Writings From Jerusalem Feb 2009

Writings From Jerusalem Feb 2009

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Feb 3, 2009

The clouds over the coastline of Israel as we approach in the late afternoon are beautiful, puffy and peaceful. As I look at them I think of every time I have flown into Israel and the changing skyline, the modern soaring expanding expanse of the Tel Aviv vicinity and the luscious green country side that surrounds the Ben Gurion airport. Perhaps because of my sense of history I am looking at eons of time along with the physical surroundings. I remember the smaller, younger Israel of my first trip in 1968 and the pictures of earlier pioneers and immigrants and then the drawings of what it is imagined what Jerusalem looked like inTemple times and then informed by what I have seen in excavations. It is all one seamless, continuous panorama in my mind that has no beginning, no interruption, and flows towards the future. With that flowing picture in my mind, I also have the layer of current reality of war, and conflict, that is so disjunctive to the peaceful clouds in my airplane's window. In constantly studying the complex history and its dynamics, especially from the end of the 19th century to this very day, I search for an angle to see how these forces can be truly harmonized and peoples who tell such different and conflicting stories, who have such seemingly different visions for the future, can be brought into conjunction, coordination and a true, honest, sincere, peace. I can only say that having lived here for extend periods of time for study, undergraduate, rabbinical and sabbatical, as well as for several trips, the yearning for peace and quiet, the desire to build a socially just society, the dream to be a safe haven for Jews whenever they are persecuted and the vision of reconstituting the Jewish people in their natural corporate nationhood, undoing two thousand years of Diaspora is the complex weave of emotions that animates this country. They do not wish to send their sons and daughters off to the army and war, generation after generation. This country lives with hope, with dreams, and with an internal strength born of the millennia of Jewish history. One thing is for sure, that Israel is reaching towards every tomorrow with every expectation and action that will insure its existence and vitality. The time for its acceptance by its neighbors, the time for peace is now.

I would like to touch on a quote that I gave in the interview for the article that appeared in last Saturday's paper. My reference to hurricane Katrina was that the people in the Gulf states physically experienced the hurricane, while we in Richmond did not. Similarly, the one million Israeli's in the area around Gaza were under the gun and bombardment while those elsewhere, like our daughter in Jerusalem, did not. The terseness of the quote might have sounded callous. I am not. I supported every effort to aid the people hurt by Katrina. We prayed on their behalf. My comparison was solely to the point that those in the area have the physical experience. Those further away do not. That is true here in Israel also.

February 5th, 2009

While Richmond is in a deep freeze, I traveled in a part of Israel called Emek Hefer, which is the partnership region here with the Richmond Jewish community. It was at least 80 degrees! While it was a beautiful sunny day, it should have been much cooler and rainy. This entire region depends on the winter rainfall to fill the Sea of Galilee, Kineret, the aquafier along the coastline and the small network of small rivers and ponds. From the standpoint it has been a terrible winter. I pray every day, three times a day, for the descent of rain and dew. I hope to see rain clouds, good heavy, soaking wet rain clouds that will drench me while it blesses the land.

An observation: nearly every place I turn there is construction. Cranes decorate the horizon. Boring into rock to clear land booms in different corners. Trucks laden with construction materials pass by frequently. Whatever is on the economic horizon, whatever else is happening, Israel is building itself every day. There is a certainty that courses through this phenomenon. There is a certitude that infuses the sounds and sights. The infrastructure is growing. New electronic networks go up. I saw a bride and groom get married this afternoon. And politicians are arguing and now I see some banners, as the elections are next week. Depending on how you count, through seven wars, several intifadas, the influx of the refugees from the Holocaust, the ingathering of the most diverse group of Jews from all points of the Arab world as they fled for their lives and little else to an infant state, what has been created here is unimaginable. If those who do would stop its hate and crusade to destroy Israel and instead look at what has been done as a model to build a country, care for human beings, turn its attention to the environment and develop medicine to heal friend and foe (I am waiting for the international media to carry front page stories of how many Palestinians are cared for, cured, and healed in Israeli hospitals not related to war and even from the war), maybe they would beat their tanks, Grad missiles, katyushas, and bombs into hospitals, agricultural farms, and libraries that teach respect and not hate. I know that dreaming can be illusive. But in this place reaching for God is a natural activity.

Of the places I visited today, a special waterfront that teaches swimming and boating in a two - three thousand year old natural harbor, meeting with students at a school where they are preparing to visit Richmond, was visit to Yovalim. It is a school in the kibbutz Givat Chayyim. What made this visit so unique and moving was the loving care given to children with autism that are being taught here. The entire school is 580 students. There are classes from grades 1 to 6 for these children. In one class I visited they were learning about canyons. In another class, several where mainstreamed for mathematics. I sat with the director and another staff person as they described the gamut of professional attention given to the children so that they can learn and grow into productive, happy lives. It was beautiful. There is no fanfare. There is little money. There is abundant love. There is overflowing graciousness. The walls were decorated by students who had studied Picasso and painted their works in his style. Others completed a multifaceted document about the 'greening' of the region. No war slogans. No hatred of Arabs. No denunciation of Islam. Just a place of learning and love. Just a place of children dreaming. Through the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond we give support to places like this in Emek Hefer. Late into the night I sat as part of the Emek Hefer committee speaking with its counterpart in Richmond about which projects to fund that will bring benefit and blessings to both communities.  I returned to Jerusalem on a sherut with is a shared taxi and arrived in my daughter's apartment about 10:45 P.M. What a heartfelt day. What a blessed day. I wish everyone - I mean everyone, Israel and Arab, Jew and Moslem, young and old, should have blessed days. God by any name did not put us on this earth to suffer. I saw that quest in the eyes of the children that I saw today.

