My People

Israeli Special Forces - Sayeret Tzanhanim (IDF paratroopers)

2012-01-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

Sex, Second Grade and Setting It Straight

2011-12-31T07:38:00.000-08:00

You've made it your business to set people straight ever since second grade, when you discovered a bunch of kids more uninformed and much less behaved than you, namely the first graders. Today you are a blogger, amusing yourself with nothing more harmless than personality types and book reports, or getting in touch with your sensitive side reflecting on human suffering and social justice.
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Earlier on you posted "You May Say I Am A Dreamer", your take on the first blossoms of what has been dubbed "the Arab Spring", the Middle East fiasco that may well culminate in a nuclear winter. You made five declarations:

1. You are a Christian.

2. You are a woman.

3. You are an American.

4. You are an intellectual.

(I'll vouch for you on two of these, one is a matter of definition and we'll have to take your word for the fourth.)
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What struck me was item five of this résumé:
"I am optimistic……" and then you commenced to join the international spirit squad rooting for the 'young and determined' taking to the streets in my part of the world. While some of the western cyber spectators may have sincerely believed they were witnessing the budding of emerging democracies, most were cheering on the mob simply because it sounded good.
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It was sexy.
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And collectively, the voices from the west made a difference. It was the West's cue to cut their Middle East clients' lifeline, a green light to NATO commanders eager to try out their high-tech toys in the Saharan sandbox without censor or scolding. Muslim extremists manipulated the masses in Midan at-Tahrir , played as the trump card to win the jackpot in the decade's long struggle to turn Egypt into an Islamic theocracy on the Iranian model. Their take on democracy is the right of the (Islamic) majority to eradicate or expel everyone else, and dominate those who remain behind.
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Spring and summer have past; it's the end of autumn. Lets see.....

Was it good for Christians?

Woman buried alive before being stoned for immorality

Is it better now for women living under Sharia Law?

Will the Middle East be peaceful and will America be safer?

Is today's bloody, burning, bigoted Middle East your dream?

Revolutions don't always usher in freedom. In fact, they seldom do. Russian Bolshevists, Rwandan mass murderers, and the Iranian Mullah-archy all hitched a ride on popular uprisings. If you lived here, or even read up on the subject before you posted, you would have known where the winds of spring can blow.

Demonstrators protesting sectarian violence against Coptic Egyptians

So, you are a Christian, you are a woman. So you are an American. You might even be an intellectual.
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So what?

Did you try to paint a sexy mental picture for us of you waving the stars and stripes, leading the troops as they beat a hasty retreat from the Middle East?
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Or did you honestly and truly believe you are leading Christian soldiers onward, marching as to war, with the banner of democracy going on before?

If you appoint yourself defender of the faith, women and the American way of life, you owe it to us to know what you're talking about, to think a little. You're not in second grade anymore; before you set us straight, you have to do your homework.

jesus@yahoo.com

2011-12-19T23:40:00.001-08:00

This summer I started chatting. Why? Maybe boredom, maybe curiosity, but for whatever reason, it opened up a whole new world for me that I never knew existed.

Apparently, serious chatting is done on MSN and Yahoo. It's free and offers chatter bugs the options of visual and audio technology. I learned very quickly that the rules and physics of nature we take for granted in real life don’t apply in the chatting world. It is inhabited by beings invisible and anonymous, and the moral forces of gravity that keep our feet on the ground in real life don't always exist. More like a séance; you can't be sure if the spirits you conjure are good or evil, male or female, old or young, or even human.

A bit of advice to the new chatter bug: not all that glitters is gold. A 'mom' more often than not can be a pedophile, 'dad' is a dirty old man, and a 'sexy young woman' is probably a gay guy preying on straight men. Be very careful about giving any personal information to contacts, and photos of your kids are off limits.

The common belief is that anything goes in Yahoo land, but it turns out that there is a code of etiquette among chatterers. Texting in capitals is shouting – not nice. Large fonts are rude, and usually used by 'bots' – computer programs designed to lure the unsuspecting chatter to sites selling porn and infected with viruses. Chatting behavior is also regional: among North Americans and Europeans using the camera is only for people that know each other well, and an invitation to 'cam' can be misconstrued as making a pass, while Asians like to see who they are talking to.

Yahoo is a dark and lonely land of shadows, but there are redeeming rays of light for the tourist. I met a young girl who described herself as a 'sad girl'. Her mom's boyfriend was abusing her with mom's knowledge and without her protection. It was the boyfriend's birthday and the sad girl was distraught because he expected to get a 'birthday present' when he came home from work. I gave her (probably unwisely) my sister-in-law's phone number and stayed online with her until her teacher came to collect her. I asked her why she was in a chat room, of all places. She said her friends told her she needed to talk to an adult, and that she would find an adult in a chat room. I think her angel was very creative that day.

Some of the stories you hear touch the heart – sometimes literally. Rebecca is a young mother of Sara, who has a heart condition that could be simply treated with a pacemaker, but their medical insurance won't take responsibility for the expenses unless she literally drops dead. Rebecca doesn’t live every day by faith – she lives it minute by minute.

Laura is recently widowed and lives in the (still undefeated) Deep South raising her only son. She has enough courage and cheer to share with others while holding down a full time job.

Lilia lives in the Philippines. She is a born again Christian in a mostly Roman Catholic nation who raised two sons singlehandedly, and now like many Filipinos she has sent her oldest to work in the oil industry in the Middle East in order to make enough money to ensure his and their family's future. Last Friday night a typhoon hit her city. She woke in the night to the sound of a flashflood tearing through her neighborhood. The power went out all over the entire city, so she and her neighbors broke out to the rooftop and then spent the night in pitch darkness drenched by torrential rains and beaten by 90 knot winds until morning. She describes it as 'the end of the world'.

I chat almost exclusively with women, but with a handle like 'Ami', I get a lot of messages from men (called 'males' in Yahoo). I have yet to meet a man that is not interested in something I cannot and will not provide. The exception to this are Arabs. Once they find out that I am from Israel they are beside themselves with hatred. These are some of my favorite casual chats. Unable to tear me limb for limb in the safe Ethernet environment of Yahoo, Jihad online is very frustrating. I return smilies for swearwords, and eventually they realize the futility of their endeavors to evoke fear or anger, and hopefully I plant a seed of doubt in the bed of misconceptions they have been raised on.

Critics will tell you that Yahoo is ruled by the devil. Speaking as one who has been traveling there of late, I would say that they are absolutely right. Chatterers hiding behind their aliases expose the darkest sides of human nature. But may I remind you that Satan is the prince of the air in the world we live in offline no less than the internet, he is just more successful at maintaining his disguise.

And at this time of the year, when the Christian world is celebrating the advent of THE cosmic surfer maybe we should remember this: He came to dwell with human beings. They were sick and poor. They were wounded and broken. They were lonely. They were slaves to the same sin, lust and greed you find in Yahoo. They were called harlots and publicans; today we call them sluts and con men. And Jesus broke bread with them. He listened to their stories and told them His. He chatted with them.

I think that if Jesus would have come in our age, you'd find Him at Yahoo.

I Want You To Meet Someone

2011-11-06T09:23:00.001-08:00

Maayan's big dream when she was a girl was to be a bride. She wasn't too keen on being a wife, but she wasn't one to let a little detail like marriage keep her from having a wedding. Her wedding would be fancy; a white wedding dress, flowers, adoring family and envious girlfriends. The groom was an unattractive but essential accessory, like a telephone pole by the Taj Mahal.

I fixed her lunch one day after school. She was in first or second grade and sat there by the kitchen table waiting for me. I told her there was someone I wanted her to meet. She didn't show any interest or objection.

"Who?"
"You know how Savta Sophie and Saba Yaakov (my wife's parents) were matched." (60 or so years ago arranged marriages were the rule in Jewish Bombay, love matches were the exception.) She knew, but didn't get the connection.

Well, a friend of mine has a son your age, I told her. I went on spinning the yarn. Now I had Maayan's attention. "My friend and I have decided that you (Maayan and the boy) are right for each other, so we (my imaginary friend and I) have arranged for you to get married when you're old enough. We think it would nice if you get to know each other."

"I don't want to marry him."
"You don't even know him."
She didn't care. "You can't make me marry him."

She had a point there. The trick in successfully fooling someone is to never deny the truth, but to twist it.

"I can't make you marry him, but only I can decide if you will have a wedding. If you won't marry him, then I won't let you get married."

I had her over a barrel. It was the prospect of missing her day more than a lifetime of loneliness that troubled her. She paused. Then her face hardened and her forehead furled.

"Okay, I'll marry him, but he'll wish he were dead."

The drop of anger in the corner of her eye told me I had gone too far, so I came clean before she started crying.

"Abba, that wasn't kidding – that was lying!" That was when we made the rule that pulling someone's leg longer than 5 minutes is lying.

In spite of being deceived regularly by her parents, Maayan grew up to be a well adjusted young woman with a healthy distrust of authority. With the exception of her first beau in high school, she's never made the mistake of bringing her boyfriends home.

Now there's a man she wants me to meet.

I don't know much about him.

The time has come, and Maayan is bringing a man into my life. I don't have much of a choice in the matter, and I will have to live with it and hope for the best, like a bride in an arranged marriage.

Maayan is the matchmaker for herself. For me. For him.

I hope it's a good match between the men in Maayan's life. Because if it isn't, one of us will wish he were dead.

Israel Remembers

2011-05-09T01:39:00.001-07:00

Israel Memorial Day for Soldiers Fallen and Victims of Terrorism

The Seventh Tear

2010-12-25T09:59:00.006-08:00

There's something enchanting about the Irish, an inconsistent combination of melancholy and melody, mad mentality that's logical only if Irish or inebriated. Or both. Words spill off their tongues singsong like music. Fairytales and fact intertwine until its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Neil Jordan's Ondine (Ireland, 2009) is an ancient legend in 21st century Ireland. Syracuse, locally know as "Circus", is a fisherman that finds a girl in his net. He's not sure if he's lost his senses, but his daughter Annie is certain that his catch is a selkie, a Gaelic version of mermaid. Syracuse humors Annie, but her interpretation of the myth proves to be closer to reality than common sense. There's no denying that when she sings to the fish, his catch is unheard of. The Fisheries Inspector is incredulous when Syracuse claims he caught salmon trawling (apparently only possible with a gill net), but astounded to find Ondine hiding under the (dry) gill net.

Fisheries Inspector: "Circus, there's a girl in your net!"
Syracuse: "Is that illegal?"
Fisheries Inspector: "No, but it's unusual."
Syracuse: "Ask her how I caught the salmon."
Fisheries Inspector: "How did he catch the salmon?"
Ondine: "Trawling."
Fisheries Inspector: "Do you expect us to believe fairytales?"
Ondine: "Yes."
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Neil Jordan deftly weaves legend together with a modern story employing imagery and symbolism. It's fairly easy to find the connections if you listen carefully to little Annie's explanation of selkies. They are seals who shed their fur to live with men. A man who hides a selkie's fur for seven years can keep her, a selkie who sheds seven tears can find happiness with her landsman. Syracuse is beside himself, wanting to believe in happily ever after, but afraid that it's too good to be true.

So what is real? What we know or what we believe?

Life Is Like a Bus

2010-12-16T12:24:00.003-08:00

"Life is like a bus. People are getting on, and others getting off. And when some have to get off, it's sad to go on without them, but you have to try to enjoy the ride until your station arrives."

Rona Ramon, wife of Columbia astronaut Elan Ramon (1954-2003) and mother of IAF pilot Asaf Ramon (1988-2009).

Tatiana's Response

2010-08-03T14:09:00.065-07:00

For 60 and some years since the truth about Hitler's 'Final Solution' was revealed, Jews and Gentiles alike have been struggling with the Holocaust. One of the latest attempts is Tatiana De Rosnay's "Sarah's Key".

"Sarah's Key" revolves around the infamous Vel d'Hiv roundup of Jews in the greater Paris area in 16 to 17 of July, 1942, so named after the local nickname for the Velodrome d'Hiver indoor stadium where over 13,000 detainees were held in appalling conditions until transferred to camps outside the city. The children were separated from their parents, who were deported to Auschwitz. The children were to follow in the weeks to come, and gassed upon arrival without even so much as a 'selection'. Perhaps the most outrageous aspect about Vel d'Hiv is that it was a totally French operation, which exceeded the expectations of the Nazi occupiers who initiated it.

De Rosnay weaves two stories together. One is 10 year old Sarah in Paris of 1942 who locks her little brother in a closet, hiding him from the French police detaining her family. The second is Julia, who's life intersects with Sarah's 60 years later. De Rosnay's plot alternates between Sarah's efforts to rescue her brother and Julia's discovery of Sarah and a secret from Paris the summer of '42.
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"Sarah's Key" is fiction but a possible, even plausible story; a gripping account of horror and tragedy .... until runs out of gas midway through the book. It’s a shame De Rosnay didn't quit while she was ahead. My advice is to open to page 175, tear it in two and toss the second half. You will end up with a shorter, but much better book. The pages in your waste bin are De Rosnay's attempt to respond vicariously through her characters. It's a guilt fest; they wallow in remorse for crimes that belong to others and to the past. The moral of the story, so she says, is despair and self flagellation. To a man, all the major players in "Sarah's Key" set a course for one sort of self destruction or another.
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It's true that some survivors couldn't pick up the pieces of shattered lives, but the overwhelming majority chose life. They established second families on the ashes of the ones that had perished.

With nowhere to go, and no one to turn to, the remnant of European Jewry created a home in the wilderness their forefathers dared only to dream of. They remembered, they documented the crimes against humanity, they tried to build a new society in which genocide is unthinkable, but the bottom line is that they moved on.

The generation of the camps is passing from this world, and now it's vogue to stir the ashes. For some, modern 'new Jews' who have little or no connection to their homeland or faith, the Holocaust is the only 'Jewish' thing left that they can identify with.

But really, how do we respond to the Holocaust?

Some remember.....

some are in denial,

And some, like De Rosnay, accuse.

The Holocaust exposed a sickness of hatred and evil that has plagued mankind since Cain slew Able. 60 years later the collective 'us' is still licking its wounds. We can we can pick at it like a sore, drown in despair and sink into guilt– or choose life, choose to heal, to learn and even to forgive.

It's overwhelming, the Holocaust. More than half a century later, we're still groping for the right response, but unfortunately "Sarah's Key" is wrong.

From the Back of the Bus

2010-07-21T21:59:00.001-07:00

Once, long, long ago in a place far, far away, I rode a Tri-met bus home every day from school. A favorite pastime was teasing a Stephanie, one of my classmates, from the peanut gallery at the back of the bus. I don't know why I did that; she wasn't a bad person, not ugly or unpopular. Maybe I was just bored.

Now, 30 some years later, Stephanie comes to mind. A couple of weeks ago she was blogging poetic about turning 50, and today it's my turn. (Her profile picture is of a little girl. It's not her. She stalks preschoolers at playgrounds and probably will continue doing so until she's christened her first grandchild.) Or perhaps it was last week passing a mile or so from her little farm on the Columbia and wondering if she was home.

Fifty for Stephanie is an adventure, a pleasure cruise on quiet waters. In fact, fifty is only one thing.

Old.

