The Binding of Us All

In Genesis 15, G-d makes the first covenant with Abraham. Takes him outside, tells him look skyward, stars will equal progeny, you're gonna get this sweet land, and you're gonna be a successful whatever. Nations will form themselves of your seed, and the other nations will bless themselves in you. Great.

What makes this contract so weird is that legally, it's not a contract. In modern law, a contract has to involve a sacrifice on both sides: for example, you work for me, I lose money paying you. Ostensibly, in Gen 15, Abraham is being gifted....possibly for cutting his junk. Whatever, it's not like in Deuteronomy when G-unit is like, if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna let you starve and all your enemies violate you.

Read This Article (it's long, but it's good for you): The First White President

So this is the subversive D'var/Drash/Sermon that I cannot give at my small, midwestern pulpit. It's about how Abraham is America. And his altar to his god is built on a human. His son, which it is said that he loved, though in the Hebrew he could not always distinguish bein [between] ben [son] and na'ar [lad] (Dad, Where's The Goat?). He (remember he's also America) would lie, degrade, slit the throat of his son, in order to get what he wanted.

At this point, G-d has made only promises for increasing Abraham's status. There have been no threats for non-compliance. It seems Abraham's gain is more important than blood. The call for profit rings out and Abraham says hineini.

It doesn't matter that his profit literally lies on the alter and will be built on the back of suffering and the joy of that young 'lad'.

In Rashi's commentary he cites Akiva saying that Abraham for all of his obedience DOES call G-d out at the end of his trial.

Abraham says to the Almighty:

“You gave me this son. Then you said to take him up AND NOW, now you say to halt.”

The Master of All Creation is not so easily dismayed though. G-d's response in this unfeatured episode is to say, “I said to take him up, l'olah,”

-- which can mean as an olah a burnt offering, or to to go up like make Aliyah or I went up on the bus--

G-d continues “and you, Abraham have taken him up, so take him back down. “

The midrash insinuates that Abraham erred here in assuming G-d meant to sacrifice instead of just a nice father and son hike. Meaning he was so ready to kill him anyway. Anything to appease that which he benefited from.

It does not matter that an angel/messenger stops him. The matter is never spoken of (because denying our privilege is more comfortable: it's easier to fight against elitism while ignoring that the elite is based on racism and sexism.

We'll talk instead of rebuilding nations and wells and naming cities. Welcome to Beer Sheva, ignore the systemic inequality. Isaac can confront his horrors alone in the fields and hope that a cop or a well-intentioned and armed citizen doesn't 'mistake' him for a criminal.

We will not talk of the silence of women, who die to see their children taken. Women's pain does not matter. The mother and son cast out: we did not kill them, if we don't have to see their deaths. And we wonder, why, when they do not die, they resent those in power? They are the landless, the homeless, the migrant, the displaced.

We will just continue to celebrate the elevation of the patriarchs. But for how long? 

Aweful Days

Well, if anyone was in doubt, I'm a mess. But the best way to keep a b-log active when gradschool makes you feel like you're drowning in the ocean on a floaty with a steady leak in it, it's to post something you thought you'd posted like a third of a year ago. So here's some untimely reflections on the Israeli High Holidays as we approach the biblical ones.

Aweful Days

Memorial Day for Soldiers and Terror Victims is less a day of memory and seems to be a day of foreshadowing. I was fortunate to be able to attend a memorial ceremony for a scouts troop. As they read the names of all the fallen and their ages, I couldn't help but to focus on the ages. There was a time 20 seemed old to me now I realize that it's just kids dying and I'm in a country where parents frequently outlive their offspring in a reversal of the natural order. The students who put the ceremony together would be in the military in the next year or two. Twenty still seems old to them. And that's why there was so much push back to include Terror Victims a few years back. This is not just a commemoration of what was but also what will be.

So my clever plan to acknowledge the Palestinian victims of Independence Day will definitely not fly. My hope was that especially in the context of the War of Independence, we could acknowledge that lots of people died in the process of this amazing, and I think wonderful, country. That does not excuse the blind eye though. I believe that giving a national outlet to Palestinian grief would go a long way toward more peaceful coexistence. And more positive incorporation. The token Arab-Israeli lighting a torch does not mean anything if a bunch of nationalistic d-bags parade through the Arab Quarter of the Old City every year. One of the things that makes Israel a great place is the accomplishments of all of her citizens, her efforts toward peace. It's not a perfect plan.

