Opening our Ears, Hearts, and Minds

This is going to be a long blog post, so grab a cup of coffee and set aside some time to sit down and read this one J

Over the last couple of days in Haifa we heard from people representing different parts of Israeli society (Russian, Palestinian, Ethiopian, Muslim), many of the encounters provoking thoughts about what it means to be the “other” and to be a minority in a Jewish state (and of course what it means for us as American Jews to a be a minority in America).

Our first speaker, Ella, discussed the connections the Former Soviet Union Jewish community had with Israel prior to being allowed to leave Russia and the challenges that awaited them here.  She described a community that in theory was very much welcomed but in actuality dealt with discrimination once they got here, stereotypes about Russian prostitutes and mafia, and the challenges of any tiny state to absorb a million people in a very short period of time.  Ella told us that for the most part the Russian community has done well here, becoming doctors and members of Knesset, but that the community still remains somewhat separate from larger Israeli society and prefers to speak in Russian as opposed to Hebrew.  She asked the group to be honest when we had pre-conceived notions or racist thoughts and to talk about them as opposed to whitewash them.   Some of her comments inspired strong feelings in the fellows (we suspect it had a lot more to do with her delivery as opposed to the content) and provoked an intense discussion about the reality of Israeli society.

We also met with two women, Robbie and Moira, who lost loved ones in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or as Yehuda Amichai once wrote – people who got caught up in the “terrible chad gadya machine” (see below for full poem).   Robbie & Moira are part of an organization named the Parent’s Circle and their mission is to let people know that both sides are suffering and there are people looking for a peaceful resolution – basically they don’t want other families to have to go through what they went through.  Robbie’s son was killed by a sniper while he was manning a checkpoint and Moira’s husband was killed by the Israeli police during a protest.  We sat and just listened to their stories.  They asked us to think about what the true meaning of forgiveness is and what we, as human beings, owe each other.  The group decided that the bottom line was to allow for encounters and on the most basic level just to listen to people’s stories.  After they left one of the members of our group said it was the first time he actually thought about the other side, that it might not be about right or wrong all the time, but about acknowledging that there is tremendous suffering on both sides of the conflict.

When we met with Uvie, an Ethiopia olah (immigrant) who has been in Israel for 20 years we were shocked (both Israelis and Americans) at how little we actually knew about Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Jewish community’s recent history.  Uvie showed us a slide show of pictures from Ethiopia and we were shocked to see green fertile land, plenty of water, and a thriving Jewish community that supported itself through farming and selling handmade wares.  Uvie told us about her community’s religious affiliations and fervent desire to leave and live in the’ land of milk and honey’ (we thought that the community had to leave because they were starving).   She told us about trekking through Ethiopia and parts of Sudan to meet up with El Al planes as part of Operation Moses.  She described the horrible toll the trek took on the people making it (4,000 people died on route), seeing a plane for the first time, and touching Israeli soil for the first time.  We also heard about living in absorption centers for a long time, having her Jewish identity seriously questioned, and having Israeli social workers question whether or not her mother was fit to raise a child in Israel.  Her story resonated with the Ethiopian Fellows from Haifa and they began to tell us about their own immigrant stories, including being forced to change their Ethiopian names because they didn’t sound Jewish enough. 

Our last visit was with Muaz at an Ahmadiyya Mosque.  For many of us it was the first time we actually stepped foot (technically sock as we removed our shoes and kept our socks on) in a mosque.  We heard about the Ahmadiyya community’s struggle both as minority in the Muslim world and being the target of Muslim terrorism (because of their fairly open interpretation of the Koran) and a minority in the State of Israel.  We identified commonalities between this sect and our Jewish world.  We talked about the shame and dangers of religious extremism.  We learned about Muslim customs and prayers.  We left the mosque thinking about the fact that the ideological conflicts between the Western world and the Muslim world should not be summed up as black and white and that there are people interested in exploring and living in grey areas.

Throughout all these encounters we’ve begun to understand tikkun olam (repairing the world) not as an overwhelming global mission but instead happening on a personal and small communal level.   It starts with a tiny shift in our own perceptions, a willingness to contemplate differences and listen to other perspectives.  If we can then somehow create opportunities for others to shift then we’ve made the world a better place.