Forty is when you're getting old, at fifty you've arrived. Don't believe all that crap about being at your prime and starting out on the second half of life. (Who lives to be 100? Who wants to?) When you turn 20 and 30, you build your body. After 50 you try to preserve it. Parts break down and need to be fixed or replaced, starting with the eyes and teeth and ending up with the heart and mind. When you're young you don't greet strangers because you can't find your glasses.

After fifty, women turn invisible. They no longer attract the attention of men other than their husbands, and that only because they can't be ignored. It isn't much better for men – fifty is when your warranty runs out. You're useless and redundant; who wants a worn out and weary ol' coot.
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50 isn't just a number for me this year. Things that defined me are coming to an end. The army will be turning me out to pasture. My son will be replacing me, doing stuff I won't be able to share here because I don't need to know (and you, dear reader, need to not know.) It's my time to move to the back of the bus.
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But if there's something to be said for fifty, it's perspective. A lot of things happen over the years. You see things from the back of the bus.
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I think I know why I poked fun at Stephanie 32 years ago. She was a bit pretentious, a little presumptuous, and I couldn't believe that she and everyone else on the bus didn't see it. But now I think that they probably did, and liked her anyway. And if now at fifty she pretends a little, who cares? She's not a bad person, not ugly and not unpopular. She loves and is loved. She's happy. She has a bright take on life and paints it pretty. I think I envy Stephanie a little.
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So maybe I should try sitting quietly in the back, watch Stephanie, and maybe even learn something.

Happy 50th, Steph!

Introducing Golan

2010-07-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Meet Golan. She's one of our 11th graders. She's the one with kind eyes and the good nature.

Golan is a photographer.

When they started high school, I was the one with the camera. "Paparazzi" they called me. They protested and ducked at the glint of the lens, but not so much anymore, 3 years on.

They are all every one beautiful even if they don't believe me, in the spring almost summer of life. I want to capture the season for them, bottle their memories in film and preserve them for the day they will be gold.

I discovered Golan's work by chance while posting mine. She has something, is something I will never be. She's unobtrusive, inconspicuous, observing, has an eye for opportunity – innate qualities no less essential than expensive gear.

She has an eye for color and beauty in the ordinary and mundane details we mortals see and overlook.

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She catches a pregnant moment, tells an entire story at shutter speed.

Golan is a photographer, but she has taken the leap from craft to art. She is able to translate what she sees into ideas, and to give ideas and feelings visual, almost tangible expression.

Like loneliness……….

……….and eternity.

Our11th graders went to Poland this last winter. I didn't go with them, but Golan says without words how it feels as a young modern Israeli to return to the shadow lands of the Holocaust.

She steps into the shoes of new arrivals on the platform in Auschwitz, and she, and you, experience just a shade of uncertainty and finality of the doomed.

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About a year ago I completed "kissing the mirror" and needed to give it visual expression. A cover. Golan agreed to help me. I outlined the idea and let her run with it.

She came back with this....

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Good, lovely, but too 'sexy'.

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This one was perfect. It said it all. The innocent, egoistic kiss.

But I decided I want something more subtle.So I saved it for a back cover cameo,
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and took this one...

...and cut it to get this for the front cover:

Viola'! ("behold" in French)

Walla! ("Wow!" in Arabic)

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"kissing the mirror" has the honor of being Golan's first professional job. Not her last.

Golan's working, and going places. No surprise here; I knew it already last year. The day is coming soon and Golan will be introducing me.

I was one the of teachers at Golan Levyathan's high school.

Yes, that's right, the Golan Levyathan, the photographer.

And thanks to Jeni for lending her beauty to "kissing the mirror".

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You can catch more of Golan's work at:

http://golan-ha.deviantart.com/

Don't Believe Everything They Say About Israel...

2010-07-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

To Saint Catherine of the Wheel

2010-07-18T15:26:00.002-07:00

Saint Catherine of Alexandria ...hmm

Venerated patroness of women scholars, they say you were condemned to be broken on the wheel by pagan Romans for your brilliant defence of the One True Church. The only thing is, torture on the wheel was invented long after Rome had converted and crumbled; the only Romans that broke poor souls over a wheel were Catholic priests tormenting heretics.

So Catherine of the Wheel, you may tickle certain uninformed ears, but you come off a bit contrived, even a little dishonest.

I visit you from time to time. You review writers, presuming to be a fellow; wax and spin sentimental stories you think we want to hear. Ho Hum. Maybe some readers' hearts are warmed, but not mine.

Because I know there's fire.

I've seen it burn, when you discovered a fallen angel under your roof, and even when you poured coals over my head. And I can't say that I always liked it, but Catherine flashing and flaming was never boring.

So you may earn peer recognition and you might find the right word, but if you can't be real and muster the guts to put it on the page, you will never more than scratch the surface, irritate the skin. And I know you are capable of piercing the heart.

There was no wheel and you're no saint, Catherine. Get that through your head and maybe you will be able to write.

Wave Your Flag

2010-06-30T14:26:00.011-07:00

The fragile balance that exists here has been seesawing, the scales are tipping in favor of war. Simply more reasons for it than not.

But then comes the World Cup, and passions are diverted for a season.
Thank God for FIFA.

Wave your flag.

Playing on Passion

2010-06-23T23:52:00.007-07:00

Somewhere along the line Mel Gibson evolved from talented actor to serious artist. His career crawled out of the organic matter of blood and guts in the Mad Max series to action/comedy in Lethal Weapon I-IV, and in the last decade or so made the leap to a new level of thought provoking work, directing "The Passion of the Christ" (2004) and "Apocalypto" (2006).

Gibson gambled in both The Passion and Apocalypto, presenting historical drama in contemporary languages to subtitle-illiterate Americans, counting on raw violence and a fast pace to retain their attention. The Passion of the Christ is almost docudrama, following Jesus on his Via Dolorosa ("way of sorrow") in the last hours before his crucifixion. Apocalypto takes place in the doomed Mayan civilization literally moments before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors.

The Passion of the Christ isn't officially censored in Israel, but in tacit consent between the local distributors and the Israeli audience it isn't marketed here. (I was only able to see it on Utube.) It's just a modern version of Medieval passion plays once produced by the catholic church, more often than not the spark igniting drunken riffraff only too willing to exact revenge on the local Jewish community. At least that is how it's seen here. And besides, a crucifixion isn't going to move an Israeli crowd – in Second Temple Judea it was almost death by natural causes.

Objectively speaking, the telling of Jesus' crucifixion is certainly legitimate, even essential for Christians. Gibson's version isn't blatantly anti-Semitic, but he slips a latent bias in between the lines. He washes Roman hands of guilt; a reluctant Pilate who issues the death warrant, and the ignorant bullies who drive in the nails – Gibson forgives them for they know not what they do. He places the Christ's murder squarely on the Jews; if it's sanctimonious priests scheming and manipulating others to do their dirty work, or a lynch mob screaming for blood. But to be honest, Gibson's portrayal of Jews is accurate. The first century Jewish leadership was never accused of being 'nice' by their contemporaries, and Judeans weren't a gentle bunch, as Roman legions would discover time and again. Saying that, let me remind any Christians latching on to the above "admission of guilt" in order to browbeat present day Jews 2000 years removed from the crime, according the gospels it was first and foremost Jesus orchestrating the events that lead to his crucifixion – otherwise he isn't who he says he is and he was simply the sad victim of a case of mistaken identity. And as for Jewish kneejerk defensiveness at any mention of Jesus, we won't erase anti-Semitism by repainting the past.

In Apocalypto, an idyllic indigenous village in the jungle is raided and its inhabitants force-marched to a city belonging to a more advanced Mayan civilization. The story focuses on the captive Jaguar Paw, following him from his abduction on through the frenzied Mayan crowd. After the women are auctioned off, the men are painted blue and led up to a temple where one by one their beating hearts are to be cut out to ensure the pleasure of the gods and a good harvest. Jaguar Paw's life is spared by a total eclipse of the sun (a sign of the god's favor) and he exploits the opportunity to make a break for the jungle. He is doubly fortunate, for just as his pursuers catch up with him on the beach, they meet a landing party of armored Spaniards and priests who appear to them as gods, to Jaguar Paw (and Mel Gibson) as saviors.

It's not hard to decipher Gibson's agenda from his work; it's apologetics for the traditional catholic church, with one hand pointed at Christ killers, and the other twisting a positive spin on the Spanish crimes of conquest (and subsequent forced catholic conversion) of the native population of Central America. But it is in the parallels and contrasts between the two films one can find the fallacy in Gibson's portrayal of Jesus' crucifixion.

In Apocalypto, men are made gods to be sacrificed to save the Mayans from famine; in The Passion it is God made flesh to save men. Both films pivot on celestial signs, the solar eclipse vis-à-vis God darkening midday to night. In both the spectators - the Mayan crowd or modern theater audiences - are riveted to the drama of human sacrifice. And there's the rub.

Human sacrifice plays on passion. By our very nature, we can't help but be moved when observing the ritual murder of another person. So I have to agree with the verdict of the Jewish audience on this one, even if not with their polemics. Gibson's Passion is fueled by the same raw emotion that turned the wheels of idolatry and Papal violence, reducing Jesus' crucifixion to no more than another version of paganism. The Passion of the Christ is only a modern rendition of an ancient universal genre, one that has tugged at human hearts, sometimes literally, since the dawn of time.

Gibson could have featured the gory crucifixion of any one of thousands of Jews 2000 years ago and would have generated the same emotion. The cross doesn't make Jesus the Messiah.

In the last 60 seconds of the Passion, Gibson takes us to a tomb. The stone rolls away and the camera pans over to an empty shroud. Jesus comes into focus, stands and the last we see of him is a nail-pierced hand. An empty grave doesn't play on emotion and it won't generate box office hits, but it makes all the difference between victim and Messiah.

A Bad Joke

2010-06-12T16:39:00.012-07:00

A catholic priest, Protestant minister and a Rabbi walk into a restaurant. The priest asks for a glass of water. "May our Lord who turned water into wine turn this water into a bottle of fine Cabernet Sauvignon." The waiter gets the hint and brings the best of their selection. The minister orders a sardine and roll, and then blesses, "Let this sardine and roll be multiplied as the miracle of loaves and fishes." The waiter rushes off and comes back with smoked salmon and French bread.

The Rabbi observes this and orders something from the menu. When all have dined, they ask for the check. The priest refuses to pay up – all he had was a glass of water. The minister puts down a few coins for the roll and sardine. The rabbi tears the bill in half and says, "May the God who divided the Red Sea for the Children of Israel split this bill between this pair of fools."

A bad joke. Not really funny. But like any joke or story there is some truth in it, otherwise it doesn't make sense. True, there is interfaith tension. True, the Jewish stereotype is wily and greedy, not that there's any truth to the stereotype itself.
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There is a measure of truth to William Paul Young's "The Shack". His story is about Mackenzie who grieves his 6 yr. old daughter, who was kidnapped and probably murdered in a shack in the Wallowa Mountains by the 'Little Ladykiller', a perverted serial killer. 4 years on, Mack gets a mysterious message from 'Papa', family nickname for God, inviting him to return to the same shack his daughter was killed.

The story is Young's venue to outline his views on religion. Much of Young's theology is sketchy, but he's explicit at least on one pillar of Christianity: the trinity. Mack goes to the shack, and indeed meets God, who is:
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1. God the Father ("Papa") is a woman, black, fat and in the kitchen. So, there you have it ladies and gentlemen, God looks like this:

2. Jesus. He's not what Mack expected.

"Jesus?"
"Yes Mackenzie?"
"I am surprised by one thing about you."
"Really? What?"
"I guess I expected you to be more" – be careful here, Mack – "uh…well, humanly striking."
Jesus chuckled. "Humanly striking? You mean handsome." Now he was laughing.
"Well, I was trying to avoid that, but yes. Somehow, I thought you'd be the ideal man, you know, athletic and overwhelmingly good-looking."
"It's my nose, isn't it?"
Mack didn't know what to say.
Jesus laughed. "I am Jewish, you know. My grandfather on my mother's side had a big nose. In fact, most of the men on my mom's side had big noses."
"I just thought you'd be better looking."
(From "The Shack")

From this we learn 3 things:

a. All Jews have big noses.

b. People with big noses are ugly.

c. Therefore, Jews are ugly.

If Young researched his "Jewish" character of Jesus at all, he must have done it in a Reform Temple. He has Jesus frying up bacon and eggs on Saturday morning. The Sabbath may have been created for man, but pork wasn't created for Jews, and I think that even the real Jesus would have drawn the line at cooking on Shabbat.

3. The Holy Spirit is a mysterious, fidgety Asian woman.

All three claim to be One, but the story doesn't play that way, Mack having quality time with each of them at one time or another over the weekend. The closest to "oneness" are godhead family meals rustled up by Papa.

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God (namely, God the mother) is essentially the defendant. Why do bad things happen to good people? Or namely, why did God let Mack's blameless daughter experience such a brutal fate? Papa's answer is that instead of sparing her, Jesus was there for her, sharing her suffering, comforting her. The story about Jesus and the imaginary girl is heart warming, but what about real people that are terrified and alone and in pain?

Is it fair to stack the deck by creating man with a sinful nature, and then condemning sinners to hell? The solution is a role reversal exercise, no doubt brilliant to Young's mind. Mack is commanded to condemn 2 of his children to hell, which is unbearable. He begs to take their place. "You see?", says Papa. "That’s exactly what the cross was all about." There's nothing new about this, but we didn't ask how God solves the dilemma, but why does He let it exist in the first place.

There is a measure of truth to Young's arguments, but the bottom line is that he deals with hard questions by not really answering them. His story rings true and pleasant to the ear, but falls apart the minute it hits reality. The gospel according to Young is that mankind is undergoing an educational process, Jesus was an object lesson; if we can only understand God and his plan enough, all things are resolved. I'm just wondering if a god that can be understood by humans is really God.

You will find many interesting ideas in The Shack. Some of them are true and by sifting them from Young's inventions, the reader can reexamine himself and build a stronger foundation for his/her faith.

It's hard to pin Young down on anything other than his concept of the trinity, which leans more three than one. At very least he has done a great service for detractors of Christianity who claim it's not a monotheistic religion. The Shack is exhibit A for the commandment forbidding making an image of God. Young has made God in the image/images of man/men/women, creating his gods from racial profiles I hoped had passed from this world 50 years ago (the Negro mammy, the inscrutable oriental and the ugly Jew). In the end, Young's gods are small, no larger than his imagination, and their images limited to ethnic stereotypes.

Mack walks into The Shack and meets God – an African-American woman, an Asian and a Jew. It sounds like a bad joke; if only it were.

kissing the mirror

2010-06-07T01:08:00.039-07:00

I didn't set out originally to write a book. I had come to a point when I needed to unravel the loose ends in my life, and the stories started to flow.

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"Every time I finish a story, there is a little relief, a sense of release. In every story I give up something and in return I receive something.... With each story I am being healed and the scales fall from my eyes and the glass becomes clearer and I can see."
(from "Losing Control at a Very Basic Level")

I got the idea for the title from one of my stories. One of the girls I dated in high school told me she practiced kissing on the mirror. It struck me that it's a metaphor for those things we often do innocently, with the best of intentions, but in the end don't get us any where with God. And in a way, it's also like our human nature, sinful and self-centered. Until we realize the vanity of kissing the mirror, we will never experience the real thing with God.

2010-04-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

Hidden Treasure

2009-12-26T11:15:00.005-08:00

I found this blog by acccident, digging for something totally unrelated.

