AgPerson

In Haifa, we briefly stopped at the Bahá’í Gardens, a beautiful terraced garden in the heart of the city, overlooking the sea. The Bahá’í are a modern religion movement premised on the underlying unity of the world’s major religions. This movement was a spin-off of Islam founded in the late 1800s with the ambitious goal of uniting the world in peace and harmony. In Islamic countries, Bahá’í followers have been persecuted and killed. The international governing body of the Bahá’í was established in Israel in 1963 with the blessing of the Israeli government, and by all accounts they have been good citizens.

There aren’t many Africans to be seen in Israel, so a member of our party asked the African guard if he was Bahá’í. I can’t remember where he said he came from (possibly Uganda?), but he spoke Hebrew as well as English and said that he was volunteering at the temple for a year. I would have liked to have learned more about the Bahá’í. But of course, that is a common theme of these entries.

To compensate for some of the shortcomings of the trip, and to get a different perspective on things, I struck out with two other members of the group during Shabbat downtime in Jerusalem for an unauthorized walking tour. From our hotel it was a straight shot to the Old City, and we explored some of the Christian and Muslim quarters, including accidentally stumbling upon a claimed site of Christ’s burial, a beautiful monument known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the church, we were berated for not removing our hats. How disrepectful, the man said. Which struck me as funny, since almost everywhere else in Israel, hats are pretty much required, in keeping with the Jewish practice of wearing a kippah, the traditional head covering worn to symbolize God’s constant presence.

The transition for Christian to Muslim quarters was obvious, with a massive increase in crowds, noise, and appearance of traditional Arab dress. Hundreds of stalls were packed together in small, untidy streets, with wares hung and displayed in every crevice. It was quite a sight to behold.

On our walk back to the hotel, we witnessed a large protest march by ultra-Orthodox Israelis angry about a proposed parking lot near the Old City. Riot police, ambulances, and officials were out in force. The parking lot would be open on the Sabbath so that non-Jewish tour groups would be able to easily access the Old City, only one quarter of which is Jewish and closed down on those days. Apparently this controvery has been ongoing, with protest marches like this common.

From the silly to the solemn: the next day was Holocaust day. Perhaps because I have gone through multiple other museums, seen movies, and learned about the Holocaust in so many ways over the years, or perhaps just because I am jaded, the Yad Vashem museum did not make much of an impact on me. It was painfully exhaustive in its cataloguing of atrocities, with personal testimonies on video screens, documentary evidence, and interactive exhibits. My feet hurt. The museum took forever to get through. Our tour guide was strangely cheery, saying things like “okay friends, let’s proceed to Auschwitz.”

After Yad Vashem and a pizza lunch, we visited the cemetary on Mt. Herzl to the east of the museum. Named for the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, the “mount of memory” features the graves of Israeli notables including Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir. Along the northern slope of the mountain are graves for Israeli war dead, analogous to Arlington Cemetary in Washington, DC. The plots are uniform and sized as proscribed by Talmudic teaching. No distinction is made between any fallen soldier, regardless of notable achievements or acoldates. However, modern graves have gotten more elaborate, with pictures, inscriptions, keepsakes, and whole little gardens. Some of them are gaudy, or at least verge on it.

The cemetary itself was quite striking. Abundant trees and vegetation graced the hillside, and the effect was to make one feel connected to nature and the cycle of life, a nice change from the flat, sometimes barren, often spooky graveyards of America.

And perhaps to emphasize that cycle, the following activities were very much about life: a visit to a bird watching station, where the small animals are captured in nets, identified, tagged, and weighed, followed by tree planting on a nearby hillside. The bird business was straightforward but really neat. Lightweight nets strung between trees and poles snare the animals, which are then put into breathable cotton bags and hung on pegs, where they flap about a bit while waiting their turn. Each one is expertly pulled from the bag, examined, catalogued, and then released. As a child I was always told not to touch birds, and I’ve never seen them so close up, held in human hands. The station shares its findings with other observatories in Israel and the surrounding countries so that bird migration patterns can be plotted and the health of flocks and species tallied.

