Gonna Set The Night On Fire

I have a friend who has more energy than the Energizer Bunny.  Some years ago, perhaps four years after her aliyah, when I was still living in Baltimore, I spoke to her on a Sunday.

"Are you feeling okay?" I asked.  "You don't sound like yourself."

"I'm so tired, " she said.

"Tired?  I've never heard you describe yourself that way.  Why are you so tired?"

"Well, I was up until 3 AM, waiting for my kids to come home." she said, matter-of-factly.

I was puzzled.  "Why in the world were your kids out so late??"

"They were out till all hours with their friends, building bonfires. You know, Lag b'Omer...."

I slapped my forehead with the heel of my palm.  If she hadn't told me, Lag b'Omer would have come and gone without me really noticing.  And that's when it hit me.  Jewish life in Israel really IS richer.

The very first Lag B'Omer fire my eyes set upon in Israel, one which I smelled before I saw.  Bigger ones came later in the evening, but this was my very first.

This year, my first Lag b'Omer in Israel, began right after Shabbat ended.  There was an open-air Shlomo Katz/Chaim David concert in the basketball court next to where our shul davens.  I walked around with a huge smile on my face, making small talk, astonished at how many people we already know in our new community, and how many of them have ties to Baltimore.

Some of our neighbors dancing to the music.

After the concert, we drove around Ma'ale Adumim to see how the bonfires were going in other parts of the city.  There were fields and fields with 4, 6, 8 or 10 fires, each a few meters from one another.  We must have seen 60 or 70 individual fires on a quick drive through the city.

If only my camera was as good as my eyes.

In the weeks before Lag b'Omer, we saw kids (mostly boys.... okay, exclusively boys, but I'm sure there were some girls involved too) walking around  with, ahem... borrowed grocery carts filled with sticks and broken wooden furniture and anything else that might burn.

A modest haul.

There were all kinds of fires, from ones that could really be called bonfires...

To ones that are more accurately described as campfires, like this one, obviously built by a boy scout:

Notice the stones surrounding the fire to help contain it.

This surprised me.  People dragged couches, plastic chairs, tables and mattresses to sit by the fire. I'm gonna guess it was mostly the adults who furnished the bonfires.

Sorry it's so dark, but can you find the broken down couch and the plastic chairs in the bottom of the photo?

...and even the ubiquitous mangal, which I think is being used here to barbecue potato slices.  Yum.

I did end the evening with a scratchy throat from the smoke, but there was joy in my heart from so many groups of Jews, gathered together to celebrate with fire, to match the fire in their souls.

And in the morning, cleanup begins.

Living Without God in 1971

I like to write about all the big events in our lives in Israel, especially how we spend our first chagim and other special days here.  But there is something more, something constantly in process deep within me.  A few days ago, it arose once again.

I was at a writers' conference.  A writers' conference for women.  A writers' conference for English-speaking, religious women in Jerusalem.

The conference was a satisfying mix of networking with publishers and published writers, industry information and writing inspiration with a spiritual component.  And, in one of the writing exercises, a memory surfaced.

I was a preteen.  We were living in New York, in a suburban neighborhood where every family owned a more-or-less identical private home.  My parents were visiting with neighbors down the street.  I was home alone, or perhaps I was the only sibling still awake.  While watching TV, a commercial for a denture cleaner caught my attention.  I thought about how old people use denture cleaner.  Which lead me to thoughts about aging.  Which led me to thoughts about death.  Before long, I was in a state of sheer terror, because, after death, I couldn't see anything else.

At that age (and for more than a decade after), I lived in a godless universe.  I had no way to express what was, I realize now, an early spiritual crisis.   On the yellow wall phone, the one with the long spiral cord, hanging in the hallway outside the den, barely coherent and choked with tears, I dialed our neighbors and begged my parents to come home.

Life ends.  That realization terrified me, because, in 1971, I was living utterly without God.

