Last Thurz and Friday, I went on a rabbinical students’ tiyul to the West Bank organized and led by two friends–Melissa, who’s a rab student at a different school in my denomination, and Miriam, who’s studying for the same job in another denomination. There were, I think, 37 of us, all told, from the Reform, Reconstuctionist, Conservative and Orthodox worlds (O’doxy represented both by people studying at Yeshiva University and also in more private smicha programs), all of us here in J’lem for at least part of our training. There were also a handful of miscellaneous non-clergy-to-be with us, along for the ride.

Melissa used to live here and has been doing Jewish-Muslim dialogue (including here) for something like ten years, so she had the connections and whatnot to pull it off. The idea was, I think, just to give all of us baby rabbis a chance to see some aspects of life in the Territories, and to hear some perspectives on the conflict that are harder to access from the comfort of West Jerusalem. I was psyched for the opportunity, given both how clearly my mandate this year around the conflict has felt like it needed to be, “shut up and listen” and how much less I’ve wound up in the Territories than expected. Plus a disproportionate number of the people signed up for the trip were dear friends from some aspect of my life or another, so it was a treat to get to spend a couple of days hanging around in their company, all at once. (It was also kind of bizarre to watch, over and over again, two people that I knew well–say, a childhood friend and a friend from the Bay Area, or a friend from LA and one of my New York classmates–having chit-chatty “and who are you?” conversation with each other.)

Anyway, here’s some of the trip report.

Our first stop was the Hope Flowers School just outside of Bethlehem.
It’s an elementary school founded in ‘84 (at one time it had expanded to do secondary ed., too, but couldn’t continue offering that because of financial issues) that, in addition to a regular curriculum, emphasizes teaching nonviolence and democracy with the idea of empowering the next generations of Palestinian kids. And, because they want to create cultural change (and have their lessons “stick”), they also do classes and trainings for parents, teachers, and other folks around the community. We met with Ibrahim Issa, the head of the school, who explained that, before the second Intifada started, the curriculum focused more on bridge-building accross cultures, doing programming with Israeli students, interfaith stuff among Palestinians, teaching Hebrew, that sort of thing. Since the Intifada they’ve had to focus more on helping kids deal with more immediate issues, so they’ve had to ratchet up psych support to addresss war trauma. Like, for example, there’s a 5 year-old girl who woke up in the middle of the night to find an Israeli soldier, mid house-search, standing over her bed, and her hair started turning white the next day, and continued to turn white as the days went on. Lots of kids acting out–some stop talking altogether and some act more violent towards one another. Even if nothing happens specifically to a specific kid, they feel it when when the Israeli army occupies the city (sometimes happening as often as for two weeks every two weeks) tanks roll around town, army people destroy homes and businesses, etc. Lots of stories. A lot of the school’s students come from refugee camps nearby. There’s an army post and a sniper tower right near the school, and several Jewish settlements close by. Hope Flowers started a hot meals program since 56% of Palestian children are malnourished. I really appreciated Issa’s perspective–he argued, and I agree, that one of the most important things that they can be doing for the kids now is to try to get them grown up during the Occupation and Intifada with as little permanent damage as possible. Of course, even so, it will take a long long time for the community as a whole to recover from everything that’s happened, but working in the here and now to try to alleviate some of the emotional scarring is pretty crucial, both for their individual development and for whatever longer-term chances there might ever be for peace.

The school’s in real danger–there’ve been orders by the Israeli govt. for the demolition of the cafeteria, and it seems possible that the separation fence might pass through school property, plus since like 70% of Bethlehem is unemployed since the Intifada, there are basic issues about paying bills, paying teachers, making ends meet re: tuition and such. It strikes me as a telling snapshot of how the crisis affects some of the folks on the ground.

After Issa, we went to do an art project with some of the kids at the school, a chance to get to hang out with them. It was fun (I mean, art project, duh) but a bit frustrating, since the kids didn’t have Hebrew or English and most of us didn’t have Arabic. We could do some nonverbal communication, and sometimes there was a translator around, but there was also a lot of just sort of smiling and coloring in the same place.
Anyway, here’s some of the show and tell. A couple of the Palestinian kids are in the middle of the photo, a couple of folks from the trip on the sides.

After the school visit we went to the Bethlehem Hotel for lunch and some other stuff. Bethlehem in Hebrew is Beit Lechem, or house of bread. And it was! Ohh, gooood pita. And serious hummus. I mean, serious.

(This is not a photo of the hummus, but rather a record of the fact that I was in Bethlehem.)

Then we had a panel wherein several Palestinian peace activists shared, mostly, their personal stories of how they got to the work that they do. There was Sammy, head of Holy Land Trust, Hussan, also from Holy Land Trust, and George, who works with the Bereaved Parents’ Circle. Sammy, it seems, came from a family of peace activists, and inherited the organization that is now HLT from an uncle who, because of his left-leaning, albeit nonviolent political activities, was eventually deported by the Israeli government. Hussan is a big guy, and it seems was harassed (read: beaten up) often by soldiers when he was a kid because he looked older than he was, and they didn’t believe that he wasn’t yet old enough to have the required identity card that one gets at 16. He became angry and jaded and was involved in stone-throwing and the like during the first Intifada, served some time in jail. I wasn’t 100% clear on what personal factors lead to a transformation in outlook, but sometime after that he made his way over to HLT and has been working for reconcilliation and nonviolence since then.

