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.