. I flew to Baltimore February 6 for my mother's seventy-fifth birthday. I suffered a heart attack on the 9th and stayed with my mother after five days in the hospital, for a week. I came back to L.A. on the 22nd and went to work on the 24th. I came back to Baltimore March 16th. My mother was in hospice care. She died March 18th and the funeral was the 20th. I returned to L.A. after observing shiva, the week of mourning, on March 28.

It helped me to get this off my chest. I will feel better. I always do. I have to remember to look at how far I have come, continue to struggle with today, and be hopeful about the future.

 I wrote this Thursday (it's Monday now). I do feel less depressed, although the weather has been worse. Other delegates have said even more bigoted things than Delegate Phillips, but it has only made me more determined to win this election. I've been inspired by the one Jewish delegate in our legislature, Mike Pushkin, from Charleston, who pointed out that baking a cake for someone you don't like is an inconvenience. I won't share the rest of his thought. And Steven Skinner, our only openly gay delegate, from Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle, having to tell the troglodyte legislators that he didn't choose to be gay.

I feel better about going to Israel, although both Joe and I are concerned about stamina and logistics. We will be active voices for change in Israel, as we are here.

My Time Is Now

It's been two weeks of intense feelings, both positive and negative. Last week, I heard speakers about the Israeli and American elections, met the head of The American Conservative Union (who thought it was okay if I was not served in a restaurant because I am gay). The news about the elections is only good because no one believes the Republicans have a credible candidate. As far as Israel, there is a sense of hopelessness that there is any leadership that will solve the problems there.

Then the Mormon Church effectively kicked out same-gender couples and their children. At least many of their own church members rebelled. We heard about the attacks in Paris, and less-publicized attacks in Kenya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We attended a service and dinner as guests of WVU Hillel Friday. Saturday, I spent most of the day in bed, not willing to deal with the hordes around a WVU football game, and feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.

Things picked up for me Saturday night, when we saw Morgantown Theatre Company's production of "Oliver!" This is the children's theater group where I played the rabbi in "Fiddler on the Roof" in the winter of 2014. Joe and I were blown away by the professionalism of these kids, who range in age from six to eighteen. After ten years of acting classes, I could not have done what the nine-year-old who played Oliver did. It was beautiful and heartbreaking.

Last Sunday we dined at the home of a gay couple we have come to know in Greene County, Pennsylvania, just north of here. It was a chance to let down our (virtual) hair, away from any professional connection, with three other long-time same-gender male couples. I'm grateful to them for adding us to their clan.

I was back at WVU for the Women and Gender Studies Department Fair on Monday and Transgender Day of Remembrance on Wednesday. It's amazing how college has changed since my graduation in 1971. Johns Hopkins, where I was an undergraduate, did not admit women until 1970 (four transferred into my junior class in 1969). They thought they were liberal because they added a "History of Africa" that year. There was no study of women, of gender as a concept, nothing Jewish, certainly nothing gay.

At some point in the spring of 1970, my junior year, the spring of Kent State, I walked down Calvert Street in Baltimore to 29th. I was wearing bell bottomed jeans, a plain t-shirt with a blue ring collar, and a brown "wet look" belted jacket. My already-thinning shoulder length hair was flying in the breeze. I  flashed a peace sign at a passing police car, and a policeman growled at me from the car. Maybe I misremember the details after forty-five years. Or maybe it was a dream. I remember feeling  that this was my time in the world.

I rode the PRT, Morgantown's "futuristic" rail transit line (from 1973) into town Wednesday to the LGBT Equity meeting on WVU's downtown campus. It's a half-mile walk from our house to the last station on the line. It was unseasonably warm and sunny. I had my iPod on, playing "Little Black Submarines" by The Black Keys. And for a minute, I had that same 1970 feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Maybe it was the weather or my heart being fixed with new stents or running for office, or just being a part of something on campus. The world is falling apart and our country is a mess, much like 1970. Perhaps my euphoria is that I understand how bad everything is, but I know that I am doing well.

Our meeting was short, and the Transgender Day of Remembrance after was more moving than I expected it to be. I met some students who came to support transgender people on campus. One young woman told me she was Jewish and confided that she had heard that the rabbi in Morgantown is gay. I was delighted to introduce myself as the rabbi's spouse.

