The Torah describes an עת רצון, a time of God's desire:
ואני תפילתי לך עת רצון
"My prayer goes to You at the time of desire", says the Psalmist (69:14).
כה אמר ה', בעת רצון עיניתיך
"So says God, at the time of desire I will answer you", says Isaiah the prophet (49:7).
But when is the time of desire?
With another human, we know when it is. When the benefactor is in a good mood, when her stock is up and you have just done something to ingratiate yourself to her. Then you catch her eye, and the smile comes easily to her lips, and you know that now is your best chance for a yes.
With God, desire cuts the other way.
When "I am sunk in the mire and cannot stand," when "my clothing is sackcloth, and I have become an example (to pity), the folks at the gates gossip about me," (Psalms 69:3 & 11-12) that's when God answers in an עת רצון, a time of desire.
If a person's well-being could be graphed like the stock market, God's desire is aroused at the bottom of the valley, just as the bear hits rock bottom, just before it rises up as the horns of a bull.
וברצונך תרום קרנינו
"And in Your desire You will raise up our horn," says the Psalmist (89:18).
The Nevi'im Achronim (Prophets) and Tehilim (Psalms) are replete with pronouncements of God's love for the poor. The Israelites in Egypt were redeemed by virtue of their forefathers, who themselves were wealthy and powerful. But in later biblical times, suffering itself becomes a virtue. Often, the prophet blames the wicked for the plight of the poor. The poor in their suffering stand in contrast to the wicked in their power, the implication: poverty equals innocence.
פלטו דל ואביון, מיד רשעים הצילו
"Rescue the poor and destitute, save them from the hands of the wicked." (Psalms 82:4)
Viewed through a hasidic lens, suffering brings us closer to God for another reason. The poor are not inherently righteous. But those who examine themselves and their lives through their suffering, and reach up beyond their present selves, emerge into a holier state. The time of hardship can be an עת רצון, a time of God's desire, but only if we make it so. Says Rebbe Nosson, the student of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav:
"And even one who falls – chas v’chalilah – to doubts and bad thoughts and he is thinking away from God, even so, there is no despair in the world at all. Even if it seems that he has fallen to a tainted place where God cannot be found at all, even so, he should strengthen and fortify himself, to seek, to search, to ask after the Blessed One’s glory. And when he asks and searches after God, and he is sorry and longing and calling out to God, and yearning to return to Him, even though he does not know any way or path or advice or plan of how to rise up and return from such places that are so distant from God, even so, through the asking and the searching within himself, he is searching and asking for God: 'איה, where is the place of His glory?' Through this, he rises up, for going down brings us to go up."
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Mortality
Last week, I had a miscarriage.
That information seems maybe too personal to be sharing on a website. But the experience of this pregnancy and its spontaneous termination taught me something important about what it means to live in America, and what it means to live in Israel, and that's why I'm sharing it.
A year ago, my husband and I were satisfied with the size of our family. Ours is the imagined ideal, minus the dog: one boy, one girl, a mother and a father. Our kids are at a perfect age: young enough to need us, but not every minute. Why would we want to mess that up with diapers, night feedings, choking hazards, car seats, etc., etc., etc. -- not to mention the risks of complications? Besides, the world's population topped 7 billion a few weeks ago. 7 billion! More people are alive today than the total of all people who have ever died. This exponential growth rate cannot continue, and even replacing ourselves is really a luxury.
Then, we spent a year in Israel. Israel has one of the highest birth rates of any western country: 2.97 per woman. In Jerusalem, where we were staying, the average family has 4.5 children! Our family of one lovely boy and one lovely girl felt paltry there. Over time we met a few small families like ours -- but every single one of them had suffered fertility problems. It seemed that small families by choice did not exist.
We loved the family atmosphere in Jerusalem. Our five year old daughter could leave our apartment and walk all by herself to the apartments of any of three of friends. For the first time, we felt comfortable leaving our son alone -- we knew if he got into trouble, he could run to any of 10 different neighbors for help. The kids could walk to a local park by themselves, and even to the closest makolet (little grocery store), where they would greet the owner by name and he would give them their purchases on credit.
As an American, my gut assumption is that the large size of Israeli families is a result of Israel's religious culture. Certainly that explains why Jerusalem, the most religious of Israel's large cities, has an especially high birth rate. Many an American has returned home from an extended stay in Jerusalem feeling more devout, and more pregnant, than she was when she left.
But what is that religious experience that drives fertility? And why, judging by my husband's physics colleagues, are secular Israelis more family-oriented than their American counterparts? A friend of ours who did almost the same thing we did said to me: "Our youngest was conceived in Israel, where all things seemed possible." This friend is not religiously observant, and his statement was not inspired by tradition. All things seemed possible.
In Israel, life and death are closer together. You don't have to be religious to feel that. You simply have to walk into a shopping mall and open your bag for inspection, and realize that in the not-so-distant past people came to Israeli shopping malls equipped with explosives. Far more importantly, Israeli children enter adulthood by way of the army, where they cannot help but confront their mortality.