Hide Me
by psychedelic pisces at Cerulean Ciphers
I'm like a tightly closed bud of a flower,
hidden layer by layer of wonderful surprises.

I'm beautiful, I'm brilliant, I'm funny and witty, I'm fragile and sweet, I'm vindictive and loyal, I'm sensitive, I'm a complete enigma. And I'm hidden. Hidden from you and everyone else.

Find me... like I found you - unpolished, rough diamond beneath a pile of fool's gold.

Discover me... like I discovered you - slowly and with great enjoyment
as i watched you shine.

Cherish the moment you uncover me like a child
who eagerly opens his present on christmas morning.

I am hidden so you can find me.
Find me soon for I am buried beneath all pretty baubles and trinkets.
Hopefully, you are not blinded by all the glitter and sparkle for
I am plain and dull.

When you find me at last, do not lose sight of me.
I am hard and edgy from the hiding. If you treasure me, polish me with care until at
last I shine like a tear from your eye.

And I will be yours forever.

A Taste of Tel Aviv

2009-12-23T11:37:00.001-08:00

Israeli Indiana

2009-11-21T01:20:00.004-08:00

This is the only photograph I've seen of myself lately that I like. It was taken recently by one of my 11th graders somewhere out there in the Negev. It's what I'd like to think I am; a kind of Israeli Indiana Jones.

Who am I fooling? Probably noone, save yours truly. I'm just a eccentric English teacher. Now, how interesting could that be? Not nearly as dramatic as an archeologist like the real Indiana.

אביתר בנאי | לילה כיום יאיר | שיר הנושא מתוך האלבום

2009-10-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

Night Will Shine Like Day
Aviatar Banai

Foam

2009-10-17T12:14:00.006-07:00

Take me to the seashore,
The waves caress the sand.
Walk me nowhere with you,
In foam where sea meets land.

Footprints melt and mingle,
Dissolve beneath the waves.
And all there is is now,
Sea, foam, me, you, your face.

If our path disappears,
And you sift through my hand,
Then foam lasts forever,
Like our walk on the sand.

Footprints have been covered
By snow and by the waves.
The years have washed away,
And so we keep the days.

I am from the ocean,
And you are from the land,
Meet me on the seashore,
In the foam, on the sand.

Education

2009-10-05T12:52:00.013-07:00

Last fall I wrote Funny Words about how I had knocked myself out getting my degree in Jewish Studies. Actually, getting the degree was pretty easy; getting it with a few funny words added on was what almost killed me. I was writing to two people. To a former friend that had decided late in life to do what I had done, not to further her profession or for pleasure, but for "self validation" and "peer recognition". Poor reasons, I pointed out from experience. She cut me off crude and final – she knows it all and wants some paper to prove it, and if I can't cheer her on, I was dead weight she didn't need. True.

The other person I was writing to was myself. There were two things I could do to move forward with that degree of mine; go and get my MA - research. Or put it in practice. I wasn't about to imprison myself in musty libraries and submit to moldy minds, so that left practika. But this time, I swore to myself, no trying to excel or shine. Just do it and get it over with.

It wasn't an issue of being qualified; just this little matter of being certified. Half way through now, and there hasn't been much I haven't at least heard about. Jewish Studies is a wide field. But I did learn a few things since then.

For one, the one thing I'm certain of is that I don't want to be certified. Knowing it is one thing, trying to spin it is another. The logical thing to do would have been to quit, and to try and get my tuition money back. But then it occurred to me that I have an opportunity here to see for myself the entire country of Israel in the space of a little over a year. Virtually every little corner, from several different angles. Even in a small country, that's no small thing.

The classroom experience is also unique. That's because most of it isn't in a classroom. Days in the field start early in the morning and end late, and if I nod off here and there it's middle age, not sensory deprivation. Our teachers are almost to a man leaders in their fields. They speak in the first person. I found. I discovered. And if what they show us isn't from personal experience, they are on a first name basis with those who are. A generation from now, academia's best will be someone who read the books that our instructors wrote.

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Fringe benefits beyond the curricula share the bench with me. A know-it-all carrot farmer, a wealth of (often inaccurate) information. Two hot lesbians in heat have almost convinced me that what you need to really turn a woman on is to be a woman. The corrupt army retiree starting his second career – heaven help his future clients. A hippie in denial. A Torah observant moshavnik that thinks Jesus is fascinating. I could go on and on. I'm sitting on a gold mine of character types.

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But more than the subject matter or observing my peers, I've discovered a new side of myself. One that couldn't care less; one that makes its own rules and doesn't play ball with the establishment. I complete assignments, bring them to class and then let them stay in my bag when asked to turn them in.

The climax was midterms. I decided not to take them, but was told that I can't continue unless I take the exam.
"Okay, I have to take the test, but I don't have to pass, do I."
"True", I was told.

So halfway through the exam, suddenly I had enough.

I handed it in incomplete, and and spent the time remaining on a bench by the sea reflecting on my achievement. I don't know if I passed or failed. It may be the first time in my life that I flunked at anything, and boy, it feels good.

Be a flunky or flunk – those are my choices and I've made mine. Validation isn't earned in institutions, and I don't know if my peers recognize me, but more significant, I see them.

I've learned alot about myself this time around.

Now that's what I call an education.

Torn Between Two Women

2009-08-29T22:59:00.007-07:00

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Most are at least familiar with the account of Mary queen of Scots' imprisonment and execution at the hands of her cousin Elizabeth I, but a less known tale is that of the relationship that developed between Mary and her host/jailer, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife Bess of Hardwick. Philippa Gregory breathes life into this historical footnote in her novel, "The Other Queen".

A sincere man of honor, George accepts Elizabeth's charge to hold Mary as his unwilling guest, but in the style she is accustomed. His wife Bess is less than enthusiastic about the prospect of entertaining royalty.

Two women under one roof – big mistake.

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Bess is a "much married woman". She describes herself as "self-made" and has made a career of bettering herself through strategic marriages and then helping her spouses rob the Catholic Church which is being dismantled by the Protestants that have seized control of England. By marrying husbands above her station and then carefully husbanding the profits, she successively gains leverage to yet better matches in turn. George is her fourth, the crown of her achievements, joining his noble blood with her new money in a blend that mixes well with the cream of Elizabethan society.

Mary has been to the alter more than once herself, but that's where the resemblance to Bess ends. She is the product of careful breeding and carries in her person the keys to power, a "queen three times over" heiress to the thrones of Scotland, England, and France. Raised as a princess, she takes the trappings of royalty for granted and holds court even in captivity, at the expense of her hosts. Bad enough for ol' Bess that has slaved for every penny, but what gnaws deeper is having a woman said to be the most beautiful in Christendom and half her age to boot sharing her "husband the earl's" attentions.

Indeed, George the jailer is captured by his prisoner's charm and torn between Mary and his wife, the lady of the house out ranked by her guest. He's an honorable man, so there's no question of loyalty. On the contrary, he is played by both women. He tries to make Mary feel as welcome as possible under the circumstances, but she returns by exploiting his goodwill to hatch ever new plots to recruit spies and allies to overthrow her rival. And Bess for her part thinks nothing of spying on her husband and the "other queen" for Elizabeth's henchmen.

On the canvas of 16th century England's religious struggles, Gregory has painted a metaphor of those two bridesmaids of Christ; the Catholic Church and that peculiar invention, the Church of England. Catholic Mary has the pedigree and holds court in grandeur. She's beautiful and glamorous, but has the heart of a harlot and seduces men to rebellion and death. Bess is the Anglican. She serves a bastard queen, a self-made religion conceived in lust by Henry VIII and nursed with greed by Elizabeth I, robbing Catholic sacraments and Protestant reformation to cloth herself in legitimacy. She thinks she's fooled everyone, but even her own husband sees a common thief underneath the trappings of nobility.

And George is the Bridegroom. Grieved and deceived by Mary's scheming and Bess' grubbing, he turns his back in sorrow on both. As if to say, in the words of the poet in Elizabeth's court, "A plague on both your houses."
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More Than The Matrix

2009-05-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

(With school, tax time and summer, I haven't been able to free my mind and my schedule to blog anything new. Shavuot (Pentecost) is here, and More than the Matrix seems to be in the spirit of the holiday.)

Netanel and I are into The Matrix trilogy. For those who haven't seen or at least heard of it, it's about Neo who is a cyber messiah, mankind's last hope in the face of a race of robots that sustains itself by turning human beings into living batteries. It's a kind of alternate energy nightmare.

Neo has the perfect life. His day job is hacking into the robots' network ("the Matrix") and playing the ultimate computer game on line, beating up bad guys that look like grown ups in business suits. After a hard day of kicking the crap out of adults on line, Neo retires to human kind's secret underground base ("Zion") with his hot babe and they go to this great trance party.

"Mr. Smith", a personified antivirus program inventing by the robots to protect the Matrix from hackers like Neo that has shorted out and is running amuck. Out of control and driven by hatred for humans and robots alike, Smith becomes a menace to one and all.

Morpheus, the prophet that discovered Neo, is convinced that he will save mankind. In the end, Neo martyrs himself for the sake of humankind (and robotkind) in a classic 'good triumphing over evil' battle, and defeats Smith.

Humans and robots, now friends, are all grateful and The Matrix ends with the promise of a brighter tomorrow for everyone.

But what then? Do they have a party? And what about the computer games?

Did the Israelites think their deliverance from Egypt was a cosmic version of The Matrix? There was this big bad villain and God saved them with lots of special effects and pyrotechnics. Did they figure that they were free to pursue their own devices? Because that's what they did.

Just as soon as that old fuddy-duddy Moses had his back turned and was busy hammering the Ten Commandments out of stone on the mountain, they rigged up a golden calf and had a trance party.

They didn't get it. God didn't free them from the flesh pots of Egypt to set up new ones of their own. Salvation is an opportunity to start a life that means something. God expected more of them. And He expects more of us.

Passover is not only about freedom from slavery, but also about liberating ourselves from the Egypt within. About finding more in life than pleasure and self gratification.

I don't think that Neo gave his life in order that those he left behind could carry on hacking into 'The Matrix' and partying like there's no tomorrow. He died to give them a chance to build a new world; one with meaning. Not a virtual simulation on a computer program, but a real life with substance.

Neo wanted humans to live like he lived, to love like he loved.

Neo expected more of men than The Matrix.

Time Stopped

2009-04-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

(I posted 'Time Stopped', Karnit Goldwasser's eulogy to her husband Ehud last summer.
In honor of Ehud and all of our fallen we remember today.)

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes. Time stopped."

"On the morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border a journey began for the two of us. You and me. Us, the family and you. All of us, the nation and you. My love, they say that time does what it will, Heals and closes wounds, but does it?"

"For two years I have spoken in the name of two, Eldar and Udi. Regev and Goldwasser. The struggle to bring you home to us was a joint effort from day one. But today, for the first time, I allow myself to speak to you alone. Today I can't conceal, that my mouth and my heart are one. And the heart …. the heart, my love, weeps and pains."

"Forgive me, dearest, if I don't name here all of your wonderful qualities, your character, your inner beauty so rare; that were a light unto my feet and were at my side every step of the way in the struggle to bring you back to us. Please, my love, let this painful and intimate farewell, let me do in my own way, as you would if you could if only you could make yourself heard."

"During your long absence, as time passed on, your face belonged to one and all. Udi, the private person, my Udi, was suddenly our Udi. All of ours."

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes, and time stopped for you. The morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border, our journey began. For the two of us, you and me. For us, the family and you. For the nation and you."

"Today our journey is done and come to its end. We, just you and I, are now setting out on the next journey, the journey of my life. You will be part of it, silent but active, hidden but inspiring, concealed from all but before my eyes always. You will always be my second inner voice, forever young, that will be with me for as long as I live."

"July seventh, two thousand and eight, noon; and time has started anew."

(From Karnit Goldwasser's farewell to her husband Ehud, who was returned from Lebanon and buried yesterday.)

Nimrod's Children

2009-04-25T01:49:00.003-07:00

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11:9)

Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñarritu is the movie industry's version of Pablo Picasso, chopping up stories and rearranging them without regard to time or space in a collage as cryptic as one of the Spanish artist's creations. While the method is engaging, unless one is blessed with an unusual memory, you need to see Iñarritu's films twice to really understand what you've seen.

Babel is four stories filmed on three continents in four languages which seem to have little or nothing in common at first - Moroccan goatherds in the Atlas mountains, an American couple on vacation, a Hispanic woman and her young charges at a wedding in Tijuana and a rebellious teenaged deaf/mute in Tokyo. What's the connection? Chance; seemingly insignificant details are the butterfly wings that blow a tempest once their consequences are felt on the other side of the globe.

Images of children in the book of Genesis are interwoven into the plot. The rivalry between Cain and Able, Ishmael abandoned to die in the desert, Lot's seductive daughters; the common denominator being the tragedy of characters driven by emotion and their flawed nature to unpredictable, if rational, consequences.

Babel isn't a film friendly to subtitle illiterate Americans, but one I recommend. Not because of the story(ies), rather so that you see for yourself that such a movie can exist. Save for the few human beings on this planet that are fluent in all four languages - English, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic – Babel would have been incredible and unintelligible only a generation or so ago.

Man has broken down the barriers of distance and language that have separated the human race with the power of the mind. Technology. After four or five millennia, Nimrod's children have once again built a city, a global village, and a tower. Iñarritu's Babel is a sample of the mortar between the bricks.

"And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)

Abraham's Children

2009-04-20T12:44:00.006-07:00

Warning: I wrote a lot of stuff in this post about religious doctrine that’s real cynical, and it's more than likely to piss you off, so you're better off just reading one of my blogs about flowers and poetry.

The Apostle Paul once made an offhand comment in one of his epistles that since Abraham (the world's first convert to Judaism.) became a Jew by faith, so it figures that Christians are also Jews because they're believers. Paul didn't know it, but his friends let people read his mail and he probably never dreamed the fuss he would stir up when his remarks about who's a Jew (and who ain't) got canonized and became Church doctrine. The doctrine depends on which church you go to.

Catholic Church Doctrine:

The Jews aren't the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that they aren't the Jews.

Protestant Church Doctrine:

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that the Christians are Jews.

There is also 'Replacement Theory' Protestants that have this doctrine:

The Christians are the Jews, the Jews aren't the Jews but the Catholics aren't Jews either.

Naturally the Jews have a religion and they have a doctrine too;

Jewish Doctrine

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Gentiles, but the Gentiles can think what they like.

I'm not sure why everybody wants to be a Jew, but it must be because they all reckon that since Abraham lived a long time ago, sooner or later his heirs (the Jews) will be coming into a lot of money. (That's what I thought when I converted to Judaism, but sadly I was mistaken.)

It's nice that everybody wants to be part of Abraham's family, but you can tell who is family and who's not when the going gets rough, and I don't recall very many Catholics and Protestants lining up with the Jews when they were being carted off to concentration camps by the Nazis. (The Nazis' doctrine was that the Jews are the Jews, the Germans are the Aryans and Aryans think they can get away with murder.) You can't blame Christians for not wanting to join Abraham's children when they're getting slaughtered, but on the other hand it seems to me that you can't turn around and claim to be a part of the family only when its fun and you can get an inheritance.

I've been told I'm a cynic and I'm probably a bit cynical when it comes to religion because religions tend to be pretentious and claim to be things they're not. But unless someone is a religious butthead, I try not to be cynical about people because there is nothing more hurtful than telling someone he's not what he says he is, what he believes he is.

