Israel Day 6 – Shabbat!

I’ve never before been excited about a Sabbath, and heading into it, I’m not sure I was excited at the time.  But in retrospect, not only was it sorely needed, the two Shabbats we experienced in Israel lent a calm to the trip.

Before splitting into small groups for a Shabbat dinner with Isreali hosts, we joined Friday night services at a reform congregation that became popular in Jerusalem only after an Ultraorthodox neighbor snuck into one of their services and ran away with the Torah in hopes that the liberal reform congregation would leave the neighborhood.  Only after the publicity of the stunt did the congregation receive enough funding to build themselves a proper synagogue.  Thus begun my learning about religion in Israel.  Where we have ‘spiritual but not religious’, Israel has ‘Jewish but not religious’ – in that ‘religious’ denotes the ultraorthodox, and everyone else tends to self-identify as secular, even if they attend Shabbat regularly.  The State echoes this division, funding both the synagogues of the ultraorthodox and providing stipends and housing allowances (and military deferral) for ultraorthodox men who want to study Torah, but providing no financial assistance whatsoever for Reform or Conservative Jewish denominations.  There is a high respect in Israel for the devotion of the ultraorthodox, and in fact the two Chief Rabbis appointed by the Knesset have, up until now, been ultraorthodox. 

In our Shabbat service we were provided with prayer books that held the English translations of the Hebrew prayers (which are mostly sung) and if you listened carefully, you could follow along.  The Rabbi did occasionally insert a few English statements to keep his American guests (Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union was also in attendance) up to speed.  The message of the service was to shake off the remnants and pollutants from the week before and prepare ourselves for the presence of the divine.  During Shabbat, which is sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, Jews are to have a day of rest marked by the scripture, ‘do not create’.  The interpretation of ‘create’ leads most not to cook, work, ignite (as in your car), or turn on electrical devices.  This does require that food be prepared ahead of time, and it was interesting to see how the hotel dealt with Shabbat restrictions in feeding their guests.  (On Shabbat, there was instant coffee rather than brewed, because the water could be kept hot all night, while coffee could not.  You can turn things off on Shabbat, but not on.)  So Shabbat becomes quality time with family.  People walk, bike, play card games, study torah, sing, and generally spend time together.  The city of Jerusalem comes to a standstill – no buses, cars, trams, and scarce pedestrians because all the shops are closed.  

The Supreme Court Building

I was signed up for a bike tour of Jerusalem, which was ideal in the empty city streets…until you remember the amount of hills in Jerusalem.  It was, at times, like biking San Francisco.  But it allowed us to get a bit more information about the state of Israel and modern (West) Jerusalem. Yeni (yen–AI), our bike tour guide, brought us to a hill overlooking the Knesset (the lone house of Congress in Israel) and through the Supreme Court.  The interspersing of rectangles and circles in the architecture symbolizes that law is flat, but justice is round. He pointed out how the Supreme Court building sits higher than the Knesset, signifying the supremacy of the law.  He also told us that Israel does not have a constitution, which complicates governing and law in the land.  There is a set of laws that might be considered a Bill of Rights and can be used as a guide, but there is no bedrock document that is referred to when interpreting modern dilemmas, because many religious Jews believe there should be no law higher than Torah.  (Jared also said that the lack of a Constitution has to do with the haphazard beginnings of Israel; since a Constitution is usually written before the founding of a nation (in a time of unity), now Israel is a diverse nation and the process drafting a Constitution would create bitter partisanship, especially considering the interesting balance of religious and political supremacy in the land.)  Two Chief Rabbis, who are elected by the Knesset, advise the executive, congress and court system on matters relating to religion – birth, death, marriage, and divorce. The Supreme Court is felt, by most progressive Israelis, to be the beacon of democracy and justice – and answer to becoming too theocratic under guidance of the Chief Rabbis.  Anyone is allowed to bring cases in front of the Supreme Court, and Yeni commented that recently, a Palestinian argued and won a case before the Supreme Court.  (That doesn’t necessarily mean the Israeli Supreme Court is objective in American terms…see theLefternWall blog for more examples.)

Knesset building from under the pine trees

While standing on a hill under a cluster of Pines, Yeni remarked that the pine is not native to Israel/Palestine, and in fact is a patriotic sign of the war.  When Palestinians were forcibly moved from the area and their home demolished, the new state of Israel had to do something to prevent them from returning and rebuilding on the same portion of land.  Where they couldn’t put Jewish people, they planted the fast-growing pine tree to occupy the land.

We stopped near the Montefiore Windmill, the first and only windmill in Jerusalem, built in 1857 as a sign to the Jerusalem people that progress and civilization can live outside the walls of the Old City.  Yeni takes this opportunity to show us the panorama of Jerusalem – from the Old City on the left to the Security Wall and proposed E1 Zone on the right – and I take the opportunity to pick his brain about the occupation.  (E1 is a territory proposed by the Rabin administration (1995) and pursued by the Netanyahu administration that would unite Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and be surrounded by the same security fence.  This would heavily complicate Palestinian transportation between Bethlehem and Ramallah, two Palestinian towns north and south of Jerusalem, by making them travel around the outside of the wall enclosing the Jewish settlements.  More importantly, if Israel annexes the E1 zone, it effectively separates East Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital, from the Palestinian cities in north and south West Bank, effectively ending the potential for a Palestinian state.  As of November 30^th, 2012, Israel approved building in the E1 zone, supposedly as retribution for Palestine’s successful move to be recognized by the EU as a non-voting member.)