Forty years later, I am blessed with a spiritual life beyond my greatest aspirations, one that grows deeper each year.  Once I located my own soul (not so easy when one lives in a godless universe), the journey began.  And that journey ultimately led me to Israel.

I am often struck, when friends and new acquaintances tell their stories of how they came to live in Israel, about how we are all guided here.  It's as if God handpicks us, one at a time, and sets us on a path toward this place.  It has long seemed to me that a significant percentage of olim are either converts or, like me, baalei teshuva.  It's as if, having lived lives without God at all, or without the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, making aliyah is simply a  natural extension of our spiritual journeys.

It isn't always easy to live here.  In fact, it's often difficult to live here, at least at this stage of Jewish history.  We have many enemies, some from without and, sadly, many from within.  But there is an undeniable richness to life here, access to spiritual growth, access to one's own soul, and to God, that can exist nowhere else in the universe.  God lives in Israel.  And, thankfully, so do I.

You turned my mourning into dancing (Psalms 30:12)

In the emotional roller coaster that is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day to our fallen soldiers and victims of terror, followed immediately by Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, there are many tears.  

Last night, we attended the filming of Tuesday Night Live's Yom HaZikaron shows.  Grown men wiped away tears as we watched videos which told the stories of Mikey Levine, a passionate, driven lone soldier who was killed in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and Avraham Dovid, one of eight boys and young men who were murdered in the Mercaz HaRav massacre in 2008 as they sat and studied Torah.

It is a great and weighty privilege to live in this county in which our Memorial Day means so much more than sale prices on mattresses and radial tires.

I grew up with the 4th of July of course, but learning about Yom HaAtzmaut was simply not part of the curriculum when I was becoming religious.  I first heard the words Yom HaAtzmaut 20 years ago, from a friend who told me about a Yom HaAtzmaut program at her childrens' school.  Ironically, that same school, the one where we sent our children when we still lived in Baltimore, just announced that it's closing its doors at the end of this school year.

So Yeshivat Rambam is closing its doors next month, and I, who first heard about Yom HaAtzmaut in the context of a Yeshivat Rambam celebration, am living in Israel and celebrating the real deal here.

The irony is not lost on me.

Each time our Shabbat table includes seminary students, here for the year studying Torah, we end up talking about their future plans.  When they sit at my table in Israel and say, "I'm going home in X number of months," it makes me cringe, because they still see their homes in someone else's country, even after having the gift of studying and living in Israel for the past academic year.

Some people promote aliyah by talking about the privilege of living in Israel, of being part of the greatest experiment in Jewish history in 2000 years.  There's no doubt that's true.

But there's also the shrinking of the American Jewish community.  In some cases, it's not just shrinking, it's imploding.  Aliyah isn't just for idealists any more.  It's for realists whose eyes are open and who see what's coming around the bend.

I am truly, unspeakably grateful to be a citizen of Israel.

Tonight, in the early hours of Yom HaAtzmaut, I sat in a huge park in our community, eagerly anticipating the celebratory fireworks.

There were 15,000 people at the festival, live music, vendors selling all kinds of glow-in-the-dark chachkes and candies.

Sitting there, it was hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that this precious, special, now 63 year-old country is threatened.  It all felt so festive, so joyful, so normal.  If anything in Israel can be said to be normal.

All around the country are signs of national pride.  

So many buildings decorated with flags.

Flags fly in roundabouts in Jerusalem.

Flags fly outside the grocery store.

Even the meat counter inside the grocery store displays its patriotism.

And at night, there are the lights that celebrate 63 years of a Jewish country.

It's irrational, how much I love this country.

Happy 63rd Birthday to Israel and all the holy Jews who share this country with my family.

Ten months later, I still can't believe I get to live here.

Seeing With Affectionate Eyes

Over Pesach, I read a couple of novels for pleasure.  One of them was Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons, The novel is about a group of lifelong friends and how they cope with aging and loss.  But more to the point, the book is set in Charleston, SC.