When you realize that life is fleeting, all things really are possible. Nothing is guaranteed, and everything is possible. You must cast your bread as best you can, as often as you can, and hope it lands well.
My very first pregnancy, over ten years ago, ended in miscarriage. I was 29 years old, but an American 29 year old -- young and immortal. I wanted to have my babies when I wanted to have my babies, and I was not interested in accepting what nature had to offer. That miscarriage was a dreadful shock.
This last pregnancy was an Israeli one, conceived under the lingering influence of the Israeli air: religious, optimistic, and aware of my mortality. Its termination was disappointing, but not a shock.
But the aftermath -- the doctor's visits, the ultrasounds, the medications -- jolted me back to American soil, where all things do not seem possible; where life seems under our control, and possibilities and impossibilities are determined by our human capacities; where raising children is hard, and careers and family are in competition, and a family of two healthy children (baruch Hashem and kein ayin hara!) seems perfect.
Perhaps by coincidence, and perhaps not, I offered a dvar torah at my shul two weeks ago that touched on very similar topics (though at the time I thought my pregnancy was healthy). If you would like to read the dvar torah email me at ilana@post.harvard.edu
That information seems maybe too personal to be sharing on a website. But the experience of this pregnancy and its spontaneous termination taught me something important about what it means to live in America, and what it means to live in Israel, and that's why I'm sharing it.
A year ago, my husband and I were satisfied with the size of our family. Ours is the imagined ideal, minus the dog: one boy, one girl, a mother and a father. Our kids are at a perfect age: young enough to need us, but not every minute. Why would we want to mess that up with diapers, night feedings, choking hazards, car seats, etc., etc., etc. -- not to mention the risks of complications? Besides, the world's population topped 7 billion a few weeks ago. 7 billion! More people are alive today than the total of all people who have ever died. This exponential growth rate cannot continue, and even replacing ourselves is really a luxury.
Then, we spent a year in Israel. Israel has one of the highest birth rates of any western country: 2.97 per woman. In Jerusalem, where we were staying, the average family has 4.5 children! Our family of one lovely boy and one lovely girl felt paltry there. Over time we met a few small families like ours -- but every single one of them had suffered fertility problems. It seemed that small families by choice did not exist.
We loved the family atmosphere in Jerusalem. Our five year old daughter could leave our apartment and walk all by herself to the apartments of any of three of friends. For the first time, we felt comfortable leaving our son alone -- we knew if he got into trouble, he could run to any of 10 different neighbors for help. The kids could walk to a local park by themselves, and even to the closest makolet (little grocery store), where they would greet the owner by name and he would give them their purchases on credit.
As an American, my gut assumption is that the large size of Israeli families is a result of Israel's religious culture. Certainly that explains why Jerusalem, the most religious of Israel's large cities, has an especially high birth rate. Many an American has returned home from an extended stay in Jerusalem feeling more devout, and more pregnant, than she was when she left.
But what is that religious experience that drives fertility? And why, judging by my husband's physics colleagues, are secular Israelis more family-oriented than their American counterparts? A friend of ours who did almost the same thing we did said to me: "Our youngest was conceived in Israel, where all things seemed possible." This friend is not religiously observant, and his statement was not inspired by tradition. All things seemed possible.
In Israel, life and death are closer together. You don't have to be religious to feel that. You simply have to walk into a shopping mall and open your bag for inspection, and realize that in the not-so-distant past people came to Israeli shopping malls equipped with explosives. Far more importantly, Israeli children enter adulthood by way of the army, where they cannot help but confront their mortality.
When you realize that life is fleeting, all things really are possible. Nothing is guaranteed, and everything is possible. You must cast your bread as best you can, as often as you can, and hope it lands well.
My very first pregnancy, over ten years ago, ended in miscarriage. I was 29 years old, but an American 29 year old -- young and immortal. I wanted to have my babies when I wanted to have my babies, and I was not interested in accepting what nature had to offer. That miscarriage was a dreadful shock.
This last pregnancy was an Israeli one, conceived under the lingering influence of the Israeli air: religious, optimistic, and aware of my mortality. Its termination was disappointing, but not a shock.
But the aftermath -- the doctor's visits, the ultrasounds, the medications -- jolted me back to American soil, where all things do not seem possible; where life seems under our control, and possibilities and impossibilities are determined by our human capacities; where raising children is hard, and careers and family are in competition, and a family of two healthy children (baruch Hashem and kein ayin hara!) seems perfect.
Perhaps by coincidence, and perhaps not, I offered a dvar torah at my shul two weeks ago that touched on very similar topics (though at the time I thought my pregnancy was healthy). If you would like to read the dvar torah email me at ilana@post.harvard.edu
Monday, November 21, 2011
Get Up and Walk the Land
Shortly before we left Palo Alto to spend a year in Israel, I attended a discussion at the Oshmann Family JCC in Palo Alto with a leader of the Israeli environmentalist movement. She was remarkably deferential to American environmentalists, seeing Israel as trailing in America's footsteps.