An Arab Shepherd is Searching for his Goat on Mount Zion

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion

and on the opposite mountain I am searchingfor my little boy.

An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father both in their temporary failure.

Our voices meet above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.

Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya* machine.

Afterward we found them among the bushes and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying.

Searching for a goat or a son has always been the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

* Lit. "Only one kid." A song chanted at the close of the Passover seder service, seen by some commentators as an allegory for the Jewish people.

The Challenges of Community Service

We are waking up super early this morning to head down to the desert, to a town named Arad to finish up our Winter Seminar in a congress with other Diller partnerships.  The last couple of days in Haifa have been jam packed with community service, encounters with different groups of people who live here, and time to reflect and grow as a Diller community.

This post reflects specifically on our community service experiences (other stuff to come later).  We can definitely say community service was quite a challenge for all of us – the work was demanding, exhausting, and rewarding at times.   

Those of us teaching English at the Gabrieli School (Erica, Carly, Caleb, Liat, and Liza) struggled with creating appropriate lesson plans for young children who spoke little English.  We also had to deal with students who didn’t want to listen (who knew it was so hard to work with children????)  We ended up teaching English through song, physical games, and word games.  Often times we got the sense that the students were upset with us for attempting to teach them but on our last day we received many letters (written in English) from the students telling us how much they were going to miss us and how much fun they had with us. 

Those of us who volunteered at the Ofakim School (Brynn, Daniel, Noah S., Hannah L., Ryan), a school for mentally and/or physically handicapped children, had a mentally exhausting week.  We struggled with remaining positive throughout the experience and we questioned some of the educational methodologies of the teachers - but our reward came in the connections we made with the students (when they were excited to see us the next day) and the smiles we provoked from them.

 Those of us volunteering at the Senior Day Care Center (Noah S., Halle, Benyamin, and Tova) learned how to play rummy cub and card games in a different language and perfected our bingo skills.  We also listened to the personal stories (in Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic) of the participants even when we didn’t quite understand them and learned some new ballroom dancing moves.  And last, but not least, those of us who went to the Meyer Children’s Hospital at the Rambam medical facility (Alyssa, Gregory, Lizi, and Hannah F.) visited with sick children in their hospital rooms and in special classrooms.  We painted and glued and created puppet shows and played memory with the patients and tried to give their parents a little bit of a break.

It was interesting that none of us felt that we had amazingly fun experience doing community service- weren’t we supposed to have fun while doing this?  Isn’t that important for us?  Isn’t that what keeps us coming back for more and encourages us to continue doing it?  Someone in the group suggested perhaps if we would have built something we would have felt more accomplished and we wouldn’t have had to struggle with the language and cultural barriers.  But, on the other hand, maybe community service is not about us having a good time, perhaps it’s about responding to a void or a need in our community?  Maybe building things without human interaction is an easy way out, of not dealing with tachlit (actual) realities of the needs of the community?  

We’ve just started to think about what we’ve learned about ourselves through the community service experiences – how did we deal with our frustrations?  Did we find positives as well as negatives?  What would we do differently if this was our project?  What was the impact of our behavior on the rest of the group?  What are we taking away from this experience?  Can we use these experiences to help us grow?  We are looking forward to starting to craft our own projects for next year with all these questions in mind.

A Closer Examination of Haifa Society

This morning we began our community service in Haifa.  We split up into four groups – one going to the Rambam hospital to work in the children’s ward, one going to Ofakim to work with children with disabilities, one going to a senior residence, and one group teaching English to a predominantly Ethiopian school.  Overall, we were all very challenged during the community service, as it turned out none of them were easy tasks.  We struggled with the language barrier and the disorganization of some of the service sites.  In the end the hard work we put into the community service paid off and everyone felt that they had done a good thing.  Greg played checkers with a 17 year old Israeli Arab patient in Rambam without quite understanding that apparently there are different rules here, Noah S. slow danced with a woman at the senior residence, and Liat good heartedly accepted the gentle ribbing of the young Israeli children making fun of her American accent while speaking Hebrew.  We are all looking forward to returning and conquering the sites tomorrow.