I'm pretty sure I've been in Charleston, SC at least once in my life, but it left nary an impression on me. For Anne Rivers Siddons, however, Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry is as vivid as a character in the novel.

Generally, I skim quickly over descriptions of scenery in books, jumping to dialog or drama for much the same reason that I prefer lyrics to music alone.  I am exceedingly verbally wired.  I didn't read many of the scenic passages in this book either, but it did occur to me that the author must love that part of the world quite a lot to write about it in such detail.  She sees the South Carolina Lowcountry with affectionate eyes and, as a result, she notices its details - its smells, its sounds, its color.

And that inspired me to notice more of the details in the place I love.  Even though I don't yet feel wholly at home here in Israel, there are so many things I love and, inspired by the novel, I tried to remember to notice them.

In grocery stores all over Israel, the aisles of chametz, foods that we don't eat on Pesach, are covered up.  I know this isn't the prettiest photo, but look below for a detailed image of the graphic.

It says, "Chag Aviv Sameach" in Hebrew.  Even the plastic sheeting in the grocery stores in Israel wishes the Jewish People a happy Passover - a happy springtime holiday.

Today, we drove to the Dead Sea on Route 90. We had the Dead Sea to our left and this amazing vista to our right.  If you look closely at about 9:00, you'll see what I think is an opening to one of the many caves in the the area, not far from Kumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  This scenery is 30 minutes from our home and  I can go see it whenever I want.

This was a tiny little hop-plop snack bar on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, selling cold drinks and not much else.  I loved it so much, I wanted to buy something there, just so it would remain in business.

As we sat at the shaded tables eating lunch, I glanced over and saw this tree.  I have no idea  what kind it is, but I love it nonetheless because it grows in Israel.

I saw many other things through affectionate eyes today - like floating on my back in the Dead Sea and looking up at this view:

And the Dead Sea mud hole that was, literally, an unadorned hole in the ground. I didn't get in because I wasn't sure I would have been able to get out, but I did see lots of these mud people.  My mud people.

I've loved these last few days of seeing Israel with affectionate eyes.

May I always be privileged to remember to look.

Ascending Har HaBayit

A few weeks ago, an old friend sent us an email inviting us to tour Har HaBayit (The Temple Mount) with her family on the first day of Chol HaMoed (the middle days of the Pesach holiday).  Immediately, I felt conflicted.  I knew that ascending Har HaBayit is considered controversial, especially for women.  Har HaBayit is the mountaintop where the First and Second Temples stood and where the Third Holy Temple will be rebuilt very soon, Gd-willing.  The holiness of the site is so extreme, so much more so than the Kotel (Western Wall), that many say we are not spiritually prepared to ascend in these days.

Holiness, or the prospect of being close to such holiness, invokes a feeling of awe.  I wanted to go and was afraid to go in equal measure.  So I asked my rabbi for a ruling according to Jewish law.

He was very encouraging and told us exactly how to prepare.  Ascending the Temple Mount requires immersion in a mikvah and one must wear non-leather shoes.  My friend had arranged for a knowledgeable tour guide to lead us, both to explain what we were seeing and also to keep us on the permitted path, since Jews in today's time may not walk too close to the exact place where the Temples stood.

In the end, we decided to go.  We met near the entrance to the Mughrabi Gate, right off the Kotel Plaza. We were a group of about 15 religious Jews.

At the Mughrabi Gate, throngs of non-Jewish tourists were ushered through as quickly as if they were entering a shopping mall.  A brief pass through a metal detector and off they went.  We, obviously religious Jews, were required to present ID and to wait over half an hour for clearance.  Once we were cleared to enter, we were followed the entire time by a handful of Israeli police officers who kept urging us to move along.

I realize that they are charged with keeping peace, and that, as religious Jews, we might "make trouble", but the fact that non-Jews are assumed to be mere tourists, permitted to walk all over the Temple Mount without escorts while religious Jews are suspected of coming for incendiary purposes is, minimally, hurtful.

