Israeli High Holidays
When an American Jew thinks of the High Holidays, we usually think of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. However, Israel has a second set of High Holidays, beginning with Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and ending with Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day). At HUC, we actually began our commemoration the day before Yom Hashoah, when we watched a movie in Hebrew class called "Biglal Hamilchamah Hahi" (Because of that War). It was a documentary about two singer-songwriters, Yehuda Poliker and Ya'akov Gilad. whose parents survived the Holocaust. The stories were interesting, but the thing that really tied the movie together was the music. A favorite song on mine was called "Afar V'avak"(Ash and Dust) about Yehuda Poliker's mother going back to visit the Salonika, where she was originally from and many Jews were killed or deported to Auschwitz. I'm going to link it here:
I found out later that Yehuda Poliker made an entire album of music that if not directly related to the Holocaust was influenced by the Holocaust. It has the same title as the above song. Check it out on itunes. It's really powerful.
That night, there was a ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. It's impossible to get tickets, so I streamed it online. By far the most touching part of the ceremony was the torch lighting. In this ceremony, six torches are lit, each one by a different Holocaust survivor. Before each torch is lit, the survivor tells his or her story. It was amazing to hear all of the stories. This year, one of the torch lighters actually died a few days before the ceremony, and his widow lit the torch. The ceremony was amazing, so I am going to link the Yad Vashem website here. This page contains information about the ceremony, biographies of the torch lighters, the list of names that was read during the ceremony, and even a broadcast of the ceremony itself for those who speak Hebrew or just want to see something incredible.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/2013/index.asp#!prettyPhoto
The next morning, we had a service at HUC. After the service, we all went outside on the street to hear the siren. At 10am, there was a two minute siren, during which there was a moment of silence throughout the entire country. Not only were people silent, the entire city basically shut down for two minutes. Busses stopped. People got out of their cars. It was so moving. We then had a ceremony at HUC put together by the Israeli rabbinic students as well as a couple of my American classmates. The ceremony revolved around the story of a woman who survived the Holocaust and made aliyah, weaved together by music. It was beautiful.
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| At HUC. It did have fire in it at one point. |
The next week was Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day). This day is a much bigger deal than Memorial Day in the United States. Most Americans just have a barbecue or go to the beach or something. But here in Israel, army service is required, meaning almost everyone has someone to remember. Therefore, the day is very somber, and the entire country mourns its fallen soldiers. It begins with a siren at 8pm the night before. Still recovering from three weeks of sinus purgatory, I decided to not go to any sort of ceremony. Instead, we watched the siren from Jen's balcony. This time, not every car stopped, though most of them did. There were several ceremonies that did take place around the city, though. The next morning, we had a service at HUC, which I led with Jen and Lori. After that, we went to a local high school, Gimnasia Rechavia, for a ceremony.
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| The hallway of Gimnasia Rechavia. |
The ceremony was well-attended, both by students and by non-students. I assume that most of the non-students were alumni, though we were there too, so there may have been some community members. At 10am, there was another siren. We all stood in silence. After the siren, the ceremony began with mourner's kaddish and the lighting of a torch. The mourner's kaddish was the only religious thing in the ceremony; the rest was secular. To me, that sort of illustrated the intersection of the Jewish religion with secular Israeli society. Throughout the ceremony, the names were read of alumni of the school who had died while in the army. I believe there were 138 total. Possibly more, but that is what my brain seems to remember right now. Between each name reading was either a poem, a song, or both. Unlike in the United States, where we wear black to a memorial ceremony, here in Israel, the dress code for a memorial ceremony is a white shirt and jeans. It makes sense, as Israel's colors are blue and white.
That night, the country transformed for Yom Ha'atzmaut. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but Jerusalem transformed into one giant party. Really. Every city square had some sort of music and/or dancing, and you couldn't even walk down the street without some kid hitting you with his giant inflatable Israeli flag hammer or spraying you with some illegal fake snow stuff. The atmosphere was festive. My friends and I wandered around the city center. There was some fireworks, music, Israeli dancing, and general partying involved. Of course, I got back home and there was even a party going on in the building next door. And, it must have been city-sanctioned, because there were even the police barrier thingies that I saw on all of the other city parties. The entire city was plastered with Israeli flags. I mean, plastered. You rarely get that kind of display of patriotism in the US.
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| Outside of my apartment building. |
Women of the Wall
Many of you have either read in the news or seen on my wall or heard through the grapevine about what went down and Women of the Wall last week, so I thought I would share my own experience. Prior to Rosh Chodesh, a district court made a decision that we were allowed to pray however we wanted. The Attorney General said that he did not approve of the decision but would not try to overturn it. Therefore, we all decided that we were going to wear our talitot and pray our hearts out. We had heard there was going to be some sort of backlash. As I walked to the Kotel on Friday morning, I noticed that there were many Haredi men and girls also walking to the Kotel. When I got there, what I saw was madness. Half of the Kotel plaza was filled with Haredi men protesting. The other half was filled with Haredi girls praying and protesting. There were so many Haredi women that it was almost impossible to get to the women's side. I tried to find Alli, our wonderful service leader who has been doing great work for Women of the Wall all year, but no such luck. Finally, I found some friends. We saw a bunch of police and realized that the service would be happening outside of the women's section. A couple of us (i.e. Jen followed by me) managed to push past the police and get as close to the middle as we could possibly get. The service was beautiful. Because we were not on the women's side, the men were able to pray with us. It is not what Women of the Wall usually does, and I'm not even sure it's what their ultimate goal is since there are many Orthodox women who pray with us, but it was a certainly a silver lining of us not being able to pray on the women's side. This time, instead of going to Robinson's Arch for the torah service, we read from a chumash. The goal is to eventually be able to read from a sefer torah, but for now this was what they decided to do. There was a girl who had a bat mitzvah, so it was very celebratory. I didn't get any pictures of the service or what was going on because, let's face it, I'm way too short, but many of my taller friends did. The entire service, the Haredim were protesting. However, this time, the police were protecting us, not them. In fact, the only people who got arrested were three Haredi men.
