Day 9 part 1

Yad Vashem

This morning we woke up to go to Yad Vashem. I was rooming with one of the Israeli soldiers from a K9 unit, Tal. We started talking about some American television that we both enjoy, and he told me that he wants to get into comedy later on, and he already does some standup. He asked me how I was enjoying the trip, and I told him that I was having an excellent time. Then he told me that he thinks the whole thing is kind of crazy and if I wanted to marry a non-jewish girl then I should go ahead and do that. He said that it does not always sit right with him that he is privileged in Israel just because he happened to be born Jewish.

Today was Yad Vashem. The most striking part of Yad Vashem is not in the sheer size of the museum (it is huge) but in its brilliant design. The architect, Moshe Safir, is a McGill alum who was born in Tel Aviv and who also built Habitat 69. The museum is built into a hill, and is a huge triangular prism with side rooms that you walk through. Once you enter you are confronted with a large video screen of spliced film from the early parts of the 20^th century. The screen depicts snippets of Jewish life in Europe before the war. There are children singing hatikvah, men in cafes, delis, shtetls, playing violin etc. The next room contains a basic rundown of the history of anti-Semitism. First, religious anti-Semitism, then racial anti-Semitism then its holocaust related mutation, nationalist anti-Semitism. The room contains a very good deal of old Nazi signs and banners and cartoons of the most hateful kind.

The next part of the museum documents krystalnacht. The hallway gets a little darker and narrower. Scenes of rabbis being humiliated on donkey carts, business destroyed, children and parents in the streets are shown on video screens and in photographs hanging on the walls. We move along to the next section and the hallway continues to get narrower and darker.

The next few sections record the process of internment. Jewish land and property is confiscated. Everything is taken away, and Jews are given jumpsuits, their heads are shaved and they are sent to camps. Some work, but are not well fed, and begin to waste away. There are not many pictures from inside these camps during the war so most of this part of the museum consist of the items that were discovered….shoes, jewelry, clothing. A diary, passport or photograph, but no pictures, no people. You get the feeling here that these people have already died…you would not recognize them in a photograph even if you saw one.

Next section: concentration camps. Again not many pictures. But there are models, and sculptures. Each death camp is displayed. So are the statistics: between 800,000 and 4 million died at Auschwitz, one hundred and fifty two thousand at Chelmno, four hundred thirty five thousand at Belzec, seven hundred fifty thousand at Treblinka, and the list goes on. Pictures of the gas chambers hang on the walls. The museum is at it narrowest here. On a crowded day, like today, you are herded through the exhibit pressed up against those around you, with little control of your own movement. Everyone walks the same path in the museum and you can’t skip any part.

We are all getting claustrophobic at this point. Someone in the group is hyperventilating or something, but they are far back. Luckily the hallway widens and we get a little more light. The next section is liberation. This section is, by far, the gruesome. As the war ground to halt in Europe, the Russian and American armies discovered death camp after death camp in Poland and finally revealed to the entire world exactly what had happened in Hitler’s Germany. Emaciated, bald, androgynous figures stare blankly at the camera, looking ready to collapse. Everyone has seen these photos. Bewildered American soldiers stare back at the figures, unable to really get it. There are videos too. An U.S. army caterpillar tractor is pushing a mountain of bodies into a grave. Some of the arms, legs, heads get crushed under the blade, the tractor backs up and takes care of the ones that it missed.

The exhibit is almost over. We move onto the next section. Back into the main corridor of the triangular prism, it we can breath easily again. There is space and there is light coming in through the huge glass window at the end which is no clearly visible. The last room to see is the hall of names. A giant room with drawers on all the walls. The names of every victim of the holocaust known is kept in these drawers. From the ceiling hangs a conical structure in which the photographs of thousands of people who died are displayed. Directly below the structure is a giant hole in the ground with a guard rail around it, about 12 meters deep with a few inches of water at the bottom. When you look down into the water you see your reflection among the thousands of photographs that are hanging above you.

Finally we reach the end. The end of the triangular prism juts out of the side of the mountain toward Jerusalem. There is a large patio from which you can see nearly the whole city and all the surrounding hills. Today the sky is perfectly clear and the temperature is perfect. We have some free time now before we will go to for services.

Digression and Day 8

I’ll take a second to respond to Mahmud’s post before continuing with day eight. Mahmud is right to say that the Golan’s strategic importance is no longer what it used to be. When it was first captured in 1967, the Golan was a very important strategic asset, especially because it seemed as though Syria was still bent on destroying Israel. In such a case, the Golan would an important staging ground for an invasion of Israel. Today, however, a full scale invasion of Israel does not seem to be in the cards for Syria because of its military inferiority. Thus Israel would not have to worry about the degraded soviet artillery in the Heights that would be easily dealt with today. The Scud Cs don’t really factor in so much because Israel has pretty good anti-ballistic missile systems. Even so, a militarized Golan would still be somewhat of a security threat no matter what intentions are, which is why any agreement would necessarily entail de-militariziation stipulations. In 1994 the two sides agreed on proportionally sized demilitarized zones on both sides of the border. Now, today that situation might be a little bit different considering the threat that Hezbollah would still pose to the Northern Israel regardless of a peace deal, so it might be a little less reasonable to expect Israel to agree to the same sort of demilitarization.

Now while it’s true that there is less parity now than there was in 73 between the Syrian and Israeli armies, it doesn’t mean that Assad can’t engineer a war to his advantage. Assad has a weapon today that didn’t exist in 73…Hamas and Hezbollah. Again, these two groups are very powerful tools as they pose a huge threat to Israel when you consider the sort of response needed to deal with them. They really do have the capacity to thin the Israeli army to the extent that Syria could make some gains and hold them in the Golan, at least for a short time. Of course this would still be extremely difficult considering the lack of air defense on the Syrian side. Nonetheless, Assad would wait until the international conditions are such that a military defeat would still yield political gains. This would only be possible if Syria really does make a sincere effort at peace and exposes Israel as unwilling to negotiate the Heights. Only then would the U.S.A. and Europe be able to exert the necessary pressure.

Finally, I don’t see much of a paradox…if I took something from you and you put up no fuss, I wouldn’t even consider giving it back. But if you cried and made me feel bad about it, maybe I would think about giving it back. It’s less costly for Israel to hold on to the Golan simply because they never have any problems there, why should they give it back? Rationally, you would want to be rid of something if it gives you more grief than benefits. All the Israelis have ever gotten from the Golan is benefits (wine, nice views, good camping) and no grief.

Challenges

Today was the long awaited day when we might have gotten to see a bit of the other side, and get a more balanced look at Israel. It was only half satisfying to me.

The first stop was a mosque in an Arab village along the Jerusalem quarter. We were to meet with the Imam of a mosque and some of his congregation. The village had been inside Israel since 1948 and all the town’s residents were Israeli Citizens. We got to the mosque, went inside, took our shoes off and sat in the prayer hall. The imam gave us a quick lecture about the basics of Islam (a brief history of Mohammed and the 5 pillars). I could tell pretty quickly that they were very moderate and very pacifist. I asked what his views were on living in a state that was built for a different religion. The Imam said that it was a Muslim’s duty to live with what God gives him until God changes it himself. He went on to say that unless it can be absolutely identified as divinely ordained, human agency in changing something like the Jewish character of the state was not allowed. The Imam even said that they would absolutely support a two state solution. The Imam also used language that indicated he was speaking for the whole of Islam. He refused to even acknowledge that any disagreement could even be considered Islamic. Now of course this comforted most of the people in my group… “oh how nice, finally someone who knows what Islam truly is! if only the rest of those pretenders could be so enlightened!” I was pretty disappointed because I had hoped to at least hear a more informed explanation of the thinking of some other Muslim groups on Palestine like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Iran etc etc. Instead of giving any explanation at all the Imam only said that those people weren’t really Muslims at all and that it was all politics. Again, everyone liked hearing that, but it’s bullshit. Nasrallah is Muslim because he says he is. His followers are Muslims and their thinking is Islamic. Of course it’s all politics, but those politics are inexorably tied to Islamic thought in every single one of the cases I mentioned. So this incident was a little disappointing because I thought that the theme of the day would be challenges and instead we were brought to a lecture by people who obviously don’t pose a challenge at all.