I wish we had more time to explore Jerusalem. What an amazing city. Starting at the Zion Gate, we walked through the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, exploring a place that felt more grown than built, fantastic in its layers of structure created over thousands of years. We wandered narrow alleys and countless shops, had some more falafel, and visited the crowded Western Wall, the last remains of the Old Temple of Jerusalem, where some members of the group were deeply moved. At the Davidson Center we explored the history of the Temple and the city, and wandered over and through amazing ancient ruins. The great temple measured 500 meters to a side, and was in its day an architectural marvel to match the great structures of Rome. But the Romans destroyed it, twice, and later the Dome of the Rock an Islamic mosque, rose in its former location. I could have used another couple days in the Old City alone, and would have relished the opportunity to see the various places of worship and the Christian, Arab, and Armenian quarters, but due to security and liability concerns those parts were officially off-limits to us.

We also walked through part of new Jerusalem during the quiet of Saturday Shabbat. From afar we glimpsed the Supreme Court, Knesset (parliament), and walked through a beautiful rose garden, but we did not get to enter any of the buildings. Sadly, the majority of our time in Jerusalem was spent inside underground windowless conference rooms in our hotel, due to a program called the Israel Shabbat Experience led by two well-meaning modern Orthodox men. This program, billed as potentially life-changing, could have gone better.

So far the religious component of the trip had been fairly minimal; nonetheless, many participants were on their guard, awaiting a religious indoctrination they felt was inevitable. Thus it was unfortunate that expectation setting for our Shabbat program was non-existent. In my mind, the ideal program would have started with at least a brief introduction to the fundamental principles of Jewish thought, in a purely education vein, followed by an exploration of the rich traditions that make up the Shabbat. Many participants on this trip have had little or even no experience with Jewish culture, much less with religious worship. Shabbat done well can be spiritually meaningful for people of varied backgrounds and traditions. Havdallah in particular has always struck me as a particularly beautiful ceremony.

We instead jumped straight into blessings, followed by a somewhat confusing ethical discussion based on Talmudic teachings. I felt the need to raise my hand and ask a very basic question, “what is the Talmud?” The facilitators were caught off guard by this query, and did not adequately answer it. Throughout the “discussion,” which concerned a hypothetical young German soldier on trial for Nazi war crimes, most participants were confused, uncomfortable, and guarded. Our huge 25 person discussion circles in a noisy and crowded room made meaningful debate difficult, and no one really wanted to give their opinion anyway when they felt that there was an official preordained answer to come at the end regardless of our personal thoughts. Particularly notable, in our group of young adults, was the refusal of anyone to take an absolute position about the scenario. Perhaps heated debates might take place in teenage Birthright groups, but we both refused to mete out a punishment to the German soldier without due consideration of all the facts and mitigating circumstances, and also refused to state with certainty that, in his position, we would have the moral turpitude to make the “right” choice.

What does the Talmud say? Something about moral absolutes, and the need to behave as individuals rather than to follow the crowd, and the need to understand absolute and inflexible notions of right and wrong. No one said it during the session, but afterwards several people fumed at a Talmud that would demand we follow moral absolutes rather than doctrine while at the same time allowing orthodox Jews to continue to subjugate women in accordance with religious law. Instead of explaining Talmud as I learned it, as the fundamental philosophical text of Judaism, a series of questions and answers and commentary to be studied and learned from, we inferred from our orthodox captors that Talmud is strict Jewish law, not open to discussion or debate. There were a lot of questions stewing in the group, on such potentially controversial issues as homosexuality, birth control, the role of ancient tradition in modern society, gender roles, and sexism in Judaism, but for the most part they went unasked, due to discomfort about the tone of the entire program.