Shalom from Jerusalem III (but written in Richmond)

Feb 17, 2009

 

Last Friday, February 13^th, I landed in Atlanta and then flew on to Richmond and have continued to live in two time dimensions, eastern standard time and Israel time, which are seven hours apart. It is such a strange thing to live into these different realities. I may walk these streets, but at the same time, I see the streets of Jerusalem, the newer and older cities, the stores and hear multiple languages, Hebrew, English, French, German, and Amharic, all being spoken at once. I don't know how to settle my brain down from functioning in "warp speed!"

 

I was in Jerusalem for the elections and watched the results starting at 10:00 P.M. that Tuesday night. The Israeli political system is based on the British model in which you vote for the party of your choice. They receive a representational amount of seats in the government and then the president invites the leader of one of the largest parties to form the government. This has always been a coalition of several parties garnering more than 61 votes (60 being 50%) and thus insuring that a vote of 'no confidence' will fail and not bring the government down. This is always a very delicate maneuver.

 

It is fascinating to watch this process from close up. I was amazed how little material was in public view. I was looking for hand-outs, large banners, advertising on buses and billboards. There was so little! Yet somehow they got their message out. We are used to two parties and rarely a maverick third. In Israel there were many parties running slates, some of which did not receive the threshold necessary for even one seat, such as the Pensioners Party and the Green Party. When I was interviewed by Alberta Lindsey I thought that the Kadima party had the best overall posture on the issues. Tzipi Livni really surprised the pundits, yet the complexity of issues and the variations on themes within each party, makes the choices ever more complex and difficult when you look at it while in Israel than looking at it from here.

 

The concerns spread over a vast panorama with consequences for the survival of the state:

how many will be above or below the poverty line;

will education be enhanced, will the ultra religious community continue to receive state subsidies for education and the size of their families while not being obligated to military service or any other comparable service to the country;

will the religious parties maintain their monopolistic control of marriage, divorce and conversion;

will the Arab citizens of the State of Israel be singled out to make a pledge of loyalty, a move that threatens the very fabric of any democracy (remember what was done to the Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II in the USA).

No party had all the answers that I wanted. Some answers were better in Likud, others better in Kadima, and some in Labor.

 

To borrow a Yogi Berra'ism and change it: "It's not over even when it's over!" Even while I watched the celebrations at the Kadima headquarters on television, I learned that they still had to count the ballots of the soldiers in service and then, depending on other pieces, who will President Shimon Peres tap first to make the new government, Tzipi Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu? Even as I write this on February 16^th, this is not clear. And meanwhile the events of the economy, military and foreign policy, the desire for the release of Gilad Shalit, continue under the caretaker government of Prime Minister Olmert.

 

It was a fascinating time to be there, for here is democracy in action, the only democracy in thousands of miles. No country in the entire Middle East can claim to be a democracy, but Israel. In the newspaper and on billboards were posted official notices of the voting places, hundreds in Jerusalemalone. There were notices of the guaranteed write to vote, about non-interference, about who was eligible (our daughter got there just a few days too late to vote), with detailed write ups of each candidate and party and what they stood for. And then the post election analysis that continued endlessly. Amazing!! The deep grasp of its citizens to the complexity of the forces that shape their world! In Richmond we struggle to have one newspaper. In Israel there are at five large and at least as many smaller ones, especially those that are in other languages. Official signs are in Hebrew, English and Arabic. And the consequences are not theoretical. The answers, the decisions, influence the very survival of the state, for the welfare of its citizens. Israel is not immune from the economic situation. People are losing jobs. There is serious concern about homeless and poverty. There are many organizations and volunteer efforts to alleviate this. And the enemy is only as far as the nearest katyusha missile and Grad rocket, or the threats from Iran to wipe Israel from the map. And yet the sunrise which I watched from our daughter's window and the sunset that I absorbed into my soul as I worked to her place of work, the Ramah Programs in Israel, were stunning and elevated my soul to look heavenward, as to say to God, there has to be some way to hold evil at bay, to bring tranquility and serenity. If from this little spot on this spinning globe we all pray to You, can there not be some way that from way out there can come an answer to help us find the way down here? Even if I just watch the hues in the sky, I feel a measure of reassurance that the efforts, at least human, will strengthen this country and continue its efforts to build a Jewish, democratic, progressive country. My wife and I are thrilled that our daughter is part of this great enterprise in human and specifically Jewish history. I was blessed these past two weeks to walk the streets of Jerusalem with her, absorb the sounds, music and aromas. In my sleep I am still there.

 

And then I visited Sderot and looked into Gaza. I was told where to run and how to hide if a missile came. That will be the next piece, from Jerusalem, at least in my heart and soul, even as I type from my synagogue office here in Richmond.