It is true, on a public policy level Israelis are far less green than Americans. But on the level of local communities and personal practices, I'm not so sure.
Most of the Israelis I know line-dry their clothes. Only in the dead of winter do they resort to clothes driers. While in Israel, I did the same. Sure, our clothes were a little more stiff and wrinkled, but everyone was doing it! I had the best of intention of continuing with line-drying in Palo Alto, but it's harder than you think to purchase a reasonable drying rack in American hardware stores. And our clothes drier here is a heck of a lot more powerful than the one we had in Jerusalem. And, I confess, don't underestimate peer pressure.
Large cars are very uncommon in Israel. Big families crowd into compacts -- baby in the front seat, four kids crammed into the back. It may be a little more dangerous in the short run, but in the long run our children will all inherit a healthier planet as a result. Admittedly, these choices may be driven by poverty rather than ideology, but does it ultimately matter?
Many years ago, I briefly dated an Orthodox man who, like me, had spent extended time in Israel. He was surprised when I told him that one of my greatest pleasures in life is hiking in our (American) National Parks. He said: "I only think of hiking as something to do in Israel, as in קום התהלך בארץ", get up and walk the land (Genesis 13:17) -- quoting God's words of assurance to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of Israel.
Israelis are very connected to their land. On a mythological level, God's promise has come true, though perhaps not in the ways our ancestors might have envisioned it: every place Abraham tread is now steeped in meaning for his descendants. A day hike in Ein Gedi would be incomplete without reading the stories of the future king David's escapes from King Saul; a day hike in the Gilboa requires a retelling of Saul and Jonathan's deaths on the mountain.
Israel is also a small country, where farms and nature preserves and cities are packed close together. And the Zionist ideology ennobles the working of the land: החלוץ נאמן לעבודה, "the pioneer is loyal to his work." For all these reasons, Israeli children all over the country do far more hiking, and have far more direct contact with commercial farms, than my own kids ever had in America.
Fifteen years ago, after a visit to the chicken coop of an Israeli friend's farm, I swore from then on to buy only free-range eggs. Of course, we all know that farm chickens live their lives in boxes barely larger than their bodies. But it's one thing to read about it, another thing to see it. And how many American suburbanites actually get to visit a farm like that?
This past year, on a visit to our cousin's kibbutz, my daughter and I paid our regular visit to their dairy farm. The kibbutz is one of the supplier's of Tenuva, a large-scale dairy company. In the past, nothing about the dairy was particularly disturbing. The cow's don't exactly live luxuriously, but they do not seem mistreated either. This time, we happened to witness the final 20 minutes of a birthing. That entire time, the mother's sides were heaving with exertion but not a sound uttered for her lips. Her silence was almost frightening, and my daughter and I were both swept up in empathy with this laboring mother. Finally, with a tremendous push from the mother, out came the calf, collapsed in a heap in the dirt. The calf seemed blue and lifeless, but soon life's colors came into her face and we saw she was fine. Eventually, the supervisor on duty came into the pen to see how the birth was progressing. He was pleased to see a healthy calf, and then -- he gave the mother a solid kick in her side with his heavy farm boot. The mother shuddered.
"Why did you do that?" I almost cried.
"She needs to start licking the calf," he said. He gave the mother another hard kick, and then left the pen. Five minutes later, in her own good time, the mother turned around and started licking her calf. Ten minutes after that, the supervisor returned with a cage on wheels, hauled off the calf, and mother and baby never saw each other again.
Nowadays, I only buy free range eggs and I don't eat beef. I've also mostly switched from dairy milk to soy.
And if one of these days you start noticing my clothes have become more wrinkled, you'll know why.
It is true, on a public policy level Israelis are far less green than Americans. But on the level of local communities and personal practices, I'm not so sure.
Most of the Israelis I know line-dry their clothes. Only in the dead of winter do they resort to clothes driers. While in Israel, I did the same. Sure, our clothes were a little more stiff and wrinkled, but everyone was doing it! I had the best of intention of continuing with line-drying in Palo Alto, but it's harder than you think to purchase a reasonable drying rack in American hardware stores. And our clothes drier here is a heck of a lot more powerful than the one we had in Jerusalem. And, I confess, don't underestimate peer pressure.
Large cars are very uncommon in Israel. Big families crowd into compacts -- baby in the front seat, four kids crammed into the back. It may be a little more dangerous in the short run, but in the long run our children will all inherit a healthier planet as a result. Admittedly, these choices may be driven by poverty rather than ideology, but does it ultimately matter?
