Protesting in the Holy City

Last night, I attended a protest in the center of Jerusalem. I'm rather surprised by the lack of media coverage of it; it seemed like a big deal, with thousands of people marching down King George and Ben Yehuda, culminating in one very full Kikar Tzion. Yet, somehow, it wasn't mentioned in either the Jerusalem Post or the English edition of Ha'aretz. (There is a Ha'aretz article here.) The best coverage I can find is from EuroNews. (Note that the guy holding the flag in the first frame is Andy Dubin, one of my former teachers from high school.)

After reading that article, I have to wonder--what were we actually protesting? The protest was billed as

“Taking back the city, by walking!”
Secular, religious and masorti Jews:
say put an end to attempts of haredi coercion
and unite to restore sanity, freedom
and mutual respect to the city!

which is entirely consistent with the newspaper articles. Yet, what is it specifically that we were protesting? According to EuroNews, we were protesting the Haredi protest of Intel, which I didn't even know about until now. According to Facebook and the Masorti movement, we were protesting the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel at the Kotel. I couldn't understand the speeches because they were in Hebrew, so I don't actually know what we were officially protesting. All I could really catch were a few phrases about Jerusalem belonging to everyone--which, of course, I fully agree with. I was told that the general message was "Why do we let a minority who doesn't even serve in the army control our capital?" but I have to take other people's word for that. It's gotta be true; why would they lie?

Anyway, I hope that we actually accomplished something with our march/rally/protest combination. I'm not particularly hopeful considering the lack of media coverage, but maybe we at least sparked something. Maybe. And with that, I leave you with some footage of the event itself, courtesy of my and Alexis's cameras. Mine's the one that sucks.

Reconstructionist Shabbat in Jerusalem

It's amazing how different this past Shabbat was from the previous Shabbat. Last Shabbat I was in the Kfar, sick, and didn't do anything Shabbatistic other than consume a challah. This Shabbat was Shabbat.

Friday night was disappointing at first because I didn't realize how early Shabbat started (3:58 candle-lighting time!), so I didn't have time to walk down to Shira Chadasha for services. Instead, I hung around Ahuva's until Alexis arrived, at which point the three of us experimented with porridgey couscous. The result: fried couscous with mushrooms, onions, poultry seasoning, zatar, and whatever other spices Alexis put in there. It was actually really good, and a testimony to what creative college graduates can do if they actually learn how to cook. (Read: a testimony to the awesomeness that is Alexis in the kitchen.)

After dinner we settled down to watch Swing Kids (or rather, let it load on MegaVideo) until Ahuva's roommate and one of her friends came in with Mr. Fuzzfuzz, at which point we proceeded to talk about kitties and tell funny stories from high school. But really, while Friday night was a lot of fun, it's not the main point of this entry. The real reason I was downtown, intruding on Ahuva's hospitality, was that this week was the monthly Reconstructionist minyan, which I am absolutely in love with.

They've said that Reconstructionist services are never the same twice in a row, but I've now attended twice in a row (this Shabbat and Parshat Noach last month) and it seemed pretty similar to me. A lot of the tunes used in Psukei D'zimra were Reform, but there actually was a Psukei D'zimra, as opposed to it just meshing into Shacharit. I was very happy to hear a tune of Elohai Neshama which I know and love from Temple Emanuel. We also did Ahava Rabbah entirely out loud, which I haven't heard since sophomore year at AHA, before Rabbi Stein started valuing time over singing.

The gem of the service, though, was the Torah service. The Reconstructionist minyan in Jerusalem reads only three aliyot, but all of the aliyot are communal. Each one has a theme relating to the portion to be read. I don't remember what the first one was, but the last two this week were for anyone struggling with jealousy or feeling under-appreciated (for Esau's pleading for his blessing) and for anyone who was searching for something (for Jacob's being sent out to search for a wife). After each reading, the gabbi rishon gives a mi sheberach blessing based on the theme - that we should overcome our jealousy and see that we are loved, that we find what we are searching for, etc. It's really moving to stand up there and have someone say a blessing over you, especially one that's produced on the spot and not one that's just being read off a sheet. Before the third aliyah they do the normal mi sheberach for the sick, but they do it in the form of a chant of "ana el na refa na la," the words Moses prayed for Miriam when she was sick, and while it's being repeated people say the names of the people for whom they are praying. This is also really moving because the entire congregation is chanting it at once, rather than just one person standing in the front reading off a piece of paper.

