Shabbat afternoon
Shabbat afternoon we walked through a nearby neighborhood, Yemein Moshe
(vowels approximente; correction welcomed). As with many things in
Jerusalem, there's a story.
In the 1880s or 1890s a successful British businessman named Moshe Montifiore visited Jerusalem, where he saw Jews living in cramped, sometimes-squallid conditions inside the walled city (the old city, now). In those days they closed the gates at dusk and kept them barred until dawn, and the person who didn't make it back on time was on his own, at the mercy of bandits, wolves, and other hazards. But the city was more than full, so Montifiore tried to get some to move outside.
Montifiore was wealthy, so he built some very nice apartments a short distance outside the wall and offered them for free to Jews who would live there. No takers. Finally he installed a clerk whose job was to pay a stipend to people who lived there; that did the trick, but only halfway: like some Palestinians "living" in tents in Jenin et al, Jews "moved into" the apartments, waited for the clerk to go home each night, and slipped back into the city, to return before the clerk came back in the morning.
Even though it didn't play out as he intended, Montifiore is seem by the locals as a real mentsh, and today the neighborhood that grew up around those apartments is beautiful and well-maintained. I've forgotten many of the details of the story, alas, but it was an interesting way to spend a couple hours.
There is another visiting Reform congregation staying in our hotel, and my rabbi is very friendly with their rabbi. They had arranged for an afternoon speaker, and they graciously invited us to join them.
The speaker was Rabbi David Forman (who I met at HUC that morning), who is one of the founders of Rabbis for Human Rights. The name implies left-liberal politics and he was introduced as being pretty far left, so I had certain expectations. They were shattered. He spoke interestingly about conflicts between Jews and Jews, Jews and Muslims, and Jews and Christians. (Alas, I was not taking notes.) He spoke a lot of sense about striving to minimize impact on innocent bystanders but recognizing that at some point, you have to defend yourself from people who are trying to kill you.
One comment he made about last year's disengagement from Gaza stuck with me. When the Israeli government decided to evacuate the Jews from Gaza, those Jews fought back (to sadness all around). According to Rabbi Forman, they invoked the image of the Holocaust and prayed for God's intervention. Rabbi Forman pointed out: what would it have meant had they prevailed? If God intervened for them, wouldn't that be saying that the Shoah was not as bad as eviction? (Mind, there's a long post possible here on the theology of intervention, but it'll have to wait for time and some sign that it would be interesting to someone.)
After the talk we gathered in my rabbi's room for havdalah. He asked each of us to share what we'd liked best so far. It was interesting to see what things struck different people. It was pretty obvious to me (because I'm studying his rabbinics as well as his explicit teachings) that he's trying to build a strong community among this group of 22 people. It's starting to gel, but it needs some time yet, I think.
Other bits:
Could it be that I understand more Hebrew than I can generate? At HUC I was following the torah reading pretty well; granted, I know the story at the macro level. I've understood parts of overheard conversations, though certainly not all. But I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to speaking. I know from my NLP days (and it seems to be common sense) that parsing is easier than generation, but still...
The hotel meals are impressive -- not just the Shabbat dinner, with its three kinds of meat, two kinds of fish, a dozen salads and vegetables, and half a dozen desserts -- but also the daily breakfast. Usually when a hotel says breakfast is included they mean danishes, not fish, copious salads, fresh and dried fruit, a great variety of cheeses, spinach pies, quiche, omelettes made to order, and so on.
The tea bags are labelled only in Hebrew, so it's a bit of a flavor lottery. I assumed I wouldn't know any of the words; only after getting what turned out to be mint tea did I take a close look. Mem-yud-nun-taf. Um, yeah. I would have gotten that one if I'd tried. :-) Cinnamon was almost transliterated too, except they used a kuf for the first letter where I would have expected a samech. I guess I assumed that these words existed in Hebrew, not just as loan words. (Armed with this knowledge, I was successful in preventing a chamomile encounter.)
I've been watching my rabbi on this trip. He's very much playing the role of shepherd or mother. I think he feels personally responsible for the happiness of everyone in the group. I do hope he's getting some time for himself; that's got to be very draining. I guess being a rabbi is (in part) about the congregation in all its forms, not just the ones conveniently centered at the synagogue.
Next up: SCA event, Yad l'Kashish, the old city, and more -- but not tonight, because the wake-up call tomorrow is at 6:00 (!) so we can get on the road by 7:30. Tomorrow we head north.
