in god's country

This past week, our class embarked on a four-day tiyul to the Negev desert in southern Israel. This was a part of our educational experience of the year (although other than spouting off on the benefits of recreation and informal education, and then talking about “Reform Jewish connections to the land of Israel,” I can’t really tell you the M.O. of the past week) and it was a boodle of fun.

I love the desert, desert climate, desert flora and fauna (and yes, there is lots of it, you just have to look for it), desert mythology, desert sky, desert music, desert beauty, desert silence. For me it’s mostly been a love affair with Death Valley, but the Negev totally suffices. So being there, for 4 day, camping and hiking and breathing it all in, it was just all totally a pleasure.

The trip was structured around two thematic halves: enjoying the desert and enjoying each other, as well as learning about Israeli connections to the southern Negev. Our trip started with a visit to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the central Negev that David Ben-Gurion moved to in his later life and was eventually buried there. We used this visit as a jumping off point as the importance of the Negev (about 60% of Israel’s land area; only about 10% of the population) in Israeli culture and history.

We then went on a beautiful, steep hike overlooking the Ramon Crater (the largest geologically formed crater in the world) and headed to a five-star Bedouin tent for the evening. Gavin, Luanne, and I (the three ED students) led Mincha (afternoon) service that day. We wanted it to be a contemplative, reflective service, and I think we reached our goal.

The evening program consisted of learning about Bedouin culture (a totally constructed experience, but non-authentic) and having a nice dinner, and then doing some campus bonding through a friendly Eurovision-type song competition. The LA campus group did okay (we came in 3rd), but putting “Hit Me Baby One More Time” to Opera is much harder than one might expect.

Thursday morning, half the group rose bright and super early to mount the bus for an all day hike on Har Shlomo (Mt. Solomon), a basalt crag in the Eilat Mountains. It was a great hike, a very steep ascent and an even steeper descent, but at the peak there was an incredible view of Eilat, Aqaba (in Jordan), the Saudi Arabian coast, and mountains on the easternmost edge of the Sinai Peninsula (in Egypt). Israel’s really smack dab in the middle of it all.

That evening we regrouped at Kibbutz Yahel, one of two Reform kibbutzim in the southeastern Negev (an area called the Arava), where we spent Thursday and Friday night. Thursday we rested and had dinner and a karaoke evening. I played cards. And may or may not have sung a karaoke song with RVT; we wanted to do “Love Shack,” but that was just done, so we did “Stand By Me.”

Friday morning we visited Kibbutz Lotan, the other Reform kibbutz, which has a very strong eco-friendly bent. We toured their straw-mud igloos (natural insulation), organiz garden, composting toilets, and had a conversation with the past Kibbutz mayor about the role of Zionism in Reform Judaism. We had a quick kibbutz-style bagged lunch on the bus on the way to a beach off the Eilat coral reef, where we spent the afternoon snorkeling and enjoying the sunshine. On our way back to Yahel we stopped at Yotvata, a dairy, for ice cream, the best Israeli ice cream I’ve had.

Shabbat was really lovely. The services were student led, and the massive group of 9 students did a really nice job stringing together different themes and musical elements. Leslie, one of the service coordinators, had asked me Tuesday if I would give a brief D’var Friday night, so I wrote a little D’var on the portion of the week (which was the first in Leviticus) and the desert. It was about finding and hearing your calling, bring called, responding to a calling, especially in the desert where, through the pure silence, we can truly hear ourselves. It went pretty well, especially considering it was written and edited on the fly.

Friday evening was had dinner and then a really nice chill evening of some cards (the game of the weekend was Juker, a big game in the Midwest that’s like a combination of Bridge and Spades), some hookah, some wine, some conversation. As Erev Shabbat should be.

Saturday itself was really relaxing. We had services, some down time, lunch, more downtime, a tour of the Yahel dairy cows, and then a conversation with the Kibbutz’s founders, and then we came home. The relaxing, chill element of the weekend really pervaded my own experience. It was so wonderful to get away and relax in a desert environment, and on the beach, and hike, and hang out with my classmates with out the stress of class or other external pressures.

