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.