In the 1880s or 1890s a successful British businessman named Moshe Montifiore visited Jerusalem, where he saw Jews living in cramped, sometimes-squallid conditions inside the walled city (the old city, now). In those days they closed the gates at dusk and kept them barred until dawn, and the person who didn't make it back on time was on his own, at the mercy of bandits, wolves, and other hazards. But the city was more than full, so Montifiore tried to get some to move outside.
Montifiore was wealthy, so he built some very nice apartments a short distance outside the wall and offered them for free to Jews who would live there. No takers. Finally he installed a clerk whose job was to pay a stipend to people who lived there; that did the trick, but only halfway: like some Palestinians "living" in tents in Jenin et al, Jews "moved into" the apartments, waited for the clerk to go home each night, and slipped back into the city, to return before the clerk came back in the morning.
Even though it didn't play out as he intended, Montifiore is seem by the locals as a real mentsh, and today the neighborhood that grew up around those apartments is beautiful and well-maintained. I've forgotten many of the details of the story, alas, but it was an interesting way to spend a couple hours.
There is another visiting Reform congregation staying in our hotel, and my rabbi is very friendly with their rabbi. They had arranged for an afternoon speaker, and they graciously invited us to join them.
The speaker was Rabbi David Forman (who I met at HUC that morning), who is one of the founders of Rabbis for Human Rights. The name implies left-liberal politics and he was introduced as being pretty far left, so I had certain expectations. They were shattered. He spoke interestingly about conflicts between Jews and Jews, Jews and Muslims, and Jews and Christians. (Alas, I was not taking notes.) He spoke a lot of sense about striving to minimize impact on innocent bystanders but recognizing that at some point, you have to defend yourself from people who are trying to kill you.
One comment he made about last year's disengagement from Gaza stuck with me. When the Israeli government decided to evacuate the Jews from Gaza, those Jews fought back (to sadness all around). According to Rabbi Forman, they invoked the image of the Holocaust and prayed for God's intervention. Rabbi Forman pointed out: what would it have meant had they prevailed? If God intervened for them, wouldn't that be saying that the Shoah was not as bad as eviction? (Mind, there's a long post possible here on the theology of intervention, but it'll have to wait for time and some sign that it would be interesting to someone.)
After the talk we gathered in my rabbi's room for havdalah. He asked each of us to share what we'd liked best so far. It was interesting to see what things struck different people. It was pretty obvious to me (because I'm studying his rabbinics as well as his explicit teachings) that he's trying to build a strong community among this group of 22 people. It's starting to gel, but it needs some time yet, I think.
Other bits:
Could it be that I understand more Hebrew than I can generate? At HUC I was following the torah reading pretty well; granted, I know the story at the macro level. I've understood parts of overheard conversations, though certainly not all. But I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to speaking. I know from my NLP days (and it seems to be common sense) that parsing is easier than generation, but still...
The hotel meals are impressive -- not just the Shabbat dinner, with its three kinds of meat, two kinds of fish, a dozen salads and vegetables, and half a dozen desserts -- but also the daily breakfast. Usually when a hotel says breakfast is included they mean danishes, not fish, copious salads, fresh and dried fruit, a great variety of cheeses, spinach pies, quiche, omelettes made to order, and so on.
The tea bags are labelled only in Hebrew, so it's a bit of a flavor lottery. I assumed I wouldn't know any of the words; only after getting what turned out to be mint tea did I take a close look. Mem-yud-nun-taf. Um, yeah. I would have gotten that one if I'd tried. :-) Cinnamon was almost transliterated too, except they used a kuf for the first letter where I would have expected a samech. I guess I assumed that these words existed in Hebrew, not just as loan words. (Armed with this knowledge, I was successful in preventing a chamomile encounter.)
I've been watching my rabbi on this trip. He's very much playing the role of shepherd or mother. I think he feels personally responsible for the happiness of everyone in the group. I do hope he's getting some time for himself; that's got to be very draining. I guess being a rabbi is (in part) about the congregation in all its forms, not just the ones conveniently centered at the synagogue.
Next up: SCA event, Yad l'Kashish, the old city, and more -- but not tonight, because the wake-up call tomorrow is at 6:00 (!) so we can get on the road by 7:30. Tomorrow we head north.