For pictures, check out my Picasa album:

Negev Tiyul

Obamas go organic

I gotta tell you, it's not just that the Obama's are coming into the White House and making all sorts of policy changes, big and little - from the budget to the troop redeployment to not federally prosecuting medicinal marijuana clubs - but it's really the small stuff. I saw this article in the NYTimes today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html?hp

about how Michelle Obama is putting in a 55 acre organic vegetable garden. It's going to be the first vegetable garden at the White House since the Roosevelts. And especially today, now, as local/organic/non-processed foods are really starting to pick up steam, a little role modeling from the President's family can make all the difference. 

going to ethiopians

I don’t think I’ve written at all about my community service project, and so I’m going to give a brief spiel now. Every student is required to engage in a regular CS project, Some are bullshitty, like working in the ARZA office (serving which community?) but others actually get people out there, like song leading once a month at a home for retired people, or for mentally challenged people, or teaching English to troubled Israeli youth. My project is great. Once a week, on Mondays, I go to an immigration absorption center in Mevassert Zion (a posh suburb just south of Jerusalem) and spend two hours working in a recently immigrated family. But since all of the recently immigrated families at the center are Ethiopian, and have been Ethiopian for years, we (the 11 of us) work with Ethiopians immigrants.

It’s a fascinating, rewarding, thrilling afternoon. We work in pairs; I work with Lisa and we make a really great team. Our family is wonderful. There are 4 kids: Koltroin, a boy aged 9; Yeshuruk, a girl aged 7; Aytnagev, a girl aged 5; and Avram, a boy aged 2.5. The family has been in Israel around 3 years, so their spoken Hebrew is pretty good; we’ve seen a marked improvement in the Mom’s spoken Hebrew and the older kids’ Hebrew reading in the past year as well.

We’re with the family for about 2 hours a week, and we do various activities with them. We help the older ones with their homework, we color with the younger ones, we do puzzles, we play Hangman and checkers and Tic-Tac-Toe, we sing some Israeli songs, we talk about upcoming holidays, we eat popcorn and drink juice. This past week we had a fantastic, impromptu dance party of Israeli and Ethiopian music. It was an amazingly fun time, universally agreed (but Lisa and I) as the best week we've had yet. Lisa and I have really bonded with these kids, and they’ve bonded with us. I’m really, really going to miss them next year.

When Tom was here, he came with us, and took some pictures. Some really great pictures (my current Facebook profile picture is with Aytnagev). Here are some:

little baby Avram

Yeshuruk looking curious

Lisa and Avram

Aytnagev in a rare moment of smiling

Aytnagev and myself

up and down the coast

This past weekend, Ari, Meredith and I took a two-day trip (Friday/Saturday) to the Galilee Coast, renting a car (an epic, ghetto-fabulous Fiat Punto, complete with stick shift) and heading from the ancient archaeological site of Caesaria – south of Haifa – all the way to Rosh HaNikra, the northwesternmost point in Israel (butting against Lebanon).

Caesaria was beautiful. Ancient Caesaria was a city built by Herod on the cusp of the BCE-CE switch and was used as his deep-sea port. It was a huge administrative and trade city with an amphitheater and lighthouse, etc. As all other sites in Israel, it became Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, etc and eventually fell into obscurity. This was my 4th time there, so much of it was familiar, but it was a gorgeous day and it’s right on the beach and it was simply lovely. And seeing Ari, who had never been, run around like a kid in a candy store, snapping photos of everything from the sand grains to the sea to the ancient tiled mosaics to Mer and I, was very amusing. We had a lovely lunch on the water, and went on our way. To prove the neat beauty:

Mer and I at the top of the seats in the amphitheater

figuring out where the hell we are on the map

walking on the Caesaria promenade

enjoying lunch on the Mediterranean

Next stop was Rosh Hanikra, where there are these amazing grottoes under the cliff. The water comes into the mountain, over many millennium, and carved water caves. It was beautiful. Here are some pictures of the first day:

Ari excited about the Grottoes

my album cover

Ari and I admiring the sea and the caves

I saw the sign, I just ignored it

the view of the Israeli coastline

We drove back down to Haifa and checked into our hotel. The ordeal of finding the hotel was incredibly frustrating. I was doing all the driving (because 1. You have to be 24 to rent a car in Israel and I’m the only one old enough, and 2) Neither Ari not Mer can drive a manual, at least well), so I was tired and frustrated with the stick shift, and then we couldn’t figure out where the hotel was and how to navigate all the one-way streets and I kept getting flustered with the manual and the map and the cars, and so forth. But finally we found the hotel and decompressed for a bit.

Our evening activity entailed exploring the German Colony in Haifa, at the base of the Ba’hai Gardens (which were beautiful and all lit up), having dinner, and then coffee and playing cards (our game of choice is Oh Hell! which is a lot of fun and really the only 3-person card game). An evening shot:

Ari and Meredith in front of the Ba'hai Gardens and Temple

On Shabbat, we took a self-tour of the Shrine of the Bab and the surrounding gardens in the Ba’hai Temple complex. We then walked to the top of the hill and got a full sense of the view and the gardens from above, in daylight. It’s a beautiful, well-manicured garden, with lots of lawns and trees and flowers and an incredible view of the city. Here are some pictures:

Mer and I in front of the Shrine of the Bab (a true hero shot)

Ari, with the gardens and Haifa behind him

the three of us in a Haifa sculpture garden

Our final main stop of the weekend was in Akko, a Crusader, Mameluke, and Ottoman city on the coast halfway between Haifa and the Lebanese border. It’s beautiful city, a place I’ve also been a few times, but one that never gets old. It’s got a lot of narrow alleys, old, old buildings, a beautiful mosque, a great view of the sea, some nice food, etc. It’s predominately Arab (at leas the old city is; the new city is predominately Jewish, leading to a lot of internal tension) and so has a very different flavor than much of the Galilee coast (although since we did a lot of our touring on Shabbat, a lot of the fellow tourists were Arab families). Here are some pictures:

Me in the Akko shuk bewildered...

...because of that shark!

the Al-Jazzer mosque in Akko

where Akko meets the sea

Our trip back to Jerusalem was uneventful. We made one leisurly stop in Zichron Yaakov to have coffee and play cards. To cap off the great weekend, Meredith won her first game of Oh Hell!

Note: I didn't take any of these pictures. I forgot my camera at home: silly me! These are all Ari and Meredith's pics.

Chag Purim! Chag Purim!

Or, a holiday for really, really big kids too.

So, Purim is a fantastic holiday. The basic rundown of the holiday is it celebrates the Jewish victory over Haman and Persian Jew-haters who tried to kill the Jews of Persia, as told in the book of Esther. The book itself is fascinating (one of my favorite biblical books with dense story lines, hidden meanings, and applicable, relevant lessons for Diaspora life today), but also troubling: there’s a lot of drinking, debauchery, killing, and the total absence of God. It’s the most modern (or post-modern) of any biblical book and holiday.

The holiday celebration itself is pretty fascinating. Basically, there are 4 mitzvot of Purim: hear the scroll of Esther read aloud, give gifts to friends, give gifts to the poor (Tzedakah), and enjoy a Purim feast. There’s also the custom of drinking until “One can’t tell the difference between ‘Cursed be Haman’ and ‘Blessed be Mordechai,’” but that’s NOT a commandment. People sometimes get confused.

To celebrate Purim at HUC in Jerusalem, we had a three-pronged celebration.

Prong 1: Purim service and Megillah Reading. Tuesday night, we assembled at school. A group of students organized an evening (Maariv) service/show they called Maariv: The Musical. They took us through a standard service but used modern tock and pop tunes as music for prayers/songs on prayer themes, while telling the story of a young girl named Estehr who wanted to be a star of Shushan Bandstand but the evil producer Haman wanted to wipe out the Jews because the Record Exec Mordy Chai wouldn’t sign his daughter. It was incredibly clever, very funny, and borderline inappropriate. But very, very funny.

