Birthday party

I turned 21 last Sunday, and to celebrate a bunch of my friends went bowling last night at Lev Talpiot Mall, one of the two alleys in all of Jerusalem. Most people actually didn't make it; it was a miserable night, rainy with lots of puddles to soak your feet through your shoes, and Lev Talpiot Mall is far away from just about everything. It still ended up being a lot of fun, though.

The original idea was pretty simple: do some bowling, eat some cake, go home. Little did I know that if you want to go bowling in Israel, you have to make a reservation or wait, nor did I realize that we wouldn't be able to bring food into the bowling alley--cue Alexis, already on her way to the bowling alley, heading back home to put a cake in the fridge. Meanwhile, Ahuva, her friend Rosanne, and I waited what we were told was going to be an hour and a half for a lane. We ate some really expensive fries and wandered around the arcade for a bit. We discovered that Ahuva's still really good at basketball, and only in Israel is whac-a-mole really whac-a-wolf which looks a lot like whac-a-cat. Also only in Israel: being assigned a bowling lane next to a Haredi family.

The hour and a half waiting period thing was a lie; we really only had to wait half an hour, which was nice except for the fact that Alexis hadn't made it. We didn't realize how long it would take her to get there, so we bought a four-player game and ended up taking turns playing for Alexis. (Bowling is expensive in Israel; 28 NIS per person per game!) "Alexis" almost won, too--Ahuva and I tended to bowl better for "Alexis" than we did for ourselves, though Rosanne was really good all the time. I also learned the importance of having a ball that a) isn't too heavy and b) your fingers fit into; a mysterious new ball showed up at our lane halfway though, and I stopped throwing balls into the gutter. (My hand stopped hurting, too.)

Alexis and LynleyShimat showed up later, after our insanely priced game of bowling and a game of air hockey for Ahuva and Rosanne. I got to whac-a-wolf/cat (followed by Ahuva whacing-a-wolf/cat), Ahuva and Lynley played more basketball, and Lynley and I played this really messed up bowling arcade game where throwing the ball in the middle always caused a split and throwing into the side didn't necessarily result in a gutter ball. Afterwards we sat and ate some popcorn and redeemed our tickets for a couple of spinning tops, which were way too amusing for our own good. A couple of the people who worked at the bowling alley looked at us like we were crazy; then again, I think we've mostly come to expect as much. (Note: you have to turn your volume all the way up and/or plug in speakers to hear the sound on these videos.)

After we left the bowling alley, we wandered into a massive SuperSol which was pretty much a mix between a grocery store and a Target. Seriously; there were a whole two aisles of clothing, and another few of kitchen appliances and electronics! It was sort of amazing, especially when I found marshmallow fluff and a version of Pocahontas that I remember from when I was little dubbed in Hebrew (10NIS!). I knew there was a reason I bought a region-free DVD player last year.

After spending a while in the grocery store (which also, btw, featured a whole aisle worth of ice cream--both sides of the aisle), the five of us squished into a cab and went to Alexis's house for cake and a very late (11pm) dinner. Alexis made fried mushrooms and pasta with pesto sauce, mushrooms, and onions, which was wonderful (especially the mushrooms!). This was followed by a really interesting non-chocolate mousse cake, of which I managed to drop my piece and catch it in mid-air, which was really funny and amazing. There were actually a lot of funny and amazing stories throughout the night, which is what you get when you start Ahuva talking on AHA. Also funny and amazing: Ahuva on birthday candles.

Before we knew it, it was 1:05 AM--way past the time that the buses stopped. I figured it was time to go when I started getting silly and making wing motions with my arms at the mention of something I don't even remember, probably birds of some sort. Almost definitely birds of some sort. Because it was raining we all caught a cab back, first to King David for Ahuva and Rosanne, then to the Kfar for Lynley and me. The cab fare was actually also sort of amazing; for the entire trip from Talpiot to French Hill it only cost me 22NIS when it cost 40NIS from the Old City a few weeks ago. Granted, there were four of us in the car for the first half of the trip and then two for the second, but it was still a really nice price. It made me sorta happy, especially after all the money I spent on the night overall. I haven't calculated how much I spent, and I don't think I will; it was a large amount, but I'm okay with it because I had a fabulous time. I have some very good friends here in Israel.

