Women of the Wall - Rosh Chodesh Adar

As I walked down to the Kotel from the Jewish Quarter this morning, the first thing I noticed was the large amount of men davening on the men's side--so much larger than the group there last time (see my post). There were more women, too, but what I noticed was the men--I suppose I saw them as more of a threat, and there were so many more of them. I know it's probably because it wasn't raining cats and dogs this time, unlike in December, but as I walked down the steps I got a bit nervous. More people means more chance of trouble, and there were a large number of police cars in the parking lot, too.

I got there early, so I went up to the Kotel for a little alone time and spontaneous prayer, something I can only seem to do at the Kotel. When I got back--the Women of the Wall meet just outside the women's section--I found some familiar faces, and it wasn't long until davening started.

I was surprised by how quiet it was at first. For all the men in the men's section, most of them ignored us, and in the beginning there was only one guy yelling "gevalt" at us. It was easy to hear Nofrat Frenkel, who was leading the davening--unlike last time, when we had to strain to hear the leader. Eventually more people started yelling at us, but it was the women who made more of a fuss at us, pointing and yelling. There were plenty of soldiers and police officers guarding us, though; they stood between us and the women, though I think I saw a bit of shoving at one point. I was in the back, up against the wall that marks the end of the women's section. I figured it would give me a bit of emotional support if necessary, since getting two hours of sleep doesn't so much make for stability. Overall, though, I thought it was pretty much okay. It wasn't until Hallel that we had to strain to hear Nofrat, when other men joined in the "gevalt" and the women were screaming. By that point our original gevalter was reciting Hallel at us--though I don't understand what the point of that was. Yes, we know. We were just reciting that, thank you very much.

As we left the Kotel plaza for Robinson's Arch, a few men joined our group, including Noam and Mr. Dubin. This made me think a little bit; I've told people a few times that (in high school, at least) I felt that one of the worst parts of being a woman was not being able to help make a minyan in circumstances that required adherence to Orthodox law. How must these men feel, who want to support Women of the Wall but can't because of their gender? Is it similar to the way I feel when I can't help make a minyan? Perhaps I'll ask next time I see Mr. Dubin.

The rest of the service went without a hitch--we walked over to Robinson's Arch singing Mishe Nichnas Adar, but no one followed us over. We read the Torah with no screaming people and no rain to disrupt us. There was a little bit of dancing at the end of the Musaf amidah, but not so much. It was just calm, really, a big contrast to the davening at the Kotel itself. Out of sight, out of mind?

It's hard to come up with concluding thoughts right now, as I am writing this before going back to sleep--and if two hours isn't enough for emotional stability, it sure isn't enough for thinking. Thinking back to December, though, when most of the men on the men's side were screaming at us, it's amazing how many people ignored us. It's even more amazing to me that the women were the ones who gave us the hardest time; I understand, sorta, that there's a problem with kol isha for the men, but what's the problem with the women? Do they feel like we're reflecting badly on womenkind? If anything, I think they're the ones doing that. All we want to do is pray.

I'm grateful for the soldiers and police officers who came to protect us. I'm glad that no one got arrested. I'm glad that my initial fears were largely unfounded--though, perhaps I didn't get the full experience standing in the back. Those in the front may have a different story.

British Airways

I'm back in my dorm room in Jerusalem after a month in the States, and I would like to write about something I should have written about a month ago: my experiences with British Airways.

My flight to the States coincided with the big snowstorm in the UK, which means my original Friday flight was cancelled. After an hour on hold, I got my flight rescheduled for Monday and settled in for a Shabbat at Ahuva's--which was fine until Friday night, when my second flight got cancelled. Another hour on hold and I was booked for Tuesday.