After lunch we began our examination of the diversity of the culture of Israel through the micro chasm that is the city of Haifa.  We learned about the Bahai religion and people as we toured their beautiful gardens (lots and lots and lots of pictures), although even after watching the promotional video we had zero converts… From the gardens we headed to Carmel, a Druze village where we learned about the interesting history of their people. Many of us were surprised to learn about an Arab minority which is so loyal to Israel that they send their own people to the IDF. They served us an authentic, plateless, almost cutlery less meal. Many of us enjoyed the fig leaves, the cabbage, and the bowl of fat, while others of us stuck to the pitas, rice, and humus. And as is the Diller way, we ended the evening with a movie about the emigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel and the challenges they faced along the way. All three encounters provoked our thoughts on Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the diverse treatment of minority groups in the Jewish state.

Reunion at Beit Rutenberg

We’re back from our home stays and more challenged than ever!  Our weekends were quite similar in many ways and quite different in others.  The overwhelming experience was a great one.  Our adoptive families picked us up, brought us home, and made us feel that we were part of their families. There was a lot of hugging and cheek kissing and tons of food!  We discovered that we have to turn the opposite direction for hot water in the shower, if we ask for toast we get a grilled cheese sandwich,  and Israeli Jewish mothers like to feed their children as much as Jewish American mothers.   Oy gevalt!

Some of us spent our weekends at Shabbat tables with huge Shabbat meals and attending synagogues and some of us spent our weekends visiting and shopping at Druze villages.  We went to malls, movies, and ate out at sidewalk cafes.  Although there was no Chinese food consumed this Christmas, there was a small Christmas exchange between Ari, Carly, Alyssa, and Brynn and, even though it was different to be in Israel for the holiday the girls decided it was a holiday full of love from their new best friends, and it was amazing to be in such a beautiful place full of new “havayahot” or experiences.

We experienced several challenges as well.   It was hard for many of us to communicate with our extended families when conversations lapsed into Hebrew.  There was a lot of hand gesticulation we just didn’t get… We also began to notice many cultural differences – many of our host families spoke about the Arab population in very black and white terms while we are constantly being pushed on this program to explore the grey.  There was also much more smoking and cuss words than we were used to, and we were practically shell shocked during our time at Israeli high schools.  Teachers having a hard time teaching the 40 students in their classes, students being asked to leave class, and student cigarette breaks between classes were among the differences.  In addition, most of us were asked if we were even Jewish.  We were challenged to think about what accounts for these cultural differences (we have several theories at the moment) and why we would even be asked if we were Jewish or not?  Is it because we don’t live in Israel and speak Hebrew?  Is it because we look so different from Israelis?  Why don’t we fit into Israeli perceptions of what Jewish is?  These conversations are only beginning to be had with our Israeli counterparts and we look forward to continuing them throughout the year, especially when they have a chance to experience American Jewry.

And so it begins...moving on in.

We woke up this morning in our tents a little cold and cranky but generally happy to be waking up next to our Haifa friends.  After a quick breakfast we headed out to a desert hike and camel rides (really fun since most of us had never been on a camel before).  From there we headed to the Judean mountains for a 2 hour hike at Sataf. We continued bonding with the Haifa group, which made us all less anxious about our home hospitality stays starting tonight. 

We then got on the bus for our ride to our home for the next week – Haifa!  As we passed the city limits everyone on the bus began to cheer!  After an orientation session about Haifa, led by Haifa fellows, our parents for the week came to pick us up.  Many of us got huge hugs and kisses from or adoptive families which made us considerably less anxious and actually excited about embarking on the home hospitality experience.  The Haifa fellows told us about special food the families made for us and about their plans for us while we were with them.  We felt very taken care of (already) and left Beit Ruttenberg looking forward to the next week.