But there was still more to come and I at least hoped that we would get to hear some more contentious opinions. We walked up into the hills around the town and we eventually came to a clearing where a Muslim woman and an Arab man were waiting for us. We all settled and they started to speak about some of their experiences. They started out by saying that it is a constant struggle to keep their culture and their way of life alive. Arabs, they said, were proportionally much worse off than Jews in Israel, and everything in the state revolves around Judaism; holidays, state symbols, the teaching of history is all Jewish centered. In such an environment, they said, it is extremely difficult to maintain an Arab or Muslim identity. The woman was translating for the man, who was speaking in Arabic. His Arabic was very difficult to understand and I realized that he was using a lot of Hebrew words and some Hebrew affected pronunciations. One of the things that I liked so much about Israel up to this point was how diverse and dynamic it had allowed Jewish life to become. Now, hearing this man speak Arabic I was seeing some of its side affects.

The next topic they spoke about was the de facto discrimination built into the Israeli system. It was good to hear this considering Jesse’s rant the other day to a bunch of us that arabs were “completely equal, full citizens of Israel entitled to anything and everything that any Israeli is entitled to.” On paper he is correct, but in reality, that’s not how it works. The man told us about how so much of one’s success in Israel is contingent on serving in the IDF. Technically, Arab citizens are allowed to join, but they are nearly always rejected for “security concerns.” Now the man didn’t mention this, but polls have shown that between 7 and 10 percent of Israeli Arabs support attacks against Israel and Israeli citizens. So as far as I am concerned, these security concerns are completely legitimate. Nonetheless, it does not mean that Arab citizens should be systematically denied opportunities for success, especially with the level of education many have gotten…it’s just a waste otherwise. So the man mentioned, like I expected him to, the position that there should be some other sort of national service that Israeli Arabs can perform, that does not affect security, and by which they can still accrue the same benefits as any other Israeli who has served in the military. If Arab citizens were allowed to participate in the state, then maybe the percentages in the aforementioned survey would eventually go down.

Now much to my dismay, some in the group reacted to the man’s speech by scoffing and saying “well you live in Jewish state.” I couldn’t believe it. These people were Americans! We live in a country for all of its citizens and I’m very proud of that. Sure there are problems and yes they need to be addressed, of course racism is still alive and well and the lasting affects of slavery have not yet even come close being ameliorated, but nonetheless, we live in a country that is for everyone. I cannot imagine scoffing at anyone and saying, pff well you live in a Christian state, deal with it.

Our next stop was the security barrier. We met up with Rabbi Michael Schwartz at a lookout over east Jerusalem. We could see the wall very well, including an abrupt loop that leaves an Arab village completely encased by concrete save for a 25 meter opening on its eastern edge. The rabbi gave us run down of the problems that the wall has caused. He told us that Arabs who used to come to work everyday in Jerusalem are now unsure every day if they will be let. For the ones that get in, they now have to make a trip of several hours every morning to get to the right checkpoint instead of walking or taking a 10 or 20 minute bus like before. Thus, many workers have lost their livelihood and so now their families are suffering. The Rabbi also told us about an interesting phenomenon caused by the wall. Today, many west bank Arabs without Israeli citizenship would prefer to be included inside the wall so that they can continue to work while many Israelis are lobbying to exclude more land from the state.

After he talked about the Palestinian perspective for a while, we went to a bus stop where a suicide bomber had blown up a bus in 2002. The bus stop had become a sort of roadside memorial of the people who were killed, with pictures and collages and flowers that someone always replaces. The bus stop was also covered with a lot of different kinds of signs and slogans including the infamous "No Arabs, No Terror" bumper sticker. The Rabbi then talked about Israel's right to defend itself and about how The Hague acknowledged the legality of the wall, if not its specific course. He also told us that the wall has undoubtedly put a near complete stop to suicide attacks within Israel in general and especially in Jerusalem. There is testimony from members of the PFLP and Hamas that confirms this. What he didn’t point out, which I thought would have been a good point, is that the barrier also saves Palestinian civilians the grief of becoming collateral damage when Israel retaliates for a suicide attack. So basically I thought it was a pretty good, balanced review of the issues with which I mostly agreed.

Afterwards, we visited Har Herzl. Har Herzl is the Arlington National Cemetery of Israel, so this trip was going to be very serious. We started at some of the Graves of the Heroes of the Jewish Underground who fought during the 1948 war. After that we visited the graves of some Israeli paratroopers who were captured and killed during the same war. Throughout the tour Ronnie stressed the point that these men and women (there were women who fought) died not just for Israel, but for all Jews, past present and future. Next we visited the grave of the 22 year old American who made aliyah when he was 18 and died last summer in southern Lebanon. While Ronnie was telling us about him three of the soldiers in our group walked off to another grave 15 meters off and took of their hats. One of their friends had also died last summer in Lebanon. We also visited a memorial for all those who died in terrorist attacks. Ronnie read us the letter that one 12 year old American girl wrote to her mother as she was being held hostage in nineteen seventy something. She knew very well that was going to die and expressed a desperate willingness to accept it. Ronnie showed us a picture of the original letter, and you could tell that much of it was blurred by tear drops. Then he pointed to her name on the wall.

After that we went to the grave of a soldier who died in 1982. His mother wrote a children's book and named it after him: Guni. Ronnie read us the book. The book starts in Guni's childhood. He was an active child, and had decided from a very young age that he wanted to be an officer in the military. Guni eventually becomes an officer, serves and goes and is relieved of duty a few weeks before the start of the 82 war. Once the war starts, Guni is not required to go, but he does because he feels an obligation to his men. He died in the very early stages of the invasion at Beaufort Castle. The book concludes with an explanation for Guni's death: he died for the Jewish people, he died for his country that he loved so much, he died because he had to to protect his country and his people. All I could think was "my god, it was Lebanon…fucking Lebanon for Christ's sake. No one dies for anything in Lebanon." That war was a complete disaster and caused nothing but 15 years of unchecked and pointless misery for anyone involved. Today and yesterday, France can sit back and be indignant at Israel for its 82 mishaps completely forgetting that such a war was only a result of its own greed. Today Israelis look at the war and find heroes in what was only a shameless attempt to exploit the unjust system that the French had forsaken. And now Americans can rant and rave about Hezbollah the terrorist organization, the fucking crazy Palestinians in those disgusting refugee camps they live like animals after all. They're all heroes, Gameyal, Nasrallah, Guni, Habash, fuck it. They're dying for their people, dying for Lebanon, for shiism, for palestine, for the watan. Everyone has a flag. People were crying after Ronnie read the story, including Ronnie and some left rocks on Guni's grave.

So I calmed down a bit and finally we made it to the top of the hill where Theodore Herzl is buried. It's interesting, these graves, because they are really treated different than in the U.S. We can go to Washington's grave in the U.S., or Hamilton's or Franklin's and we acknowledge their greatness and the significance of their personalities in the birth of our country. We can talk about them a great length and list off all of their great achievements, respectable humility or general brilliance. But we always emphasis the ideas that drove them, that the ideas were always the most important thing. These men worked their entire lives for principles that went beyond race, religion or sect. That is what we are told. In Israel these men a revered for what they did for the Jewish people and not necessarily the ideas for which they struggled. So there is a sort of air of ancestor worship around Herzl's tomb which is, for me, different and a little strange.

So it was a pretty heavy day, everyone was exhausted and the Guni story was still thoroughly screwing with me. Yad Vashem tomorrow. It's designed by Moshe Safir, so it should be interesting. Time to get some sleep.

Day 7

Dilemmas

Today we went to the Golan Heights. Technically, Israel annexed the heights after the Six Day War. Nonetheless, the Heights are commonly understood to be negotiable territory in any future talks with Syria.

Our first stop was Debanyas. After 1948, this part of the heights was neutral territory, but Syria eventually extended its own sovereignty over the area. In 1994 when Rabin indicated that the entire heights were on the table, Asad made him confirm that he meant all Syrian territory that was occupied during the war. Rabin gave Warren Christopher the go ahead to inform Asad that the June 4th 1967 lines were on the table, thus including Debanyas in the negotiations. It's hard to say weather or not Rabin was being sincere. Some think was only saying the entire Heights were negotiable so that the Syrians and Palestinians would rush to sign a deal with Israel because the first one to sign would gain more. Thus Israel would minimize the concessions it would have to make to both as the rush would significantly shorten both the Syrian and Palestinian time horizons, weakening their bargaining power.