George’s story was the hardest. He and his wife and two pre-teen daughters were driving on the highway about two years ago, when suddenly they were surrounded from behind and the side by IDF cars. As he told it, suddenly bullets started raining all over the car, hitting him, his wife, the dash, the car, the everything. He took something like 9 bullets in the back. One of his daughters was killed. He needed hours of surgery. Turns out the IDF was looking for some Hamas folks and they had a similar car–a mistake. (This sort of action, btw–firing without, you know, checking first–is illegal). He became active in the Bereaved Families’ Circle because, as he put it, “this is one club that doesn’t want any new members.” His grief is heavy, and it’s clear that the loss of his daughter has utterly wrecked his family. He cites his Christian faith as the thing that helped him focus on transformation and healing, not revenge. He said–and I love this–”When I die, I’m not going to take the land with me.”

It was a hard, hard session. George’s story, in particular, was very painful to hear, and even though for me it wasn’t, like, radically new information, it was an opening into some of the extreme suffering that’s happening here, and a lot of other places, all the time. Usually it’s pretty easy to concern oneself with the little details of one’s own life, and this panel I think really plugged a lot of us into the pain that’s around all the time. We all emerged fairly sober, and moved straight into davvening Mincha (afternoon prayers), which was a very, very good thing. When you’re holding a lot of pain and you’re not sure what to do with it, davvening’s usually not a bad bet.

It’s interesting. Hearing George’s story, and the presentation at Hope Flowers, and hearing someone’s experience of having his house demolished the next day (to come in another post), it can be very easy to picture the Israeli soldiers as evil storm troopers coming in and–okay, or to think about Nazis. And while I don’t condone the actions of the Israeli government and/or the people making some of these orders, I know better than to be able to hold that image of the soldiers. I have a lot of friends who’ve done army service. For most of the people I know (though I don’t purport that this speaks for everybody, just my friends) serving in the army is part patriotic duty and part civic obligation. These are good people who love Israel, many of them hate what’s happening in the Territories and don’t support the occupation, they struggle to live their ethics and to be as good to everyone as they can. Talking to one friend about the whole refusenik question (that is, American Jewish criticism of Israelis who choose not to refuse and enter the army) he said, “It’s like asking an American, if you don’t belive in the actions of the U.S. government, why don’t you refuse to pay taxes? First of all, it’s illegal and can get you thrown in jail, and second of all, that’s not perhaps how most people think they’re going to change a system they don’t like.”

Even so, it was hard not to be shaken by the images of soldiers beating up kids, stealing money when they do house searches, doing home demolitions. I mean, that this happens is not new information but it was registering deeply when I was hearing the stories of people whose lives have been so hurt by the actions of some of these soldiers (even though knowing that though some people working in the West Bank and Gaza do behave reprehensibly, they don’t represent everyone). I wondered if it would be easier to wrap my brain around all this, maybe, if I knew that all of those people requested this work, or maybe if there was some predictible demographic, something. Then they could be the bad guys and everyone else could be the good guys? So I asked the same friend what kind of people wind up getting assignments to work in the Territories, doing house demolitions and the like. He paused for a second, and then said,

“Children.”

It’s so sad. I mean, yeah, stupid, angry 18 year-old kids. Just like the Americans who are making snuff films in Iraq are children. Babies with guns. Which isn’t to defend their actions in the slightest–those who do reprehensible and illegal things should be tried and sentenced as befits their actions–just to emphasize how… many layers are going on here, at once. I think about how little I knew and how much I hated myself at 18. The more I think about it, the more shocking the whole situation is, on all sides. There is plenty to critique about government policy and plenty of reasons to be outraged. But just also to remember that a lot of the kids in green with guns are trying to do the right thing while asked to do work that is difficult for them, and that all of them are very, very young. Not everyone who shows up to a house demolition is him or herself the embodiment of evil. Even though the government policy is not right. Both/And.

After the panel and the davvening, we had a workshop on Theater of the Oppressed, a series of improv techniques designed to help people come up with creative ways to deal with problems and/or oppression, like doing an improv scene (no words–just movement) about a problem, and then having the other people in the group try to come up with different possible endings to the scene. But getting to the heavy stuff was way late in the game–the workshop mostly involved a lot of movement, jumping around, acting like a big idiot, getting us loosened up and primed. Dancing. It was really what we needed. And Hector, who led the workshop, was a real pro, so the techniques that he was using didn’t feel heavy-handed or naive or sacchrine–just smart and effective. And man, was it fun. Would write more about it, but I’m about written out right now.

After that we all–the group, plus lots of people from Holy Land Trust, plus lots of the host families that would be putting us up for the night, plus the group of people with whom Hector, the Theater of the Oppresssed guy, was travelling, plus some other people–all went to this gigantic, wonderful restauraunt that was set up to be like a huge tent, with fabric draping from the ceiling and soft, sofa-like benches on which to sit, and arak (anise liquor) and nargillas (hookahs) at every table, and a guy playing the oud, and ohhhh, the hummus! Ohhh, the salatim (other salads)! Oh, the pita that they serve in Beit Lechem! Wow. It was decadent and fun and silly and we danced and laughed and talked and it was great to be able to connect with our hosts and the other folks helping us with the trip in a more informal and casual way. Feast as a means of connection.

Then, suddenly, it was 11pm at the end of a long day. We went off to the houses of the host families where we were staying (some Palestinians have home hospitality like a bed-and-breakfast kind of deal, a way of supplimenting their incomes), and my friend Stephanie and I (we were both staying at the same home) chatted with the very very sweet young couple that was hosting us over a bit of tea, and then it was time to crash.

Part two of the trip report to come another day, when time and energy allow, hopefully within the week.