Being singled out for an intensive security check, being made to wait while hordes of non-Jews were passed through in moments and being watched and urged along by 3 or 4 eagle-eyed Israeli police were the first of several surprises of the morning.

What were my impressions, as a first-timer?   The mountain top is huge, with many open plaza areas.

There are dozens of Muslim buildings, large and small, up there.

The whole place was filled with Arabs, for whom the Temple Mount, among other things, seems to serve as something of a National Park, with lots of lovely places to have a picnic.

Notice the Arab women enjoying their picnic behind the trees.

Didn't get a photo, but about halfway into our tour, we passed what seemed to be a school with dozens of Arab boys outside at recess, playing soccer, making a lot of noise.  We were walking, quietly and respectfully around the perimeter, being followed like hawks, lest we move our lips in prayer at the holiest Jewish site in the universe, while Arabs were everywhere, eating lunch and playing soccer and non-Jewish tourists were roaming around without a hint of reverence.

One of many non-Jewish groups with whom we shared HarHaBayit.

Deeply, deeply ironic.

That contrast sparked strong feelings among the people in our group.  Why don't more religious Jews come up here?  Why have we ceded the holiest ground in the universe to Arabs, Christians and secular tourists?

While walking around, careful not to move my lips, I spoke to Gd in my head and heart.  I'm sure the others in our group did as well.

Finally, we were near the most dramatic place of all, The Dome of the Rock, built by Muslims in the 7th Century, on the very place where the Temple stood.  It makes me shake with awe to think of how close we were.

We couldn't get any closer.  There is so much more holiness here than anywhere else in the world.  Perhaps that's why this veiled Arab woman chose this exact spot to sit and beg for charity.

At this spot, the tour guide reminded us that, as Jews who ascended Har HaBayit, we were praying with our feet.  He encouraged us to come back and to bring others with us.

As we exited, though an ordinary door into the Arab shuk, the men in our tour group spontaneously burst into song and dance, a prayer for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.

And that's when I started to cry.

Erev Pesach Photo Blog

An early sign of Pesach (or any Jewish holiday in Israel, actually) is that the Coke bottles and potato chip bags start offering holiday wishes to the Jewish people.  Look to the left of the colorful Coke bottle.  It says, "Chag Sameach" (Happy Holiday) in Hebrew.

Stacks and stacks of Kosher for Passover Coke, all bearing the Chag Sameach greeting.

The onions in Israel are often sold with, ahem, a different level of attention to dirt removal.  It takes some getting used to, but I find it earthy and more real than overly sanitized produce in Styrofoam, covered in plastic.  What does this have to do with Pesach?  Well, I cook with a lot of onion on Pesach :-)  

  

Walking around the Shuk the day before the Seder, we found lots of men working hard to help Jews sell their chametz before the holiday begins. 

Other opportunities to sell one's chametz included this "Lucy booth" at the Malcha Mall, 
right in front of a grocery store.

In Baltimore, burning the last of our chametz was a major community event a few miles from home.  Here, it was a much more modest affair.  We walked across the street, put our bag of stale bread, crackers and cereal on the pile, said the appropriate prayer in Hebrew and English and walked back across the street for lunch, all in under 10 minutes.

Notice the giant pot next to the yeshiva guy with the red glove and the tongs.  The pot is almost as tall as a person, filled with boiling water.  All day long, neighbors line up at the ha'agala station where people can bring their utensils, pots,oven racks and other metal objects to immerse in boiling water to make them kosher for Passover use.  This is a free service provided all over Israel.  Just one more way Jewish life is easier to live in this country. 

Finally, my official Israeli driver's license arrived in the mail this week.  Now I'm 2/3 of the way to the Israeli Citizenship Trifecta.  All I need is an Israeli passport, for which I become eligible after we've been living here a full year.  No road test to get a passport.  Just one more reason to rejoice on Pesach.

