slow torture

somehow I’ve managed to agree to write two different pieces on things about which I don’t know that I have anything all that much in the way of interesting to say. I’m sure there’s something somewhere down there, and if I sit here at the computer long enough, something will come out (I’ve got pieces of both of them and I’ve spent most of the last few days going back and forth between them, trying to find the good angle) but ungh, is this not my favorite way to write. Maybe it’s time to go out and take a walk or something.

I have another essay that I KNOW is interesting and that I’m excited about having the chance to write, but I have to get these two out of the way first. And as soon as Sunday hits, I’ll be in Preparing For Finals mode, more than anything.

Feh! Feh! That’s my hiddush today.

Greece is the word

Okay, here’s my token vacation blog. It’s gonna be mostly pictures, ’cause it is.

So I flew into Athens, then took a bus to Pireaus, which is the little nearby port town, and hung out for a few hours ’till it was time to catch a ferry to the island of Lesvos, which the Lonely Planet had raved and raved about. It’s one of the bigger islands and there’s lots of stuff to do besides sit on the beach, so it seemed like the best of all worlds.

It’s 12 hours by boat. Our boat was called “Theophilos”, aka God-lover. I thought maybe this was an omen, or maybe I’d have some sort of profound experience on the thing, but mostly, as it was an overnight ferry, I just slept.

Then we got, finally, to this town Molivos on the coast. Pretty pretty pretty.

They have a castle. Which I got to go see on Shabbos (best Shabbos karma ever–I was let in for free [useful, as I had no money on me, had thought I’d just go snoop around the outside] because it was like 20 min. to closing time. But as it was Shabbos, there are no close-up pictures. Here’s a far-away one, taken Friday:

They have pretty pretty cobblestoned streets with a little canopy of flowers.

Lots of fishing action.

My travel buddy and I hung out there Friday and Shabbos, and then Sunday morning rented a car to tool around the island a bit. I, uh, learned to drive stick shift for the first time, as they only had manual transmission, and of the two of us I had the license and N. had the knowledge of how one might drive stick. (Another thing I learned: it’s awfully fun and useful to travel in a language that people don’t understand. When it became clear that this was the situation, N. and I confrerenced in Hebrew about what we should do. Then we turned to the rental guy and said, in English, “Okay, we’ll take the car!”) That was kind of funny, in a terrifying, somewhat stressful way. (”Ack! It’s just not reversing! I’m afraid I’m going to kill someone!”) I had just never had the opportunity to learn before. Well, now I’ve learned. It was actually kind of fun, once we got through this one town with the narrow narrow one-lane road in which two lanes of cars were supposed to drive. Ack. It was cool, being car-enabled–we saw monestaries, hot springs, and these outrageously gorgeous views. Out. Ra. Geous.

Then we went to Athens. Lost a day’s travel ’cause the boat was delayed 12 hours due to winds (!!) but still got to see the greatest hits of Old Ancient Stuff. And I gorged myself at the vegetarian restaraunt, having basically been able only to eat Greek salad and bread for like 4 or 5 days straight at this point. Greece, not so much the place to be kosher vegetarian. Good thing I’ve gotten more relaxed about my relationship to non-kosher (rennet-ish) cheese. Otherwise I would have been a very very hungry person. Heck, I was anyway.

But anyway. The Acropolis is the big religious center of ancient Athens. It is, like the Temple in Jerusalem, built on a high hill that you see with reverent awe from the marketplace.

The corrolations between the two places were actually kind of jarring, just ’cause there are certain logical things a person would do when setting up one’s holy space in a city, and you can find some of them both in J’lem and in Athens. I jokingly asked whether we should start singing “Shir HaMaalot” as we headed up. I got yelled at for that.

They were wayyy under construction.

The places of avodah zarah (alien worship) were wayyy crowded with tourists. An interesting contrast to Molivos, where things were still 1/2 shut down, since it’s not really high season yet.

I was finding that I didn’t have the same deep reverence for these old places that I did once, as a traveller. Which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve gotten grounded in an ancient tradition, and have a relationship with it. And also, you know, these places as worship sites are way problematic in my religious system. But it was nonetheless interesting to see from the perspective of a history geek, classics geek, and Jewish ancient world geek (particularly as I’ve studied mishnayot that take place in a bathhouse to Aprhodite and the like). The thing I found myself getting blown away by, though, was the sculpture. I know that Greek sculpture has such-and-such place in art history, and the rediscovery of it in the Renaissance by folks like Michelangelo (blah blah blah). But I can’t recall having LOOKED so closely at the works themselves, and found that I was blown away by the way they handled anatomy, texture, the folds of garments, stuff like that. Really something. Beautiful and amazing.