After services is a potluck with lots of good food--mostly carbs. People like to bring pasta to these kinds of things, it seems. That and dessert. This week there were also two different kinds of lentil soup (in honor of the parasha, where Esau sells Jacob his birthright in return for lentil soup), tofu, pumpkin cake, and bread pudding - all of which were very exciting. Lunch was nice; I sat with Noam, Devorah, Alexis, and a rotating couple of RRC students. It's hard to describe, but the potluck is both part of the Reconstructionist minyan and not a part at the same time. I mean, it's a potluck, and a potluck is a potluck is a potluck. Yet, the potluck begins with kiddish and motzi, and if you stay till the end they do birkat, too. But it's not the full birkat, not at first at least. First they do a really interesting alternative birkat:

בריך רחמנה מלכה די עלמה מריה דהי פיתא
(Brikh rakhamana malkah d’almah mareh d’hai pita)
You are the source of life for all that is, and your blessing flows through us.

Oh Lord prepare me
to be a sanctuary,
pure and holy,
tried and true.
And with thanksgiving,
I’ll be a living
sanctuary
for you.

ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם
V’asu li mikdash v’shakhanti b’tokham

The middle part and the melody are taken from a Christian prayer that's apparently very popular at multifaith gatherings, but it works and it's pretty, especially when combined with with the relevant Hebrew. Our table did the traditional Birkat Hamazon afterwards, but most people just started to clean up. I think that's pretty much indicative of the Reconstructionist minyan; do everything, but maybe in an abbreviated form which still retains the beauty and meaning of the prayer. I think that's what I like about it. It's a nice balance.

Rosh Chodesh Kislev

If you've spent any time around religious Jews, you know that there's a whole ton of holidays around September/October and then nothing until December. It's the longest stretch in the Jewish year, and it's especially visible in Israel, where the entire country goes from Rosh-Hashanah-Yom-Kippur-Sukkot-Simchat-Torah insanity to two months without a single break. It's so bad that, here at Hebrew University, the Jeff Seidel Student Center had their "Hanukkah" event 25 days early, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

I put Hanukkah in quotation marks up there because while the event was advertised as a Hanukkah event, we never really got to the Hanukkah part. Instead, Rebbitzen Tsipora Dahan cooked up a storm and had the best meal ever at her house. I'm not kidding: homemade bread (including rolls with an onion filling!), soup, kugels, eggplant parmesan, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, sufganiyot, peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, lots of other small chocolate things - all made by Tsipora, except the soup. It was amazing, seriously the best food I've had in a really long time. I asked Tsipora afterwards if she was going to become a chef when her kids grew up, and she just laughed and said that it's a hobby.

We were supposed to do Hanukkah crafts after dinner, but we didn't finish eating until 10pm--after starting around 8:15. During dinner, however, we had the obligatory Jeff Seidel Orthodox idealism. Stacy and Tsipora brought in a musician, 12th grader Hadassah Haller from Ramat Beit Shemesh, who sang what must be the Jewish version of Christian music - not religious songs, per say, in that they weren't prayers, but songs that are focused on Hashem and religious life. One that really struck me was Chanale's "My Business":

Is the way to happiness the path to success?
Can I be satisfied if I'm something less
Than the doctor, the lawyer, they hoped I would be
So what if I'm happy, just to be me?

Each day, every hour, on me they depend
To be mother, a sister, plus a wife and a friend
I have a profession, though no PHD
Yet today I am happy just to be me!