!חג כשר ושמח לכל היהודים בכל מקום

A happy and kosher Passover to all Jews everywhere!

Israel Standard Time

Decades ago, my first job out of graduate school was at an Historically Black University. Among certain members of the staff, there was a concerted effort to teach me - the new, young, white, Jewish colleague, about their culture.  One of the expressions I learned that year was [WARNING: racially sensitive comment follows] "CP Time" which Urban Dictionary defines as, "The usually correct stereotype that African-Americans are incapable of punctuality, and are chronically tardy in both arriving at and beginning events and functions."


I think of that expression now and then because it reminds me of the similar expression "Jewish Standard Time" which seems to operate in very much the same way.


Then there's something about time in Israel whose name I do not know but under whose influence I live on a daily basis.


I experience time in Israel differently than I did before.  In some senses, time passes much more quickly here. We just had our nine month aliyahversary and I can't believe we've already been here that long.  Perhaps a better example is a conversation I had with a neighbor who was trying to explain to me why she hadn't gotten around to calling me about a shul issue.  She said, "Shabbat ends and I intend to do something about it, but then I blink and it's Friday again."


My life revolved around Shabbat in America too, but it's different here.


Of course, the classic example of Israel Standard Time is "acharei hachagim" (literally, after the holidays) which is an absolutely legitimate excuse for postponing anything due in the general proximity of a major Jewish holiday.


But there's another sense of Israel Standard Time that comes from being more in tune with the Divine.  We might fairly call it God Standard Time.  It's the sense, palpable here in Israel, that things move, not according to our schedule, but according to some Divine Plan.  After living here awhile, one becomes adept at foregoing any solid expectations about when things will happen.  It's humbling, in a way, to be constantly reminded that the world runs on a timetable entirely separate from the one in my calendar. 


I had a hint about this before I came to live in Israel full-time.  On a few trips here, I needed to conduct a handful of business meetings.  Being the conscientious American administrator that I was, I tried to set appointments weeks in advance. Invariably, my Israeli counterparts would say, "Call me when you're here and we'll arrange something."  I thought it was an odd way of doing business, but now I see that it's more accurate to say that it's an Israeli way of doing life.


I detect something admirable, if unarticulated, in the constant awareness that things can change in a heartbeat because God runs the world.  It's not that Israelis don't ever plan for the future, but there is a profound respect here for the malleability of the future.  It takes some time for inveterate Western thinking to change.


A corollary to this is the way that I have adapted to things not happening when they were originally supposed to.  Lots of stuff plainly takes an uncommonly long time to accomplish here.  There's a great Israeli expression  one hears in response to a demand for an explanation for which there simply is no explanation - kacha zeh - that's just the way it is.  I've watched myself going through The Three Stages Of Kacha Zeh:


Stage 1 - That is just an unacceptable answer!
Stage 2 - Oh well!
Stage 3 - I can't believe I just answered kacha zeh in response to someone else's question!


One learns to live inside the flow of time and not rush things.  Things (jobs, events, friendships, construction, resolution of bureaucratic glitches, etc.) bloom in their right season. 


 It's very Zen, very Simple Living. And, in the end, very biblical.*


* See Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 3:1.  Or The Byrds.

Driving Me Crazy

I knew, when we came on aliyah, that eventually, I would have to face the one bureaucratic demon I was most afraid to face - converting my driver's license.

I knew that it was a complicated process, involving about 17 disjointed steps.  Pay a fee and get this piece of paper here.  Get it signed here.  Pay this fee there.  Get it stamped here, here and here.  I completed the first several steps during our first weeks here and then I started ulpan, which provided a legitimate excuse to put the whole project on the shelf.

In reality, I was avoiding the next stage, which involved taking one or more driving lessons and then taking a road test.