The rest of Athens was a large, dirty city. Not very exciting. We saw museums and the old marketplaces, and then we got milkshakes.

Anyway, that was it in a nutshell. Would love to go back someday. But not today. Today I go off and do some of my big girl writing work, to grasp these last tiny moments before spring break ends and I’m back to being a grad student. Oh, and I ought to study for my halakha exam sometime, too. That might be an OK idea.

you know your life is weird and specialized when…

…you realize that all that time sitting around on a meditation cushion* is actually relevant professional experience and could go on your C.V.

*Okay, I was part of this rigorous organized thing. But STILL.

new theory

The real reason why Israel takes Hol HaMoed off as a holiday is in fact because, when your seder ends at 4am and you don’t get home ’till 6am and then you sleep on and off ’till 3pm (and thus are awake the following 4am), you realize that you’re gonna need a whole dang week to get your body clock back on some sort of respectable schedule.

That, and, of course, it’s Hol HaMoed, duh.

Oogh. Some of us are simply not intended to be nocturnal people.

Impending Yom Tov

My apartment is sparklingly clean.

My hametz is cleared out and burned.

I have spent an unreasonable amount of money on food.

My arms are killing me, which is what 3 days of scrubbing and schlepping will do to a girl with RSI.

I am tired.

The food is cooked, Jerusalem is quiet outside as it tends to be soon before Shabbos comes in, and I am looking forward to the next few days of Pesach and matzoh and haroset and redemption. I’m going to a seder comprised of people so engaged that we had a listserv going to discuss seder plans and ideas (and there was a meeting, but I missed it), and with this crowd I’m sure it’ll be an excellent mix of good Torah and good silliness. And there will be time to rest, and to breathe, and to contemplate, and to serve God and bask in that service.

Hag sameach and gut Shabbos to one and all. And to all a good night.

back, and scrubby

Back from the land of Away, which was great wonderful fun AND had the bonus of keeping me offline for a full week, very good for a girl’s mental health now and again. Will write up some of that, but not right now.

Now. back to Pesach preparations. I cannot BELIEVE how much work I have to do in the next 2 days. My work is way cut out for me. Trying not to feel overwhelmed–will just start with a pile of ignored papers and work my way down until every dang tile is gleaming. Then, it will be time tp brave the inconceivably crowded grocery store or shuk, haven’t decided yet. Whatever. I’m just grateful to be back in a place where kosher food is easily attainable.

The good news is, I’m hiring out. There are these “PESACH CLEANING” signs all over town, so I called one and arranged for a yeshiva bocher to come over and log in a few hours’ scrubbing on my behalf. I’m so amused. It’s only enough to help with some of the worst kitchen things (cleaning and kashering the oven, eg)–I’ll still have to do everything else. But young Yossel or Moish or whoever he is should be by around 3 to lend a hand. Should be an interesting experience, at least.

Okay. Now. To the brooms!

mazel tov to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I am peeing in my pants I’m so excited. Okay, I’m not actually peeing. But wow am I excited.

I just bought a shas. (complete set of the Talmud). And more.

Part of the thing we rab students do this year is go crazy buying books for our love, our lives, our long-term libraries. As my teacher R. Dan Shevitz instructed me, “Buy all the books you can. They will never be cheaper.” And we are, after all, People of the Book(s).

Today was going to be the day. A bunch of us are shipping books home by boat (slow, but hella cheap) and how many boxes it’ll be, etc. needs to be figured out in the next week or so. I mentioned to my friend Yoshi this morning that I had made an appointment to talk to the guys at the store where they’re really nice to us (despite apparent handicaps, like being women, or Conservative Jews, or both) about a price for such things, figuring I’d drop more or less 1500 shekel on some gemara and Rambam. And he informed me that there was a store up by where I do my belly dance classes that sells used sets of stuff for good prices, maybe I want to check there. I’d bought a number of used books over the course of the year, but it had never dawned on me that people might have complete sets. Cool, OK, worth investigating. The neighborhood there being what it is, I put on my best bas yisroel gear (long skirt, long-sleeved shirt with my licentious collarbones strategically hidden and walked up there, practicing saying with a straight face, “Hi! I’m here studying for the year and I’m supposed to buy some books for my brother. Do you have….?” It was particularly interesting when I arrived to that street, since usually I walk around there in a tank top and yoga pants. In any case, the store was closed. Rats. So I headed over to the part of town with the other store to keep my appointment, figuring I might just go back to plan A.