Our first days with the Haifa Fellows

It's been a couple of days since we blogged and after you read this post you’ll understand why.  We woke up in Neve Shalom on Wednesday, having spent a large portion of the night getting to know our new Israeli friends.  Now, both groups of teenagers are totally exhausted J

We headed to Neot Kedumim for our morning programming.  Neot Kedumim is a nature reserve which recreates the land at the time of the Bible.  Our guides showed us around the reserve and at different stations the groups (we split up into two mixed groups) were asked to complete tasks.   We found ourselves trying to get water out of a well without being able to look or fully communicate with each other, crushing up leaves to make Zatar, and figuring out how to herd a group of sheep.  Our final task of the day was to create our own lunch using basic ingredients such as eggs, flour, spices, and vegetables.  And, oh right, we first had to build a fire to cook it all.  At first we were a bit intimidated but the Americans got excited about starting the fire and the Israelis got excited about cooking shakshuka and pita, and pretty soon everyone was pitching in to make a meal for 40+ people.  The groups made fresh pita, egg scrambles, pasta with sauce, salads, apple pie, and more.  We were actually surprised that we managed to do it and it was delicious and Tamar was really surprised by how willing we were to clean up after ourselves and wash the pots and pans we cooked with.  She threatened to share this knowledge with our parents if we didn’t behave.

We knew we would also end the day in a biblical landscape – but on route we jumped forward thousands of years stopping at a modern art museum called Museum on the Seam.  It’s on the road that at one point was the seam between Israel’s Jerusalem and Jordan’s Jerusalem pre-1967.  The museum houses political-socioeconomic exhibitions and we saw an exhibit about the right to protest.  Many pieces of art were by Israeli artists telling the story of the protests in Israel the last few years and many pieces came from around the world (Iran, China, USA).  Going through the museum provoked many questions about art in general and how to understand it but also questions about how protesting fits into our notions of pluralism, leadership, tolerance, and tikkun olam.  We had the chance to reflect on the pieces and it was fascinating to hear what the Americans took away from the pieces and what the Israelis took away from them.  It definitely set the stage for conversations about the political left and right in Israel and America’s support of the Israeli government.    

We ended our day at the tent of Abraham, a tent in the dessert which hosts groups of people interested in experiencing desert life in Israel.  We ate dinner and the groups participated in programming led by fellows.  We taught each other games, dances, and cheers. At our maagal layla all 40 of us reflected on the day and talked about our needs and hopes from the group and what we personally brought to the group. It was clear that our first whole day together had really created bonds based on shared experiences and listening to the thoughts of the others.  Boys retired to their tent and girls retired to theirs as we said good night and prepared for another big day on Thursday.

More Pictures

Today is the day we finally meet Diller Haifa

Tuesday, our second morning in Tel Aviv was amazingly fun.  We started the morning with free time on Nachalat Binyamin street, a pedestrian mall where local artists set up tables to sell their art.  Many of us bought presents for family and friends and, of course, a little something for ourselves.  We also bought a present for the Diller fetus (Haoobar shel Diller), our unofficial group mascot J.  Some of us sat at outdoor cafes and ate a hearty Israeli breakfast and people watched.  Combined with 72 degree weather, it could not have been a more enjoyable morning.

After eating at a café Erica, Daniel, and Lizi submitted this for the blog:

The best salad and easy too!!!

-lettuce string

-cucumbers

-shredded tomato

-parsley

-onion

-vinegar

- squeezed lemon!!

This salad was consumed by Erica Richmond and Scoop at a café in a Tel Aviv shuk this morning and it was sooooo super good!

Erica was heard to say, “This salad is sooooo awesome!!!! I wish we could have had ten more bowls!!!!”

Daniel responded, “We should remember the ingredients so that we can make this at home. It doesn’t seem that hard to make.”

Erica observantly noted, “You’re intelligent.”

After our morning we headed to the Palmach Museum.  It is an interactive educational museum in which you walk through 12 interactive rooms and become part of the rag tag group of Jews fighting for Israel’s independence in the late 40s.  We talked a lot about a homeland for the Jewish people, self preservation, and the toll war ultimately takes on a people.  It also helped us understand more background to the current Arab/Israeli tension.