Once someone remarked about me (being a convert and all):
"You're not a Jew. What's so Jewish about you?"
The question was cynical and not inquisitive, and didn't even deserve to be honored with an answer. And such is the nature of religions, especially when they question others.

A few years ago we stayed with my sister-in-law for one of the holidays, and my niece (Or I should say, my wife's niece since I'm only an in-law and only think I'm part of the family.) brought Tuviel and Talia, a brother and sister, with her. Seeing that they are black, at first I assumed they were Ethiopian, and then hearing their American accent, that they were African Americans and therefore not Jewish. It turns out that I thought wrong.

Of course I realized that certainly there are blacks that converted to Judaism; after all I did. But I had never heard of 'Black Jews'. Tuviel and Talia explained that centuries ago Jews had migrated to Africa or had been taken there in captivity by the Romans after they destroyed the Second Temple. Their ancestors had lived there for centuries until at some point they had been stolen into slavery in the United States. They even knew what tribe of Israel they belong to – Levi.

In spite of being white and only a convert to Judaism, I felt an immediate connection with Tuviel and Talia. Within minutes, in spite of not knowing their father, I knew the man that had raised them. Their dignity and bearing reflected values and knowledge as plainly as their faces, and while obviously there could be no blood relation, I felt a kinship I don't get from other Jews, not even from the family I'm married into.

And I think its because we have the same father. The Father. We inherited similar traits of faith and the desire to find and serve Him. I sensed that we share the same spiritual DNA.

Tuviel has since moved back to the US and over the Pesach holiday Talia visited us. She told me that sometimes Israeli Jews question her Jewishness. Not out of curiosity, but cynically, hypocritically. Their questions aren't questions, but a thin mask for bigotry, the intention being to derogate and the way asked insulting her intelligence.

Talia describes it as an inheritance dispute. That European Jews in particular don't want to share Abraham's birthright with Black Jews, who are all the more incensed because they suspect that many of their detractors in fact have non-Jewish pedigrees (Their reasoning behind this accusation is yet another doctrine.).

I'm only a guest, an in-law, at Abraham's table, so I probably should just be quiet and just listen to family discussions. But I don't like to hear Abraham's children fighting and bickering over his inheritance. I would like to sit with a family that wonders who inherited Abraham's big heart. Who has his eyes that saw strangers from afar and who got his legs that jumped up to fix them something to eat? Who has Abraham's hands that dropped everything when he heard Lot was in trouble and helped him out? Who inherited a mind that judges a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character? Who has Abraham's faith? Who received his courage to stand up alone against the idol worshipers of his day?

I guess that sounds naïve. Maybe I'm not so cynical.

I think Paul's remarks about Abraham's children were metaphorical, not doctrine. That Abraham's children are faithful and righteous, that the spiteful and narrow-minded aren't really his children and they only think they are.

But then, what do I know. As someone once told me, I'm not really a Jew.

Wild Flowers

2009-03-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Palestinian kids 'boarding' down the slopes of the Kidron valley between the Mount of Olives and the old city walls.

Paula

My Israel

2009-03-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

Israel at 61.

I thought I would let her speak for herself.

One Shabbat

2009-03-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

(I posted 'One Shabbat a little more than a year ago, and at the time I was sure that soon it would be outdated. Unfortunately, it is just as relevant today as it was a year ago.)

When I started this blog a month or so ago, I swore to myself that I would not deal with politics or busy myself and my readers with the ongoing conflict that is almost a way of life in this little country.

But it seems callous to carry on as if all is well, when not far from here are thousands of innocent people that live in fear and misery on a daily basis.

I know it's not realistic to expect a solution; I know there is too much pain and hatred in this corner of the world to think that it can disappear overnight.

So I ask for this: one Shabbat.

One Shabbat that the Hamas will forget their anger and think of a more constructive way to express themselves, because they can't build a life for their people by destroying homes in Israel.

One Shabbat that the army will send all the soldiers in Gaza home to their families, because I know that for one or two or more of those families it will be the last Shabbat they spend with a beloved son.

One Shabbat that supplies of food and medicine and electricity and water will be allowed to flow freely to the thousands of Palestinians that greet every evening in darkness and wonder where they will find their next meal.

One Shabbat that the families on the Israeli side of the fence will get a good night's sleep without fear of dozing off and never waking up.

One Shabbat that Gilad Shalit's family will receive a sign of life from his captors.

That's all I ask for;

One Shabbat of peace.

Jerusalem

2009-03-09T11:10:00.004-07:00

A Journey Through Society

2009-03-07T09:53:00.008-08:00

My tenth graders set off on a journey last week. It's not the first time they've been in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but this time they visited places and people that perhaps they had heard of, but could barely imagine. They traveled to the farthest corners of Israeli society; dark places most of us Middle Israelis never see.

And the first step was a question: If on one side is equality and on the other is 'survival of the fittest', where are we Israelis? Part of the answer is a rundown neighborhood in south Tel Aviv ironically named Shikunat Hatikvah ('Neighborhood of Hope'). Our guides did their best to to explain what it's like to live in an island of poverty in a party town like Tel Aviv, but they weren't nearly as convincing as the locals we met by chance. "It's not as bad as they say it is", they explained, but the subtitles read otherwise.
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A few streets over is a slum that doesn't appear on the map, but has a name – 'Crate Town' (my translation). Not recognized by the authorities and therefore free of building codes and municipal services, people build their homes out of odds and ends. Pitch dark at night, flooded in winter and ruled by criminals, the people living here probably would have been left to their own devices except that to their misfortune they are sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in the country. Rich contractors buy up the ground from under their feet turning them into squatters on land they have lived on since the nation was founded. The rich getting richer use a combination of goons and city ordinances to force the poor getting poorer out of their homes.

Our next stop was the 'slave market' near the Central Bus Station. The street is a kaleidoscope of human beings of all colors and races, foreign laborers living on a pittance and often just one step ahead of the law. Exploitation draws exploitation – a few blocks over is the red light district (We didn't go there of course.)

A 15 minute bus ride away is Kikar Hamedina. It's Tel Aviv's Central Park, a circle of watered parks surrounded by chic boutiques that only the very wealthy can afford to shop. Again it was the passersby that underlined the message, casually mentioning how much they invest in the manicured dogs they're walking – more than what an entire family lives on in the neighborhoods we had been only minutes ago.

Walking back to the buses, I asked Odedah what she made of what we had seen that today. She's 16 years old, so learning that she was shocked didn't surprise me. She thinks that social justice has to start with people with money.

"Because people follow people with money."
"Do you have money?"
"No."
"Neither do I."

Oh well………….

We spent the night in a hostel in Jerusalem. An overnight school trip where we don't sleep in tents in the desert and have showers and teachers too tired to know or care what they're up to all night (see 'The Lowest Place on Earth'). The kids were very excited.

The next morning we invaded an ultraorthodox stronghold called Mea Shearim. I use military terminology because that is how the people living there see us creatures of modern society – the enemy. They reject modern culture, modern kids and the modern state that spawned them. They say that only the Messiah can redeem the Jewish nation in the promised land. The state of Israel is an abomination. We were asked not politely to leave.

Something odd occurred to me. Our guides were obviously not religious. That's why they wanted us to see the nasty side of religious Jews. Yet, for two days they were preaching about equality and social injustice.

There are two explanations for everything in the world. The first is called evolution. By random chance and natural selection, things are what they are. Survival of the fittest. The other, less popular, notion is creation. God created stuff for a reason.

Now if you believe in evolution, then the strong survive. There's no way around it. And if you believe in equality, then it's because we are created beings. There is a God.

So I thought it was odd a bunch of people trying to show us that God is bunk, but talk equality – and a another bunch of people that think they are better than everyone not like them, but talk God. I know there's some rational explanation, but I just thought it was odd, that's all.

Nevertheless, after two days of seeing poverty and crime and exploitation, I was wondering if those snobs in Mea Shearim aren't right. Maybe Israel is an abomination.

The plan was for my tenth graders to finish the day on Mt. Herzl, where the dreamer who wrote the blueprint for modern Israel is buried. They are 16 or almost 16 now, and the idea was to give them their identity cards in a ceremony at a place symbolic of the society they will be joining before long.

But once again, something not on the program underlined why we need Israel, warts and all. Just before loading the buses taking us to the ceremony, one ambulance siren, then a second, then dozens. In Jerusalem, that can mean only one thing. Terror. Another Palestinian that hates Jews more than he loves his own life.

Israel hasn't succeeded any more than the rest of the family of man in establishing a just society. But time and again, the world has turned on Jews, and providing a haven, not social justice, is why Israel has to exist.

On the way back home I remarked to Odedah that our journey reminded me of the Gospels. I mean, Jesus was on a journey in society. He rubbed shoulders with the poor, broke bread with the rich, was rejected by religious hypocrites.

"You know, like, not much has changed here in 2000 years."

"And it won't until He comes back", she replied.

I doubt if human beings will ever be able to create a just society. I know that Jesus didn't even try. He didn't come with a social agenda; He didn't come to change mankind. He came to save men.

So in a way, as much as I hate to admit it, they're right in Mea Shearim.
Redemption will come with Messiah.

Kinneret

2009-02-28T09:04:00.003-08:00

(also known as the Sea of Galilee)

Xiu On Poetry

2009-02-18T10:03:00.009-08:00

Xiu has featured more than once here at My People. She is only 19, but a woman for all seasons. Scholar, athlete (rugby!), fashion model, business woman (of late), a woman of letters (January Winds) and ............ a poet.

You can find her almost daily at January Winds. Sometimes its merely her personal diary; short notes more to herself than to her readers or messages to the ones closest to her. And sometimes she writes poetry.

This isn't the first time I've posted about her poetry (Xiu's Song). Xiu verse is short, not metered but rather a rhythm of ideas, thoughts. So much poetry, especially the old fashioned classical kind, confuses more than captures the imagination; fanciful foliage of language crowd the flowers of emotion and meaning. Xiu's poetry is unadorned, simple beauty like a single rose.

Like "On Love":

You see, I loved her.
It was love at first sight,
at last sight
at ever and ever sight.

I've always wanted to ask her about her poetry, and today I got my chance. I saw her online on Facebook, and for the first time we had a real conversation. I asked her about her poetry:

5:54pm Lim Yi Xiu
i just come up with phrases once a while, and i break them apart into like a poetry form. instead of one whole sentence...

so it goes
Something like this
once in a while
or maybe all the time

and i have layers..
that not everyone notices-
which is good!
subtle meanings/ metaphors...

and i try to make them
as real as possible.
personal things i experienced.
so it is real,

and not some thing
i merely THINk about.
but i do
experience them.

So even when talking about her poetry she breaks into verse.

And now while blogging this, I see Xiu wrote me a poem at January Winds:

Remember the Times:

Remember the times, so fine,
when we were too young to be prudent
about emotions, love, speech, actions
Remember the times, so fine,
when we thought that
nothing could stand in our way

Remember the times, so fine,
for they keep us alive
so why don’t we try
Remember

With the genius of brevity, short and sweet Xiu took sentences from a Facebook conversation, and made me a rose.

Thanks Xiu

:)

If You Go

2009-02-14T13:08:00.001-08:00

Vocals: Din Din Aviv
Idan Reichel Project

Planting Hope

2009-02-05T00:27:00.010-08:00

Noa was one of the ninth grade girls that read Shakespeare with me in the library last year. (see 'Language of Romeo'). She's not bashful; straight-spoken but not-out spoken in flawless English. She was born in Jerusalem and from age two until second grade lived in the Philippines with her family.

Last year a teen counselor asked Noa if she wanted to go to a camp. What kind of camp? "A peace camp with kids from around the world."

"I always wanted to go to a camp outside of Israel. So even if it was a peace camp, why not?".

The 'peace camp' is the International Camp held by Seeds Of Peace every year for hundreds of kids from regions of conflict. The idea is to open up new possibilities for young people from opposing sides by giving them a time and place far from the combat zones where they can meet and get to know each other face to face.

Noa never had any contact with Israeli Arabs until she was interviewed during the selection process.

"Before I had this stigma about them, about how they were. Like they're all religious and can't be with boys and [boys] can't be with girls. I thought they were very closed within themselves, like they don't have their own thoughts. Like puppets on a string."

Noa was interviewed (in English) about current events in Israel, about her thoughts on politics and religion. Candidate 'seeds' attended classes and seminars during the year, and finally some were chosen for their ability to speak and interact with others, their opinions and their proficiency in English. As time grew short and the selections narrowed, she started getting excited about it.

"It really got me boosted up. It sounded like so much fun, getting to know people around the world and what they think of the conflict. People out of the country; people that don’t know exactly what's going on directly. Like telling them what I think and seeing their ideas and their thoughts about everything."

The Seeds Of Peace International Camp takes place every year by Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Maine for three weeks during summer vacation. Besides other Israeli (Jewish and Arab) teenagers like Noa, there were Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians.

I asked Noa to tell me about one of the Palestinians she met at camp.

"The one that stands out the most was Haya. She's from the Palestian delegation, I think from Ramallah. She's a Christian. Even though she's very 'Palestinian', very against the conflict and believes that this is a Palestinian state and not an Israeli state, she still came to camp with an [open mind] and not with a script they gave her at home. She was open to our ideas and heard what we [Israelis] had to say in our dialog groups and what we think should happen with the Palestinians at the check points and the wall that is being built and everything. At the end of camp she came [went?] with the idea that there should be a united state called "Palestine/Israel". Both people should be in this land and both people deserve it."

"Do you think Haya is a typical Palestinian?"

"I think she's a bit different. In a good way. She listens to people and tries to understand the other's opinion, the other's situation."

"Are you a typical Israeli?"

"I don't think I'm unique in my opinions. I think there are many people that think like me, but I don't think I'm typical because, unlike my classmates, I point more to the left. I think we should try to get along, open the borders; try, like, an utopia and try to understand each other. If more people would try, and if we had a government that wanted to try, I think that the conflict would cool down a bit and more Israeli and Palestinian kids could get along better."

Less than half a year after the 'seeds' returned home from camp, war broke out between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. Did that change the way the seeds look at things?

"Some kids were saying, "Save Gaza!", and pulling up pictures of little kids that were injured very badly. People were, like, 'Stop the war!' and 'F--- Israel.' Others were saying, 'This is a test for all the seeds, everywhere, from all the years. How are we going to react to what's going on? How should we act in a time of war?' Others were saying, 'Go IDF! [Israeli Defense Forces] After 8 years of Hamas throwing bombs over Israel, it's time to do something.' "

"Some were confused, like me. I didn't know where to go, what to say. On one hand I was pissed at the army for [killing] over 1000 people, a thousand people that didn't do anything. On the other hand I was angry at Hamas; 'Who do they think they are, throwing bombs at Israel. They have no right to do that, especially when we had this peace agreement or whatever it was. I didn't know how to react, express myself about all the different opinions. I didn't know what to say."

"Haya kinda disappointed me. She was like, 'F--- Israel, I hate everyone.' She got really mad, bad talked the Israeli girls that were with her, and Israeli friends, and it disappointed me to hear her talk like that. Afterwards I talked to her and she calmed down and said it was just out of anger and she does believe in peace – it's just harder now."

Noa's still in touch with other seeds.