Chorus: I don't need a license, don't need a degree
For I'm in the business, of a woman, you see
My life's full of meaning and my home's full of light
I don't need all that money to be doing all right

I don't need a mansion with riches inside
My children are diamonds, and my family's my pride
Why should I travel, I'm where I want to be
Can you find me a woman who's got more than me?

There's not much vacation, get no time to rest
My house is my office, and my kitchen's my desk
I work for Hashem, yes, the Torah's my trade
Maybe I'm overworked but I'm not underpaid

Chorus

I really don't know what to think about it. On one hand I'm all for going after what you want and not what people expect from you and I completely agree with not needing to be rich to be happy, but I have a problem with the rest of it. "I don't need a degree... I'm in the business of a woman, you see"--are you saying women don't need an education? Are you saying that the purpose of a woman's life is to take care of the house and the children? If that's what you want to do, fine, but... the business of being a woman, really? I feel like the song "Just A Housewife" from Working conveys the same thing but in a much better way. Otherwise it just feels like they're shoving the wonders of Orthodox living down your throat--which, I guess in a way, is the purpose of Jeff Seidel.

Overall, though, I had a really good time at the Rosh Chodesh event. Hadassah's voice and music was really beautiful, even if I had to take the songs themselves with a grain of salt, and I still can't get over Tsipora's cooking. You know, I could really get to like Rosh Chodesh this way.

Drag queens and swing dancing

This week was a very busy one for me at the Jerusalem Open House. Not only did I spend most of Sunday at the community center, working on the newsletter and the database with Dalit and the other interns/volunteers; I also attended two big events, the opening of the Hakafot café on Tuesday and my own event, the English Speaker’s Group swing dance night (“Swinging Queerly”), on Saturday.

While the café’s grand opening was advertised as an English-friendly event, I was disappointed to see the only English-speakers there were Ahuva and myself. This made the first hour or so rather boring, since we were isolated among a bunch of Hebrew-speakers who already knew each other. I did, however, get to consume some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (Cookies & Cream, 7NIS) and pie (apple, 10NIS). I would have just gone for the pie, but it wasn’t out at first so I didn’t know about it.

And then the drag monarchs came out—two drag kings and two drag queens, regular performers at HaKatze. I am happy to say that my videos from Open House came out much better than the ones I took at HaKatze, and now you can actually see the drag:

The event was also advertised as an open mic night, but there was no open mic about it. Once the drag monarchs (yes, I know I’m making up this phrase), the night was basically over. I don’t know how much café-related items JOH actually sold, but the drag drew a nice crowd.

Between Tuesday night and Saturday night I had my longest stretch of time away from the Open House in a long time—or maybe it just seems that way because I was there almost every other day for a week and a half prior. Saturday night, however, was our first English Speakers Group event of November, “Swinging Queerly,” in which we invited Shirley of the Tel Aviv Swing Club to teach a lesson in East Coast. It was really interesting to watch her teach because she didn’t teach it as East Coast, she taught it as six-count Lindy Hop, which actually makes a difference. I didn’t even realize before now that East Coast starts on a step-step, whereas Lindy (six-count or eight-count, whatever) starts on a rock-step. The moves also had different names; the inside-turn was a “window,” for some odd reason. I have no idea.

I spent a lot of the event running around—figuring out how to turn on the fan, finding tape so someone could tape her flip-flops to her shoes, helping Shirley, etc. I guess that’s why I lost track of time and the lesson went an hour and a half before Shirley realized people were getting tired and it was time to stop. We were supposed to have open dancing after the lesson, but that failed. People were just too tired. I think they had fun, though. They look like they were having fun:

Note that the people in the second video, Ahuva and Alexis, learned Swing at AHA, which is why, as Chelsie put it, "they look so good." Yes, I also spent a decent amount of time taking video--and stealing follows when Shirley was working with their leads (or vice versa). That's how I got to dance once we had an odd number. (Before the last person came, I was just in the line.)

And that was that. When things ended I went to get malawach for the first time with Ahuva and Alexis, and then I went home. Game over.