I understand why people want to just focus on the good for a day. The reality here wears on everyone, but also how can we ignore the fact that the way they made it 'safe' for celebrations was to shut down part of the population. To fence them in, cage them in. And I agree that was was probably the best security decision. Nothing ruins a barbeque like a stabbing but currently, both people and their sentiments are trapped, and some of them cry out their destruction, their Nakba. This year for me has been about shared narratives. That's what peoplehood is to me. My Irish stories about tinkers and potato famines; the Jewish narrative of Exodus and Land and Redemption, the Israeli narrative of finding and building a home, the Palestinian narrative of imperialism, refugees and isolation. It's my task to integrate the first two or three for myself but I really believe the modern State of Israel AND the Palestinian people (I've given up on their 'leadership' for the moment), need to work toward the last two. Today I will celebrate, though I'd rather stay home. Today I will continue to hope that this narrative reconciliation is possible; that people can acknowledge the pain of the other, even if it means absorbing guilt. And that Independence does not have to mean isolation.  

Know Below Whom You Stand

My significant other finally read my blog and has registered a complaint that I haven't written anything. I walked myself into this conundrum. So as my growing anxiety over gradschool mounts, I suppose I should give the writing muscles a flex. Especially since rumor has it, in a profession where our goal is to help people be compassionate, engaged humans, and Jewish humans, several of our teachers are said to be brutal dick heads if you don't live up to their standards. To put it succinctly.

The word Yarmulke is said to be a composite of Aramaic “yari malke” or fear of King, i.e. G-d. It's not really the Almighty filling me with fear these days. In my personal past, the tiny circular hat-like thing was a celebration of Heschel's sacred time. It would be donned for holidays or Jewish learning activities. In Israel I found it less necessary for me to demarcate Jewish time or space, being surrounded by it on all sides.

Coming 'home' has given me a glimpse into Moshe's psyche when he came down with the Tablets pt. 1 and saw Mooby the Golden Calf. It started way before my return with the desecration of cemeteries, a verbal assault on my very American rabbi in our Nation's Capital. It continued with a misguided Nazi salute from a family member and a brief incident which made a Jewish summer camp's security updates seem so much more fitting. Particularly the discouragement of public displays of Jew. But the same way I would get permission from my companions in Jerusalem: since having a vagina and wearing a kippah could bring unwanted aggressions, I cannot get consent from 400 children on essentially and island. Begrudging silence.

So on the sorta island, I went from forgetting to take off my sorta hat between activities, to putting it on first thing in the morning. Emboldened by this article:

Wearing a Kippah For Solidarity and Visibility

So while exploring ritual garments in my ''Suiting Up'' activity, a young woman, almost bat mitzvah age, asked me why I wore this tiny hat all the time. I told her my old reasons, the ones that I most identify with like sacred time. Then I said that there seems to be a lot of fighting in the world and I think it's important to be visibly Jewish right now. In a shocking turn of events, she hugged me.

And what once was a story of defensive, and aggressive beanie-wearing, turns into a moment of human connection. And hopefully a flame of why I'm doing what I'm doing that even the least compassionate of teachers, or world events, can never douse.  

For Mamma, Borders in the Old City

Stolen From My Mother

A Meander Through The Old City

This Old City is not the oldest Old City. The current, giant walls are from around 1530-ish. The Western Wall is in there, I guess it's a little older....but it is also pretty much the only place I've been. My class did go up to the Temple Mount/Dome of The Rock courtyard, which is pretty and amazing and also, right above the Western Wall and it's the same place.

So I took some exploradora time. My main goal was that cafe in my head that only exists there. I wanted to get coffee in the Moslem/Arab Quarter. Despite to some, what sounds like a reckless air, I picked the safest day possible. Two days after the most recent Damascus Gate stabbing and early enough in the week that it was not near their holiday (Friday) or the Jewish Holiday (Saturday). And despite myself, or because it's closest, I went through the touriest gate. It pops you in between the Christian and Armenian Quarters. I wandered down the street and had a very awkward encounter with a vendor. I made the mistake of polite conversation. He offered me a cheap gift and I wasn't sure if I could refuse and then he really wanted to meet again to practice English. He gave me his number. I promised to call him which is definitely made of lie. I'll see this lie at Yom Kippur.