Bigotry in Jerusalem

Lately, I've been feeling really sick of this city. I've already mentioned the anti-Arab bigotry that I saw on Rosh Hashanah and around Yom Kippur and at the soccer game, but I feel like I've been experiencing it a lot more recently--and not just bigotry against Arabs, but against anyone who's not Orthodox.

First, there was Masa's Security Issues Shabbaton on the last weekend of November. The weekend began with a Friday tour of the security barrier, run by the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem. We heard stories about families and villages cut arbitrarily in half and people who can't get past the checkpoints to receive medical treatment, and the absurdity of the situation hit me. I don't know much about the effects of the barrier--I am not an Israeli resident, but a representative from Stand With Us emphasized the effectiveness of the thing in stopping terrorist attacks--but couldn't they build the barrier around said villages, rather than straight through it? What security does splitting up families and communities provide?

And then there's the issue of Sheik Jarrah, where a Palestinian family was evicted from their home to be replaced by Jews (this over and above the houses that are being demolished), and the people who protest it keep getting arrested! Yaron, the youth coordinator of JOH, was one of those who got arrested the two weeks ago; he told us the story on Sunday, at which point he told me to be careful of what I do because they were deporting the non-Israelis who were arrested. (Whether that actually happened or not I don't know.) It's all really frustrating because really, there's nothing I can do. While others I know do go to said protests, I don't feel like I can ignore Yaron's warning--and even if I did go, what good would it do? Are these protests really doing anything?

Switch topics of a second to Orhodoxy in this city. I already posted about the protest I went to on the same weekend of the MASA thing. That occurred in the middle of a personal struggle of mine, in which I came out to my chevruta partner at JSSC and she freaked out. The following Sunday, the director of the women's learning program nearly kicked me out, telling me to "think seriously" about whether or not I wanted to be in the program, and lectured me about being a non-Orthodox convert and how she wishes the other movements of Judaism wouldn't call themselves Judaism because "Judaism has 613 commandments" and the other movements "are really different religions." The next week, someone else called me a "bad Ashkenazi" when I told her that my family's tradition is to follow the Sephardic rules for Pesach--because obviously, where my family's originally from matters much more than the customs of my family now. The same person compared my LGBT Jewish community at home to Sodom and Gomorrah, and none of the other (also Orthodox) people stood up for me. The head of the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash program "reserve[s] the right to talk to [me]" when I told him about what happened at JSSC and why--although he has since requested a copy of Rabbi Steve Greenberg's book.

And then there's Women of the Wall; the arrest of Nofrat Frankel which I have mentioned multiple times in this blog, and the abuse that we suffered last Friday. I am reminded of this every time I ride the 4א through Ge'ula and see the streets full of men who look exactly like those who were yelling at the Women of the Wall and women who look exactly like those who have insulted me for my identity. And I think, how can one live in this city. How can one take insults to oneself, and then look up and see all the other, much bigger bigotry going on around her? And when I mentioned it to one of our madrichim, his only response was, "What bigotry?" What bigotry, indeed. Have you lived here so long that you can no longer see it?

I know that America is not innocent of racism, but I still look forward to my upcoming month there. I need a breath of fresh air, or at least air filled with problems that I'm used to.

Women of the Wall

This morning I got up really early to head down to the Kotel for Women of the Wall’s monthly Rosh Chodesh minyan. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have made it: it was rainy and windy enough that my umbrella kept turning inside out; the friend who was supposed to go with me slept in; I wasn’t exactly awake at 5:50am when I had to leave the apartment; and I don’t really go out of my way for feminism in the first place. (Blame it on reading books and articles from the 1970s.) However, last month’s arrest of Nofrat Frankel made me determined to attend, if only to support a fellow queer Jew who wanted nothing more than to daven at the holiest Jewish place in the world. Besides, I haven’t been to shacharit for a while, and I miss singing Hallel.

