Subject: [KIT] FW: News from Israel

From: Anne Muir <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:50:51 -0400

The following is the fourth in an ongoing series of personal observations
from Andy Blanch, currently traveling in Israel, Palestine and Jordan.
These "blogs" will be posted (along with a some nice pictures) at
www.centerforreligoustolerance.org  We encourage you to feel free to pass
this email (and or our web link) to anyone who you think might be interested
in our work!

Blog #4   April 5, 2007
    
    I¹ve always been fascinated by the notion of ³identity politics²  that
what people believe about the past and present and future is largely shaped
by how they choose to identify themselves.  Here in Israel - a Jewish state
surrounded by Muslim states  religious identity runs very deep.
    
Last night I attended a Seder at Elana¹s house.  At the table were Elana and
her husband Tsvi, Tsvi¹s 94-year old father, their daughter Sheera and her
husband Oren, their son Noam with his two 8-month old twins (his wife Chaya
was indisposed), and David, a friend of Noam¹s here from Toronto on a
one-year internship.
    
    Tsvi and his father are originally from Poland.  The family fled to
Russia just before the Nazi invasion, always staying a few miles ahead of
the advancing troops, and eventually finding their way to Israel.  Elana¹s
family are sixth-generation Americans from Chicago; she and Tsvi moved
permanently to Israel when Sheera was 14.  The move was very hard, according
to Sheera, who had to adjust from being a typical American teenager,
concerned primarily with boys and grades, to the more austere and serious
orientation of Israeli youth.  But now, she says, she wouldn¹t consider
moving back. Oren is a Sephardic Jew. Chaya is Ethiopian.  (The twins, a boy
and a girl, are just beautiful.)  I have a hard time imagining an American
family with so many ethnic and racial strands.  But they are all Jews.
    
    A few days ago I attended a pre-Pesach event hosted by Rabbi Yosef
Hadane, chief Rabbi of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel and a member of the
Abrahamic Reunion. Ethiopians faces several challenges in Israel today.
They among the poorest communities (with an average income less than half of
the average Israeli and significantly less than Palestinians).  In addition,
their Jewish religious traditions are sometimes questioned by haredi
(Ultra-Orthodox) Jews.  Although they managed to retain their religious
identity during thousands of years of exile and isolation - with no
knowledge of the existence of the rest of the world¹s Jewry  their native
teachers (Cahenat) do not receive the same rabbinical training as their more
Orthodox brethren. This question of ³Jewishness² is complicated.  Rabbi
Hadane bridges the gap, featuring Cahenat on the dais along with the Chief
Rabbis of Israel. 
    
    I have always loved the Passover Seder, with its ritualized memories,
inspirational prayers and songs, symbolic food and drink, and emphasis on
family and friends.  But experiencing Pesach (Passover) here in Israel has
given me a deeper glimpse into what it means to be Jewish.  Tsvi began the
evening by reminding us that the Seder has been done in precisely the same
way, at the same time, by all Jews everywhere - for over 3,000 years.
Coming from a culture where anything over 100 years old is considered
ancient and where change seems to be the only constant, this seems nothing
short of miraculous.
    
Much of the ceremony is familiar, but as I follow along in the text I notice
for the first time that not only does the ceremony memorialize the Jewish
history of slavery and liberation, but it includes a warning about the
future  an admonishment to remember that in every generation enemies will
rise up and try to beat us down and that we will resist and we will survive.
This makes me pause, wonder if there is a point at which remembering one¹s
history could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    
    As the evening proceeds, Elana urges everyone to think about the meaning
of liberation for each of them, personally.  Tsvi talks about his own
youthful activism in the 1970¹s, when the plight of the Russian Jews was of
major concern.  We all protested, he remembered, pretending to have hope,
but really, we didn¹t think they had a chance.  What could we expect?  That
the Soviet Union would all of a sudden see the light and let them go?  But
then a few years later, poof, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian
Jews are now here.  No matter how bad things look, he concludes, there is
always hope. 
    
    Elana emphasizes the need for empathizing with all oppressed people
everywhere, and for remembering that ³liberation² can be internal as well as
external.  She notes that Israel, a crossroads between the East and the
West, has one of the highest rates of female trafficking/slavery in the
world.  Noam reads a special prayer for the 15 British sailors recently held
hostage in Iran.  
    
    The ritual cleaning and preparation for Pesach at first baffled me, but
now it is starting to make some sense.  What is the point, I had wondered,
of throwing out all this food?  I was tempted to think about this as Spring
Cleaning  OK, lets get the crumbs out of the breadbox, but do we really
have to toss a whole jar of honey because a breadcrumb might have gotten
stuck in there?  What really is the point of having 2 more sets of dishes,
when you already have two sets, one for meat and one for dairy?   And isnt
it a bit obsessive to make such fine distinctions - on Shabbat, no lighting
of flames at all, during Pesach no lighting of new flames but lighting from
an existing flame is OK. (So go ahead and light your gas stove if you have a
pilot light, but not if it ignites from a spark.)
  
    When I get up enough courage to ask Elana and Eliyahu about this, they
each give the same answer: ³God sees everything.²  I am starting to
understand that the whole point of rules like this, of the law-based
morality or ³halacha² of Judaism, is not to enforce a rigid set of
behaviors, but to constantly remind people to be present in every moment.
What a beautiful concept to build a life around.

 

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