There's a rumor among olim that it used to be possible to simply transfer your license from outside of Israel the way you would if you moved from one state in the US to another.  Then there was an influx of immigrants with forged licenses who didn't really know how to drive and the policy was changed, requiring all drivers, no matter what country their original license was issued in, to take a minimum of one lesson and pass a road test.  I don't even know if the rumor is accurate.  But I did know that I would be required to take a driving test to get my license in Israel.

The thought was so anxiety-producing that I avoided it for a few more months.

Finally, I scheduled my lesson.  The first time I showed up, I didn't have the right paperwork.  The second time, I was able to complete my lesson, but the experience of driving with someone who was watching and judging my every move behind the wheel was totally nerve wracking.  Nevertheless, at the end of the lesson, the driving instructor offered me a test date, so I knew I must have done well enough not to require a second lesson.

A week later, on the test date, I was one of three experienced drivers trying to get our American licenses converted.  I was the second driver out on the course.  My heart was pounding, thumping in my chest as I got behind the wheel.  I have been driving for well over three decades, but I felt like a teenager.

Another quirk of the Israeli system is that they don't tell you right away whether you passed or not. Again, the rumor is that once, a driver was told on the spot that he failed the test and he either shot or knifed the tester.

So now you have to wait until the late afternoon and call your driving instructor for the results.

I forgot to mention that, in addition to everything else, I'd already laid out close to 800 shekels (more than $200).

Can it be any more torturous a process?

Yes, it apparently can.  Because after some 35 years of driving without so much as a speeding ticket or an insurance claim in decades, I failed my road test.

I failed my road test.

I failed my road test and I plunged into the depths of despair.  I began thinking - I am in Israel almost nine months and the job I might have hasn't exactly come together, I can't really speak the language, despite my best efforts in an intensive ulpan and now, I have lost the ability to drive approximately three decades earlier than most adults do.  I was hurt and angry and feeling very, very low.  I kept noticing flagrant violations made by other drivers.  I saw plenty of terrible drivers in Israel.  How could it be that I was being denied a license?

Yes, I knew that I had one more chance.  I also knew that if I didn't pass a second road test, I would need to take 20 or more lessons, at 150 shekels each, just like a brand new driver.

I was angry, I was hurt and I was highly uncharacteristically down on myself.

Initially, I wanted to avoid everything connected with cars and driving.  I thought a lot about how this was going to impact my family, not being able to drive to the grocery store or to take someone to a doctor's appointment.  I couldn't think of more than a handful of adults who didn't drive, unless they lived in Israel and had never had a car.  I alternated between feeling deeply resentful of a system that was prepared to strip me of my ability to drive with trying very hard to accept this new reality as the will of my Creator.  Hashem willed that I not be able to drive anymore and I had to get to the place where I could accept that.

I had to find some spiritual comfort.  I told myself that the principles of emunah required me to see this as a good thing.  Everything Hashem does it for the good.  So my job was to figure out how this could be good.

Maybe it's my destiny to die or worse, to kill someone (Gd forbid!), while I'm behind the wheel.  So Hashem took away the chance to fulfill that destiny by taking away the chance for me to ever drive again.

The gemara says that three things are earned through yisurim (suffering) - Torah, Israel and the World to Come.  Maybe giving up the ability to drive is part of the price I have to pay to live in Israel.

I thought about it a lot.

Then, last night, while we were sitting in parent-teacher meetings, the driving instructor called and said he had a last-minute cancellation for this morning.  I accepted the appointment and told myself the outcome was in Hashem's Hands.

As an extra precaution, I drove home from Jerusalem last night and back into the city this morning, figuring that any recent time behind the wheel might eliminate a small fraction of my anxiety.

By the time I sat behind the wheel of the test vehicle (in Israel, you use your instructor's car for the road test), I felt that I was truly in a place of acceptance.  Whatever happened, whatever the outcome of this second chance, it was all in Gd's Hands, not mine.



Baruch Hashem, I passed.