As I mentioned, the weather was miserable, but there was still a nice group of us huddled together under umbrellas. Someone behind me commented that if they wanted to break up the Women of the Wall by arresting one of their members, they failed and did the opposite; I’m inclined to agree, since someone else said that this was the worst weather she could remember meeting in.

For the first few prayers, everything was fine. But by the time we got to Psalm 150, men were gathering next to the mechitza and behind the women’s section shouting something at us—maybe “ki va,” maybe “toeva,” maybe “give up.” Of these “toeva” makes the most sense, except that… it doesn’t. What were we doing wrong? We were on the women’s side of the wall. We were in the back, so we weren’t interfering with religious women who wanted to go up to the wall. We didn’t do any parts of the service which require a minyan, even though there were definitely at least a minyan of us there who count women. I saw very few women wearing tallitot, at least outside of their jackets (I didn’t even bring mine, since I was warned that being an American meant I could get deported if I made trouble) and while this is something Orthodoxy forbids, it isn’t listed as a toeva (abomination) in the Bible. Also, while one woman came up to us and started screaming, everyone else was a boy or a full-grown man standing on the periphery. They didn’t have to look at us. They didn’t even have to listen to us; we weren’t being very loud, and they certainly could have overpowered us with their own prayers rather than shouting at us. Of course, their shouting forced us to raise our volume; we spent the rest of the service struggling to hear where we were in the service, and when one of us picked it up we had to sing loudly to signal others of our place.

After we finished the Amidah, we headed—slowly, so as not to slip on the wet Jerusalem stones and drop the Torah—to Robinson’s Arch, the area designated for women and mixed groups to read from the Torah. The men followed us, still screaming, held back by the police. To drown out the screaming, we sang—Al HaNisim, Banu Choshech, Ahavah Raba, Esa Enai—songs of strength and hope. Because it was raining we were told we could read the Torah in a covered space near the Arch, but then that permission got revoked. “It’s an archeological site,” we were told, “tourists are going to be coming through.” (Even though the site didn’t open until 9am, and it wasn’t even 8:30 at this point.) We ended up going to the actual Arch, huddled once again under our umbrellas, where Nofrat Frankel chanted the Torah portion out of a chumash rather than risk the Torah getting wet. We, of course, did not get this privilege; I left the service soaked through multiple layers, and too cold and wet to walk to the bus stop. I paid 40NIS to take a taxi home, but at that point I didn’t care.

I’ve read people wonder why the Women of the Wall can’t be satisfied with praying at Robinson’s Arch in the first place, since it is, after all, still part of the Wall. But from what I saw this morning, I have to wonder how anyone can pray there. There’s just one long path leading up to the wall, no space to really gather. It is, after all, an archeological site and not a prayer site (but somehow still acceptable for us to use, and whereas the space indoors is not?) Imagine praying in a synagogue the width of your bathroom; that’s about the width of the space at the Arch. And they wonder why we can’t be content to pray there!

You may notice that I’ve been using the word “we” a lot in this entry. This is natural for an entry about an event I attended, but I feel like it’s more than that. As I get more and more fed up with the Orthodoxy of this city (more about that to come), I’ve come to identify with this group of women a little bit. All they want is to pray, once a month, at a holy site where some people pray every day. They’re not there to be disruptive; they just want to be themselves and practice their religion in a way that’s meaningful to them. And if this minyan is a way to carve out a little space each month to do that, and in the process perhaps show those bigots that there are other people in this world who are entitled to pray at the Kotel too, all the more power to them. They’re not meeting next month—nor will I be here—but come February, I’m definitely going again.

If anyone is interested, the New York Times ran an article about this same minyan. I'm under the rainbow umbrella, and no it isn't mine.

Added 11 March 2010 - Youtube now has two videos from the December meeting of Women of the Wall. The first gives the overall experience (minus the bulk of the service where we were being screamed at); the second shows the Haredi reaction to our davening.