"With most of the kids I talk to them on Facebook, sometimes I call. I talk to them on Messenger and keep in touch on how they're doing at school. And after everything going on in Israel and in the world, what do they think. Have their opinions changed, or are they still the same?"

"I talk to Haya. She doesn't get on the computer a lot, but when we get a chance we talk a lot. Personal and political. If it were possible, I would like [her to visit me], but she has a tough time getting out, the check points, and she'd rather not. It would be different for me [to visit Haya], a little bit scarier, because a lot of Palestinian people don't believe in peace. They would see it as 'treason' and say, 'Why is she [Haya] bringing an Israeli person.' "

"Are Palestinians the enemy?"

"No. They're a group of people, some do believe in peace, and there are others that are religious and anti-Israel and think Jerusalem should be theirs and Jewish people shouldn't be here at all. It's very complicated, but I don't see any [of the Palestinian people] as my enemy, not even the extremists."

I asked Noa if getting to know the other side will bring peace.

"I don't call them 'the other side'. They're just a group of people, and once you get to know them and get to know their opinions and what they've been through and how their life looks like, it gets to you. It tells you, look at what we're doing, it's ruining lives."

"And when we tell them about our families that get hurt by suicide bombings, and everything that’s going on hurts us. People we know. I think once you actually get to know both sides and what both think, you can start getting to peace. You have to put religions aside and think, "What would bring peace?"

What will the Seeds Of Peace camp be like this summer? After the war?

"I think it will be different in a way because of the war and what's happened, but all in all it will be the same dialog, almost the same conflicts, almost the same ideas. You'll [they will] still go camping and still have activities and have group challenge, still eat and sleep together. I doubt if Seeds Of Peace will change."

It looks like it will be another dry year here in Israel. Like lot of farmers, I'm wondering if there's any point in planting. But looking at last years crop of seeds, that have survived the heat of war and are still growing, I reckon we should keep on planting seeds of peace.

This Is The Hand

2009-02-03T00:03:00.003-08:00

This is the hand stretched out upon the nations.

Isaiah 14:26

Alaska

2009-01-30T11:59:00.008-08:00

A bit of trivia, but not a bit trivial, is the fact that I was born in the state of Alaska. It's a wild country, but my parents weren't thrill seekers. The most adventurous thing they've ever done was to marry each other; a close second was having me. Anyway, I wasn't in Alaska very long. My parents and I left when I was a year and a day old.

I have always been a bit intrigued by the land of my birth. I grew up in Oregon, which is a beautiful place, but to be brutally honest – it's kinda boring. I heard the call of the wild at an early age. I daydreamed about adventure, imagined setting out on my own and dancing with danger.

Sean Penn's film 'Into The Wild' was a natural choice for me when I saw it on the shelf at the movie rental place. It is the true story about Christopher McCandless. Raised by well-to-do, upper middle class peppermint Americans, his story is not remarkable until he graduated from college, donated his savings to charity and set out west in a beat up Datsun. Severing his ties with his family, he chooses a new name, 'Alexander Supertramp'; and cutting society's safety net he burns the last of his spare cash.

The new self made 'Supertramp' lives on the edge. He hobos freight trains, starves with the homeless in urban America and survives dehydration in the desert. He has this amazing adventure where he paddles a kayak down the Colorado River to the Gulf of Mexico, and then with no documents and a winning personality, fast talks himself back over the border. Every time he's reached the end his rope, dumb luck and the kindness of strangers snatch him from the jaws of calamity.

But its not enough for McCandless/Supertramp. His dream is to walk into the wild back country of Alaska and live off the land like his hero Jack London.

So I'm watching Into The Wild and thinking to myself, "If I were young, if I could do it all over again, this is exactly what I'd do." And then it occurred to me that that is exactly what I did. I left everything and everyone behind for a life I invented in an exotic and dangerous place close to the edge. I even did the name change thing.

Christopher hitched his way north to the Stampede Trail in central Alaska in April of 1992. He headed into the bush with a 22 caliber rifle and 10 pounds of rice and set up a base camp in an abandoned bus. At first he holds his own, but when he realizes that he isn't hunting and gathering enough to sustain himself he decides to hike out – only to discover that he's trapped by white water currents of a river that had been frozen over when he hiked in. Trapped in the wild by his own folly, Christopher McCandless starved to death.

Unprepared by spoilers, it hit me hard. Like McCandless, lust for adventure consumed me in my youth. I set out into the wild, and in a way I'm trapped there.

It's not something uncommon. Young men and women (probably more men than women) hear the call of the wild, singing like Sirens luring sailors to peril. You want life to mean something, to experience it in the extreme. You want to taste it raw and bleeding, not boiled and seasoned like it was served at home.

Many have answered the call of the wild. Most of us live to tell about it. My journey took me to the other side of the planet. I thought I could make up a name, invent a life of my own. I lived on a kibbutz and enlisted in the Israeli army. And by the time I realized what I had done, it was too late. An ocean of reality separated me from where I had come from.

McCandless and I aren't uncommon. Many young men hear the call. I have a cousin who 'disappeared' years ago. He was just a kid when I left America, a bit rowdy but likeable enough. He got in trouble here and there, but nothing too serious. And then he took off and nobody's heard from him since save for cryptic messages every now and then. Here in Israel, trekking into the wild is almost a rite of passage for young men and women after they finish their army service. Most of them find their way back, although I've heard more than one parent comment that even though they are back here, they're still over there.

If you walk into the wild and can't find your way back, you're lost. You live a life to the Nth degree and discover yourself, but the only ones that care are back where you started from.

I'm one of those that returned. I still live in Israel, but I'm a member of my American family. It involves long distance telephone conversations and flying for hours between continents, but the bottom line is that I came back. Home is where the heart is, and so is the wild. You can be on the other side of the globe or just around the corner, but when finding yourself means cutting yourself off from the ones that love you, you're lost in a wilderness.

I hope my cousin will find his way home someday. I think that if McCandless could have made it out of Alaska, he would have returned to his family. Weak and helpless, he wrote this on a page torn from a novel in hopes that someone would find it in time.

"S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out
of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to
save me."

It was signed, "Christopher McCandless". Not Alexander Supertramp. He was ready to come home, but it was too late.

The state of Alaska is where my life began; its where Christopher McCandless's ended. The wild isn't a place as much as a state of mind. Some of the less fortunate get trapped there; most of us adventurous souls are lucky enough to find our way home.

The Little Engine That Can

2009-01-20T15:08:00.009-08:00

I think every boy and girl, or at least every American boy and girl, grew up on the children's book "The Little Engine That Could" by Watty Piper. It's the story of a long heavy train that needs to be pulled over a high mountain. The bigger engines all refuse for this reason or that, but to everybody's surprise one little engine steps (rolls?) forward willing to take the overwhelming task on himself. Straining, pulling with only determination and faith that he can pull his charge to the top of the hill, the little engine chants under his breath "I think I can, I think I can." And, of course, in the end he does.

. The moral of the story, that with hard work and positive thinking anyone can, everyone can, is the stuff Americans have been raised on. We weren't handed everything on a silver platter, but anything was possible. We were offered opportunity.

As incredible as this may sound, there was a time in my youth that I considered being the president of the United States of America. No kidding. It was an option, one of many directions I considered taking at the beginning of my journey. Now, after time has tainted my mind with a healthy dose of realism, I know that I was only fooling myself. Yet perhaps it says something about one of the greatest gifts America has granted its men and women, its boys and girls; optimism, a belief that opportunity is endless. No matter how wild it is, how far fetched, Americans can.

Maybe its because I have lived over here so long, far away from the land of endless opportunity, but now I have come to see that American expression "because I can" the way the rest of the world sees it. The arrogance in it, as if it somehow it is a reason for anything. Like when ex-president Clinton was asked why he had the liaison with Monika Lewinski, he replied, "Because I could."

"I can" doesn't mean it's right or wise or good; it just means it's possible.

But Americans can. And sometimes they do.

Today I watched an American take the oath of office as president. Unlike me, he did take that the path to the White House, and he made it there with a promise to Americans. "Yes, we can."

Today was the crowning achievement of his career, greater than anything he will do in the next four years. An achievement for Americans and for America; for today all things are possible for all men and women.

In the next four years he will have to pull a long train with 300 million Americans aboard up a very high mountain. It will take a lot of determination on this young American's part, as well as that of others who are willing to jump down and step up and help him push that train up to the top.

Today I don't know if Obama can, but I certainly hope he will.

Winter

2009-01-13T22:20:00.003-08:00

I recall growing up in Portland in the cold country of the Northwest, winter mornings waking up to see snow or black ice on the window. They closed school and we stayed inside, snug and warm out of the cold.

In the more than half of my life here in Israel winters are short and mild, temperatures usually range from warm to blistering heat. So do tempers.

This isn't my first war, most likely not my last.

Here school is cancelled more often because rockets, and not snowflakes, are falling. People stay closer to home, find snug shelter inside hopefully safe from the terror outside.

And even when you're out of range, more often than not someone you love isn't. You slow down and close down, do what you have to and no more. You find a place inside yourself and wait for the storm to pass.

I don't feel like blogging.

2009-01-13T14:19:00.001-08:00

Where are you, Maayan?

2009-01-04T12:19:00.004-08:00

"Sometimes in order to live somewhere, you have to die there."

Hagit Rhein, mother of Capt. Bania Rhein who fell in Lebanon, and Eliyashiv, in combat somewhere in Gaza.

God Smiles Too

2008-12-31T14:47:00.003-08:00

Sometimes we can grow old,

and lose sight,

that when God sees His child happy,

He smiles too…

Xiu

Good News, No News

2008-12-31T12:50:00.007-08:00

Probably only readers that have visited Israel really understand yesterday's "Inside Joke". So to clear this up, I copied a map of the latest conflict and marked how it fits into the context of 'My People".

For now..

The bad news is that the Hamas are shooting missiles at Maayan.

The good news is that they are really bad shots.

The good news is that Maayan will be home for a few days.

The bad news is that it is because her classes have been cancelled because of the war with Hamas.

Inside Joke

2008-12-30T13:14:00.003-08:00

Abba: Maayan, they're saying on the news that some Grad missles hit Beer Sheva about an hour ago!

Maayan: Yeah, I know. I was walking to a friend when they hit.

Abba: Did you see it?

Maayan: No, but I heard them.

Abba: Was it close?

Maayan: No. Somewhere in the neighborhood.

Abba: In the neighborhood? That isn't very smart.

Maayan: What?

Abba: You know, somebody could get hurt.

Maayan: Oh yeah, I know. They should shoot them at open places where it's safe.

Abba: I'm going to make a compaint.

Maayan: Good idea.

Abba: Well, are you okay?

Maayan: I was shook up a bit at first, but I'm okay now.

Abba: You know, it's all for the best.

Maayan: Thank God.

My People 2008

2008-12-25T00:45:00.023-08:00

My People owes its existence to a girl I knew in high school. She, my brother Barry and I all rode the same Tri Met bus home from school. She was a very serious girl. I enjoyed stirring her up. I guess I was pretty obnoxious. Maybe it was that she was so naïve (or so pretentious) and I couldn't resist trying to burst the bubble she was blowing.

Barry once asked me if I ever wondered why we hooked up with her. I don't; we didn't have much of a choice being on the same bus and all. What I do wonder about is why out of all the people I knew back then, she is one of the few I still know 30 years later.

Just about this time last year I finally joined the internet community and discovered that girl from the back of the bus on her blog, Recollected Life. After close to a decade since I'd last heard from her, it was a pleasant surprise. She turned me on to blogging.

The name of my blog was almost obvious. Ami means "my people" in Hebrew, and I write about myself and the people in my life. In most cases they are people I know personally. My family, my friends, my army buddies … my people. Blogging at My People added more to that list, like Xiu at January Winds and Olivia who blogs Inspired By Grace.

So a year has passed (almost). Where did I go with My People?

I think I wrote more about Maayan that anyone else. She's at an interesting time in life, a lot of important choices. She's on my mind a lot and that's why she's featured so much in my blog. Some of my more pointed observations were 'Maayan: before and after' and 'Taking the Reins'.

How much I write about any one person doesn't reflect on my relationship with him/her. Directly or indirectly, that girl at the back of the bus shows up a lot at My People, but in fact she's played only a small part in my life. On the other hand, my wife Yael who has to contend with me every day, hardly appears at all.

'Footprints in the Snow' and 'Kissing the Mirror' were about the women in my past, and 'The Language of Romeo' about the woman I'm with.
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Maybe the 'Hands' project wasn't great, but hopefully it was original. I'm thinking about an 'eyes' project in 2009.
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I live in an interesting place, and hopefully My People has shed a different light on Israel that that presented by the media. Not the war zone you see in the news or Sacred ground – just a beautiful little corner of the world. In the course of my continuing education I have 66 required days in the field. It occurred to me that this would be an excellent source for a new blog. We'll see.

I probably wrote more about my faith than any other subject. I hope none of my readers took this to mean that I am an authority on religion. I'm not. I am still searching and struggling with God. I think 'Kissing the Mirror' and 'It's Just Grass' say most about where I am spiritually.

If it seems that I have an axe to grind with the Catholic religion in general and the Anglican Church in particular, I do and I don't. Nothing from my Protestant past and my Jewish present would endear me to the Catholic faith, but I don't have any personal accounts to settle. While getting my degree I researched the Anglican mission in Israel (then Palestine), so I am simply more familiar with that particular subspecies of Christianity.

Probably the most moving piece I blogged wasn't mine at all. I translated into English Karnit Goldwasser's eulogy to her husband Ehud in 'Time Stopped'.

I don't know what makes a blog successful. I get a lot of hits, but most are people mining pictures. The most popular posts are 'I am a Chameleon' (photo of the blue panther chameleon), 'Snake in the Synagogue' (the Talmud page), 1492 (painting of Queen Isabelle of Spain), 'On Blogging' (Xiu's naval piercing) and 'Being a Boot' (the picture of muddy boots). I don't know if you need to be a good writer to succeed in blogging; apparently people are more interested in muddy boots.

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It's been 30 years since I rode Tri Met home from school with Barry and that serious girl, but I still have that impulse to deflate what is puffed up, to poke people with reality. Maayan refers to it with the Hebrew expression "to sting". And some of my posts are sharp, but they only hurt when they touch the truth.

My People is about the people in my life. They are from all races and religions, from every corner of the world. Most of them I know personally and many of them I'm related to. Some are friends, some not, but in one way or another they are all a part of me. Even that girl that from high school.

So in the end, My People is no more than a personal journal that is open to the public. My People is about me.

About 'The Last Summer'

2008-12-18T11:30:00.004-08:00

Maayan e-mailed me, wondering if I was a bit blue when I posted "The Last Summer" below (my translation into English). Allow me to explain....

Back in the early 90's, Temporary Sanity were some kids that jammed together, but hitherto had played only for friends and at high school parties. On a lark they recorded 'The Last Summer'. It was a bittersweet ode to passing youth; that last summer after graduation when one after the other they get drafted until they have all disappeared like autumn leaves.

Little did we know back then that we were living the last summer of temporary sanity before Oslo, suicide bombers and Lebanon. The lyrics written in innocence took on new ominous meaning. Some, too many, empty seats at high school reunions were silent testimony to the insanity of the times.

But I posted it simply because I ran across it on Utube and its still a beautiful song.

Don't worry, Maayan, I'm not blue, and at least for now temporarily sane.

