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.