Our Shabbat services were farcical. We had no challah bread for the blessing over the bread. We had no Kiddish cup for the blessing over the wine, not that either blessing was explained. The havdallah ceremony marking the end of the sabbath and the start of the new week, which is traditionally held under the stars, took place underground. The spiritual meanings of these ceremonies and the thousands of years of tradition that underly them were completely glossed over. For those like me in possession of a decent Jewish cultural background, the entire process was tedious. For others who lack that context, it were painful, upsetting, even scary.

While in Jerusalem there were two other official activities of note. We visited a traditional Israeli street market, the Makne Yehuda, in the hours leading up to the start of Shabbat. It was a sprawling and crowded mass of culinary commerce, magnificent to behold. We also spent one evening taking in the shopping and entertainment of Ben Yehuda street, including, in my case, some kosher sushi and dim sum. A great, if brief, “taste” of all the city has to offer. So much wasted opportunity in such a wondrous locale.

In Tzfat, the birthplace of Jewish mysticism, a nut named Avraham Levental told us that Kabbalah was aweeeee-some. He repeated this multiple times. He has spent the past ten years delving into the meaning of his name. The fundamental precept is that everything is God. You just can’t understand how aweeeee-some that is. Our journeys are beginning to follow a familiar pattern: a very long time driving on the bus, followed by slightly less time in an actual place, which we are never able to explore to our satisfaction, followed by piling back on the bus to get to the next destination, inevitably late. No one seems to think this is awesome.

Yesterday’s boat ride on the Sea of Galilee could have been relaxing, but the four crew of the large wooden vessel felt it was their mission in life to get us to dance, no matter how little we wished to do so. Their increasingly frenetic music reflected their desperation as we refused to move our bodies, and eventually they resorted to bringing out the bongo drums and getting a drum circle going. Prior to the cruise we had a very brief period to explore the waterfront of the town of Tiberias, which was pretty shabby. A fellow participant told me that it reminded her of boardwalks along the Jersey shore, except that the swimming section of the beach was a small cordoned rectangle signposted “Public Authorized Swimming Zone.”

Our time in Haifa was an exercise in frustration. Rather than a nature walk along the Little Switzerland trail as per the itinerary, we went to meet our “peers,” a group of Israeli soldiers and students, at a beach. Some sort of scheduling mix up meant we were an hour late getting to the peers, who will be accompanying us for the next five days, and then we had 90 minutes to change for the beach, enjoy said beach, find food (which consisted of a few slow sit-down restaurants and one sad falafel stand with two cashiers and a single plodding sandwich assembler), clean off, change into dry clothes, and get back onto the bus. Even the most easygoing members of the group were frazzled after being yelled at by the guide for our inability to meet this time line.

In spite of our failure to enjoy regimented beach time, we were a mere 10 minutes late to the Ein Hod Artists’ Colony, which was a very interesting and enjoyable destination. There were many types of art to explore and artists to meet, as well as a pottery demonstration. Again the pattern of the trip repeated – not enough time, rushed to the bus, and then a few more hours of driving, this time through rush hour Thursday traffic (the equivalent of Fridays in the United States) so that we could arrive on time in Jerusalem. Which we didn’t. And so the walking tour of Jerusalem was canceled. Brilliant.

In my last entry I think I misjudged the mood of the party after our group huddle. Not only was everyone annoyed at the additional “ice breakers,” many were upset by what the felt was the strong indoctrination component of the program. There are several couples on this trip, including one married and one engaged, and there are also many participants with significant others back home, who are more often than not non-Jews. Over falafel in Tzfat, a member of the group joked that we should raise our hands if we had a Catholic boyfriend back home. All four of us present raised our hands, although in my case the Catholic takes the form of a girlfriend.

A British-Israeli gent with the wonderful name Neil Lazarus made a joke that imparted the same idea in a much more comfortable way. “My friends,” he said, “remember one thing: Birthright is all about Jewish babies! The name is frequently misheard: it is actually birthrate.” He is a funny guy, we laughed, there was less awkwardness. We also learned about the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire and the situation with Sunni and Shi’a Muslim sects in the Middle East. Little of it was new to me, but the presentation was engaging and interesting, and no doubt helped others to understand the situation here. Again, I found the perspective to be Israeli, Jewish, and patriotic, but still relatively neutral.