The security wall in top right corner at tip of trees

Yeni professed to be a lefty leftist, and is against E1.  He wants better human rights for Palestinians, but he admitted to being scarred and jaded by the ugly side of the conflict.  Trained as a medic in the army, he was near a pizza restaurant when a bomb exploded inside during the second intifada.  Wanting to offer help, he rushed straight into the grisly sight of children’s torn limbs across the restaurant.  Later that night, he saw the mother of the suicide bomber on television, handing out candy.  Of this, he told me that Palestinians and the Jews are people with different values.  He wants them to have their state, and for Israel to be less aggressive, but he expressed cynicism that the two peoples could ever share a common culture or citizenship.  He questioned the motives of the Palestinian people as well – citing how, within 5 years of establishing Israel, Jews had set up universities and hospitals.  In Gaza, where Israel withdrew in 2005 and foreign aid is plentiful, Palestinians have focused on obtaining rocket-propelled grenades in order to take revenge (referring to the recent conflict in 2012).  It became clear how much violence takes a toll on visions for peace.

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Reflection: Hope (or lack of it)

Our guide, Yeni

On Shabbat, I found myself contemplating the bloody turn of the second intifada, and how that complicated the instinct towards peace for so many Israelis.  I so appreciated the opportunity to speak with Yeni, a guide who was not enlisted to teach about peace, or identity, or politics, but simply shared his honest feelings on the matter of the occupation – someone to lend a new, independent, unassuming voice to what we were hearing.  Like Ben David, Yeni’s (inner) morals pointed him toward hope for a fair and peaceful resolution to the conflict.  But like Ben David, Yeni had developed a jaded outer crust towards the Palestinian people as a result of gruesome violence.  Living in a bit of a cocoon of bodily safety as I do on Chicago’s north side (the distinction is worth noting), I realize I can’t relate to the way spilled blood and uncontrollable violence can corrode your spirit and your hope.  But I think it’s a very real, visceral fear.  At one point early in our bike trip, as Yeni was speaking, there was a loud bang that startled us all.  We quickly found the source; a young woman, dressed in a punkish style, kicked an aluminum door a second time with such force that it reverberated all over the near silent street.  I thought how out of character, and probably disrespectful, it was to be out on the street creating such noise pretty early on the Sabbath.  But Yeni stared at her over his shoulder for nearly another two minutes.  I couldn’t help but wonder if that bang, which sounded eerily like a gun, caused a crisis reaction in his psyche. Just like it’s hard to teach fear to a generation that doesn’t know fear, I imagine it’s hard to unlearn trauma if you’ve seen it firsthand.

And yet, from Nusseibeh’s book, I remember the account of the would-be suicide bombers’ motivations for their crime; how a single mother with 5 children attempted jihad because she was so humiliated by Israeli soldiers who forced to strip and dance in front of Palestinian men at a checkpoint.  This public humiliation was enough for this woman to give up life – give up motherhood!  And it reminded me of a question Nilsa had asked; just what is a (wo)man’s breaking point?  How much can you push someone before they break, or become violent?  How far do you push someone before they give up on hope, and close the door to peace?

With each generation comes a new opportunity for social change.  I think about our issues at home; for some of my fellow organizers in Chicago, the social issues that are most in our sights are too easy.  They call the gay rights issue ‘won’, the fight for immigration reform ‘over’.  Why?  Because the upcoming generation has already acclimated to the victory. The majority of people in their 20’s know someone gay or lesbian, or have accepted the friendly stereotype so available in our entertainment, and so when this voting bloc becomes more engaged, the policy path is paved for victory.  (This is not to say the marginalization, bias, and discrimination is negligible.  Just that policy will change.)  Similarly, once a young person realizes they have been sitting in class next to an undocumented immigrant for the last 3 years in school, they rarely see the benefits of excluding that person from the American system.  The ‘illegal alien’ is also a friend, a classmate, or a team member on their basketball team. The dehumanization of labels becomes more and more difficult – especially in our social media age.

With each generation comes new opportunity for social change, but only if barriers are crossed, relationships are made, and walls are torn down.  Only if suicide bombings stop; only if Israeli abuse is curbed. Nusseibeh’s most salient point, in my opinion, was his statement of the wall as a barrier to relationship, not a barrier to terrorism. I am heartened that there exists the opportunity for Jews to enter their children into joint Jewish-Arab schools.  But listening to Ben David’s pride at teaching his children not to ‘hate Arabs’, but also hearing that the sentiment is often heard in Israeli circles, it feels like ‘peace’ is getting further out of reach.

I remember Ophir’s words – that if you’d take a ‘strategic risk’ in waging war, why not take a risk in waging peace?  For those of us who are not Chief Defense Ministers or holding a gun at a checkpoint, I feel like the most important risk you can take is to be vulnerable.  This may mean vulnerability in your geography, vulnerability in your principled stand, or vulnerability in your interactions with others.  There is vulnerability in opening your ears to hear your enemies’ story.  There is vulnerability in allowing your children to befriend the ‘other’ and try to balance the biases that will inevitably come falling down on them as they grow.  I guess the most important vulnerability is in taking the first step, the one that seems small, unexpected and impossible.  Sometimes, in our lives, small steps are all we can do to make Beverly Harrison right;  “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence…and watching the evidence change.”  But small steps lead to new generations.