It's Sunday night now as I finish this. It is cold out. There was no sun today. ISIS has united Russia, France and the United States. What the Republicans have been saying about Syrian refugees not being welcome here has resonated with Jewish people, and, for once,  all segments of the Jewish community are together, remembering the Jews who were turned away from the U.S. in the late 1930s.

I would like to think that good will come from the events of the past week, even the tragic events. Despite my advanced age and creaky body, I plan to be part of what happens here in West Virginia, in the United States and in the world, for as long as I am able. 

Coal, The Iran Deal, and The Republican Debate

Part One: Coal

There was an opinion piece yesterday, August 5, in The Gazette-Mail, Charleston's daily newspaper from Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal-mining company, crying about how the bankrupt company can't be sold to a company in Kentucky unless it stops paying pensions and providing health insurance to retirees. According to Chris Regan's blog (homeyesterday.com), in a post from August 3, Crutchfield received a two million dollar bonus this year, and six million total in 2011 and 2012.

Meanwhile, President Obama came out this week with new guidelines for carbon pollution to combat global warming, air pollution and the high incidence of asthma, particularly among young people who live near coal-burning facilities.

According to our local politicians, particularly our Republican Congressman David McKinley and our newly-elected Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but also our Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III, Obama is the villain. The health of people in the United States, and particularly in West Virginia, comes second to the lining the pockets of coal company executives. Meanwhile the bankrupt companies want to back out of their contracts to provide for retirees, and want to sell out their union workforce to non-union companies. This year, they convinced our Republican-dominated legislature to ease safety regulations for the mines.

Educated people and anyone wanting a chance for a real life have been leaving West Virginia for decades. Whole neighborhoods in northwest Baltimore, near where I grew up, were inhabited by "hillbillies," as we called them in our ignorance when I was a teen. In the 2010 census, forty of our fifty-five counties had lost population over the previous ten years. And yet coal millionaires ask for tax cuts and buy Republican officeholders (and many Democrats) to make sure the health of the planet, and the well-being of workers and their communities are not considered. Everything is the fault of Obama and the EPA.

President Obama has offered to help retrain workers and bring new industry to the coalfields. He has been so demonized here that no one will listen. When we came here in 2012, there were signs everywhere that said "Stop Obama's War On Coal." I understand fear of change and economic insecurity. I wish someone could reach out to people who are pro-coal - and I see lots of "Friend of Coal" decals on cars- and explain to them how they are being used, in a way they might understand. Once in a while I see a sticker that says "Friend of Coal Miners," and I think that is something that needs to be emphasized.

Part Two: The Iran Deal

There has been a split in the Jewish community about the Iran deal. Again, Obama is blamed by many traditional Jewish organizations, and certainly by Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, of caving in to Iran and not stopping a deal. Of course, the deal is not just the United States and Iran, but includes Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China. People opposed to the deal want the United States to take unilateral action, maybe even to go to war against the regime in Iran. President Obama warned that these are the same people who pushed for war in Iraq.

I get that Iran has a terrible government. But I also understand that the United States does not, at this time, have the power to effectively engage Iran in war, even if we wanted to. Our allies in Europe would not support us. It is time to acknowledge that we must work with other countries, our allies particularly, but even Iran. Killing off a bunch of people we think are different from us is an American tradition, going back to Colonial days, but I've known people from Iran- yes, mostly Jews who fled, but others, too- and I don't see them as different from us. As we approach the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, I know that war should be absolutely off the table. Is everything 100% verifiable in this treaty? I don't know. But I have to trust that a consortium of nations came up with a workable deal.

Part Three: The Republican Debate

So the Republicans are debating tonight. We don't have a television, but if we did, I wouldn't watch Fox. Not one Republican of the Top Ten has had anything positive to say about the rights of LGBT people or is in favor of my marriage. That alone is reason enough to not watch them. As far as threatening to shut down the government for funding Planned Parenthood, they should be tried for treason.

I cleaned up my political act for my spouse, Rabbi Joe, when he was applying for pulpit positions in 2012. He doesn't take a public stand on political issues, although some wish he would. He and I don't agree about everything political. If you look at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, you will find that my positions follow those of our religious movement. I'm less diplomatic in my verbiage.