I’ve been trying a new approach with these triplogs, attempting to discuss the ideas, concepts, and experiences of the trip, rather than the traditional chronological approach. I think it suits the format of this “experience,” as they refer to it, and I hope it is interesting. Tomorrow we begin our belated exploration of Jerusalem, which will no doubt be fascinating but rushed. Tonight I share a room with an Israeli as well as another American. Breakfast, as always, begins promptly at 7:00am.

From my room at Kibbutz Manara in Israel’s extreme north, the view is of Lebanon, a border that has been closed for three years. While we were off rafting down the Jordan River, Hezbollah militants lit a fire on a nearby hill, something they do from time to time to annoy residents of the kibbutz with the smoke and soot. Proximately and possibly related, an old Syrian land mine exploded, further clouding the air. On our travels through the Golan Heights, we saw miles of fields cordoned off with razor wire bearing signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English: “Danger: Mines.”

The minefields date to Syrian occupation of the region prior to the 1967 Six Day War. Golan was a valuable strategic objective, according to our guide Maxi, because of its high vantage point. A small strip of land, Golan made up half a percent of Syria’s area, but now composes about 5% of Israel’s. It serves as an important buffer between Damascus and Israel’s northeast, and in addition to military outposts, the Israeli government has built waterworks and reservoirs, allowing settlers to improve the land and plant orchards. From atop Mt. Bental, we gazed across the Valley of Tears, where so much blood was shed on both sides during the ’67 war and the 1973 Yom Kippur wars, and into Syrian land. To the south was a large UN compound, established after the ’73 ceasefire to keep the peace. Perched atop a mountain not far away stood a large Israeli listening post, antennas sprouting from every corner.

Maxi, in his 60s, was in the IDF’s special forces during the ’73 war, and worked behind enemy lines to cause chaos and confusion within the ranks. His father went to war, and told Maxi that it was so that he would not have to. Maxi went to war, and told his children it was so that they would not need to. But the cycle continues. Every Israeli citizen is required to serve a military term after graduating high school. Maxi says that many Arab Israelis refuse to do so, and he wishes they were forced to at least carry out public service, if not actually join the military. He doesn’t mention the ultra-Orthodox Jews who also refuse to serve, and I don’t bring it up.

We rafted down a section of the upper Jordan River today, following a short hike in Nahal Gilabun, a canyon on the Golan. The Jordan, here, is more of a stream than a river. Being in the desert, Israel has constant water problems, and is currently in the fifth year of a drought.

Tonight after forced folk dancing, we circled up and each said why we came on Birthright. The statements were short and generally glib – most people came “because it was free” or due to the nagging of other Jews in their life. Some liked the opportunity to travel, a few others were looking to discover more about their Jewish identity and heritage. The last person to speak said she came to find a husband. Everyone laughed, but she seemed serious. I came for a variety of reasons. Because I did not want to pass up the opportunity to see and experience Israel at no cost, sure. But also because the nature of the exploration fascinates me. Rich Jewish donors, mostly anonymous, put up a ton of money to drag American Jews to the homeland. The tour is whirlwind and exhausting, but even in such a small country, cannot be exhaustive in a mere 10 days. The goals of the program are not hidden: they want young American Jews to be captured by the spirit of Israel, to support Israel’s existence, and to embrace their Jewish identity. The not-so-subtle push is for exactly what the girl in our circle expressed: interbreeding. I say this without judgment. They want to keep pure a bloodline that extends at least 250 generations.

The Taglit Birthright program presents the country from an unabashedly Jewish and pro-Israel point of view. They balance enough “good with the bad” to provide a notional neutrality, but they never claim to be objective. The program and its guides walk a delicate line, attempting to persuade jaded American teenagers and young adults of the importance of their Jewish identity without being so “preachy” as to be off-putting. This fascinates me. The experience is well run, and so far doesn’t seem like an indoctrination program. But I’ll take it one day at a time.