Getting into the (Hannuka) holiday spirit

2008-12-18T10:37:00.001-08:00

"The Last Summer" - Temporary Sanity

2008-12-17T23:29:00.001-08:00

It's my last summer with you here,
With the first rains I'll disappear,
My tears will run down the slope,
Like a falling leaf, a far away hope.

I'm a winter person in a land by the sea,
But when this winter comes, I'll cease to be.
Melting slow, layer by layers,
Between will and won't and last prayers.

Remember you promised not to cry,
Cuz' the sky is big and the tears get dry,
Close your eyes when the first rain falls,
And think of me ……

I want to climb mountains because they're there,
And travel to lands over the sea,
To find if there's a life instead,
And if they go on living after they're dead.

It's my last summer with you here,
With the first rains I'll disappear.
Melting slow, layer by layers,
Between will and won't and last prayers.

Remember you promised not to cry,
Cuz' the sky is big and the tears get dry,
Close your eyes when the first rain falls,
And think of me ……

2 years

2008-12-16T08:46:00.005-08:00

2 years since

you're gone. Absent,

not accounted for.

2 years now,

where are you?

We're still here

2 years later

Happiness Isn't Fun

2008-12-13T07:20:00.003-08:00

This Shabbat's Torah reading, "Ve-yishlach" - the account of how Jacob returns to Canaan and confronts his brother Esau, reminded me of an op-ed by Jonathan Rosenblum I read years ago, Happiness Ain't Fun. Below is an excerpt:

"Each of us is born incomplete. That lack of completion creates a gnawing within. Our natural tendency is to identify that which is missing with something outside of ourselves - material possessions or some physical pleasure - and to make its attainment our goal. Yet attaining the sought-after object rarely does more than stifle the gnawing for a period of time. "
"A moment's reflection would show us why our efforts to quell our inner turmoil are doomed to failure. Our problem is an internal vacuum, but we seek to cure it with things that must of necessity remain external. No physical object can be amalgamated into our being or fill our internal void. But instead of recognizing this, we convince ourselves that we erred only in our choice of objects: We needed a Rolls, not a Cadillac, or two Cadillacs, not just one."
"By focusing on that which is outside of us rather than what is wrong with us, we lose all sense of who we are, what makes us unique, what special tasks we have been created for. Like a teenager whose life revolves around the telephone and the mirror, we lose all sense of ourselves, except as we exist in the eyes of others."
"The soul, which is not of this world, cannot be satisfied with the goods of this world. Only curing our own imperfections can ultimately quiet the ache in our souls, for only such changes as we make in ourselves can be more than momentary sedatives."
"Every material object is, in a sense, borrowed. It cannot become intrinsic to us, part of our essence, and sooner or later it will no longer belong to us. But what we make of ourselves when we conquer our anger or resist the impulse to speak ill of someone else or train ourselves to reach into our pockets for every passing beggar cannot be taken away from us."
" 'Who is a rich man?' ask our Sages. And they answer, 'He who is satisfied with his portion.' They do not say that such a person is also a rich man, but that he is the only rich man. No matter how much a person possesses, he is a poor man as long as he is driven by a hunger for more."
"Upon meeting his brother Jacob for the first time in decades, Esau tells him, 'I have a great deal.'*, implying a desire for yet more. 'Keep it for yourself', Jacob replied, 'I have everything.'** "
* Hebrew: "Yesh li rav" - I have much. (Genesis 33:9)
** Hebrew: "Yesh li kol" - "I have it all. (Genesis 33:11)

Stigmata

2008-12-11T11:25:00.021-08:00

On the way home from America, one of the films featured on our United Airlines flight was Henry Poole is Here. Henry is diagnosed as terminally ill. He quits his job and moves back to the quiet neighborhood where he grew up. He wants to close a circle, to end his days peacefully. He rebuffs his friendly neighbors. Really, what's the point?
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A nosey neighbor lady is poking around in Henry's back yard and discovers a water stain in the image of Jesus' face on the back of his house. Henry takes a look. He sees a bad paint job. Nevertheless, word gets out and Henry's back yard turns into a local Mecca. The dumb can speak, the blind can see; and Henry couldn't care less.
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"Hope won't save you", he tells his wellmeaning neighbors. They can't believe it, incredulous that Henry is blind to the miracle staring him in the face.

I have been told that my blogs about movies are spoilers, so I won't go on. Henry Poole is Here is about the eternal three: faith, hope and love; its a thought provoking story with a twist. Just the thing for a Henry Poole like me.

Every now and then you hear about these strange little 'miracles'. Like statues of the Madonna or people bleeding spontaneously from parts of the body where Christ was wounded. (These people are usually Catholics - non Catholics generally go to a doctor when they spontaneously bleed.)

Its called "stigmata". Most people dismiss it as so much bunk, most people not being Catholic. I for one (neither Catholic nor 'most people') buy it. But the question isn't, "Is it true?"; the real one is, "Is it the truth?" After all, that's the conclusion they (the Catholics) would have you come to.

My mother in law's father died once. In fact, he was so dead that they had him all wrapped up in a shroud for burial. (People weren't buried in coffins back then, over there in Bombay.) Fortunately, he came back to life before they got around to burying him. Once his wife calmed down, he told this story:

After he died, he was taken down a hallway to a place and "there was a trial". He was asked if he had any requests. He replied that his youngest daughter Rosy was to be married soon and that he wished he could have lived to see her married. At this point he found himself back among the living, wrapped up in the shroud.

In the monthes that followed until Rosy's wedding the old man told his story to a number of people. He wasn't sick any more. Rosy got married and about a week afterwards he was sitting outside on a balcony or a porch and his wife left him for a moment. She heard him say, "What, you've come already?" By the time she came back to see who he was talking to, he was already gone.

What does it mean?

Not much, really, unless you happen to be a member of the family. At the time it meant a lot to my mother in law, her brothers and sisters. It was a bit of comfort in their time of loss, but there are no spiritual truths here.
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Stigmata is a Catholic thing. It happens to Catholics, it strenthens Catholics, it gives them a little hope. I'm sure the bizzare, gory stories are true, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with the truth. God, for reasons only He knows, sometimes does things a little out of the ordinary. Not to prove this religion or that; it's His way of encouraging people. A little miracle here and there gives people hope.
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No, Henry, hope won't save you. Not always. But you can take this to the bank; if you don't have any hope at all, you're already finished.

Letter from America: Paradise

2008-12-04T13:32:00.019-08:00

San Francisco, California

Sunday, November 30, 2008

A week or so before I set out for America, we read the story of creation from the Torah scroll in our synagogue. It goes like this: God creates a paradise, and lets a man and a woman live there. He gives them free will, a choice. This freedom is the man and woman's undoing as they end up choosing to eat fruit of a tree forbidden them and are sent out from Eden.

The United States of America was founded by 13 colonies on the Atlantic coast and over the space of less than a century expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean. On a bay at frontier's end is San Francisco.

The city is a monument to the achievement of the human will over the elements. She is built on a peninsula connected to the mainland by the Golden Gate Bridge suspended on enormous cables and further south by more bridges that run for miles over the bay. San Francisco was the perfect place to build a deep water harbor, but her steep hills would have normally precluded it as a site to found a city. Undeterred, the city fathers overcame the obstacles in their way. The famous trolleys made it possible to climb hills too steep for horse and carriage and homes were built almost one on top of the other. At the mercy of frequent earthquakes, they have built skyscrapers designed to stand even the most violent quakes. But more striking than the city's victory over the physical elements is the diversity of the population; Asian, African, Hispanic and European descendants make up the indigenous population.

My friend Mary lives in a quiet suburb on the bay just south of the city. Mary is one of my favorite Americans. I've known her since seventh grade and we've kept in touch over the years. My daughter Maayan and I visited her on the last leg of our journey in America. She took us to see her sister Barbara who lives in the city.

Barbara lives with an obese cat she rescued from the animal shelter in a building called 'The Thick House'. It's like a kibbutz for artists. Each of the residents is in some way an artist; poets, painters, sculptors. They display their creations in the hallways and stairwells of the building that is in itself a work of art.

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Barbara wasn't always an artist. Thirty years ago she was my boss in the men's department at JC Pennys where I worked while I was in college. After 20 years in the retail business, she chose to recreate herself in the middle of life and learn a new craft. Artists usually use their art to express themselves, but Barbara is different. She is a graphic artist that works for the city's public library. She has the gift of reaching into the mind of another person and creating images that can be understood by others. She is like a translator using a visual language.

Mary's family is a metaphor for what I think is most beautiful about America. Mary is the almost youngest of seven brothers and sisters. Each and every one is dramatically unlike the other, each a different hue of opinion, occupation, lifestyle, and personality. Yet as a family they are a rainbow, close and harmonious, accepting and appreciative of one another.

What is America? It is the ongoing fusion of the entire gamut of the human race into one nation. This truth, self-evident, that all men were created equal was a stone big enough to bridge the gulf that divides people and peoples, and to built on it a new civilization founded on tolerance.

America is a paradise. A paradise created by human beings out of the only thing man took with him when he was sent out of the Garden of Eden – freedom. Freedom to be what and whom they will regardless of race or religion or age or gender. Freedom may be America's undoing, but without it Americans wouldn't be who they are.

Americans have a choice.

Letter from America: Black Friday

2008-12-04T08:29:00.005-08:00

Friday November 28
Seattle, Washington

We Israelis don't lack for anything we need, but we don't always have everything we want.

Israelis in America get sick. It's an eye disease. We see all the newest brands and latest models. America is shiny and glittery, and on sale. We Israelis see this and get big eyes.

They call the day after Thanksgiving 'Black Friday'. It isn't because the day is dark or evil. It got its name because retailers open the holiday shopping season with sales and since most Americans have the day off the stores are swamped by shoppers and it puts them 'in the black'.

Black Friday can be deadly for Israelis that happen to be in America. In this climate, their immune system is weak anyway, and the glitter of gadgets is too bright and the prices too appealing to resist. Israelis can't help but shop and spend.

But with all the plenty glaring on the surface, it's easy to miss a different reality underneath. Americans tell me about the high prices they have to pay to own their own homes. They go into debt to pay for their children's education and while medical care is state of the art, its price has become exorbitant and beyond the reach of many. I was shocked to discover that American businesses aren't required to provide their employees with pensions.

I listened to Americans and it struck me how poor little Israel has managed to provide low interest mortgages to young families and immigrants, tuition is maintained at a reasonable level (2,500 dollars by law, regardless of the level of the institution one attends.) and all enjoy the benefits of our national health system for a fraction of what it costs Americans.

So I didn't get up early on Black Friday to fight my way through the crowds to the great sales. I'm not dazzled by American trinkets. When it comes to the things that are really important, it seems to me that we Israelis are better off than our American cousins.

We Israelis don't have everything we want; but as for the things we need, we have it all.

Letter From America: Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

November 27
Portland, Oregon

I have been trying to find America's heartbeat. In the past it was easy because it was strong and steady. This week I tried to find a pulse.

The patient has seen better days. I grew up in an America where you worked hard and in time you were rewarded with the fruit of your labors. You joined the labor force, purchased a small home, worked some more and when you could afford to do so, built or bought something larger. You could expect to end your days secure and in comfort.

I haven't lived here for 27 years. In the meantime America has contracted a disease. The Subprime Financial Crisis is only the latest rash, but it's not the sickness. A lot of Americans got impatient. They wanted to taste the good life now and pay for it later, if ever. They didn't have to work hard. They could borrow the the things they wanted and the banks were dumb enough to let them do it.

Later is now. Of course, not everybody got sick, but this last year the ones that had been gorging themselves started heaving and puked. So these days Americans are trying to clean up the mess. They tell me about unemployment and reduced hours. Some of them, a lot of them are my age. There's not a lot of time left to work hard again.

But coming from a part of the world where health is the exception and not the rule, I see a country that is battling a cold but is still very strong. America enjoys the blessings of generations that did it the old fashioned way. Americans have a lot and they're grateful for it.

I haven't been in America for Thanksgiving for 27 years. I've been here a few times for Christmas and there's always been talk about how America has become commercialized and how holidays have lost their meaning.

America is sick and I don't think I have met one American this visit home that doesn't feel it on his/her own skin. So it is all the more inspiring how inspite of, or perhaps because of what ails America, Americans are truely thankful for the good land God has given them.

I took America's pulse this week.

Americans have a good heart. That's why I give America a clean bill of health.

Letter from America: The 'Loggers'

2008-11-25T18:17:00.007-08:00

Wilsonville, OR

November 23, 2008

The United States of America was founded on the principles of democracy, but it took centuries of at times bitter struggle to come up with the recipe for tolerance and coexistance that you find here today. A variety of different ethnic groups, religious beliefs and political opinions that polarize other nations blend together in harmony, giving America its unique flavor.

But in the arena of sports pockets of still exist. This is where you find the high schools of small towns and farming communities battling each other in the minor leagues.

Last night Scio, Oregon’s (Pop. 600) varsity football team (the ‘Loggers’) squared off with Knappa (also called the ‘Loggers’) in a semi-final – the prize being a shot at the state championship. Scio doesn’t have the resources to develop a pass and receive strategy, so this year it played a running game with big farm boys plowing through their opponents’ defenses. Yard by painful yard, particularly for the poor slobs in the farm boys’ path, Scio’s Loggers plodded up to the top of the heap.

The two pretenders squared off at Wilsonville (neutral territory). Knappa played a more sophisticated game, passing over Scio’s defense and employing their own farm boys to block Scio’s. By the end of the first half , with Knappa leading 29-8, it was clear who would take the day. Scio didn’t lose heart and fought on, no longer out of hopes for victory but for more personal reasons. My brother Barry leaned over, “A lot of these kids are seniors. They know that this will be the last time they play the game. Ever.”

With four minutes left in the game, both teams caught a new wind. Knappa charged fast and furious, while Scio threw in all their reserves to hold them back. Barry’s a member of the school board. He remarked that most injuries happen when teenage athletes get whipped up and start taking chances.

“Why is Knappa pushing so hard?” I asked. It was obvious by now that they would win.
Barry replied in his fake foreign accent. “This is America. When we win, we’re in their face.”
“And what happens when “they” are in the Americans’ face?", I wondered.
“We nuke ‘em.”

America has employed and deployed young men and women around the world with the same competitive spirit that I saw on that field in Wilsonville last night. As Scio’s varsity team can tell you, size and strength don’t always spell victory, but it does mean that the other guys had better watch out.

Letter from America: The People's Choice

2008-11-22T21:20:00.004-08:00

Portland, Oregon

November 22

Passing through America in November 2008 you can't avoid the election of Barak Obama at the beginning of the month. It has blasted a crater too big. You can't get around it.

Be they Democrats or Republicans, lean right or left; whether to their minds it is the breaking light of a new day dawning or the first sprinkles of fallout before a four year political winter, Americans are collecting their thoughts about what happened here. It's sitting there in the back of their minds, on the tips of their tongues, struggling to get out.

Maybe it's because I live far away, but I think that by electing Obama Americans cashed a note signed when slaves were emancipated 150 years ago. Obam took the last step in the march Martin Luther King Jr. started in Montgomery, Alabama. For me, this election wasn't about the next four years, but about the last 50 and the 50 to come. But alot of Americans aren't like me. They don't care about history. They live here, and they're worried about now.

Some Americans, apparently most, think that Obama is a savior that will extract them from the mud of a foriegn war and shore up a failing economy. Others say he's an antichrist (?) that has seduced the nation.

