One of Us

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

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.

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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/

By All Means

"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.

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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.

Breach in the Gate

It is told of how merchants from far away countries came to Jerusalem. They would set up booths out side the city gates and peddle their wares to the locals. It must have been the ancient version of a shopping mall.

Nehemiah, incensed when they persisted to do business on Shabbat in the holy city, instructed the guards to close the gates. He wanted to separate the people from outside influences, to prevent the commercialization of society - to keep those merchants of Tyre from turning God's people into mall rats.

After the War of Independence in 1948-9, Jerusalem was divided between Jordan and the modern state of Israel. The border ran along walls on the western side of the ancient city, a no-mans-land deserted until the city was reunited in 1967. As a result, the city benefited from a wide strip of prime real estate that escaped development and over the years has been turned into a north by south thoroughfare in the heart of the city as well as parks and other public works.


Just outside Jaffa Gate the area around an abandoned Ottoman water reservior is now a city park where concerts are performed outside on warm summer evenings. Every August Jerusalem hosts an international artists' fair for two week after the 9th of Av (The date of the destruction of both the first and second Temples.) The foriegn diplomatic corps in Jerusalem sponser exhibits featuring artists, dancers and musicians from their native lands alongside the local artists.






I don't believe I can describe it better than the photos I took last week .......





























































No doubt that Jerusalem's artist's fair isn't as impressive as festivals held elsewhere. It isn't a reason to visit Israel, but if you live here or happen to be passing through, it's alot of fun.



Today the nations don't make the trip to Jerusalem in order to make a buck. (I didn't see many buyers among the many just lookers.) As a capital and and the heritage of three major religions, countries are bartering for visibility at the Jerusalem's little fair. And Jerusalem loves it.














Nehemiah is probably turning in his grave. Instead of bolting the gates, Jerusalem's fathers have broken a breach in the walls.










Today Jerusalem's gates are open to one and all.