Shabbat in the Holy Land

I had this very idealistic idea of Shabbat is Israel before I came here--something that involved Shira Hadasha and lots of spiritual experiences. Now that I'm here, however, I'm realizing just how idealistic that was. Yes, there are a lot of Jews in Israel, which means a lot of synagogues and people celebrating Shabbat. However, you need more than a place to go for services to make Shabbat. Not any place works. It's not fulfilling to walk into an Orthodox synagogue where the ruach is in the front and you're stuck in the women's section in the back--at least, not if you're not used to that kind of thing, and these are the majority of the synagogues in Israel! You also can't walk into a synagogue that does most of the service silently, regardless of its movement affiliation, if the ruach is what makes Shabbat meaningful for you. And of course, even if you find a good minyan--Shira Hadasha, for instance, or the Reconstructionist movement's monthly minyan--this means nothing unless you have a community of friends with which to spend the holiday. Meals, conversations, board games--these are important parts of Shabbat! And I have seen glimpses of all these things in the past few months, the good bits and the bad. Honestly, after all this time, I'm not finding Israel particularly spiritually fulfilling. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough; I don't know. Maybe the spirituality of the Holy Land is confined to the Orthodox majority; I don't know. All I know is that I feel like I'm still searching for something, and I haven't found it yet.

The call

Hebrew University is geographically located in East Jerusalem, though it’s considered West Jerusalem. The French Hill is ambiguous; not considered a Jewish settlement, but not considered West Jerusalem, either. All of this geography is a prelude to a very simple point: from campus and my apartment, I can hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day (or rather, whenever I’m awake and in a place with an open window). And oddly, it’s a very comforting sound. I have no idea what the words mean, but the very sound is a comfort. Even knowing the politics, even knowing that many of the religious people who heed this call wish I wasn’t sitting where I’m sitting, in this land—their land—the sound is a comfort. It’s a reminder that this country is home to devout people of many religions, and that Jews don’t have a monopoly on religion here. It’s like a wish, like it’s saying respect us, too! A constant coming out, perhaps. A five-times-daily Pride, a reminder to everyone that we’re here, respect us, too! It’s an odd comparison, but maybe it explains things a bit.

Classes

You know how when things get busy, all you want to do when you have a spare moment is lie down and do nothing? That's been me lately. Classes started three weeks ago already, and I haven't written a thing. I've been so busy with schoolwork and dealing with idiot banks and phone companies... well, that's another story. Right now I just want to write about The Big Thing, my classes.

The first class I'm taking, of course, is Hebrew. I'm in Ramat Gimel intensive, which means we have an extra half an hour of class each day so that we can get through the entire level and enter Daled next semester. That is, of course, in theory; my teacher is adding in additional classes so we actually finish everything. Read: Instead of having class 8:15-10:15 Monday/Tuesday and 8:30-10:15 and 10:30-12:15 Wednesday, I will soon have an extra 10:30-12:15 class on (some) Mondays. Sound like Ulpan, anyone?

I'm learning how wise the Ulpan program was. We had class from 8:30 until 1:15 (I think--I can't even remember anymore!), which was a lot, but we always had a break after an hour and a half. Now we have two hours straight, and it's really hard to concentrate that long without a break. I also think that my Ulpan teachers are better than my current teachers, even though one of my current teachers is a PhD and the other one wrote our textbook. During Ulpan, our teachers couldn't rely on translating words into English to convey their meaning to us because not everyone spoke English; now it seems like it's all they do. I miss the pictures and the wild gestures and understanding the words for what they are rather than what they mean in English.

Long story short, I'm not enjoying Hebrew, nor do I really feel like I'm learning much. I don't know how we're going to get through the level, nor do I know how I'm going to learn enough to take a class in Hebrew next semester. In theory I'm working my way through Daled on my own; not in theory, I don't have time and will have to see how much cramming I can do during break / whether I can convince the teacher I can work really hard and puppy-dog my advisor into letting me take it even though technically Daled is required. Israel is supposed to be full of loopholes.