But from where I come from, detached and distant, I see this: nobody knows yet what the next four years will bring. The Bush administration isn't a hard act to follow; maybe all will be well. Maybe not. All I know is that it's too early to tell.

Leaders are servants of God. It is through them that He blesses some countries and punishes others. The democratic process has led people to believe that they are in some way masters of their own destiny, but despite of or even because of the fact that they elect their leaders, it is really only the means that God uses to reward nations, for better or for worse.

He just lets them choose their poison.

Letter from America

2008-11-16T09:21:00.014-08:00

They say that every immigrant to Israel (Hebrew: "oleh") from North America is at first euphoric. The surge of moving to an exotic country, new surroundings, and being pumped with Zionist ideology is intoxicating. Eventually the emotional high wears off and the oleh comes to his senses and sobers up with one hell of a headache. The exotic has become foreign, the new has become routine and ideology diluted by reality is weak soup. (This doesn't happen to immigrants from Russia or other places where Jews are poor and persecuted.) I don't know who "they" are, but in view of the high percentage of American olim ("oleh" – plural) that eventually return and from personal experience, I tend to believe "them".

I got my Aliyah (Hebrew: immigration to Israel) hangover relatively late. I was in uniform only a year after my feet touched holy ground, and it's against Israeli Army regulations to get homesick. It took about 3 years before it hit me – I'm here. For good.

By then I had been released and was living on a kibbutz and when I wasn't scheming how to get myself and my family back to 'God's country' (Better know as the great state of Oregon), I was working in the kibbutz's cotton and wheat fields. Modern agriculture isn't really work anymore; nowadays it amounts to sitting on your butt in an air conditioned tractor cab listening to the radio while you keep the wheels in the furrow.

Pining as I was for my homeland, I would tune in The Voice of America and when that wasn't sending, second best was the BBC. One of my favorite programs was Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America".

(Now for those of my generation that don't tune into the BBC, let me remind you that Alistair Cooke was the British guy that hosted "Masterpiece Theater" 30 years ago on the Public Broadcasting Service, which I watched regularly in my youth; not because I was such a cultured teenager, but rather because I was a normal one that thought that the PBS was the only channel on television where there was the off chance of seeing naked women.)

Every Sunday Cooke would comment on the current events, American culture (or lack of it.), the days personalities or simple personal reflections with dry humor and a sophisticated not-American accent. What I loved about "Letter from America" were the bits of America and Americans that most Americans were either too oblivious or too American to admit.

I think Alistair Cooke's authenticity was due to the fact that he was never really quite an American. He lived there almost all of his adult life, received citizenship and genuinely loved her, but in the end he was the eternal outsider. He never was really a player and from his position on the sidelines could see things that were lost on those in the heat of the game.

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I have observed in the past (see "I am a Chameleon") about myself that I have this quality of blending in, but not really belonging. I am different even if I seem to fit in. I'm an outsider. And so, perhaps this blog offers the reader a novel point of view of Israel, maybe one that is as, if not more accurate than if I were a native son. Maybe I should call this blog "Letter from Israel".

It took time and not a little strain on my marriage to pass the crisis of immigrating and integrating in Israel, but in the end I made it and I'm not sorry. I love it here and I love the people in spite of it all. But I will always be me and part of that is being an American.

The funny thing is that by now, after 27 years of my adult life living in Israel exceeding the 21 years that preceded them, I'm an outsider in American circles as well. I don't think quite like them. I see things they don't see even if they're there.

So in the next two weeks while I visit home (America will always be as much home for me as Israel.), My People will be a letter from America. Hopefully my family and friends will be kind enough to let me post from there even though they probably will end up scratching their heads when they see how they and their America looks through my eyes.

I'll try to be gentle.

The Lowest Place on Earth

2008-11-10T13:29:00.013-08:00

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth and it's getting lower. A man made ecological disaster has and is taking place here in living memory. For centuries the Jordan River flowed from the Sea of Galilee and emptied into the Dead Sea, but now with Israel and Jordan pumping water out before it reaches the sea, it is drying up. Today the sea is actually two, separated at the waist by dry land that was still under water when I visited it for the first time the winter of 79-80.

Underground salt deposits along the shores melt when washed by fresh water until the soil covering them caves in. The ground under trees, cars, even people collapses without warning and they disappear into deep craters.

My 9th graders last year are now 10th graders. Last week we spent 3 days in the desert. We set up base camp between the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert and every morning we set out for one of the wadis that wind into the barren hills.

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, so no matter which way you go its uphill from there. Of course there are rewards. Desert springs aren't as big or impressive as the ones I visited in Croatia last month, but at the end of a long trail on a hot day, they are refreshing. Maybe it’s the contrast between water and the wilderness.

These 3 to 6 day outings in nature every year are a standard part of Israeli education, but the concept is foreign to Americans. Why do we send our children out of school to trek the desert and sleep in tents when they could be in a classroom?

In three years these kids will be soldiers and it wouldn't hurt them to start getting used to life without creature comforts. But we aren't Spartans and its not our job to supply the Israeli Army with hardened warriors. The reason we take them out into the wild goes deeper. What is education?

I think that Americans see education as a means of shaping the individual. You take a child and give him the tools to function one day as an adult.

In Israel we are creating a society. Sure children need to learn the fundamentals like reading and writing and mathematics. But by the end of grade school they have hopefully reached a basic level of knowledge and from there each takes a different path and majors in the subjects that interest them. And while they no doubt are learning things that are valuable, lets not kid ourselves – in ten years chances are that they will be employed in fields totally unrelated to the subjects they study now.

School is a fabricated society we have created with rules and values and objectives in a sheltered environment. We still have enough control to mold and shape the members, and by the time they leave and become citizens we hope they will have learned to work together toward common goals, to respect each other, to contribute and for each to take responsibility for more than his/her little corner. So a camp in the middle of the nowhere where the essentials of survival – food and shelter - depend on group effort is the ultimate lesson.

Almost two years ago the ground collapsed from underneath these kids in a way unusual even in Israel. For some of them, perhaps all of them, starting each day means setting out and climbing an uphill path from the lowest place on earth. They are learning that they reach those good places at the end of the trail when they pull together.

And what amazes me and inspires me is how even after having hit bottom they still have fun, have a bright take on life and push on. How they can just be a bunch of kids.

Union Boulevard

2008-11-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

(I posted 'Union Boulevard' last April to mark the 40th year since Marin Luther King's assasination. With America coming down to the finish line in a landmark election year where for the first time an African American is running for the nation's highest office, I am reposting. Regardless of who proves to be the better man, for the first time in America all men are equal.)

After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, Moses' life was drawing to an end. He had one last request:

"Let me cross over and see the good land that is over the Jordan."

He is allowed only to see the promised land from afar, but not to enter in himself. He gathered the children of Israel for one last time and told them,

"I will die in this land, I will not cross over the Jordan; but you will cross over and you will inherit the good land." (Deut. 4:22)
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The echo of Moses can be heard in the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, the great civil rights leader, in his sermon where America's blacks are likened to the children of Israel in the wilderness. He assured his people that one day they too would share the good land as equals;

"I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

The next day he was murdered.

For black Americans Martin Luther King was Moses and the wilderness seemed endless. They took to the streets all over America. In Portland they marched down the nearest business district, ironically named "Union Blvd." After a week of rioting Union Blvd. looked like a tornado's path, with many of the businesses (mostly owned by whites) burned out ruins. When the smoke cleared it turned out that the wilderness had grown, for the workers and clerks (mostly black) that had been employed there on Union Blvd. found that their workplaces were gone.

Recovery was slow in coming. You could drive down Union Blvd. when I was a boy and see a wilderness of crime, poverty and hopelessness. Whites began to understand that it was time to include blacks and share the fruits of democracy. African-Americans realized that they wouldn't reach the good land by burning the wilderness; they had to cultivate and nurture it to make it blossom.

Martin Luther King saw a day when little white children and the sons of former slaves would hand in hand cross over to the good land. He saw a day when a man would be judged "not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character", a day when Americans would pull together instead of tearing each other apart.

I have seen the good land. Union Blvd. has been renamed Martin Luther King Blvd. (Called the MLK locally.) On one of my visits to Portland not long ago I walked down the MLK. I passed by businesses like "The African Art Gallery" and "African Bride Fashions", most likely owned by African-Americans, and the Oregon Convention Center, owned by everybody equally.

Last Friday it was 40 years since that day in Memphis that Martin Luther King's life was cut short. Today what was unthinkable the day of his death is a reality we almost take for granted. An African-American is a viable candidate to be the President of the United States of America. After 40 years in the wilderness, a new generation is entering the good land.

Of course all is not perfect, yet as one who remembers the wilderness 30 years ago, I know the good land when I see it. The good land is where there is hope. The good land is where things can get better.

Isn't it ironic that here in the good land that Moses spoke of, we are still wandering in a wilderness. Israelis against Arabs, Moslems against Jews, Jews against Jews. Driven asunder into camps we have yet to harvest the bounty of the land. We crossed the Jordan, but the good land eludes us.

I have seen the good land. Perhaps I will never dwell there myself, but I hope my children do.

I can see the good land. I don't know if I will ever cross over, but I know this: the only way is together. The way to the good land goes through Union Blvd.

Knowing the Difference

2008-11-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

There's a woman my age here that decided to go to college. To be honest, until she told me about her decision, I had always just assumed that she had at least a B.A. in something, and I didn't rule out an M.A. as well, because she's this know-it-all type of person and comes off as being very authoritative.

A week or so after she started school, she showed me the final draft of an assignment, her first assignment, that she had completed. And not just to me; to everybody. She was like a first grader that had finally learned the ABCs, showing off and very proud of herself.

I had done the go-back-to-school thing ten years before and formal education doesn't make much of an impression on me. I read her assignment and pointed out a few things that she needed to work on. After all, she had asked me what I think. She was very insulted. After chewing me out with more than a few harsh words, she stomped off and pouted.

While her behavior was sophomoric, I was the one in the wrong. Even I know that children need encouragement more than correction. The first grader with her ABCs doesn't need to know that the 'i' and 'j' need to be dotted and that she's got the 'e' backwards. When she's finally made that breakthrough, she needs to be praised. Sooner or later she will make the corrections that need to be made. The middle aged lady/coed deserved the same consideration we naturally give to seven year olds, but I guess the fact that she isn't cute and missing her two front teeth threw me off. And I should have remembered that grown ups can sometimes behave childishly and when they do someone has to be the adult.

Sometime after this I overheard her talking about when she started school, and she mentioned that first assignment that I had 'corrected'. She voiced almost word for word the remarks that I had made before. And I'm sure that in time she will find that while higher education may require an enormous effort for old and rusty minds, objectively it's no big deal. But that is among those things that people need to learn for themselves, whether in the first grade or freshman year at age 50.

And I am learning that there are things that are true, and there are things that people need to hear, and wisdom is knowing the difference between the two.

In Bruges

2008-11-02T22:42:00.010-08:00

The prophets probably didn't know about the afterlife, and even if they did they certainly didn't tell anyone. There's no mention of heaven or hell in the Old Testament. Salvation, judgment, redemption were collective and in this life.
Here and now.

By the time Jesus came along the idea of "there and then" had evolved. He wasn't challenged when He spoke of life after death. (Except for the Sadducees who were old farts that nobody cared about anyway.)

Talmudic Judaism and the early Church developed the idea of the next world; the resurrection, Judgment Day, heaven, hell. Of course this presented a new problem. If there is a day of judgment then, and people are living and dying now, then where are the souls in the meantime? Lets say that Joe died in the year 1000 AD and Judgment Day is only in the year 2000 AD. (Theoretically of course, because who could have imagined that God would tarry so long.) What happens to Joe for a thousand years?

The Jews, or at least the more mystically inclined, decided that Joe is here. After he died he got a second chance and a third and so on. He got reincarnated to make a "tikkun", to fix things he'd screwed up in his former life. His soul would "roll over" (the term for reincarnation in Hebrew) again and again until he got it right. The soul, so they said, is definitely here and now.

The Christians, more specifically the Catholic ones, invented something new. When Joe died his soul went to a place called Purgatory where he worked off any unsettled accounts with God until Judgment Day. According to the Catholics, after the body dies the soul is there and then.

It is this nagging question about the time and place between the debts we accrue in life and payday that is at the heart of the film "In Bruges". Two Irish gangsters are sent to Bruges, Belgium after botching a hit in London. They are told to wait there for instructions, but at least to Ken, the older of the two, its clear that there will be a reckoning.

Bruges is a well preserved Medieval European town, "something out of a fairytale" one of the thugs calls it. Ken is more aware than his mate of their predicament and in no hurry, but young Ray chafes in exile. He is tortured by guilt and oblivious to the charm of Bruges. He wants to move on, not knowing that here and now is all he has left.

Bruges, a place in between, after life but before judgment.

The great sage Maimonadies understood something that eluded others, both Jewish and Catholic. Time and place are created. God doesn't exist in time or place, and when we leave this life our souls are no longer bound by either. We don't have time to kill until "then"; we don't roll back over and over again "here".

"In Bruges" is a black comedy with an irony that makes sense in a daft mad Irish state of mind. The setting and hints like the painting "The Last Judgment" by Hieronymous Bosch (Note how grotesque characters like in the painting appear throughout the film.) point to something deeper. If there is such a thing as purgatory, its here and now. Ray wallows in guilt, but does nothing about it. Ken finds a way to redeem himself.

Bruges – a fairytale land or a tortured conscience in exile. Bruges, untouched by time, is where we are, where we will be. Heaven and hell don't begin when this life ends. For the soul there is no boundary between "here and now" and "there and then".

So maybe the Old Testament prophets were right after all. The next life starts now.

Ray: "Prison...death...didn't matter. Because at least in prison and at least in death, you know, I wouldn't be in ****in' Bruges. But then, like a flash, it came to me. And I realized, **** man, maybe that's what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in ****in' Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die. I really really hoped I wouldn't die."

From "In Bruges"

ONCE: Falling Slowly

2008-11-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Funny Words

2008-10-23T16:08:00.004-07:00

to Xiu

I went to college late in life. They call it "Adult Learning" in the States nowadays. They called it strange back then, over here. We're catching up with our American cousins like everything else and there are more people my age advancing their educations at advanced ages.

I was different than my fellow students not only because I was older than most of them, but also in that I didn't have any particular reason for being there. I studied things that had no connection whatsoever to how I made my living and with no intention of using it in the future. Like a seamstress buying a welder.

Now I see that the "reason" was how I saw myself. I didn't feel as good as those guys that had done the smart thing and finished college before setting out in life. They never rubbed my nose in it and I suspected that I was every bit as intelligent as they are, but nevertheless that's how I felt.

Now days they have funny words for the reasons I had for going back to school – "self validation" and "peer recognition", but there are old fashioned words for it too. Vanity. Ego. I would knock myself out cramming my brain with stuff I didn't care about in order to impress profs that didn't care about me. After exams they'd post our scores on a board outside the administration office, and like everyone else I would search for the numbers beside my ID number to get the verdict. It was never enough for me to have done well – if it wasn't the best I walked away disappointed. Even then I knew how pathetic it was, how vain, but I couldn't help myself. And the worst part was that I didn't dare tell anyone because everyone hates the smart kid.