We ate a quick lunch and got on the bus heading to Holon to meet our Haifa counterparts.  Everyone was so excited and so nervous about the initial meeting.  How awkward would it be?  Would we be able to communicate well with the Haifa group? What should we say?  How should we act?  Bus as soon as they got off their bus we began to cheer and clap for them (to the degree that they were confused why a group of Americans was louder than them) and from then it became a piece of cake.  We met our friends in person, connecting names to faces, and spent time building our relationships through group games (skillfully run by Halle & Erica & Avital & Ohr).  We then went in mixed groups to the Holon children’s’ museum to a special exhibit named Dialogue in the Dark.  The exhibit is in pitch black and is designed to challenge visitors to use their 4 remaining senses (PITCH BLACK!!!).    We had to navigate crossing the street, going to the beach, and purchasing food at a café without the use of our eyes.  The exhibit was a little scary, but ultimately very powerful as we realized how blessed we are not to have to worry about sight and that were also capable of adjusting and compensating when something is not perfect in our lives.  We relayed not only on ourselves through this process, but also on the other members of our group to help us get through.

We had a delicious dinner at a shepudiah in Holon, a restaurant that serves shipudim, grilled meat on metal skewers.  Some of us had no idea what to do with the skewers until our Israeli friends showed us that we first had to push the food off the skewer and than eat it from our plates.  We traveled to Neve Shalom, to our sleeping accommodations and we experienced our first maagal layal (night circle) with all 40 of us (with all of us together it kind of seems like we’re 100).  Everyone spoke about what they hoped to learn from each other over the course the next 10 days.  Early bedtime tonight (12) and a very full day tomorrow in Neot Kedumim, Jerusalem, and the desert.

Tel Aviv - Here We Come!

This morning we woke up early, got on the bus and headed to Tel Aviv.  We started our morning at Kikar Rabin, Rabin Square, where Rabin gave his final address to the Israeli people and was assassinated.  We read excerpts from his acceptance speech at the Noble Peace Prize in 1994 and talked about how leaders often have to take a stance which angers many people, but how powerful his message of hope was. 

From there things got considerably lighter as we split up into 4 teams and participated in a scavenger hunt of the Dizengoff and Neve Tzedek neighborhoods.  We ran around the streets talking to and taking pictures with Israelis who thought we were only slightly crazy but totally willing to go with it.  We were shocked at how friendly they were and how willing they were to help us find our way from point A to B, even if they ended up sending us in the wrong direction most of the time J.  We also met many ex-pat Americans who only wanted to hear about our trip and give us helpful advice for navigating the city.   We had a great time exhausting ourselves running around.  Congratulations to Alyssa, Caleb, Daniel, and Liat for winning the game!

After a quick lunch in a local park we headed toward Bina, a secular yeshiva near the Central Bus Station.  The yeshiva’s mission is to open up classic Jewish texts to secular Israelis to that they can feel ownership around these texts  and figure out if these texts have any meaning or relevance to their lifestyles.  One of the tracts they run is a social awareness tract which combines text study and social and political action in the neighborhood.  We took a tour to see how migrant and foreign workers live in this area and heard about the governments’ and the populations’ response (or non-response) to this community.  It was fairly shocking to see the poverty and terrible living conditions and our text study post tour revolved around what we see as Jewish imperatives when it comes to these type of situations.

We stopped by Yaffo to see the Mediterranean Coast and eat an ethnic dinner of shakshuka, cous cous, stewed vegetables and majdera.  We are excited about our second day in Tel Aviv tomorrow.

Another Intense Day in Jerusalem

After a WICKED late night last night, most of the fellows arose at the designated 6:30am wake up time, while two others continued to rest peacefully in their beds. The former ate breakfast in preparation for our walking  tour of the Kotel tunnels and the latter gulped down theirs in the form of challah and honey on the bus, sympathetically provided by Dr. Halle Watkin.

We arrived at the Kotel and saw it in full day light for the first time. This provided a different view and reference for our journey through the tunnels below. The tunnels, an archeological journey back through time, were well lit but slightly cramped.  We marveled at ancient Herodian and Hasmonean roadways and pillars stories beneath current ground  level and parts of moats sitting dormant for thousands of years.  We also passed by women praying in the tunnels, at the closest point of the wall to where the Holy of Holies (kodesh hakodashim) once stood.  It was interesting to see that although designated space for the sexes is disproportionate at the Kotel (men have 75% of the space) the women and not the men are able to pray at this incredibly special spot.   This observation prompted some discussion later at night about egalitarianism and the Jewish religion.