When I got back to the Kfar on Saturday night, I learned that my roommate Estie, who was also flying British Airways, was still going out in the morning. At this point I just wanted to get home and pet the cats, so I listened to another hour of hold music before finally talking to a representative. I explained my situation, that my flight had been cancelled twice and that my roommate was flying out in the morning, asked if there was any way I could be put on her flight. After a few more minutes of hold music, she came back saying I was good to go. Why they didn't put me on that flight to begin with I'll never know, but it was that simple. She even stayed on the line a while longer so Estie and I could ask various questions about baggage allowances and special meals, juggling both of our questions and both of our accounts without ever sounding annoyed. And this after multiple days of call after call of frustrated, hour-on-hold passengers!

Since then I've had a few less pleasant experiences with British Airways, namely another call during the massive snowstorm in DC to try and reschedule my flight which was met with one very rude customer service representative. Also, whereas this entry a month ago would have mentioned the surprisingly edible food provided by British Airways--evidenced by both August flights and the January ones--maybe they're making budget cuts or something, since the food was nearly inedible for my flights back to Israel. However, I have to hand it to them; they did take off during a time when the DC metro was even shut down, and I even had a row to myself for my first flight--totally coincidental, but it made up for Mr. Customer Service Guy.

I've flown El Al before, during my first trip to Israel with AHA. They're much more expensive and, honestly, I don't think they have anything over British Airways to make it worth the cost. And with my travel luck, being able to say anything good about an airline is a miracle. I don't expect to travel much in the future, but if I do I know which airline I'll pick (assuming they stay on the cheap side of the price range, of course).

Besides--who could resist those accents and the pink and blue pillows they put on the seats?

The value of money

I owe this blog a long entry about the ending of the semester, but that entry is still to come. Right now, I would like to talk about the concept of money.

I have been spending money on food, transportation, and other daily necessities for five months now, all in shekels. As I travel around Boston now, I'm really not doing anything I haven't done before. Yet, somehow, it feels different. While I balked at a $2 bottle of water at the airport, once I converted it into shekels I realized that I'd bought a $2 (8NIS) bottle of water in Israel before, quite willingly, if not an experience I repeated again once I realized how much I'd spent. $1.80 in subway fare sounded high when I looked at how much I'd be traveling until I realized that it's not that different from Egged's $1.25 (5.9NIS) fare for those who can't pass as a youth. $4 on pizza and $8 on lo mein also seem extreme when I'm looking at buying all my meals, until I remember those $7 (26NIS) calzones I splurged on a few times. Similarly, the $3.25 (12NIS) falafels I got in Israel felt really cheap there, but really aren't when compared to that pizza.

I always knew that I don't really have any real concept of the shekel. I've been judging my purchases based on whether the number seems large, knowing that you really can't get anything for 1NIS. But it took me until this trip home to realize that I've been thinking about it in the same way I think of dining points at Brandeis: I have a fixed number of them, and as long as I don't go over I'm good. Shekels don't look like dollars, and it's not like I can earn any anyway. But in the States, where I'm used to money as something that's earned and spent and saved, it's a completely different matter. The money guilt that has evaded me in Israel comes flooding back.

I have not yet figured out the solution to this problem, or what it is I need to solve here. The lack of money guilt is very nice, though being left to spend whatever I please is probably not a good idea. Perhaps leaving my money in dollars in a US bank will solve this one.

How not to plan a trip

* Plan the entire trip between midnight and 2:30am the night before you leave.

* Stay up until 2:30am when you have to get up at 9:30am. Repeat the next night, substituting "2am" and "7:30am." Survive the trip with the help of caffeine pills. Be really crabby because of it. Travel with another person who's doing the exact same thing.

* Plan to meet someone and then have one digit wrong in her phone number.

* Plan your entire trip around websites about gay Tel Aviv, and then find out that there's nothing to see or do until night.

* Fail to realize that there are two shuks in Tel Aviv, and then go to the one that's mostly food and not random fun stuff.

* Fail to look up each and every relevant bus route.

Read: The one big important lesson I learned from my trip to Tel Aviv and Haifa with Ahuva is that I'm really not cut out to be a traveller. Going to places I'm unfamiliar with is too stressful.

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.