The newest weird fact is that most of the Old City has some sort of roof? I said no, but his offer to go up to the roof was so cool that despite the very obvious reasons to say no to this strange man who wanted to lead me up a dark ladder in a maze, I hesitated. One of my non-coffee goals included trying to find the 'center' of the Old City. Not the middle but the border where all four Quarters meet.

It was difficult to separate from Shadi (not actually his name but a nickname for people who don't understand his name: to be honest, my Arabic blows. It took Osama, who works at my school, approximately 40 tries and Osama is a name I'm familiar with.). While booking it away from my newest, closest, friend, I got hella lost. Not lost, but turned around from the direction I was going. And the Old City is a middle eastern maze of mazes. There's ups and downs, shitty vendors, creepily empty residential areas.

I am ashamed to admit, that in addition to lying about calling that man, I was afraid in the Arab areas. I think a lot of it was:

When we went to the bilingual school a mom told us that the biggest impact her kids gained by learning Arabic is that when they are surrounded by that language, they are not afraid. They know what's going on around them.

I've never been in an environment where I don't understand the language-least of all in a place rife with tension. Also, I was a little frazzled. I never know if my presence is inappropriate. Or my dress. And general Arabs are WAY more polite than Orthodox Jews—they won't call me a whore or spit on me. It's almost worse this way.

I ended up in one of those creepy residential areas, I think they're extra creepy because it goes from crazy tourist crazy market to two kids I don't understand. Some boys did pause their futbol game to help me. I stopped in a convenience store in a cave—not literally because that sort of exists here, but it was definitely not a tourist stop-- and bought one of my favorite candies from Chicago which is made in Ramallah. I think buying things that have to have employed people is probably the best way to help make life better and people less vulnerable to recruitment or despair. It's a fair exchange with hopefully less corruption and degradation. Plus, candy.

I never did get coffee. The problem is another cultural one where I should have checked my Western sensibilities before I wrecked my constantly caffeinated blood stream. Based on my observation the Arabs don't cafe as much. They have these real bad ass trays on chains that guys who have coffee making in their shops send coffee to stores that don't and they all just drink (and smoke-gross) while they're working—which I can totally get behind.

And I realize that borders aren't as clear as we think they'll be. Like the Christians in this region tend to have a lot of Arabic language/culture/race/etc. So half of the Christian Quarter is in Arabic. The Armenians are Christians so they blend into the Christian Quarter. Everything's in partial Hebrew because I guess this is Israel or something and oh yeah everyone's holy sites are in the same frickin' place so it seems there's no extricating one from the other.

And I was so frazzled from my spin around that I forgot to use my minimalist Arabic. I am filled with linguistic sin from that day. I don't know when I'll go back. Not over break because they're shutting down East Jerusalem and all the not Israeli territory for the holiday (Arab Christians? Where will they hide Jesus' eggs?) because we are still basing freedom on the safety of borders because we still haven't found a way to find safety in cooperation.

על לא יודע

עד לא יודע

The worst sadnesses come directly off the highest of joys. Shabbat is a trigger. Maybe not a trigger, maybe not even the bullet, but the powder within. Especially the Shabbat of Purim. “When Adar Enters, Joy Increases” the sages say sagely. As I neared the end of a stressful event and we were welcoming in the Sabbath. The oneg, the joy was strong. Then dinner happened. 

The guests in question were from a large umbrella organization that is pretty directly affiliated with my school, profession, and life. When they bragged about providing their employees with healthcare, it was exciting. Maybe these white, wealthy, uniformly dressed men ARE good. The clothing situation should not be ignored. Recently, I have had several male teachers comment on appropriate dress to me. They who only need but pants and a button up shirt and very seldom have people comment on their bodies in the street. Though admittedly, it was a female teacher who gendered the attire conversation the most because devil-women have thighs and cleavage. And even on the pulpit, we will be sexualized and body shamed. 