After exiting the tunnels, we walked through the Muslim Quarter to a final opportunity to spend time at the Kotel.  Some fellows decided to write notes and place them in the wall. Some fellows experienced similar feelings to the night before. However, some had different feelings.  We all spent some time struggling with what the Kotel meant to us on a personal level.

After leaving the Old City of Jerusalem we travelled to the Israel Museum, where we could actually visualize Jerusalem at the time of the second temple (and put together all the archeological pieces we have seen in the past 2 days) because the museum houses an amazingly realistic scale model of Jerusalem at that time. The temple was HUGE!  With Herod’s expansions, the temple took up a great part of the walled city.   We talked about the role it must have played in the religious and national lives of the people.   We also learned about the various fortifications and how the Romans ultimately breached and decimated the city, putting an end to Jewish sovereignty of Jerusalem for thousands of years.

From the model we walked over to the Shrine of the Book to see the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It was fascinating to see how such scrolls had been discovered and preserved for so many centuries and how the religion’s canonical and apocryphal liturgy connects it to the land.  We also saw the famous AHAVA sculpture (taken from the LOVE sign in Philly) and posed for many fun photo s despite the sign clearly stating: “Do not climb.”  The rest of the museum included paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Chagall and other Jewish artists, Jewish cultural clothing, and models of synagogues from around the world. For those who saw the Italian synagogue on Shabbat morning it was exciting to see the similarities between the functioning synagogue and the model in the museum.

It was only a hop, skip and a jump to the K’nesset (Israeli Parliament) building across the street where Benyamin briefed us on its makeup and functions.  We spent majority of our time there in front of the symbol of the State of Israel, the menorah the British had gifted to the new state. The menorah  has symbols representing  historic Jewish events and personalities.  Some fellows noted the significance of the menorah having being carried out of Jerusalem by the Romans now being returned to the Jewish people – a real symbol of rebirth.

After our extraordinarily busy morning we travelled to one of the loudest and most vibrant places in Jerusalem - the Machane Yehuda shuk (open air food market.  Hannah L. briefed us on what to expect and proper shuk etiquette and we were each given a stipend of 35 shekels to purchase our own lunches.   Most of us, tempted by the irresistible aroma, purchased falafel or shwarma to eat, and bought fresh fruit, nuts, and candy for dessert.   It was great interacting with the Israelis and experiencing the atmosphere of the shuk as it is completely foreign to us in the States.  One fellow bought a Breslav knit kippah with  Na Nach Nachman M’Uman written on it and began to sing and dance in the middle of the shuk.  We surmised that he was either inspired by a woman we had seen dancing and singing outside the Jaffa Gate yesterday or else he was overcome with
 “Jerusalem syndrome”.

Our afternoon programming brought us to studying and thinking about modern Jerusalem.  We drove to Gilo, the neighborhood on the periphery of Jerusalem to view the wall that is either referred to as the security wall or the separation wall (which separates Jewish Jerusalem from Palestinian territories).  We’ve decided just to refer to it as the swall.  We had an intense discussion about what led to the building of the swall and how it serves as a micro chasm of the  greater issues between Jews and Muslims in this country.  Meirav, our Israeli tour guide, explained the history that led to the construction of the swall as well as her own experiences with the complexity of the issue. We struggled with the gray area between Israelis needing to feel safe and secure and Palestinians needing to feel that their basic human needs are met.  It was an emotional discussion which challenged many of us to see this issue through multiple perspectives and left many of us feeling more confused and unsure than ever.  This was the main reflection topic of our maagal layla this evening, with fellows sharing thoughts about the duel nature of all the walls we have seen the past few days (it was interesting to think that a wall could either be comforting and offer security or isolating and create tension) and sharing stories about grandparents affected by walls in Germany years ago.

This evening was much less intense as we met with friends and family and went in groups to enjoy dinner and shopping on Ben Yehuda Street.  We feel sad to be ending our time in Jerusalem because we now feel so connected to the city, its history, and its conflicts but we are also excited about discovering other parts of Israel and shortly meeting our Haifa peeps.

Layla tov!

Day Two!!!!