After we talked about the strategic importance of the Heights at Debanyas, a lot of people wanted to go to the Golan Heights winery. Ronnie had told me last night that Diane wanted to visit the winery, but that he didn’t see what the point was. I agreed and said that we should go the lookout over the UN compound and Syria instead. Today I mentioned it again and Ronnie decided to abandon the winery visit, much to Diane's dismay. Everyone else seemed pretty indifferent, but man I was pretty excited to see Syria.

So we go up to the lookout, and it's a bit more odd than I expected. There are all these metal silhouette things of soldiers everywhere, plus barbed wire metal animal sculptures lining the road to the top of the lookout. There is also a dinosaur made out of scrap metal. It's about 3 meters tall and I have no idea why the hell it's there. I asked Ronnie and he really didn’t know either. We looked down into Syria and said something like.. "yup there's Syria." Damascus was about 60km away.

On the way back I started talking with Dotan and Liron. They are both convinced that there will be a war with Syria this summer. I read an article about this possibility in the Jpost the other day. Basically the belief is that Syria feels that negotiations are not possible, and that the best course of action would be to launch a limited war against Israel in the Heights to force them to the bargaining table again. The strategy is similar to Egypt's strategy during the 1973 war. The difference this time is that Syria will have a harder time relying on international forces putting the necessary pressure on Israel to stop the war, and then go to the bargaining table. In 1973, both the Russians and the Americans desperately wanted to avoid confrontation, and so both were willing to do more to end hostilities in the region. Now, the Cold War is over and so Syria can't expect a similar post conflict situation, especially with Bush in office. So that's why I think a war won't happen this summer. However, I think that Asad will try negotiations again based on the promises Rabin made in 1994. Israeli politics will be too fragmented to offer what Rabin offered, and so the talks will fail. That is when Asad will launch another war. He will wait until Bush is out and the new American administration will be more likely to pressure Israel and work with Syria. I expect that the attack will come right after another Hezbollah attack and probably a major Hamas rocket offensive from the Gaza Strip so that the Syrians will face a diluted and weakened IDF.

Speaking of which, Ronnie told me and Casey that there was in fact a huge Hamas rocket attack coming from the Gaza Strip today. The southern town of Sderot is being pummeled hard, and a lot of people are being injured. They are considering evacuating it. The attack is mean to provoke Israel to respond, which will then unite the Fatah and Hamas factions that have been slaughtering each other against a common enemy.

Later that night we went back to the hotel and I met this Orthodox Jew who spoke Arabic. So we chatted a bit in the hotel lobby and I'm sure it was an odd sight. He had worked in Arabic media analysis in the states for 5 years before realizing that he needed to become an Orthodox Jew and a religious Zionist. He said that he used to be a moderate peacenik, but then after reading a lot of vile stuff about Jews in the Arabic media, decided that it was worthless. Now he's living in Israel and studying, looking to marry a Sephardi Jewish woman soon. His sister is on the birthright trip, and she's a nice girl, but I think she's a little puzzled as to how her brother all of a sudden became so religious.

Jesse gathered us around to talk a little abut Yad Vashem and Har Herzl. Yad Vashem is the holocaust museum and Har Herzl is the Arlington national cemetery of Israel. Both are very serious, very important places. We talked a bit about the holocaust and were asked to share our thoughts. Liron said that it's important because it proves that the whole world, or at least a significant proportion of it, has hated and will continue to hate the Jews until they are all gone. Jesse then talked a bit about how there has been a move in Europe teaching to include the holocaust within a general section on genocide instead of teaching it as a special section of its own. He "wasn't saying anything" but he pointed out that this move has gained momentum as the Arab population of Europe has increased.

So basically today was a little slow, but tomorrow I expect will be a big day. Also I'm tired as hell, so I need to get out of here. Laila tov.

Day 6

Connections

This morning we woke up and headed for Safed. It is relatively secluded in the north among the hills and forests and very close to Lake Tiberias. The air was cool this and some of the slopes leading to the town reminded me of the California hills around San Francisco. From some of the hillsides, we could see down the coastal plain that leads toward the Mediterranean and Tiberias. Everything was a very bright, lush green and imagine that this part of Israel about matches the description of Lebanon given to me by my good friend Ariana when she studied there a few semesters ago.

Safed is one of the parts of Palestine that has had a significant population of Jews ever since Roman era. By the end of the 16th century, there were about 20,000 Jews living in the city. The population had grown significantly after all the Jews were expelled from Spain, and the city became a center for Kabbalah study. Its seclusion and temperate climate made it an ideal place for mystics. In the 19th century a series of plagues, earthquakes and attacks from surrounding Arab populations had reduced the Jewish population to about 2,000. in 1947 the UN included Safed in the Jewish state as part of the Tiberias enclave (the proposed Jewish state was non-contiguous).

Ronnie gave us a great tour of Safed. We first visited a synagogue that was built sometime during the middle ages. Afterward we went to some famous candle shop and I got some sweet Shabbat candles, although they can function for any occasion really. I was also tempted buy a really nice talid and matching kippa, but it was very expensive so I settled for just the Kippa. Appearently it is very characteristic of mystical Jews to wear the type of Kippa I bought, which is just fine with me. A lot of the mystical Jews we met were very friendly. One Cabadnik wanted to wrap me in tfellin and say a prayer right next to a bomb shelter, but I had to decline. It was weird looking at the bomb shelter knowing that less than a year ago is was packed with frightened orthodox Jews rockets flew overhead.

After Safed we picked up the Israeli soldiers and stopped at a park for lunch and some ice breakers. The guys are named Tal, Shai, Dan, and Dotan and the girls are named Danya, Khan, Marit and Yael. Tal and Dan are in K9 units, Shai is a sniper instructor and Dotan is a scout. All the girls are air force I think. Our ice breaker was an Israel trivia game. There were 8 groups each with a soldier. My group won. Booya.

After lunch we went to Tel Kadesh. We hiked through the woods for a while until we came to the ruins of a Roman Temple. Ronnie talked a bit about its history and what it was for but didn’t tell us why we had gone there.

Next we drove up north and I saw a fence along the road. Ronnie got on the Bus microphone and told us that we were driving along the Lebanon border and that the land 20 feet to our right was a Lebanese orchard. I was really mesmerized, this border was legendary. Ronnie started talking a bit about Hezbollah and said that they were very respectable fighters, well equipped and well trained. They had given the IDF a very hard time last summer and it doesn't seem like the war significantly weakened them at all. We rounded a curve and up on a hill in front of us was some sort of dug in structure with barbed wire and guns around it. A big Israeli flag flew from a large flagpole standing in the center. Twenty meters away was another smaller structure with another flagpole in the center, but a Hezbollah flag flew from this one.

We pulled into another public park a few minutes later and into the ruins of an old village. Ronnie asked us what we thought it was. I saw the cross on one of the buildings and guessed that it was used to be a Maronite town. It was. Ronnie talked a bit about the complicated time that was the 1948 war. There is an ongoing debate over who was expelled from Palestine and who fled and why. Most cases are ambiguous with no real way of knowing weather a not a town was empty before the Haganah got to it, weather or not a rogue commander demanded the expulsion of town residents or weather or not that expulsion was warranted because of security concerns. Ronnie told us that there was no doubt about this town. It was expelled after its residents had acquiesced to Jewish forces. Fortunately for these residents, they were granted citizenship in Lebanon because of the religion. An overwhelming majority of Palestinians who wound up in Lebanon did not have this luxury. They wound up in squalid refugee camps.

We walked over to a building that was identical to the roman temple at Tel Kadesh. Most of us guessed that it was just another Roman temple, they seemed to be plentiful in this part of the country. Ronnie told us that it was actually a synagogue. A synagogue? Now I understood. Adaptation, assimilation, living in a non-Jewish country…these were the topics at hand. How much assimilation was too much? How much adaptation could there be while still preserving one's essential Jewishness. The contrast between the actions taken by the Sicarii at Masada and the striking Romanness of the synagogue in the field reminded us that this debate had been going on for nearly 2,000 years.