Back to the guests. They bragged about how much female leadership they have and our rabbinate has. They have the first woman head of their organization! One to how many? Most of our rabbis are women! Never mind if they don't get the same kinds of positions or pay. Never mind that their male colleagues and teachers—even if unintentionally—don't listen to them. They vehemently denied that the results of the recent election had anything to do with sexism. And they [are big important men who] had access to classified intelligence...two of three of them. Hillary lost because of a list of things that every male politician, let alone the one that won, does a hundred times over. As long as you don't compare it to how men are treated it's not sexism and has nothing to do with sexism. And I as a lowly female could not insinuate that it was, what with all the privileged intelligence knowledge that they couldn't reveal....But fine, rich white dudes are sexist, but they're sort of leaning the right direction, I guess.

Then in a discussion about business: “everyone walks the line...afterwards you don't know which side of the edge you came out on.” One of them straight up admitted to taking a deal that was unethical. Apparently, the man who offered him the deal, he broke the law, but the man didn't and he got a great deal. One of the other men shook his head in agreement. My host, who for full disclosure I do not like but must defend here, tried to say she benefited from a similar deal...with a neighbor who knew her family...and neither of them were professionals who knew the business ethics and no one broke a law, but bless her for trying.

I left shortly, only not screaming at these men in disgust out of reverence for the Sabbath. Instead I cried in the shuttle all the way home. Is that the money helping me go to school? Are those the people at some point helping direct the way things work? My faith in this life path has never been so shaken as that night. I know a lot of people, clergy especially, who have put up with some institutional compromises to come out on the other side and do amazing, radical things. Should I just go on, knowing I will do my best to destroy these sorts of not-so-gray behaviors? Should I call out these dudes, if I could find them again? Should I drop out and live a radical life in my on personal sphere? How dare you, at the Sabbath table, brag of violating ethics. How dare you taint this mission that our people have. On this, the happiest of weekends, I wanted out of it all.

And yet we survived another Purim.

Yesterday, the day before St. Patrick's Day, was St. Urho's Day. Recently, I've learned a lot of my religion is a direct polemic against something else. The candle lighting which begins Shabbat celebrations, just a fuck you to someone. But that's real faith now. And I'm not in undergrad anymore so I don't know how the Flying Spaghetti Monster is doing up in the sky, but I haven't fallen off the earth yet, so it's gotta be up there. Even if Urho, is a ...uh...newer saint, I don't mind. I don't mind wearing purple and celebrating Finland even if it makes fun of one of the most important holidays of my year.

I don't know if I learned this fact as a kid, but this year I was blessed enough to make a pilgrimage to Ireland. While there I learned that the ''snakes'' that Patrick kicked out of the Emerald Isle were actually non-believers. Awesome. What could make St. Patty's more like Purim, if a persecuted population I loved and was affiliated with turned out to be the persecutor at the end of the story.

This year at least I, must confront a lot of things I do not like. Not even talking about the state of either State that I will live in this year. There's the slaughter and sexism in my religion, the pages of slaughter at the end of the Esther scroll. That the drunken saint of my youth forced conversions, is fine because eh, Catholic. That a sizeable chunk of the leadership and funding of my current faith community is entitled, sexist, unethical, dick bags, well maybe I'll drink a little extra this week, not just for the holidays. Just for a moment until I don't know.

Then I'll sober back up and get back to work.  

Homeland and Peoplehood

Homeland

A lot of people give up a lot of who they used to be when they convert, especially to Judaism. Judaism has the uniqueness of being more than religion. One of my friends took a Native American studies class once taught by a white lady. And that's fine, until she said that she was ethnically Native. Because that's not, uh, how it works. You have religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture. They overlap sometimes if you're lucky, and you have some option on most of them....except ethnicity. Maybe once, long, long ago, Judaism was an ethnicity. It's not anymore. Lucky for me because I got to join this crazy people and feel more complete, and G-d willing, that feeling is mutual.

So in this Year of Jew, that I'm having. I'm blessed to live in the homebase of that peoplehood. Israel, Jerusalem even. My dad jokes that our village is the center of the universe, but for a lot of people Jerusalem is. I love it here. I love the cats and the big rocks. I love the Jews. Even the shitty ones who are sexist and entitled at least look like Santa. But I never gave up who I was before. I didn't stop being Irish. I kept my parents' names. And while the desert is growing on me, I guess, my soul still calls out for heather and grass and a language that is almost entirely vowels. Maybe the vowels from Hebrew ended up in Irish.