I had a couple of minutes before the appointed time, so just for the heck of it I ducked down a side street on the same main drag that I had passed many times. I knew there was a bookstore there, but from the sign I had thought that it was just another religious bookshop with not-very-reasonable prices. It was, in fact, a used bookstore, run by some wan, hipstery Israelis who looked like they spent a lot of time in coffee shops.
“Hi, do you have…. holy books (sifrei kodesh)?”
“Yeah, what are you looking for?”

I named a few things. They consulted, and whipped out a tractate of gemara (Talmud) for me to peruse. They told me how much and my jaw dropped to the floor. It was dusty, but the pages seemed untouched, with a slightly worn, soft, brown, buttery leather cover, gold writing on the front, several tractates together in each volume, clear printing, Rishonim (commentators) in the back. Just the right size, about 10×14″. Like a gemara should be. As I was standing over it, drooling, they brought me a volume of the Mishneh Torah (Maimonedes’ halakhic code), also utterly perfect in every way. Smaller–7×9″ or 6×9″, crispy crispy clear printing, pretty black leather cover and the delicious smell of libraries. I started jumping up and down. The proprietor smiled.

“Have you seen the downstairs, yet?”

Holy. Moly.

It was a little overwhelming, frankly. Lots of good sifrei kodesh, and lots of solid, useful, basic stuff–not the obscure teachings of the Tjncfeiorvnuea8%#mce Rebbe from the town of GmcuiohNE, if you will. And lots of stuff in English.

I walked back upstairs.
“The question is, where have you guys BEEN all my life?”
Without missing a beat: “No, the question is, where have you been all of our lives?”

I walked out of there with a shas, a set of the Mishneh Torah, the two-volume Torah commentaries of Rebbeinu Bachya and Buber’s two volume Tales of the Hasidim (the last item was in English) for…. are you ready?

600 shekels. Today, $137.70.

I was so happy I tipped the cab driver (which we do NOT do here in Israel) a coupla shek.

I win.

Yay for me.

new good book alert

My friend Miriam Peskowitz’ book just came out, and it is so very important and worthwhile and creamy goodness that you should all go out and buy a copy for yourself and maybe one as a Mother’s Day gift. It’s called The Truth Behind the “Mommy Wars”: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? and it’s about the myth that there are working mothers and stay-at-home mothers–she talks a lot about the part-time workforce, and the way that work and parenting is constructed in corporate America. Ass-kicking goodness.

She also has her own blog, which you can check here.

That is all.

still here, just bleary

Between being sick for like a week and having some high-quality insomnia on top of it, I’m a little zombieriffic right now. The weather got HOT, all of the sudden. This is a good thing–I am perfectly content with a summer climate and its attendant sandal usage–but that, combined with the mid-semester hard work fatigue has made us all a little antsy and ready for break, already, I think. It’s going to be a hard second half of the semester, what with the yummy weather and the knowledge that, after Pesach, it’s really only like 6 weeks until I leave. Holy cow. Did I just write that? Holy. Moly. Oy. That is SO not something I’m ready to wrap my brain around.

And I messed up–way back in August, when I booked my return flight, it was a little unclear when finals and the like were, so I picked a random Wednesday late late night in the right vicinity. And for some stupid reason, had the following Wednesday stuck in my head as the date–so imagine my surprise when I find out the other day that I don’t leave right after Shavuot, but, rather, the day my finals officially end. Which just stinks in all sorts of different ways–having to pack and study at the same time, not getting a reasonable chance to say goodbye to folks, because I’ll be, yes, packing and studying, missing Shavuot in Jerusalem (!!!! and I loveses Shavuot !!!!!!) and my friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, all sortsa things. Feh feh feh. I’ve already gone once to see if they have better dates for me, and all the flights are full. I’ll check back another time or two, just ’cause you never know with these things, but I’m gonna assume that it’s a done deal. I mean, worst case scenario I land in LA to Shabbat and two days of Yom Tov, which is a nice chance to reconnect with my friends there and sleep off my jet lag, but still. You know. Yeridah can be a harsh thing, man.