Diane read a poem called about the last Canadian Jew. The poem talks about the eventual disappearance of Jews from the West after succumbing to the pressures of living in a basically Christian society and eventually being lost to assimilation. They started eating pork, milk with meat, stopped keeping the Sabbath, stopped going to synagogue, and eventually stopped celebrating the holidays. Now Judaism was only a relic, no longer kept alive by anyone but a few museum curators.

It was time to discuss. We split up into groups of four, each with an Israeli. It was me, Casey, Dotan and Alana. The first topic was something like "talk about what it means to be Jewish." Dotan said that he doesn’t really think about it, and that he feels more Israeli than anything else. He said that feels more Jewish outside of Israel, especially in the U.S. This contrasted with Casey and Alana's take, as they said they felt much more Jewish in Israel than in the U.S. or Canada. The next topic was about the land, and the Jewish relationship to it. Casey asked Dotan if he felt like it was the promised land. Dotan replied that he thought the U.S. was the promised land, not Israel. I asked Dotan if he thinks he would like to see a state that was for all Israelis, considering he felt me Israeli than Jewish. I expected him to say yes, but instead he told me that he still preferred a state that was for Jews, and not all its citizens.

On the bus back to Degania I sat next to Shai. He asked me what I thought of Israel ad I told him that it was an extremely beautiful country. He wondered if I would ever think about moving there. I sort of danced around the question. He then went on to tell us that we weren’t really seeing Israel, that there is a lot of culture and a lot of the real stuff that we weren’t getting. I agreed but I said that they are doing that on purpose, because if they got us to into the real Israel we would feel alienated from the place, not more connected to it. This of course would undermine the entire point of the trip. He thought that that might be true, but he had faith that the holiness of Israel would still prevail and that we would come out feeling even more of connection.

When we got back to Degania, everyone started drinking. Me, Casey, Josh, Dotan, Shai, Brittany, Alana and Aaron decided to take it easy with a few beers around the hammocks as everyone else got thrashed. We talked a bit about the Palestinians. Shai didn't have a lot of nice words. I realized that I should have expected this, he's a sniper. You have to tell yourself certain things if you want to do such a job right. Casey and I responded to some of the things he was saying, but then Casey turned to me and said that we were experiencing raw emotion right then, and that we weren’t going to change any minds. I agreed and we dropped the topic.

We walked back to the kibbutz apartments and everyone had left for the bar. Jesse and Diane looked stressed. It was 1:30 am, we were going hiking in the Golan tomorrow at 7am and people were just getting to the bar. Casey and me calmed them down a bit, Ronnie was pretty cool headed too. Those people will have to deal with their hangovers tomorrow. They'll understand that it's their own fault.

I talked to Ronnie a bit about the Golan trip tomorrow. We looked at a map and he pointed out where we would be going. He also said that he would point out a certain village on the way. The village was in Lebanon, but had expanded southwards during the Israeli occupation. Once Israel withdrew in 2000, the border was redrawn right through the center of the town, cutting off its residents from each other.

During the day I was thinking a lot about the particular narrative we were getting which was telling us only about the Jewish claims to the land. We were getting nothing about the hundreds of years of Arab habitation of the same places we were told belonged to the Jews. We were told that the Jews bought the land, fair and square from the Ottomans or from Arab landowners. We weren’t, however, told about the different legal regulations under the Ottomans placed land under the ownership of absentee landlords while the Arabs on the land had a hereditary right to live on the land and secure an income from farming it. Surely a lot of those Arabs were allowed to stay once the land passed into Jewish hands; they were after all a good source of cheap labor. But when it came down to it, under western law, the new Jewish landlords had no problem expelling them, declaring them squatters, when it was most convenient. We are told plenty about the various attacks, ambushes and other offenses committed by the Arabs against the Jewish community in Palestine during the early part of the 20th century. We would like to believe that the land belongs to both people. Both people surely have an indubitable and very tangible connection to the place. It's tough, if not impossible to reconcile this, especially with the wrongdoings committed by both sides, time and time again on both sides. The fact is that right now, the land belongs to the Jews. They are here, they have built cities, roads, and lives on the ruins of Arab cities, roads, and lives which were in turn built on the ruins of Jewish cities, roads, and lives before them, all on top of countless other peoples' cities and roads long lost to history. Right now, though, the Jews won the war, a defensive war, several of them and they are not leaving. The law of return makes it so, and there is no refuting it, the land belongs to the Jews and no one else, not now.

Another brief observation is that I am amazed at how easily people become very comfortable with pure racism, even me. There are some people on this trip who are just racists, no question about it. Nonetheless, I like them. They are cool people, and fun to be around. It made me realize that I know plenty of people in Canada who are basically anti-Semitic or racist in other ways that I still associate with, that I still hang out with. I usually try to disassociate myself from racism of any sort, because I reject it and think it's disgusting. I am frequently dismayed by those who think that racism in the U.S. and Canada is no longer a problem, or that it will never be a problem in Europe ever again. People let their guard down very easily and when that happens, racism always comes back. I am letting my guard down here, but it's tough not to.

Day 5

Heroism

This morning something flickered and then filled my closed eyelids with an uncomfortable white light. I didn’t know where I was for a second, and then I realized that I had fallen asleep in the Redpath library in Montreal, and it was time to start reading again, so I tried to roll over but I felt like I was stuck in Tar. Wait. Israel. Oh it's a Bedouin tent, that's where I am, but the lights. A Bedouin tent with bright fluorescent lights to wake us up. Bedouin tent. It was 4 am, time to go hiking. Casey turned to me in a stupor and joked that it was a good thing I slayed that beast last night or else we'd all be dead. Now I was reminded of noises I heard at around 2, yelping sorts of sounds, and thinking that the Russians outside were the source of the commotion, got up without my glasses shoes or a shirt to inform them of the Bedouin barracks full of 80 sleeping people they were disturbing. On my way over, I realized the noise was coming from a bush, so I kicked some dirt into it and in a pitiful looking, dirty stray cat hobbled out. I felt sorry for kicking dirt at it, so I gave it some beef jerky I had in my pocket and told it to quiet down. It did. When I got back in the tent people asked me what it was, what happened, were the Russians drinking? Do they have enough for us? Nope, I told them it was a cat, a ferocious one, as big as a German Shepherd, foaming at the mouth with red eyes and it came right at me, so I had to wrestle it, scuffling in the dirt, trying to avoid its claws until I finally pinned it down, then kicked it, letting it retreat cowardly into the desert. Someone said that there are leopards that live in the Negev, maybe it was leopard…I said yeah definitely, it was leopard for sure.

So now, it was still 4 am. Time to go hiking. Hiking at 4 am, after maybe 2 hours of sleep. We gathered our gear, and boarded the bus for the short drive to Masada. We weaved in and out of the barren hills, and eventually, to our left, rose a particularly impressive giant plateau, beyond which was a drop of unimaginable height, and then the dead see far down the valley below. The sun had not yet risen, but the glow of the horizon over the Jordanian mountains was enough cast the Masada plateau in a silhouette. We could barely make out an unnatural looking sand ramp leading to the top.

Masada was an ancient fortification throughout the Jewish Empires. Under the Romans, King Herod built a palace there, the remains of which can still be seen. In the year 66 the first of three Roman-Jewish wars took place after an altercation between Jewish priests and Greek Pagans who were sacrificing birds outside of a synagogue. Jerusalem was placed under siege and the temple was eventually destroyed. Masada was the last holdout of a particularly radical splinter group of Jews called the Sicarii (daggers in latin). These Jews did not recognize Roman rule of Israel, refused living at peace with the Romans and refused to negotiate with them. Unfortunately, they were in the minority, and many Jews living in Palestine argued that there was much to learn from the Romans, that there was much good in Roman culture and that it would do the Jews good to maybe even become a little more Roman themselves. The Sicarii killed many high profile Jewish leaders, making it look like Roman persecution. They also killed many Jews who urged cooperation with the Romans. The Talmud states that during the siege of Jerusalem, they destroyed the city's food supply so that the residents would refuse to negotiate a peace treaty with the Roman's and would fight them instead (it seems to me that destroying the food supply would expedite surrender rather than prolong it, but whatever).