Many years ago, I briefly dated an Orthodox man who, like me, had spent extended time in Israel. He was surprised when I told him that one of my greatest pleasures in life is hiking in our (American) National Parks. He said: "I only think of hiking as something to do in Israel, as in קום התהלך בארץ", get up and walk the land (Genesis 13:17) -- quoting God's words of assurance to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of Israel.
Israelis are very connected to their land. On a mythological level, God's promise has come true, though perhaps not in the ways our ancestors might have envisioned it: every place Abraham tread is now steeped in meaning for his descendants. A day hike in Ein Gedi would be incomplete without reading the stories of the future king David's escapes from King Saul; a day hike in the Gilboa requires a retelling of Saul and Jonathan's deaths on the mountain.
Israel is also a small country, where farms and nature preserves and cities are packed close together. And the Zionist ideology ennobles the working of the land: החלוץ נאמן לעבודה, "the pioneer is loyal to his work." For all these reasons, Israeli children all over the country do far more hiking, and have far more direct contact with commercial farms, than my own kids ever had in America.
Fifteen years ago, after a visit to the chicken coop of an Israeli friend's farm, I swore from then on to buy only free-range eggs. Of course, we all know that farm chickens live their lives in boxes barely larger than their bodies. But it's one thing to read about it, another thing to see it. And how many American suburbanites actually get to visit a farm like that?
This past year, on a visit to our cousin's kibbutz, my daughter and I paid our regular visit to their dairy farm. The kibbutz is one of the supplier's of Tenuva, a large-scale dairy company. In the past, nothing about the dairy was particularly disturbing. The cow's don't exactly live luxuriously, but they do not seem mistreated either. This time, we happened to witness the final 20 minutes of a birthing. That entire time, the mother's sides were heaving with exertion but not a sound uttered for her lips. Her silence was almost frightening, and my daughter and I were both swept up in empathy with this laboring mother. Finally, with a tremendous push from the mother, out came the calf, collapsed in a heap in the dirt. The calf seemed blue and lifeless, but soon life's colors came into her face and we saw she was fine. Eventually, the supervisor on duty came into the pen to see how the birth was progressing. He was pleased to see a healthy calf, and then -- he gave the mother a solid kick in her side with his heavy farm boot. The mother shuddered.
"Why did you do that?" I almost cried.
"She needs to start licking the calf," he said. He gave the mother another hard kick, and then left the pen. Five minutes later, in her own good time, the mother turned around and started licking her calf. Ten minutes after that, the supervisor returned with a cage on wheels, hauled off the calf, and mother and baby never saw each other again.
Nowadays, I only buy free range eggs and I don't eat beef. I've also mostly switched from dairy milk to soy.
And if one of these days you start noticing my clothes have become more wrinkled, you'll know why.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Rejoice!
The Torah sometimes refers to Sukkot simply as חג, holiday, because it is the holiday -- the day of ultimate celebration. On Yom Kippur we sob our hearts out, and on sukkot we feel the release that comes after the flood.
Sukkot is supposed to be a holiday of singing and dancing. But today, I was sobbing with joy.
זה היום עשה ה', נגילה ונשמחה בו
"This is the day God made, we will rejoice and be happy on this day!" For this is the day Gilad Shalit returns home to Israel.
The Egyptians required a televised interview of him before releasing him to Israel. Watching this young man's composure through heartless questions about his feelings during captivity, I think the state of Israel may have found a future leader.
אבן מאסו הבונים היתה לראש פינה
"The stone that the builder's despised has become the cornerstone."
Sukkot is supposed to be a holiday of singing and dancing. But today, I was sobbing with joy.
זה היום עשה ה', נגילה ונשמחה בו
"This is the day God made, we will rejoice and be happy on this day!" For this is the day Gilad Shalit returns home to Israel.
The Egyptians required a televised interview of him before releasing him to Israel. Watching this young man's composure through heartless questions about his feelings during captivity, I think the state of Israel may have found a future leader.
אבן מאסו הבונים היתה לראש פינה
"The stone that the builder's despised has become the cornerstone."
Monday, October 3, 2011
Shop Vac
Jonathan Coulton wrote a powerful song, Shop Vac. Watch this video clip. Jarrett Heather's animation is outstanding, and besides you will need it to appreciate this blog entry.
Coulton thought his song was about "suburban angst" -- he said so in a different video clip. Having just returned from the most passionate city in the world to the lawns and houses of Palo Alto, I can relate.
But guess what? I know people who live in Jerusalem, and others in New York City, who feel much as Coulton describes, but they believe their escape is to the suburbs. They may be right, and Coulton may be right, too. Where you live can strongly impact your happiness.
On the other hand, it is also very easy to blame something outside of ourselves for our inner miseries.
One of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs describes similar unhappiness, but maybe with a little more honesty. Listen to "Dangling Conversation" here.
Relationships are hard, much harder than most of us imagine when we embark on them. Paul Simon complains, "I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand." To reach past his lover's shadow and feel her hand, he must first reach through his own shadows and confront whatever ugliness is there. Most of us cannot bear the pain of that confrontation, and so instead we run to the basement and the Shop Vac, or the coffee shop and Robert Frost.