After the service, we were told to leave as an entire group. While we were leaving, the police formed a barrier in front of the Haredim so they could not attack us. My friend and I stil got hit in the face by a water bottle, and another friend got hit in the shoulder by a rock (which he kept as proof that the Haredim are in the wrong in this case), but it could have been a lot worse. I made sure to stick with my friends. They made us all exit the Kotel plaza the same way, and we all had to leave the Old City through the Dung Gate (i.e. nowhere near where any of us were going). As we left, we were ushered onto city buses that had been provided for us for safety purposes. The Haredim started throwing rocks at the buses. Good thing we weren't walking. They dropped us off at Mamilla, far away from the madness. I'm not sure how I feel about what happened. On the one hand, it was utter madness. It is completely beyond me why Jews would throw rocks at other Jews, or at anybody for that matter. In the US, this would probably be classified as a hate crime of some sort. On the other hand, this was a HUGE victory for Women of the Wall and for women who want to pray at the Kotel and general. It felt great to be able to wear my talit and not have to worry about getting arrested.
I also want to quickly address the Sharansky plan to fix up Robinson's Arch and make it into an egalitarian prayer space. First of all, that's GREAT. There needs to be an egalitarian prayer space for people who want to do things like have their b'nei mitzvah at the Wall or to be able to pray as a family or with opposite-sex friends or for people who don't fit into the gender binary. However, it does NOTHING to address a huge constituency: Modern Orthodox women. There are women who would like to pray out loud, and maybe even wear a talit if that happens to be their custom (I've seen women in talitot at a couple of Modern Orthodox shuls here, since according to some interpretations it's not required of women but it's not against halacha for them to wear it). There are also women who might not be Orthodox but are simply more comfortable praying only with women. All of these women need a space to pray at Judaism's holiest site. Therefore, it is important that the women's section also be pluralistic and allow all forms of Jewish prayer.
Shavuot
I was lucky to have the opportunity to spend Shavuot in Israel this year. Shavuot is (1) a harvest holiday, (2) the holiday where we received the Torah, and (3) a holiday where you're supposed to eat lots and lots of dairy. Why do we eat dairy on Shavuot? In truth, I'm pretty unsatisfied with all of the explanations I have received, so let's just go with "because dairy is awesome." If that answer is not good enough for you, Rav Google will be happy to help. It is also customary to study torah all night until the sun comes up. This is known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Shavuot at home usually consists of some sort of cheesecake smorgasbord with my group of friends, sometimes with other dairy stuff like blintzes or ice cream or just plain cheese, and maybe some torah mixed in there. This year, those HUC students still in the country had a dairy potluck. Everything my friends made was delicious. I of course, made a cheesecake. Then, we davened ma'ariv together, and then it was time for some torah study. Our goal was to get through all five books before 11:30 when all the other programming started, but we only got through Leviticus. We worked in chevrutot (pairs/partnerships) and split up the torah portions, and then we came back together as a group and everyone discussed what they had learned from their portion(s). It was a lot of fun.
After that, some of us there was a program at HUC for young Israeli adults. There were some Israeli rabbinic students there, but there were also a lot of young Israelis who were not really affiliated with HUC. The first thing they had was a song session of Israeli music. Each of the songs had something that could be connected to Shavuot. For instance, there was a song about a girl named Naomi and a song about wearing white. I hadn't heard most of these songs before, so I don't remember the names of them. After that, there were many choices of what we could learn. I chose to go to a session about whether we were all forced to receive the Torah at Sinai or whether each individual's choice. It was awesome, and really interesting to read each mishnaic interpretation. What was even more impressive is that this session was in Hebrew and I understood everything. Then, I needed a change and also thought a nice walk would help keep me awake, so I headed over to Pardes for a session taught by their president. It was interesting. Among other things, we looked at a mishna that examined the different types of leadership and how it related to the laws regarding Shabbat and Chagim.
After that, my friends and I headed to the Kotel. It was pretty much madness there. It was crazier than Tisha B'av, and possibly even crazier than last Friday's Women of the Wall. Therefore, I didn't stay in the Kotel plaza for very long. I walked around a bit and saw lots of people davening shacharit. To be perfectly honest, I didn't know one was allowed to daven shacharit before sunrise. Anyone know what the halacha is on that? I wandered over to the women's side for a bit, but then I had enough, so I pushed my way out of the plaza and met my friends on the staircase above to watch the sun rise. It was glorious. I wish I had gotten a picture. After sunrise, I went down to the archeological part where Robinson's Arch is to daven shacharit. I didn't stay for the entire thing, though, because I was exhausted, and so were my friends. I did stay long enough to hear Megilat Rut (the Book of Ruth), which was nice. This is the first time I've ever stayed up for the entire night to study. It was kind of awesome. Maybe next year too?
What a way to end your year in Israel! Only wish I had your cheesecake.
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