Eventually the Sicarii wound up at Masada, under siege again by the Romans in the year 73. The Romans decided to build a ramp to the top, where they would eventually massacre the last remaining insurgents of the first Jewish Revolt. Knowing that their deaths were imminent, the Sicarii chose to die with honor instead of surrender to the Pagans. All of the men killed their wives and children. Then a lottery was held. One man was chosen to kill all the rest. The last man then fell on his sword to kill himself.

When the Romans completed their ramp and arrived at the summit they found nothing but dead bodies and a burning fortress. However, they found that all of the food was left untouched. There was enough food left to last the Sicarii another 4 months if they had wanted. Today the remains of the Roman camps as well as the Ramp can still be seen around the mountain. IDF soldiers come to Masada when they are Drafted to swear: Masada will not fall again.

Aaron, another Aaron than the one I've mentioned that is, brought up an interesting point. He has holocaust survivors in his family and they always told him that the most important thing for any Jew was always to survive, to keep living, to keep Judaism alive, in some form, all the time without ever giving up. Self preservation was always the most important thing. It was an interesting contrast with the Masada story that tells of a group of Jews who did exactly opposite. I also pointed out that the Sicarii were not regarded in very high esteem by religious Jews in the Diaspora at all for hundreds of years, and that most Jews today are descendents of the more moderate Jews who favored reconciliation with the Romans. Masada, it seems, has only taken on its mythic significance very recently and its lessons are still somewhat in tension with some very common themes of survival and perseverance prevalent in the European Jew's narrative. Of course, this is not to say that its Mythic status is itself insignificant or wrong, it means exactly what people say it means simply because they believe it does. It is not altogether dissimilar with the myths in the Palestinian narrative that assume continuity and a collective group consciousness with the Arabs who lived in Palestine during the 1920's and 1930's. Nonetheless, Masada is particularly telling of the historical revisionism wielded by Nationalism because of its direct contradiction of the very ideals which preserved Judaism for centuries and eventually facilitated the creation of Israel.

We spent two hours on Masada and watched the sunrise. The temperature was still cool, and the Dead Sea was gleaming below. It was all very nice. Then I realized that I was in the desert without any sunscreen and it was about to get extremely hot. Luckily I found some and I was able to enjoy the rest of the time on the mountain. Roni showed us all the old fortresses, Herod's palace and the Old Synagogue. He was very informed and had a lot to say about the place. In general he's a really good tour guide.

The next stop was Ein Gedi. There is not much to say about Ein Gedi except that it is amazingly beautiful, and well worth a trip for anyone who enjoys hiking, rock climbing, swimming, photography or any combination thereof. I got to see Rock Hyraxes, which was awesome (I don't really know why). There were lots of natural pools that formed at the bottoms of huge waterfalls and we got to go swimming. I don't think the convert Margot got in. Everything along the river is green, which is a great contrast to the crazy desert that surrounds the place. There were tons and tons of great looking trails and rocks faces to climb, but we weren’t allowed. Roni sensed my restlessness at not being able go off the main trail, so he told me to call him next time I'm in Israel and we'd go for some real hiking. This is a good Idea, I will certainly take him up on it. We talked a bit more about some politics etc, he told me his wife is 9 weeks pregnant and that it is his first kid. I congratulated him. Good stuff. He met his wife on a trip to Germany, and I believe she converted to Judaism. He speaks German with her and now they both live in Israel.

Next was Dead Sea, something I'd been looking forward to for a long time, considering I didn’t get to swim in it last summer. It lived up to the hype (including the stinging). It was great and very surreal, but you know words don't quite suffice.

After the Dead Sea we had a long bus ride to the North. We were staying at Kibbutz Degania. I was excited because I knew this was the very first Kibbutz in Palestine founded by Jewish settlers in 1910. Turns out we were staying Degania Bet, part of the same expanded compound, but founded in the 30's I believe. It was still really nice. Jesse and Diane split us into groups and had us draw what we thought Israelis were like because we were meeting the 8 soldiers who would accompany us for rest of the trip tomorrow. It was very fourth grade, but entertaining. Liron helped us draw ours. It was just a girl, but she had stubble on her legs, cigarettes sticking out of her ears nose and eyes, and she held an M-16.

At dinner Casey and Aaron and me sat with a Josh from the other group. Josh told us about the Convert, Dario, was getting more and more intense. He was wearing slacks, a tucked in collard shirt and a kippa all the time now. He was also getting very confrontational with anyone who openly questioned the historical accuracy of the stories we were being told. More disturbingly, he was becoming even more confrontational with anyone who even mentioned the presence of another set of claims to the land. Josh reported that he was using the phrase "our people" excessively.

So far my experience in Israel is the polar opposite of last year's. Last year, everything was strange, and different, and people were rude and the food was bad, the music worse. This year, the food and music have stayed the same, but I'm having a much better time. This is understandable and the reasons are obvious. What I am most struck by is the effective way Roni's storytelling evokes a very real emotional response in the group and even in me. Everything is set up in such a particular way, a particular frame through which to view the land, to provoke a very specific response that gets mixed up in thought and leaves everyone with a real, if not somewhat manufactured, emotional and psychological attachment to everything they see. Not even I can resist becoming extremely enamored with Israel.

From what I can tell, this can be a good and a bad thing. It's good to the extent that it does get people involved and interested in a very important place, one that I found great pleasure in getting to know at school and here now. On the other hand, it's bad to the extent that that same one sided interest that is being built up here may blind others to the difficult reality that exists within Israel between Jews and Palestinians, and between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East. It is just as if not more likely to create a blind support for Israel as it is to create a greater genuine objective interest in the place. I told this to Jesse and he agreed with me, saying that one thing he couldn't stand was the kind of "blind Israel cheerleading" that some American Jews tend toward. That is why, he said, Kesher has tried to do more to engage everyone in debate rather than just taking them throughout Israel. That debate is yet to come, but it will in a few days I'm sure.

Day 4

Morning

From now on, each day has a theme. Today's theme was pluralism. And so, we came to Jerusalem, "the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish People" as the J-post likes to say, as well as a city of great significance to Christians and Muslims. What better a place to experience the vibrant multiculturalism of Israel than the very point where the world's three great monotheistic religions have mingled for tens of centuries?

Personally, I was extremely excited for Jerusalem. I was in Jerusalem last year, but this trip did a very good job in building up the collective anticipation of the group. I was excited for three reasons. The great political and spiritual significance of place is riveting and I don't think it really requires further explication. Second, it seemed as though the trip would actually explore some dimensions of Israel that are usually not included in the Jewish narrative. Finally, I was extremely curious to witness the varied reactions among the different members of the group to the holy places like the Kotel. I have become increasingly interested in one particular subgroup within the larger group: the converts. I'll digress a bit to explain their current situation.

There are two converts in my group that I know of, and one in the other group that is following the same itinerary on a slightly different schedule. In my group, there is Margot and Amanda. In the other group there is Dario(I think). I met Amanda in the airport in Newark. She was engaged, 24 years old, wore thick black glasses and had some Hebrew tattooed on both her wrists. She explained that she was brought up Lutheran, but that she had struggled with the concept of a God who would be so cruel as to throw people into hell for all eternity if they misbehaved. She said that it sounded very "juvenile" and that the Christians conceived god "like a toddler who would throw temper tantrums all the time." Her father was quite religious and never understood why she failed to pick up the mantle of her faith with the same enthusiasm that he had, and so there were many tensions between them. In college she took a religious studies course and after learning about Judaism, she decided that it was in line with everything she personally believed, so she converted.

Dario is about the same age as Amanda. He is the son of Catholic African woman and Persian Shi'a Muslim who moved to the U.S. from Tehran. Dewon did his undergrad at Princeton and is now at the University of Detroit for law school. |From what I gather, he had lots of issues with his father throughout his young life, the least of which was the religious one. I'm not sure if they are still on good terms or any terms at all. Like Amanda, he decided to convert to Judaism in college. As for Margot, I'm not too sure about her because she got sick and hasn't really been with the group the whole time.