Also, we get two weeks of vacation for Pesach and I’m taking one of them in Ch’ul (Chutz l’Aretz, aka “Not Israel”), which should be great fun but I’m sad not to have more time around here–tradeoffs, all good tradeoffs, just feeling all nostalgic-y now, don’t mind me. But I’m going to Greece, which should rock, and I’m going with a friend who rocks, so fun should be had. Shabbos on the Greek islands? You know, twist my arm. Will be interesting to see how all my learning on hilchot avodah zarah (um, idol worship) shakes down as I wander amidst fallen temples to Zeus. Old things and islands.

Ugg. Okay, time for bed.

Hey, I see from my highly inaccurate statcounter thingo that some new people seem to have found this blog over the last week or so. prolly lots from Jewschool. Anyway, if you’re out there, welcome, feel free to say hi in the comments anytime the spirit so moves. That goes for all you other lurkers too, you know.

Now. Sleep. Yes, sleep.

West Bank Trip, Part Two

Well, I’m home sick today for like the fourth day in a row (thank you, erratic weather changes of Jerusalem) so I figured I may as well blog a bit more about that trip to the West Bank that now feels like it took place a zillion years ago. After this, I will probably watch Pretty in Pink for the seven millionth time. Not good for much else today.

So where were we. Friday morning, my friend Stephanie and I woke up in the nice Palestinian home hospitality people’s homes, wandered downstairs and got fed an large spread for breakfast–pita plus lots of yummy things to put in it on zillions of little plates: avocado, cheeses, eggs, olives, tomatoes, etc. Then, someone from the Holy Land Trust came by to pick us up and take us back to the Bethlehem Hotel for a few hymns and praises to the Holy One.

As might be expected, the whole question of davvening (prayer) on an interdenominational rabbinical students’ trip was not without its issues. Before the trip itself, we were all asked to fill out a registration form indicating what sort of prayer space we preferred, what sort of space we could deal with and in what sort of space we would refuse to participate. The issues were, more or less, about one’s relationship to tradition, and in the end there was a traditional egalitarian minyan, ie one that uses the traditional liturgy but counts women and men as equal participants, and a creative minyan that did not stick to the traditional liturgy but rather incorporated meditation, chanting, stuff like that. There were three guys studying for Orthodox ordination who requested a mehitza minyan, in which men and women are separated and women are not counted as full participants, but they didn’t have the numbers to make it happen. So in the end, all but one of the Ortho boys chose to davven with us in trad egal land, which I appreciated, since it involved going beyond their own comfort level for the sake of pluralism and connection. I sometimes davven in spaces that make liturgical changes to the left of my own comfort/boundaries, and can really appreciate how difficult it can be (and don’t begrudge anything to the guy who chose to follow his understanding of Jewish law, even if I read the stuff differently.) Anyway, showed up to the hotel and people were already on the Prayer Train. So I wrapped myself in tallis, threw on my tefillin, and got my God on.

After that, the day’s official activities began. First thing was a panel by some Holy Land Trust folk called, “A Palestinain Perspective on the Conflict,” presumably an antidote to the Israeli version of the story we’ve heard so many times. Now, I was one of the people coming into this situation with a little more of the lefty background, I think. For a year or two before starting rabbinical school I sort of hung a little bit around the American Jewish peace movement people, and when things got really scary there the spring of ‘02 I stopped a bunch of the classes I was teaching (then, teaching high school Jewish ed in three different places because I was fed up with the freelancing life) and did a class or two on “Why is everybody so mad?” So I knew already about issues of water allocation in the Territories, and about the fact that there was settlement expansion even under Rabin, and cryptically shifting understandings of how much land everybody was supposed to be getting, and so forth. I was, one might say, a sympathetic and slightly informed listener, interested in hearing the perspectives to be shared.

Unfortunately, the guy giving the panel did not get the memo on “How to Talk To People Who Like Judaism So Much They’re Doing It For a Living.”