Donald Miller talks about the ol' lifeboat dilemma in his book "Looking For God Knows What". Imagine this lifeboat and there's a young mother and her baby, an aged WWII war hero, an escaped convict, a scientist who can find a cure for cancer – and you. Only 5 people can stay in the lifeboat, six is too many and the boat will go down with all aboard. Who do you kick out?

Nobody wants to chuck out the baby, and by default that means the mother is safe. If you keep the scientist there's the bonus of saving millions of cancer patients. It's not right to kick out the war hero (Even though some people do because he's old and besides those hero types jump out to save the others anyway.) That leaves you and the convict. Some people want to keep the convict in the boat because they want to give him a chance to redeem himself (a very noble notion). But that's what it comes down to; most of us are trying to prove that we're more worthy than the criminal and deep down we know that we're not because deep down we all know that we're all sinners.

Miller says that this lifeboat mentality is the root of all the rottenness and sickness in society. We are all competing for a place in the lifeboat, scared to death that our peers will find out what we already know – that we don't deserve a seat with mothers and scientists and heroes. We need self validation and recognition like lifesavers to save ourselves. Vanity is fear.

The funny thing is that it turns out that there's room for everyone in God's lifeboat. – even for the ones that don't deserve it. And if you realize that, there's no need to compete, no reason to validate or be recognized. You can go to college, and even excel, if you want – or not. It doesn't matter because you have a reserved seat in the lifeboat.

I kept my marks a secret all through college. Outstanding students, or rather ordinary students with outstanding GPAs, get diplomas with some funny Latin words added on. "Summa cum something". They get called up first at the graduation ceremony, and since my last name came first alphabetically, I was the first in my class called up to receive my diploma. My cover was blown. My friends were aghast. I felt a little sheepish.

I don't know Latin. I bet those funny words on my diploma mean something like "really vain" or "huge ego". I hope I got more from college than a piece of paper with funny Latin words on it. I hope I learned something.

Because now I'm at a crossroads, and it looks like I'm going to do it again, if unwillingly. I hope that if I do it again I will do it different. Maybe if I put my mind to it I will even be able to fail once or twice.

A Cross between Oregon and Israel

2008-10-19T03:39:00.022-07:00

Until last week, I had only ventured beyond Israel's borders to visit my family in Oregon. Last week we took a trip to Croatia.

Croatia is like a cross between Israel and Oregon. Mountains plunge into the Adriatic Sea on rocky cliffs under evergreen forests like Oregon's highway 101 on the coast, but the olive groves and whitewashed houses with red tile roofs stacked around small fishing harbors are Mediterranean.

Inland the deciduous trees were in autumn colors, but the paths and streams underneath were still sunless and damp like Oregon's rainforests. My photos of the countryside could have been taken from an album of the farm country where I was raised.

But unlike secularized Oregon, Croatia is more like Israel. Religion is everywhere. Croatians are devout Roman Catholics and certainly not ashamed of it. They adorn their streets and women with crucifixes; no village is without its church and it seems like every corner, whether uninhabited islands in the sea or isolated mountaintop, is the site of an ancient monastery.

The Croatians we encountered were rather reserved, like Oregonians. In fact, in general, they were kind of grouchy. Of course, we did meet some nice ones, but most of them work in the tourist industry, and as Yael pointed out, it's their business to be friendly. But if Croatians aren't gregarious, we were impressed by their order and honesty (Not qualities Israelis are known for.)

Croatians and Israelis have one thing in common: they are not strangers to war. We met a man in Dubrovnik that immediately took to us once he discovered we are Israelis. It turns out that he is the descendant of Jews that were forced to convert to Christianity in Spain. Somehow his ancestors had made their way to Dalmatia. We asked him about his family. He smiled and said that, like us, he had two girls and a son. Then his eyes saddened and he added that the boy had been killed in the bombardment of the city during the civil war in former Yugoslavia during the 90's.

Croatians like tourists. The nice thing about tourists is that they always go back where they came from and they always leave behind money. Apparently, Croatians have issues with people that aren't tourists and aren't Croatian. During the Holocaust, even the Nazis were shocked by the brutality which their Croatian collaborators carried out the elimination of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. (Although they no doubt agreed with the objective.) A Jew had better odds of survival in Nazi Germany than in Croatia.

While Israel receives a lot of attention for its treatment of Palestinians, the western world seems to have overlooked what has and is going on in its backyard. In the 1990's ethnic Serbs in Croatia were 'persuaded' to become tourists. On the road to Plitzvice National Park you pass by one abandoned farmstead after another, each one mute evidence of ethnic cleansing. The irony of it is that Croatians are too xenophobic to let the Serbian owners return home, but too stuck on law and order to let squatters take their property. Being as clannish as Jews and as straight-laced as Oregonians can be a weird combination. (In contrast, while much of the criticism of Israel for discrimination is justified, the fact remains that Arabs make up 20% of her citizens, an active and vocal minority in Israel society.)

Until now, we had never gone abroad as a family except to visit my family in Oregon. I rented a camper and we traveled from place to place in Dalmatia, never knowing where we would end up at the end of the day. Being observant, we brought and prepared our own food in a country famous for its cuisine. The idea wasn't to just to get away and relax. We had fun, but the idea was to present ourselves with a challenge far from home in order to bring us closer together as a family. With Maayan being an adult and Netanel only two years away from his army service, this was perhaps the last opportunity to do that.

My family is like Croatia in a way. We are a cross between Israel and Oregon, a little bit of both. Oregonians are known to be an easy going and orderly people, but I have more than once noted that they are capable of saying and doing the meanest things in the nicest way. Israelis are outgoing and they mean well, but they are often abrasive and rough around the edges.

We have a little of Israel and Oregon in us, but that can mean any number of things. Its up to us to decide what we want to take from each.

I know its wrong to make generalizations about entire nations, but its only natural. I met a woman at Plitzvice that is from Wisconsin but has lived in Croatia for a few years. I remarked that the Croatians seem very honest, but they aren't very friendly, and that Israelis are outgoing, but they aren't always straight.

"Don't you prefer the first over the last; you know, being honest more than being nice?" she asked me.

I thought about it.
"Actually, I prefer both."

Crazy Croatia

2008-10-09T15:51:00.006-07:00

(Note: in Hebrew, "zona" = prostitute)

One of Us

2008-10-04T09:00:00.001-07:00

Neil was one of our neighbors when I was growing up. He was the mayor back then and went on to serve in a cabinet position in the White House and later was elected Governor. The kids in the neighborhood didn’t admire him because of his position, rather because he treated us as equals. A lot of grownups would ignore us, but Neil knew how to include everyone, large and small. To this day we remember how he would come home from work at City Hall and join in on a basketball game with the neighborhood kids, along with his bodyguards. It was an honor to be the mayor’s neighbor, but we liked him because he was a regular guy. He was one of us.

Neil moved into the governor’s mansion more or less around the time I made aliyah to Israel and I didn’t have much contact with him after that. In the late Eighties he retired from politics. The last time I saw him was not far from here while he was on vacation with his grown children by the shores of the Kinneret. I asked him if he thought he’d ever go back into politics. No, he said. He wanted to invest his time with his family and go in to private business.

Then last spring, like Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, a skeleton in Neil's closet came to life. The local press uncovered an affair he’d had with a neighborhood girl, a year younger than I, back in the days when he was mayor. Overnight he went from being one of the state’s most outstanding leaders of all time to pariah and yesterday's admirers were falling over each other to throw the first stone.

Bill Clinton once said about the Monica Lewinski affair that he did it “because I could.” At first I thought his remark was banal, but on second thought I see how wise it is. That arrogant cliché Americans love so much, "because I can", sums up the number one reason why humans sin. The author and theologian C .S. Lewis once wrote that it’s conceivable that a lowly clerk could be more evil than Hitler, the difference being that the former can’t act on his hatred as did the later. If we’re not caught with our hands in the cookie jar, it’s not for not liking cookies. We like cookies, but the shelf is too high or the lid too tight, and besides – Mom’s got eyes in the back of her head. And lets be honest; most men don't get entangled in lewd sex scandals, but not due to their high moral standards rather because they don’t have the charisma and the status to seduce beautiful young girls in the first place nor the money and connections to get away with it.

The Torah tells about Judah who leaves the family business. With his own two hands he builds himself financially and accumulates political clout – only to stumble into a liaison with his daughter in law Tamar. He uses all the resources and connections at his disposal to cover his tracks, but the truth comes out. Tamar hints not so subtly that she isn’t about to burn and let him avoid taking responsibility. Finally he gives up. “She’s more righteous than I” (צדקה ממני), he says. Seemingly, Judah’s hit bottom at this point – a proud tribal chieftain humiliated. But with those two words (in Hebrew) he regained his humanity. He returned to his family in shame and was again just another one of Jacob's sons. But Judah’s moment was still ahead of him. It was Judah that was willing to sacrifice his freedom and life for the sake of his brothers. Our sages ask why Judah, and not Joseph, was chosen to be the father of kings and the Messiah. Joseph was greater than Judah in all ways except for one – repentance. Joseph, the proud and honored leader, couldn’t be to his brothers what Judah was – one of them.

With the story about to break, Neil called a press conference.

“How can such behavior be erased when the damage to others and to myself
lives on? I have sat in my place of worship each year at Yom Kippur reading in
silence, searching for personal peace. And I have found that the answer to my
question is that it can’t be erased.”

I hope that on Yom Kippur this year my friend will finally find the tranquility he’s yearned for thirty odd years. Perhaps he will never regain the respect that he once had, but when he took upon himself the shame of his deeds, even if unwillingly, he regained something else – his humanity. On Yom Kippur he will simply be a mere human being pleading for his soul before his creator, like all of us.

And that’s what I always liked about him anyway, that he was one of us.

Gmar Hatima Tova

We Happy Few

2008-09-26T04:51:00.018-07:00

A friend of mine once referred to me as a warrior. I told her that my buddies in the army would never let me hear the end of it if they got wind of that. We don't think of ourselves as warriors.

We come from all walks of life. Nir, my crew commander is an insurance agent and our crew is made up of a bus driver, some high tech geeks, a guy that gives marketing seminars and I am an English teacher/farmer/landscaper.

This week the brigade my battalion belongs to carried out an exercise designed to simulate a scenario where Israel has been attacked and the reserves have been called up to push back an invasion.

On Sunday we made the transition from civilians to soldiers and the next day we set off to meet the enemy.

The idea was to refresh our skills as artillerymen and to test our ability to function under stress, deprived of sleep and even proper food. But they didn't have to teach us to work as a team.

I don't recall ever receiving a direct command, and that goes for the rest as far as I know. We know what is expected of us and the job gets done on a basis of mutual respect between the ranks and concern for each other.

And its not all hardship either. There is the ritual of making Turkish coffee on a primus and sleeping around a bonfire made of ammo bundles after dark when the desert gets cold. (I crawled up with Zacki on to the grating over the engine, which was still warm, and nodded off looking up at the Milky Way in a crystal desert sky.)

I think that people who are awed by warriors or the idea of the warrior are people that have never been at war. For us war isn't about glory. It's a job and a dirty one at that. The truth is that we have better things to do. And in modern Israel, more and more of the burden of national defense is borne by less and less of us.

My friends and I in the 670th aren't warriors. War isn't what defines us by a long shot. I think I would call us citizen soldiers, with an emphasis on citizen. We take up arms out of a sense of responsibility, not lust for battle. We reluctantly leave our homes and change into uniform because somebody has to. Because if we don't, we won't have a home to return to.

The ordinary citizen is the foundation our country is built on, the mortar that holds society together and the reservists are what stand between home and obliteration.

I think that the reserve army is one of the things that are still good about Israel. One of the things that are still beautiful and unspoiled. And even if there are fewer and fewer of us, I believe its worth it.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

(William Shakespeare)

(I have created a new blog called "Six Seventy" - http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/ - where I will down load pictures from our various adventures in the army. It is for and I hope will be by the soldiers of the 670th, so it's in Hebrew. You are welcome to visit.)

יצרתי בלוג חדש על מנת להוריד תמונות שלנו צהתעסוקות השונות

http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/

2008-09-17T23:12:00.004-07:00

2008-09-16T23:27:00.004-07:00

Maayan

Before......

1985

1986-7

1988

Netanel's Bris 1992

.

1993

1994

1995

1999

2001

IDF

2002-4

India 2006

Odelia's Bat Mitzvah 2007

2008

and after?

(Last photo courtesy of Olivia at Inspired By Grace)

By All Means

2008-08-31T13:21:00.007-07:00

"I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (I Corinthians 9:22)

It is little known that nearly a full century before Theodor Herzl wrote "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), a group of Evangelical Anglicans (which apparently is not an oxymoron) called the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews were promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel in anticipation of the Second Coming.

Fortunately for the Christian dreamers of Zion, in England the head of the church is also head of state and it was only natural that religion oil the wheels of Empire and visa versa. Patronage of the Jewish community in the Ottoman province of Palestine was both the pretext and modus operandi of British intervention in Turkish internal affairs in the Middle East, while the LSPCAJ lobbied for the venture at home.

The Ottoman firman permitting a British consul within the walls of Old Jerusalem paved the way for the Mission. The church was allowed as a personal chapel for the consul, although proportionally this was like strapping the engine of a 747 on a VW Bug and calling it a turbo. Since the British compound is due west of the Temple Mount, the church faces the rising sun as prescribed by Christian tradition, but like a synagogue the direction of worship is also towards the Holy of Holies. In order to disarm Jewish suspicions, there are no crucifixes or images in the sanctuary (Although cleverly, the church itself is built in the shape of a cross.) Instead, verses from the Old and New Testament written in Hebrew adorn the alter and an ark.

While those Pre Zionist English dreamers didn't live to see the fruits of their labors, they played an important part in its cultivation. They promoted Jewish settlement in the city and in the development of the modern neighborhoods outside the walls in West Jerusalem. For more than a century and a half there has been a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

And while the dream of a Jewish state is today a reality, the vision of a mass conversion of Israel failed to appear.

Well, almost. Today Christ Church is primarily a guest house, but its still a church. Messianic Jews use the sanctuary on Shabbat, sanctuary in both its meanings as within the walls of the compund it is most likely one of the few places they can meet without interference. And I understand that there is a regular English service (Mass?) held there on Sundays. Our second night there, a small group of Christian Arabs met in the patio under our window. I knew they were worshiping from the sound of hymns, even though I didn't understand the words in Arabic.

A friend of mine, an Anglican, once told me that their religion is Catholic in practice and their faith pivots on obedience. A fresh convert, 'saved' from her Evangelical upbringing, she painted her new religion in black and white. It seems to me that the Anglican Church is able to change color like a chameleon, turning its skin to fit circumstance. I'm sure that obedience is the rule for followers, but expedience is the keyword for their leaders.

I am not the one to judge if Christ Church was the product of cynical statesmen or a sincere attempt to bridge the gap between Christians and Jews. I suspect it was a little of both.

Christ Church is one of my favorite places. The compound with hidden gardens and the rooms with the original stone floors and domed ceilings; waking in the early hours to the sounds of church bells and Muslim calls to prayer in the old city – it takes you back to 19th century Jerusalem and somehow the experience feels more authentic than in more modern accommodations.

Christ Church belongs to a bygone age, born out of the politics of Empire and not so Catholic currents in the Anglican stream. It is an anomaly; unlike any other church of its day, and an island of tranquility in a city known for turmoil. It is certainly worth a visit.