Now the converts must be asking themselves some vexing questions. I first wondered about their state at the independence hall lecture when the speaker laid heavy emphasis on the ethnic character of Judaism and Israel. She made constant mention of "our ancestors" both ancient and modern who all contributed to the eventual redemption of the Jewish people that culminated in the declaration of independence of the Jewish State in 1948. She also spoke at length about the role of the Holocaust in the Jewish mind. She explained that it is extremely pertinent to all Jews to think very carefully about the implications of the holocaust, not only because of its objective horridness, but because of its role in our own family histories. All of us had family who were somehow connected to this tragedy.

Now the converts must have been confused. Sure they were Jewish now, but they weren’t always Jewish. Nor were their families Jewish. The converts couldn’t really point to anyone in their family tree who had been affected by the holocaust. They were also converts to type of Judaism that does not place a lot of emphasis on its ethnic character. There is still an ongoing debate in Israel as weather or not converts to Reform Judaism in North America and Europe should even be considered Jewish at all. The orthodox, predictably, say no. However, most people in Israel want to see the Jewish population of the state go up to safeguard against higher growth rate of the Arab population. I predict that in Israel, most converts will find that reform is simply not enough. By converting to Reform, they have become Jewish in name only while their substance remains unchanged. How must they feel being told about ancestors that they never had? How will they react to the very center of their assumed religion at the Western Wall?

I think that many converts to Reform find themselves forced to become much more religious after visiting Israel. Others might find themselves somewhat alienated from what they thought was really who they were. They might drop out. I don't think that a lot of reform converts stay as mildly observant as most reform Jews who were born into the religion after visiting Israel. The orthodox line is that a convert did have Jewish blood and just didn't know it. The decision to convert is directed by God so that the unaware Jew can be redeemed. For a religious reform convert, that solution seems to be much more attractive. We'll see what God tells them when we get to Zion.

Afternoon

Our first glimpse of a sort of pluralism occurred on the way into Jerusalem. On the hill outside of the western part of the city and to the side of the main highway that leads from Tel Aviv through the Jerusalem corridor (a natural valley through the surrounding hills that leads from the coast to the Old City) lies an Arab village. It is empty and the stone houses don't look any different than ancient ruins from a thousand years ago would. But these ruins are from 1948. You can still see the path, now overgrown, that wound up the hill from the valley bellow, criss crossing in front of the houses and then disappearing slightly above the last one, directly beneath the mammoth Jerusalem Stone apartment buildings of the New City that sit atop the hill. My good friend Rick pointed these houses out to me last summer on our way into the city, but they have not been pointed out to me since. I have always wondered why they remained standing, in such a visible place for so long. So many of the same sorts of village were simply destroyed after they were emptied (either by flight or expulsion), so why not this one too?

When we got inside the city, Ronnie had us put on blindfolds until we got to a special place. Now I had already seen the old city, but I played along just to get the experience. We eventually stopped the bus, held hands and slowly got out of the bus, milling around in some unknown place, totally blind and completely aware of exactly what was going on. Everyone was excited. This was the first time in Jerusalem for most people on the trip. They knew there were about to see what most of them had only heard about in prayers or seen in stained glass in their synagogues. We took the blindfolds off, and there it was. Most people said it still looked like a picture, and that they wanted to get closer. Everyone was taking pictures, but Josh was taking pictures of people's faces. Aaron seemed somewhat indifferent but still impressed and Casey was having a moment. The converts were fixated, and Margot was standing off to the side alone, standing perfectly upright and breathing in deeply. It was a sunny day so the dome of the rock was glowing. Everything around the old city sort of funnels in towards it. The surrounding hills are covered in houses, yeshivas, churches etc all facing the temple mount.

Ronnie pulled out what he called his PowerPoint, which was really just a connected series of laminated cards illustrating the different periods in the history of Jerusalem, and briefly explained what we were looking at. He told us quickly about the Jewish temples that stood there, that at one point it was a trash heap in the crusader era, and that the Muslims had built the Dome of the Rock and the Al- Aqsa mosque and invited Jews to come back to the Old City. He also told as about the liberation of the Old City from Jordan in the Six Day war and mentioned that were were standing on land that had also been captured in the war. I asked him on the way back to the bus how close we were to the green line and he pointed about 20 feet in front of us and said "right there."

Next we went to the Cardo. Ronnie pulled out his PowerPoint and explained that when you are in Jerusalem you have to ask three questions: 1-Where am I? 2- When am I? and 3-Where are the toilets? Nuck nuck nuck. Anyway, the Cardo was the main street in Jerusalem during the Roman era. It now runs through the Jewish quarter of the city. The streets are paved with New Jerusalem stone but there are patches where the roman road was still good enough to leave bare. There lots of roman columns too. At one point, we saw an excavated section of the city walls to the ancient Jewish city that King David built after entering the Land Of Israel and slaying all the Jebusites who were living there.

I started talking to a girl in my group, I forget her name, but she was an interesting character. She lived in Oklahoma, was 20 years old and had been married a few months ago in Vegas. I have heard of assimilated Jew before but man, this took it to the next level. She had a southern drawl, bad teeth and an almost meth head like franticness and jerkiness to her movement. She told me she had spent a year in community college in Oklahoma, but that she had just transferred to Carnegie Mellon to finish her Degree in Biochemistry. I was very impressed and made it known. She was happy but said that she hadn’t really ever even heard of the school and still didn’t know much about it. I didn’t really know what to say, this girl flabbergasted me. I told her that it's a very prestigious place and she replied, "aww yeah, that's awesome!" in a thick…thick accent. She went on to tell me about how people treated her in her town. She was married to a non-Jew from her town, but she said most of the people there were extremely racist and extremely anti-Semitic. She was the only Jew around, and she constantly faced the kind of hateful invective that I have only read about or seen in movies. Of course it's even worse because her best friend is an Indian, also the only one in town. She even told me that one of her public school teachers was a holocaust denier. She loved Israel and was considering making Aliyah with her husband.

Next we stopped for shopping in the market section of the Cardo. However, they wouldn’t let us go in the cheaper Arab section of the same market, and they placed guards at the entrance to prevent anyone from trying. While I can sort of understand this (the Arab section of the market is much more mazelike and so much difficult for the group leaders to keep track of 40 people) it would have been nice to seem maybe some of that isn't so crammed, after all it was pluralism day. We were also told we would not visit the Arab quarter, or the Christian quarter. Some people complained, but there are some good reasons for this policy. First, expanding the area in which we are allowed to move greatly increases the chance that someone is going to do something stupid and cause trouble. With such a large the group, the chances again rise. So they have to constrict the space and make the rules the same for anyone. Some people here, Josh included, are trying the "the come on you can trust me" line but seriously, it's not that hard to figure out that they can't make exceptions. Secondly, allowing a group on a Zionist trip into the Muslim quarter is completely disrespectful to the people who live there and the trip organizers know this. Not all of the boundaries here are recognized and many of them will still be the subject of future negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Josh was convinced it was nothing but racism and so he sort of flipped out and got in one of the Guards' face. This upset Casey and me and we told him that he was out of line. Sure the trip has an agenda, but he chose to go on it. He's not going to change anything by badgering the 22 year old kid with the rifle. I'm here to observe, it seems as though Josh has decided he's here to cause problems, but he's wasting his time. I have spoken with Ronnie and Jesse at some length about the issues that are facing Israel and about the nature of the trip in general, about my expectations, about how I think the trip will affect the minds of those on the trip and what I think is important for everyone to consider outside of the sheltered birthright experience. These discussions have been far more constructive than accusing everyone of racism or fanaticism (even though I do think Jesse is somewhat of a fanatic, I'm not going to throw it in his face). There are far more nuanced things happening in birthright that it would behoove Josh to observe. Casey and I agree that Josh is being abrasive and somewhat offensive, and that he has completely lost the objectivity that we thought he might have. And anyway, we are going to an Arab village in a few days to talk with the residents there about the challenges facing Israel. Most birthright trips don't do this, so I'm excited to see what sort of discussions we will have. People just need to cool down and wait before they start pointing fingers and screaming about propaganda.