Perhaps the wife nags and nags: about the clothes he leaves lying on the floor (does he assume she'll pick them up?), his failure to be home in time for dinner, his failure to notice anything nice about her. Of course he doesn't notice; he doesn't hear her. He does not want to confront his own selfishness, and certainly not his own sexism. (Sexism was his parents' problem, not his!)
Perhaps the husband has been stonewalling her for years. What is wrong with him? Why can't he relate!? But has she looked in the mirror and seen the anger smoldering inside? Has she seen the ugliness of her anger, and how he flees from it? Easier not to look. Easier to retreat quietly, upstairs to the TV, or to Emily Dickinson.
The problem is suburbia. The problem is the city. The problem is all the fake friends (suggests Coulton): as we get older, sincerity becomes harder and harder to find. But taking a sincere look at our own darkness -- our anger, our depression, our greed, our cruelty -- is too hard for most of us.
On Yom Kippur, we stop hiding behind suburbia. We call it as it is: חטאנו, we have sinned. Not "he", not "she", not "them". We, Us, I have sinned. Yes, they have sinned too. But there's nothing I can do to change that. I can only change who I am.
When we face our shadows, and admit our own role in getting us to where we are and where we want to be, an amazing thing happens.
ויאמר ה', סלחתי כדברך
God said: I have already forgiven, just as you spoke.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Future
This is the seventh and final post in a series that build on each other. Each post of the series can stand on its own, but if you want to read them in order you can use these links:
1. Celebrating Israel 2. Middle East, not Middle Earth 3. Sayid 4. The Security Wall 5. Ethnic Struggle 6. Borders
Professor Johnny Aumann has a long white beard, sparkling eyes, and a warm smile. He is an old friend of my parents, and -- incidentally -- a Nobel prize winner in economics. Johnny once had five children, each one brilliant and kind, until his son Shlomo -- whose name derives from the same root as shalom or salaam -- was killed in 1982 while serving the Israeli army in Lebanon. For as long as I can remember, an 8x10 photo of Shlomo's smiling face has been sitting on the piano as the centerpiece in the Aumann's living room.
Since receiving his Nobel prize in 2005, Johnny has been speaking publicly on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and he has become known for his right-wing views. I can remember a conversation already at least fifteen years ago, in which he told us that the conflict with the Arabs will never end. We must keep fighting and accept our losses, for that is the cost of living in Israel. Those who cannot stomach the cost should leave, he said.
Johnny's views seemed extreme to me at the time, and deeply depressing. I find them no less depressing today, but unfortunately they are no longer extreme. Most Israelis seem to have given up hope of achieving peace with the Palestinians. Many who once saw themselves as lefties have now moved to the right. They see no choice but to continue in this struggle indefinitely. For the first time in history, Israel's coalition government is composed exclusively of right-wing parties. And I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu's angry reaction to President Obama back in May reflected the fatalist attitude of Israelis in general -- the feeling that we have no options left, but must put our heads down and keep fighting.
But the left has not disappeared entirely, and I have been privileged this year to meet a different kind of leftist from those I know back in America. On the subject of Israel, left-leaning American Jews often seem motivated by shame. "My people are not living up to my standards," one rabbinical student said to me. Jewish Israelis (with some notable exceptions) are committed to Israel in a much deeper way. They put their lives at risk serving in the army. They have placed their lots here, and their criticisms of Israel's right-wing government emerges not from a place of shame, but from a conviction that Israel's future demands peace.
Both President Obama and President Shimon Peres have recently warned that the conflict cannot continue indefinitely. A citizenship of 7 million cannot sustainably control 2.4 million people who are not citizens. Eventually, God forbid, if the conflict cannot be resolved the Jewish state may disappear, either in an explosion or by the slow, painful crumbling of her resources.
The price of the fight is extremely high.
My son spent his third grade year in an Israeli public school, and he was miserable. The children spend hours each day at their desks copying from the blackboards, because the teachers have an inadequate photocopying budget. Israel pours so much money into defense, too little is left for education. (Interestingly, Israel's socialized medicine is actually quite good, perhaps because doctors' salaries are extraordinarily low -- and yet many of the best Israeli students continue to choose medicine.) Even more so, my son was overwhelmed by the classroom culture: loud and aggressive, a poorly controlled microcosm of the worst of Israeli culture. The moral costs of the conflict are higher yet than the financial ones, as 18 year old boys are trained to kill, and then live out their lives -- marrying, raising children -- with the psychological impact of those experiences.
Golda Meir famously said in 1969: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons." I wonder how many Isarelis still feel that way?