A lot of people feel like they've come home when they land in Israel, literally for my roommate, since she was born here and crap. And it's home. I was worried I'd be sad missing my weather and my holidays, but I've just been so full. So full of religion and prayer and community. And I really meant to bring that with me. This is the first time I've been abroad since Spain, and you know what? It's fucking hard to Jew on the go. Like practically. Because Fire.

One of my strongest Catholic memories is holding a candle at the tender age of about six, and the eleven-year-olds had made the holder and hot wax was dripping onto my hand and I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to go to Hell. The first time I went to a synagogue they literally called up the youngest kids to light the candles. My first Havdallah in college someone handed me the candle and we were in this really fancy house and I had no idea what was going on and I had to catch the wax in my hand and it all came back again. Basically, you can't religion without fire. FIRE! Especially during Chanukah. Because fire.

So I schlepped a chanukiah all the way around the world. And then realized that you can't light things on fire in hostels. And I schlepped Tefillin all the way around the world and realized that you can't really turn on the light, or open the window, or unlock your locker at the crack of dawn in a room filled with hungover gentiles. Plus, you're not allowed to wear them in the bathroom.

Which is where I spent much of the trip. See on day one in the green, green land something turned my entire GI tract inside out. I had one Guinness. No whiskey. And no fish and chips. At one point during the week I soiled myself a little.

A classmate insensitively asked me once, if I and none of my family for generations had been to Ireland, then how DID I form my Irish identity. It's not like Judaism exists outside of Israel...for thousands of years. I formed it with stories, and Gaelic phrases, drinks, shamrocks, a series of people yelling “Jesus, ma”. Surnames. Humor. Movies, Songs. Food (mostly potatoes and cabbage), Dancing. Friends who had been.

Recently, a teacher even, in a tone I would find contentious, during a conversation about conversion, asked if he could convert to Irish. Without hesitation...or an answer, I said yes. Then I remembered that my best friend, who devoted most of her life to Irish music and dance, and makes pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle about once a year, has not a scrap of Irish ethnicity in her. Suck it. Peoplehood.

So for the first time in generations, after dreaming of Ireland my entire life, I went there. And it was like coming home. Except, literally. The stories were the same. I went to a Ceili on New Years Eve, because my friend sent me there, because she worked there and one of her teachers was leading the thing, and it was just like at home.

So for my life, I've been told and reading and learning about this Disapora. About famine and rebellion and uprising. I teared up when the plane landed. I openly cried when I got to sit in a cafe, by a peat fire, and hear people speaking a language on the brink of extinction. I successfully obtained milk using that language.

While I was gone, one of the campuses of my Seminary was swastika-ed. Whenever I'm abroad, I'm forced to decide how open I want to be as a Jew. My roommate, born Jewish, from families that moved countries, I suspect not just for fun, prefers to keep it on the D-L. If I made it out of high school, I can be me anywhere. So while I didn't practically Jew, I Jewed hard all over that Island. And I was met with pleasant surprise. And I think, that if I don't take that risk then what's the point of it all? And who will know we exist and how will they join us in fighting all the bullshit in the world.

And so on the last day, I woke from a dream of a shetland cow nuzzling me in my father's yard which was my yard then. I can't even describe this cow-love to you. And maybe that dream was significant. I am no more or less Irish from my pilgrimage. The same way I am no more or less Jewish from having lived in Israel. And obviously, after a week of travel all I wanted was to come home to Jerusalem because I just can't hostel anymore. 

But even before I left, I was sad. As we defied death in the airport shuttle through the Jerusalem hills, I realized that there wouldn't be sage or rosemary or half feral cats everywhere. So in the Year of Two Homelands. I spent the first half dreaming of Northern winds, and heather while secretly falling in love with wild spices and tectonic stones.

So my roommate and I got back. Died for a few hours. Recuperated for a few more. Then lit the menorah up three days late, played dreidle (I destroyed her sabra-ass for the record), and watched the Rugrats special.

But seriously, here's some pictures of moss, lichen and grass that I'm really proud of.