After the somewhat heated experience in the Cardo, we were off to the Western Wall. When we got there Jesse told us that we have a half hour on our own. Most everyone walked across the shiny stone surface towards their respective sections for men and women and straight to the wall. The experience of being bothered for change by some orthodox Jews at the wall was a little Jarring for some. Some others went to the Chabad cart set up in the men's section to put on the Tefillin and recite a prayer. This is a big mitzvah for the Chabad Jews. It's funny that the real big and meaningful experiences on birthright happen more subtly and at unexpected times. What is meant to be the most moving sometimes falls short, and the Kotel, in the grand scheme of the birthright trip, seems a little less impressive when it's considered only one part of the process. I think it's hard for the people on the trip to really come to terms with the spiritual nature of such a place when it is presented to them in such a crude and entirely physical way. The wall is just an old wall, there are plants growing on it, and there are Ultra Orthodox Jews, nearly as alien to the Reform Jew as a born again Christian preacher, all over the place. It's weird and really hard for me to put myself in anyone else's shoes at the western wall.

I saw old Orthodox Jew with a group of children at southern portion of the men's section. The children all had Yarmulkes on slightly to the side and they were repeating, with great enthusiasm, all of the lines from the prayers the old teacher was reciting. He was no doubt raising up the next generation of religious Zionists, as one can tell from the position of the Yarmulkes. These are the people that have the "Messiah Now" bumper stickers on their cars, and the same people who see the complete settlement of the West Bank as God's will and a step in the direction of complete redemption of the Jewish People. They are the counterpoint to the uncircumcised and tattooed Tel Aviv artist. My friend Yahel from Montreal once Joked that if there were no Palestinians there would be a war between the religious and the secular in Israel. We'll see.

Evening

The next step in the pluralism theme was a trip down to a Bedouin camp in the Negev, complete with a night in the tent and a ride on a real live camel! How rustic! How romantic! A true Orientalist fantasy! Everyone was very excited to get an up close and personal Glimpse at "real life Arab Culture." Of course, the whole experience turned out to be more like Disney Bedouin Theater than anything that even closely resembled any sort of authenticity.

We were treated to a lecture on Bedouin life by a man who was dressed like a desert dweller. You could tell that he was wearing slacks and a collard shirt under his galibiyah, which he informed me, was actually made in China. He had a doctorate in Musicology from the University of Haifa and lived in Tel Aviv. He showed us the traditional way of making bread, and coffee and the different customs of hospitality necessary for survival in the desert. Then he played the guitar like oute for us.

We went out into the desert that night right outside of the camp. Jesse asked us to walk off a bit on our own to reflect on everything about the trip. I walked a bit off, walked over some trash some beer bottles. The desert quietness was somewhat ruined by the noisy generators at the "Bedouin Camp" and the lights cast a very unnatural halogen glow over the whole area. I thought that at this point, people on the trip are starting to get really hooked on the country. We came back together to share some thoughts. Most people said that they were taken aback at how familiar the place seemed, how everything was so different yet they felt so much at home, in the land of their ancestors. Some expressed an interest in coming back to "work the soil" and contributing to their homeland. No one really mentioned that the only people we had been exposed to were other Americans and no one had yet to deal with the language barrier because everything was done in English. Obviously everyone is going to feel at home if they are shepherded around, fed for free, and interacting only with English speaking Americans and Canadians. More on this later.

We all stayed up a bit later to sit around and talk. We finally went in at around 1am. Tomorrow's theme is Heroism and we are getting up at 4am to go to Masada for sunrise.

Day 3

"How lovely are your tents,. O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!”

This morning we got up to go to morning Shabbat services. We had the option of doing yoga services on the beach or a more prayer and study intensive program in the hotel synagogue. I went to the latter because I knew we would be on the beach the rest of the day and I knew that Jesse would lead the services so I was curious as to what he would have to say. Casey, Aaron, Josh and another guy Dave who was in on the conversation last night chose to come too.

After we read through a few prayers, Jesse established the theme of the morning. He asked to find all mention of Israel in the passages and to think about what that means for Jews and Judaism in general. He asked the group what the modern day implications of these passages were and what it means to have a people and religion tied to a specific piece of land today. Josh raised his hand and said "war." Jesse disagreed and said that in fact, the passages were only the first step in establishing not only the religious, but cultural and national attachment to the land of Israel. He made a distinction between Political Zionism, which only began in the 19^th century, and Zionism which had existed since 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the second Temple and especially after 130 AD when they expelled all the Jews from what was then called Palestine. Traditional Zionism was the yearning for Jerusalem among all religious Jews since the destruction of the temple. It was uttered every day in prayers and was said to have been on the mind of all devout Jews at all times: " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy." (137, 5-7) Political Zionism was only the transformation of this yearning to fit into the framework of states and politics that had become paramount by the late 1800's.

Jesse's points all make sense because for him, there is still a very strong religious aspect to Zionism. Interestingly, he combines a lot of the ideas the secular nationalist Zionists with some of the mainly orthodox Zionist attitudes toward God and his relationship with the Jews and the Land of Israel. Jesse looks at all of Jewish history sees some basic cross cultural and religious similarities that bind all Jews together. Although Jews never all lived in the same region, state or continent or spoke the same language, they all had the torah and they all shared the liturgical Hebrew in which they prayed and studied.

These two facets of Judaism were evidence enough of an unbroken and continuous history that linked all Jews together as a nation. The secular Zionists of the 19^th century were mainly atheists and communists who saw the same things. They argued that the religion was only national self worship and that the real ties between the Jews were cultural (in the form of shared traditions such as keeping the Sabbath, Motza, dress etc) and linguistic. They lived at a time when European ethnic national movements were in full swing, defining the Jewish reality from the outside and forcing them to consider themselves part of the same global tapestry of nations with its own right to its own land. For the Jews, the answer was simple: their land was Palestine. The religion wasn’t true, but they knew that their ancestors came from Palestine and that is where they needed to go because Europe was not theirs…it was for the Germans or the French, English, Spanish, Italians etc. However these nationalisms tend to assume a constant linkage between all people within the national umbrella throughout all time. They do not take into account, however, what the people of whom they speak actually thought of the national connections the modern day nationalists are trying to prove. This is especially true of European nationalisms like Nazism, and all the other ones inspired by 19^th century romanticism.

The Jewish case, however, is different and somewhat of a problem for those who insist that all nationalism are purely modern and mostly based on historical exaggerations or mistruths. At the very least, the idea of common ancestry, a shared language and a connection to a specific piece of land has existed in Judaism since well before the modern era. This idea was, of course, reinforced by Christian societies who never really accepted the Jews until after 1789, and even that was short lived. Nonetheless, these commonalities which supposedly bound together Jewish communities everywhere were not always as strong as modern day Zionists would have you believe.

Back to Jesse, he does accept some of the limitations of secular Zionism mentioned above, mainly that it assumes a continuous and deeply felt connection among all Jews throughout time. This sort of deeply felt connection was not always the case and in fact, it varied over time and place. This is when Jesse reverts to his faith and asserts that regardless of these variances, God has always had the Jews and Israel in mind and that he always knew that he would eventually lead them back to Israel. Even secular Jews who do not believe in God are always carrying out his will, they just don't realize it.

This sort of position is very typical of North American Jews in general and Particularly Canadian Jews. Jews in North America can be religious, but on their own terms. The plethora of Judaisms in the Diaspora allows the Jew in these liberal societies to choose the way in which he wants to practice his faith. This is not so in Israel. If Israelis are religious, they basically have to be orthodox because the orthodox have a monopoly on all religious matters within the state. So most Israelis are secular, and so they have a more difficult time coming to terms with sketchy historical credentials of secular Zionism.