During each of the so-called pilgrimage holidays -- Pesach (Passover), Shavuot and Sukkot -- thousands of Jews flock to the Western Wall to remember the Holy Temple that once stood there. The municipality sets up a stage in the square just outside the Old City, and when I was there during Pesach a boys' choir was singing traditional Hebrew songs over loud amplifiers. As I arrived on the scene, they were bellowing out הקדוש ברוך הוא מצילנו מידם, The Holy One saves us from their hands. I cringed, conscious of the Arab vendors standing 50 feet away, trying to make a living off of the seeded bagels they sell from pushcarts at Jaffa gate. Israel still has dangerous enemies. Gilad Shalit's family knows this with excruciating certainly. But the words of that song were written to describe a different kind of enemy: powerful kings and nobility that tossed Jews about like so many chips on a playing board, or armed mobs that could descend without warning on a defenseless shtetl. That song, and quite a few like it, seem deeply inappropriate amidst the complex reality of Jerusalem.
When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, we entered a new stage as a people. On that day, Moses and Miriam lead us in creating a new song, שירה חדשה שבחו גאולים לשמך על שפת הים.
I believe we have again entered a new stage. We have been redeemed from exile, we are back in our own land, under our own rule. If the peace with Egypt and Jordan is a cold one, it is nonetheless peace and full-scale war is very unlikely.
It is time to leave behind the victim mentality. It is time also to leave behind the aggressive mentality that is the immediate backlash to it. It is again time for a new song.
It is time to leave behind the victim mentality. It is time also to leave behind the aggressive mentality that is the immediate backlash to it. It is again time for a new song.
Allow the sun to penetrate תנו לשמש לחדור
Through the flowers מבעד לפרחים
Don't look back אל תביטו לאחור
Let go of those departed הניחו להולכים
Through the flowers מבעד לפרחים
Don't look back אל תביטו לאחור
Let go of those departed הניחו להולכים
Lift your eyes with hope שאו עיניים בתקווה
Not through the rifles' sights לא דרך כוונות
Sing a song for love שירו שיר לאהבה
And not for wars ולא למלחמות
Not through the rifles' sights לא דרך כוונות
Sing a song for love שירו שיר לאהבה
And not for wars ולא למלחמות
Don't say the day will come אל תגידו יום יבוא
Bring on that day - הביאו את היום
Because it is not a dream - כי לא חלום הוא
And in all the city squares ובכל הכיכרות
Cheer only for peace! תעירו רק לשלום
Bring on that day - הביאו את היום
Because it is not a dream - כי לא חלום הוא
And in all the city squares ובכל הכיכרות
Cheer only for peace! תעירו רק לשלום
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Borders
This is the sixth in a series of posts that build on each other. To view the earlier posts in the series click these links:
1. Celebrating Israel 2. Middle East, not Middle Earth 3. Sayid 4. The Security Wall 5. Ethnic Struggle
My landlady has been a good friend to Sayid for many years – in that uneven way that I was his friend this year. In response to my recent blog posts, she shared with me a piece of his story that shifts my perspective. When the Palestinian Authority first became established as a semi-autonomous government, civil service jobs were available to uneducated people like Sayid. My landlady encouraged Sayid to apply for these jobs, but he refused. The pay was too low. Sayid, you see, has an entrance visa for Israel because he brings his daughter for treatments at Hadassah Hospital. That entrance visa must have seemed like a lucky lottery ticket. How could he possibly waste such a gift? But that lottery ticket turned out to have been fool’s gold. The bus rides to Jerusalem cost Sayid what would be the equivalent of a half-day’s wages if he were working on the West Bank, and many days he arrives to find no work waiting for him. Now poor Sayid is trapped in his mistake. The civil service jobs are gone, and he still has seven mouths to feed.
I am told that Ramallah is a modern town, with cafes and smoothie bars and an educated public. But if Ramallah is the capital of Palestine, it is the capital of a third world country; for Sayid’s village, and hundreds of others like his, are truly third world. It’s not just that the wages are so low and residents live in poverty. The culture is also from another era. Sayid once tried to explain to me that West Bank Palestinians are more progressive than their Jordanian counterparts. For example, Palestinians no longer allow גואלי הדם, blood vengeance. I was familiar with the term “blood vengeance” from studies of Bible and Talmud, but I was shocked to learn that it is still in practice today, if not in Palestine then in Jordan. But no, if a murder occurs in Palestine, the murderer is brought to justice in court rather than left to the hands of the victim’s family. In fact, Sayid said, it happened recently in their village that a young woman fell in love with a young man and her uncle did not approve of the match. The uncle drowned the girl, and the courts gave him only ten years in prison. The girl’s family did not pursue the uncle with violence, but instead they are pushing for a new trial and a longer sentence. They showed this restraint despite the fact that an autopsy revealed the girl to be a virgin. By implication, her virginity somehow made the crime more heinous.
As Americans know from our relationship with Mexico, first world and third world countries do not make easy neighbors.