The Megillah was read by the cantorial students, a few other rabbinic students ballsy (and talented) enough to learn Meggilat Esther trope (chanting notes), and three faculty members, including a very preggers head of the cantorial program. It was a riotous reading; it takes about an hour to read the whole books, but never before had I seen it read by people who both love reading text so much and are so good at it. What that deadly combination means is they have a lot of fun with it.

Prong 2: Purim Spiel/Beit Café. After the service, we withdrew to the moadoan (student center) for a festive catered dinner and a Purim Spiel. Traditionally, a Purim Spiel is a parody rendition of the Purim story. Because the service we had was more of a mockery of the Purim story, this Spiel was more a Beit Café, or talent show. There were some pretty funny acts (Meredith making fun of Debbie Freidman, me doing HUC-Purim madlibs, Aviv doing a rousing table reading of Shacharit: The Musical [a joke we’ve been making all year based on the broadway-ness of many liturgical music pieces], and Jordan lip-syncing to Nikki singing “Part of Your World). But everyone was pretty drunk y this point, so it really didn’t matter how funny or clever the acts were. Afterwards, a large goup of us went out on the town to experience Purim, Jerusalem-style.

Prong 3: Purim Sudah. One of the mitzvoth of Purim is to enjoy a Purim sudah (meal or feast) on the day of Purim. And since it’s a mitzvah that typically gets ignored (people either are at work or hung-over), I decided to make it happen. On Wednesday, Purim day, I had a few classmates over for a sumptuous, lavish, multiple coursed Purim feast. Here was the menu:

Canapes (cheese, pesto, olive tapanade, caramelized onions)
Mozzarella/red pepper skewers
Pasta Salad with feta
Asian rice noodle and chicken Salad
Tuna Salad (the classic!)
White Bean Salad with cumin
Lemon-Rosemary chicken skewers
Frittata, with zucchini and mushrooms
Roasted potatoes
Savory challah bread pudding, with tomatoes and onions
Melon, Persimmons, Apples
Whiskey-Chocolate Bundt Cake

It was a lot of cooking the day before and that morning, but it was a lot of fun. Ari and Meredith came over to help the morning of with last-minute chopping and mixing and plating. People came and had a really nice time. I was really glad to have done it; I felt like a real person, cooking and entertaining. I feel like I’m growing into my family heritage, doing shit like this at the drop of a hat, because it’s enjoyable. Am I a real person? Someday soon.

Time to lead, time to pray

Every Monday morning we have a Shacharit (morning) service, complete with regular Monday torah reading. Every student is required to lead one Monday service and, on a separate occasion, read Torah. Rabbinic students give a D’var Torah each week (only rabbinic students. It’s a point of contention, one I’m rectifying for myself by giving a D’var on a Saturday morning service, but that’s a different story).

My service was today. It was a doozy. I co-led with Jon, a rabbinic student, and Lauren, a cantorial student. We organized the service around the themes of Purim, the holiday which begins tomorrow; these themes included freedom, light, joy, living in the Diaspora, and personal responsibility. Purim and Adar, the month we’re currently in, represent joy, gladness, and celebration, but they also represent topsy-turvy-ness, when one thing becomes something else. We tried to infuse the service with lots of joy – from upbeat singing and lots of positive iyunim, but also some introspective teachings (taking advantage of my role as an education student) and reflecting.

There was some good collaboration between the three of us – who have very different working and prayer-leading styles – and it ended up being a positive experience. We each shared different duties, I sang some prayer nusach (standard meolody) and Lauren led some iyunae, Jon and I led part of a round of Ashrei. It was really, really nice. Overall, the service moved, was efficient use of time, created a good prayer space, and got people excited about Purim. I feel really good about the work we did.