My other class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Talmud, which I don't really understand. I was supposed to be in the lower level Talmud class because I've only ever studied Talmud in high school (and that was my first trimester!), but the lower level class was full of Nativ kids who joked throughout the whole first class without the teacher saying anything. I left half-way through; I can't learn anything in an environment like that, let alone Talmud.

Now I'm in the more advanced Talmud class, Critical Readings in the Talmud: The Talmud as a Path to Tikkun. Technically I have the prerequisites--Hebrew level Gimel and a class in classical Jewish literature (Kimelman's Liturgy class), but I feel like everyone else in the class has studied some Talmud before, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of it. What's the point of Talmud study? What are we supposed to be learning? My tri-chevruta (the product of an odd number of students in the class) is working off of the original Talmud page, which means we're reading and translating the Aramaic and... not much else. We're not really questioning it. Should we be? And even if we do, of what value will our answers be, when there are no real answers to be found?

My internship class, In the Community I: Israel Case Studies - Academic Internship, is also a mixed bag. The main thing that I'm learning from the class itself is that I really don't like psychology; sociology is much more interesting to me. It's mostly a waste of time, a lot of people sharing what's going on with their internships mixed with a bit of organizational psychology from the teacher. The good thing about knowing that I have to write a paper connecting the readings to my internship is that I'm connecting things as I go along; I guess I'm learning something there, but it doesn't merit an hour and a half every week.

My internship itself, however, is wonderful. I'm doing a whole bunch of things for JOH: running the English Speakers Group, helping to write and edit articles for the newsletter, helping to put the donor database in some sort of order, and helping to catalog and order the library. All in eight hours a week. I really like it, though, because it means hanging out at JOH a lot, whether I'm there for my internship or not. It means spending time out of my American study-abroad bubble and with Israelis in an Israeli setting, not just Israelis that were brought in like, "Oh, look, kids--it's Israelis!" I really like being able to meet people and work with people by myself and not just spend time with people the university presents to us. It's not helping my Hebrew much because everyone speaks at least some English, but I get to overhear some stuff in Hebrew, and there's more to a culture than just the language. I'm also beginning to get used to things here, and I'm starting to see how I'm going to get some degree of culture shock when I go back to the States in January.

By far, my favorite class this semester is one that got added on a whim: Nafez Nazzal's The Palestinians: Modern History and Society. Professor Nazzal's a wonderful lecturer. Everything he says is imbued with passion because he's speaking about his people and things that he can see but can't fix. Class is filled with tangents, stories of his life, but every tangent is relevent because his story is the story of the Palestinians. He knows leaders on both sides, has been threatened by leaders on both sides, teaches Palestinian students and Jewish students, gains perspectives from those he teaches... and tries his best to open everyone's eyes. Another student and I are recording his lectures because his wisdom is too important not to be recorded. It's amazing, and I can't believe I almost didn't take it. I know that I'll listen to the recordings again later, and share them with friends if I can, legally. Can I? I feel like everything Professor Nazzal is teaching us is too important not to spread.

Outside of this, I have a bunch of Jewish learning classes. I'm still doing Jeff Seidel, though I'm not really enjoying it and would definitely drop it if it wasn't my only way to earn money in Israel. My old chevruta partner gave birth over Sukkot break, and I don't know yet what to think about my new partner. My roommate Estie has also convinced me to go to the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash on Monday nights, which is where my tri-chevruta is going to do our Talmud homework. Wednesdays are the Masorti learning community (read: beit midrash, just not called that for who knows what reason) where Woty and I are learning bits of queer Talmud--see my original questions about Talmud study above.

With all of this, I feel like I have very little time. I'm beginning to miss Sundays, as Shabbat begins earlier than ever right now and my pre-Shabbat Fridays consist of sleeping in, cleaning the apartment, and going downtown to Ahuva's, where I've spent four out of the past six Shabbatot. I really need to learn to walk the 3.3 miles from the Kfar to Emek Refaim, or the 2.67 to Ahuva's. Those are the main places where Cool Shabbat Stuff happens...