On the third world side of the border: poverty is hard enough, but living in poverty with an awareness of another possibility must be excruciating. That first world temptation drives people to tremendous risk -- crossing through scorching desert and dodging patrolmen's guns to live as an illegal alien in a country that doesn't want you, or turning down low-paid work on your side of the green line in order to walk the streets in hopes of higher-paid work on the other side.
On the first world side of the border: angst about sealing that border, and about controlling the thousands who leak across anyway, can drive a country into conniptions.
But in the Palestinian territories, first and third world are tossed together like cucumbers and tomatoes in one Mediterranean salad.
When I first saw a color-coded map of Israel indicating Palestinian- and Israeli-controlled areas, I gasped at what I had known and not really known. How to draw a reasonable border with this impossibly intermixed map?
The naive answer seems to be: don’t draw a border. The peoples are too mixed together, make it a free country for all. But remember that Palestine was a third world region before the state of Israel arrived on the scene, and third world does not become first world overnight. Equality in politics does not automatically bring equality where it really matters, and where the real resentment brews: education, earning potential, vision, and respect. Nor will the stamp of citizenship erase the ethnic tensions I described in my last post. I fear that removing borders will only increase the violence, both of Arabs towards Jews and of Jews towards Arabs.
What's more, neither side is particularly interested in this solution. The Palestinian leadership would be violently opposed to Israel annexing their territories. And for most Israelis, the thought of making their national elections vulnerable to another 2.4 million voting Arabs is unthinkable. As a percentage of the population, this would be equivalent to the United States granting U.S. citizenship to the entire population of Mexico.
Secular Israelis feel they are fighting a two front battle, and their frustration with ultra-Orthodox Jews often outweighs any frustration they feel towards Palestinians. The ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim -- literally, those who tremble -- intentionally live in the past. In a typical Haredi boys' school, all secular education ends in the fourth grade. Girls receive somewhat more secular education, in part because they are banned from the holy subjects most valued by their communities, and in part because many of them will need to earn a living to support their husbands’ Torah study. Israel's parliamentary government has a proportional representation system, which gives organized minorities an inordinate amount of political power. As a result, the Haredi rabbinate has managed to retain control of all marriage and divorce in Israel, subjecting families to a deeply sexist system that should have been outdated 100 years ago.
The contrast with the Israel I love is striking. My husband spent the year visiting at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a premier research center that welcomes graduate students, post-docs and visiting faculty from around the globe. In my husband’s field of semiconductor nanoelectronics, the Weizmann has perhaps the best facilities in the world. The Hebrew University is the world’s center for critical analysis of Jewish sacred texts, and Israel's archeology is unsurpassed. Tel Aviv has a thriving gay community. One of my good friends this year, a lesbian and an American citizen, moved to Israel ten years ago because she and her wife – who is not an American citizen -- could not live together in America. In Israel they have full rights of domestic partnership (albeit not recognized as a marriage by the Haredi family courts -- but really, keeping the Haredi courts out of your marriage is usually a good thing!) and her wife was able to adopt the children she bore.
At ~10% of the population and rising rapidly, the Haredim are a serious internal problem. But the Palestinians are a far more serious problem for Israel, and they are neither internal nor external. Even in areas where Palestinians have some autonomy, like Ramallah and Gaza, contiguous regions are too small to support a real, independent government or economy. For anything but the most local matters they are under Israeli rule.
Neither solution, one state or two, is a simple one. And every time I think I understand something about Israel or Palestine, I discover a new piece of information that exposes a whole new layer of the story. But I believe an essential element in finding a resolution is to fully explore the complexity.
As with any complex problem, the way out is never easy. The solution will require compromise, even sacrifice and, let's face it, some serious unpleasantness. But I believe Israel and the Palestinians will find a solution, and in the long run peace and prosperity will emerge for all the inhabitants of this beloved land.
To continue to the next and final post in the series, click here.
1. Celebrating Israel 2. Middle East, not Middle Earth 3. Sayid 4. The Security Wall 5. Ethnic Struggle
My landlady has been a good friend to Sayid for many years – in that uneven way that I was his friend this year. In response to my recent blog posts, she shared with me a piece of his story that shifts my perspective. When the Palestinian Authority first became established as a semi-autonomous government, civil service jobs were available to uneducated people like Sayid. My landlady encouraged Sayid to apply for these jobs, but he refused. The pay was too low. Sayid, you see, has an entrance visa for Israel because he brings his daughter for treatments at Hadassah Hospital. That entrance visa must have seemed like a lucky lottery ticket. How could he possibly waste such a gift? But that lottery ticket turned out to have been fool’s gold. The bus rides to Jerusalem cost Sayid what would be the equivalent of a half-day’s wages if he were working on the West Bank, and many days he arrives to find no work waiting for him. Now poor Sayid is trapped in his mistake. The civil service jobs are gone, and he still has seven mouths to feed.