Canadian Jews are particularly prone to this sort of thinking because of the nature of their national identity. As opposed to Jews in America, Canadian Jews live in a country with a mostly vague and indistinct identity. In the U.S. there was a distinct ideology and distinct breaking point separating the period of Colonialism with sovereignty. Lincoln wrote that this breaking point defined the U.S. not only as a sovereign state but also that it marked the birth of a new Nation. Canada, on the other hand, has not experienced such a history. Canada has only gained its independence gradually, and Anglo-Canada still maintains distinct cultural and linguistic ties to the United Kingdom (the queen is still on the money!) There is no distinct historical episode to which Canadians can point to and say "that is when we became Canadian." Also unlike the U.S., Canada has had to deal with a very deep linguistic and cultural cleavage within its own borders between the Anglos on one hand the Quebecois on the other. That a large portion of Canada has always embraced a distinct national identity is a confusing issue to all Canadians. What does it mean to be Canadian when other Canadians don't even think of themselves as such? How can a national identity exist in Canada if there is no real consensus on what that means? Thus, most Canadians have to try much harder than Americans to really get a sense of who they are. Some Anglo Canadians just consider themselves Anglos. The Quebecois have it all figured out. Others do it with Beer commercials or by simply asserting their Non-Americanness. The Jews, unable to find a stronger discourse of national identity, simply find it easier to embrace their Jewishness. I would bet that on average, Canadian Jews are far more Zionist than American Jews. This is all of course very arm-chairy, and I would have to conduct a lot of surveys to really figure out if it's true, so don't take my word for it.

Dave raised an interested question at the services. Realizing the relaxed approach Jesse took to the letter of the law in the Torah despite his firm faith in God, Dave asked how reform Jews are to determine which parts of the Torah to accept and which parts to ignore. He pointed out that if so much of the Torah and the Talmud is called into question, why are none of the passages which link the Jews to Israel questioned as such? He explained that the notion that certain gods ruled over specific patches of land was widespread in the ancient near east, particularly in the Mesopotamia, the land from which Abraham is supposedly to have come. I would also point out that the Egyptians held a different view of divine rule. In Egypt, certain gods ruled of specific domains of life. If these two lands are in someway related to the Jews, it seems as though the ancient Jewish conception of God, Israel and the 12 tribes was perhaps a combination of these two explanations of a god's role in the world. Jesse didn't really answer his question. I would say that the parts of the Torah and the Talmud that are omitted by most contemporaries because they don’t fit into our modern notions of morality or because they hinder the economy. Thus they are assumed to anti modern. The idea of Land and a people, as I have already explained, did fit quite well into the common sense of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and so it was never omitted. Nowadays, how well that notion fits into the norm is coming into question and so the passages about Israel and the Israelites perhaps seem a little archaic.

"There are strangers in the land of Israel"

Next we read a passage that was supposed to be a transition into what Jesse thought would be the more "liberal" and "moderate" section. After "proving" the unbroken uncontestable connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, it was time to approach a more sensitive topic. The passage implored us to " Let the stranger in your midst be to you as the native, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Jesse concluded by telling us that there were indeed strangers in the land of Egypt and that we need to understand that. While his implied sentiments of tolerance and respect are nice, this sort of attitude is still condescending and somewhat sick. Sure Jesse own views on them matter might not be considered extremely radical, but at heart they are no different than the self righteous disregard that so many religious and secular Zionists have for the Palestinians.

"That's the Tel Aviv bubble…you're in it"

That night we went to see a play in a hip theater somewhere in Tel Aviv. We entered the place and walked through a hallway that was lined with crazy photo artwork…pierced punks on the streets of tel aviv, naked women with their heads in toilets and an old guy with a beard and a vagina. Everyone was freaked out by this, not least of all myself. It was a little too Greenwich Village for me, but my friend Alana, a girl who was going to art school in NY loved it. While it was somewhat shocking, some of it was still interesting, particularly the closeup of an uncircumcised penis with a Star of David tattoo on the stomach above it. It's a little raw, but you know, it makes some sense for Israel today especially in Tel Aviv.

The play we saw was a rendition of the biblical story of Tamar. Pretty much, Tamar is to have a child with Er, but Er is slain by God so Er's brother Onan has to have a kid with Tamar to preserve his brother's line. However, Onan doesn't like this arrangement so he "spills his seed on the ground" to avoid impregnating Tamar. God is angry and so he slays Onan. Onan's father, Judah, has one more son for Tamar but he is young and so she is commanded to wait until he is old enough to impregnate her and to preserve Er's line. So Tamar is sent away, to live with her family, she can't do otherwise and she cannot marry another man unless Judah releases her. So she dresses up like a prostitute and seduces Judah, who gets her pregnant. When Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant, he is angry and brings her forth so that he can command her death, which he has a legal right to do. However, Tamar reveals to Judah that she was the prostitute and that she is pregnant with his child, thus preserving the family line. It is later revealed that this began the line which eventually led to King David. The story is traditionally interpreted to show the way in which God used the imperfect Tamar to turn Judah from his (apparent) wickedness to righteousness. Tamar forced Judah to face up to his responsibilities (to keep his line alive) instead of passing them off to his sons. Tamar is imperfect because she is a Canaanite, but she has a firm sense of her duty as a wife and for Judah's duty as a Jew. Accordingly, she is always firm of mind, and takes matters into her own hands to fulfill these various obligations.

The play we saw presented this story by using two ballet dancers who attached these puppets to their torsos. The puppets upper body and head was a puppet, but the hands and legs were the dancer's. The heads could also come off the body and could be used for some interesting effects, like when Tamar and Er were falling in love and the heads were swirling around in the air etc. The faces of the puppets were unchanged the entire time, but the actors' expressions and body language ranged from tortured, to jubilant, to somber throughout the play.

In this version though, the focus of the story is no longer on Judah and his transformation, but on Tamar and her own personal experience which is completely rethought. Central to the play and its reinterpretation of the Biblical story was this separation between the actor and the puppet that only this medium seems to provide. With the puppet, the actor was able to portray the deep sense of obligation and duty which is very prevalent in the biblical story. With their own bodies, though, the actors were able to bring out the feelings and emotions associated with these acts which are unaddressed in torah. This is particularly true of Tamar who is visually the most tormented by the various events and their implications for what she has to do. This distinction is central to modern Jewish life in Tel Aviv in particular and in Israel as a whole. These Jews are caught between a world in which they are told that they have an obligation to their ancestors and to their history and a world in which they only want to live as human beings, unbound by such regulations that constrict them physically and emotionally. This is what the director was trying to show us, I think, and the story and the medium were really a perfect choice for doing so. Like Tamar, Jews and Judaism face a tug of war between the modern world in which their own desires and emotions should have free reign and a long history of tradition to which they are expected to adhere. I anticipate that this question, how Jews reconcile their history and modern world, will be approached quite differently in Jerusalem. Maybe ill see some of this when I go there tomorrow.

After the play we went to a mall, like any other mall, for some food. I ate at Sbarro. On the bus, Ronnie the tour guide told us a little more about the City. That it is constantly moving and that people often seem unconcerned for what is happening in the rest of the country. "business as usual in tel aviv"

Josh had some things to say at the mall. After the Independence hall experience yesterday, Josh told me that he was starting to have an identity crisis. He never considered himself particularly Jewish, he was just a guy who lived in NY, a musician and no different than any other New Yorker. Yesterday he was becoming confused. He was being told about his Judaism and what it means, and what sorts of things are required of him because of that identity which he cannot shed. None of these ideas ever factored into his life. Tonight he seems to have taken a step towards resolving the crisis. He asked me "what has Israel ever done for the world?" I said, well they have their place in the global economy, and they seem to do their part. He said that that's all bullshit and that he was starting to think that the state should never have even come into existence and that maybe it shouldn’t even exist now. I said there are lots of people in this country who are just trying to live their lives and that that sort of thinking can only be destructive in the end. He's started to decide that the whole thing is bullshit. He's very uncomfortable with the fact that there exists a place that has some role in his own identity that he can't control. He has nothing to do with Israel, why should Israel have anything to do with him? I would agree that people should be able to choose who they are, I wouldn't go so far as to say that logically leads to us saying that Israel has no right to exist.

Then again I used to think that Jews who didn’t at least nominally embrace their Judaism were being a little silly, as they really did have a lot to be proud of, so why not buy in? After that I thought that people were most influenced by their environment and that if they didn’t embrace their Judaism, it's only because they had found another way to define themselves that better suited their preferences. This trip is interesting though, because in showing everyone this big powerful and dynamic state, it really is providing some real incentives for all of the Jews who go on birthright to buy into their Jewish identity. It's hard to say objectively whether these incentives really do outweigh all others in any other environment anywhere else. My intuition tells me that they don't but it's really hard to say, and I guess it's up to everyone to decide on their own. Who knows.

Tomorrow in Jerusalem