He used a lot of very inflammatory language, and unlike everyone else that we had met thus far, did not acknowledge that there were multiple ways to view the situation or multiple truths (even as they asserted that specific policies were unjust.) This guy referred to the Jewish “colonies” and very clearly to Israel as the enemy. His maps left me with a lot of questions. On the one hand, they were instructive–if the UN proposal of 1947 had suggested a Palestinian state that was 48% percent of the land in dispute, by 1949 the state mass was 22% of that land and now, with the wall being erected, it might be as little as 12%; That’s worth hearing. And, at the same time, when he kept referring to “historic Palestine” (which was, basically, Israel plus the Territories, like the “maps of Israel” I saw as a kid in Sunday School) I couldn’t help but wonder where this concept came from, and where acknowledgements about the artificiality of this construction where–I mean, what’s the relationship between “historical Palestine” and the creation of the state of Jordan, British Mandate land, the land occupied by the Turks, etc. etc.? There were layers of complexity that were not put forth at all, and if anything’s true about this great, sad mess, it’s that nothing about it is easily dumbed down to simple black and white answers. So it was very difficult for me to stay present and attentive, because I didn’t feel that this was one individual with whom I could comfortably dialogue. Melissa, one of the trip’s organizers, asserted again and again that if he had shared the same information in different language, we all could have heard it a bit better, and that may be true. And even so, I left the session feeling some real dispair, since this guy really is on the left of Palestinian society. And if, as it seems, there’s really a gap in baseline understandings between the Palestinian left and the Jewish/Israeli left, how are we ever going to make this work? No answers.

Anyway, after that we all got on the bus to travel to Anata, a town to the north of Jerusalem that is famous for being partly inside the Israeli wall and partly in the West Bank, which is extremely difficult for folks who live there vis a vis travel, mobility, etc. We had to pass through a checkpoint and wave our pretty American and Canadian passports at the soldier-kid checking us through. Fortunately, there weren’t any problems, even for the one or two people who had funny visa issues. (Like, it’s illegal for Israelis to just come into the Territories, so my friend who entered Israel with his Israeli passport had to wave his American passport and hope that nobody noticed that he didn’t actually have an entry stamp on it….)

What happens in Anata is a lot of house demolitions. The Israeli policy for a while now is, when it pleases, to destroy the houses of Palestinians who build homes without permits. And, of course, it’s mighty difficult to get a permit from the Israeli government, so a lot of people are in a real double bind when it comes to trying to make a place to live, sometimes on their historic family land. One day, soldiers (again, really: children) will come through and tell the family to get out of the building, sometimes give them time to get all of their furniture, belongings, etc. out, and then blow the thing up. Evidently they’ll use like 3 times the amount of expolsive necessary, “just to be sure.”

We met with Salim, a regular working joe who had his house destroyed four times over several years. The story of why he couldn’t get a permit was Kafka at its finest–first they gave him one reason, then they gave him another reason, then they told him that he was missing two signatures on the document but they wouldn’t tell him which two, etc. etc. He went to Herculean efforts to keep resubmitting the permit application at no small financial expense, at one point with 200+ signatures from every homeowner in the village, just to make sure that whatever signatures were missing, he had ‘em. Then they “lost” his file. He decided to keep rebuilding the thing as an act of resistence against the policy and against the occupation. Eventually, the last time, he and some of the nonprofits with which he was working decided to turn the place into a peace center, a place for people to use in their endeavors towards nonviolent advocacy. He and his family now rent rooms somewhere outside of town. For the moment. they have given up on trying to make this space their living quarters, because his children have already had enough upheaval and trauma. It’s not an easy situation.

It was a long couple of days. Not easy, and not even a lot of new information for me, but eminently worthwhile. There’s sometimes a difference between hearing new information and “getting” it, and the latter was definitely the case (as was some of the former, I’m sure.) Any movement from avoidence and denial into engagement and connection and deeper layers of understanding is worth something. What all of this means, still, I dunno. There are some conversations happening among folks in the group about what follow-up might look like, whether volunteering for organizations, arranging similar trips for other groups, or whatnot.

In the end, I still don’t know what I think about a lot of this mess. The more I learn, the more I end up back where I started, which is that a lot of people are hurting and a lot of people are suffering and a lot of people are good people trying to do the best they can with the tools that they have. And there are government policies that are not OK, and things that should be done to change them. And, in the final analysis, a lot of different ways to look at this mess, some of which are mutually exclusive and many of which are true. I don’t know. From what I can tell, the clear work is to relieve some of the suffering. Other than that, I don’t have any answers, at least at the moment. Does anybody, really?