I am told that Ramallah is a modern town, with cafes and smoothie bars and an educated public. But if Ramallah is the capital of Palestine, it is the capital of a third world country; for Sayid’s village, and hundreds of others like his, are truly third world. It’s not just that the wages are so low and residents live in poverty. The culture is also from another era. Sayid once tried to explain to me that West Bank Palestinians are more progressive than their Jordanian counterparts. For example, Palestinians no longer allow גואלי הדם, blood vengeance. I was familiar with the term “blood vengeance” from studies of Bible and Talmud, but I was shocked to learn that it is still in practice today, if not in Palestine then in Jordan. But no, if a murder occurs in Palestine, the murderer is brought to justice in court rather than left to the hands of the victim’s family. In fact, Sayid said, it happened recently in their village that a young woman fell in love with a young man and her uncle did not approve of the match. The uncle drowned the girl, and the courts gave him only ten years in prison. The girl’s family did not pursue the uncle with violence, but instead they are pushing for a new trial and a longer sentence. They showed this restraint despite the fact that an autopsy revealed the girl to be a virgin. By implication, her virginity somehow made the crime more heinous.
As Americans know from our relationship with Mexico, first world and third world countries do not make easy neighbors.
On the third world side of the border: poverty is hard enough, but living in poverty with an awareness of another possibility must be excruciating. That first world temptation drives people to tremendous risk -- crossing through scorching desert and dodging patrolmen's guns to live as an illegal alien in a country that doesn't want you, or turning down low-paid work on your side of the green line in order to walk the streets in hopes of higher-paid work on the other side.
On the first world side of the border: angst about sealing that border, and about controlling the thousands who leak across anyway, can drive a country into conniptions.
But in the Palestinian territories, first and third world are tossed together like cucumbers and tomatoes in one Mediterranean salad.
When I first saw a color-coded map of Israel indicating Palestinian- and Israeli-controlled areas, I gasped at what I had known and not really known. How to draw a reasonable border with this impossibly intermixed map?
The naive answer seems to be: don’t draw a border. The peoples are too mixed together, make it a free country for all. But remember that Palestine was a third world region before the state of Israel arrived on the scene, and third world does not become first world overnight. Equality in politics does not automatically bring equality where it really matters, and where the real resentment brews: education, earning potential, vision, and respect. Nor will the stamp of citizenship erase the ethnic tensions I described in my last post. I fear that removing borders will only increase the violence, both of Arabs towards Jews and of Jews towards Arabs.
What's more, neither side is particularly interested in this solution. The Palestinian leadership would be violently opposed to Israel annexing their territories. And for most Israelis, the thought of making their national elections vulnerable to another 2.4 million voting Arabs is unthinkable. As a percentage of the population, this would be equivalent to the United States granting U.S. citizenship to the entire population of Mexico.
Secular Israelis feel they are fighting a two front battle, and their frustration with ultra-Orthodox Jews often outweighs any frustration they feel towards Palestinians. The ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim -- literally, those who tremble -- intentionally live in the past. In a typical Haredi boys' school, all secular education ends in the fourth grade. Girls receive somewhat more secular education, in part because they are banned from the holy subjects most valued by their communities, and in part because many of them will need to earn a living to support their husbands’ Torah study. Israel's parliamentary government has a proportional representation system, which gives organized minorities an inordinate amount of political power. As a result, the Haredi rabbinate has managed to retain control of all marriage and divorce in Israel, subjecting families to a deeply sexist system that should have been outdated 100 years ago.
The contrast with the Israel I love is striking. My husband spent the year visiting at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a premier research center that welcomes graduate students, post-docs and visiting faculty from around the globe. In my husband’s field of semiconductor nanoelectronics, the Weizmann has perhaps the best facilities in the world. The Hebrew University is the world’s center for critical analysis of Jewish sacred texts, and Israel's archeology is unsurpassed. Tel Aviv has a thriving gay community. One of my good friends this year, a lesbian and an American citizen, moved to Israel ten years ago because she and her wife – who is not an American citizen -- could not live together in America. In Israel they have full rights of domestic partnership (albeit not recognized as a marriage by the Haredi family courts -- but really, keeping the Haredi courts out of your marriage is usually a good thing!) and her wife was able to adopt the children she bore.
At ~10% of the population and rising rapidly, the Haredim are a serious internal problem. But the Palestinians are a far more serious problem for Israel, and they are neither internal nor external. Even in areas where Palestinians have some autonomy, like Ramallah and Gaza, contiguous regions are too small to support a real, independent government or economy. For anything but the most local matters they are under Israeli rule.
Neither solution, one state or two, is a simple one. And every time I think I understand something about Israel or Palestine, I discover a new piece of information that exposes a whole new layer of the story. But I believe an essential element in finding a resolution is to fully explore the complexity.
As with any complex problem, the way out is never easy. The solution will require compromise, even sacrifice and, let's face it, some serious unpleasantness. But I believe Israel and the Palestinians will find a solution, and in the long run peace and prosperity will emerge for all the inhabitants of this beloved land.
To continue to the next and final post in the series, click here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)