Yom HaShoah

Israelis never stop for anything.  They are constantly moving, yelling, pushing you out of the way so they can get to where they are going.  At 10:00am on Yom HaShoah(Holocaust Remembrance Day), a siren wails for one minute, and Israelis stop what they are doing, standing still for the entire time, in remembrance of the victims and in honor of the survivors of the Holocaust. 

At 9:55am on Yom Hashoah, I positioned myself on a balcony that overlooks a busy intersection of Jerusalem in order to witness the memorial for myself.  Many others had the same idea—from parents with little children, to teenage girls at seminary, to older adults for whom the ceremony might have a more personal meaning than it does for me. 

At 9:58am, cars were still honking at each other as they drove through the intersection.

At 9:59am, drivers began opening their car doors, standing beside their cars, in the middle of the road, in anticipation of the siren. 

At 10:00am, the siren sounded.  Traffic stopped.  Any remaining driver or passenger opened his/her door and stood solemnly next to his/her car, in a minute of quite reflection, thought, and prayer.  No one moved.  It was beautiful. 

I cried.

At 10:01am, the siren stopped, and the drivers got back into their cars and continued on their way.  When I finally gathered myself together and began to walk home, I noticed that my fellow observers had already left.  I crossed the street into my neighborhood, and life had resumed as usual, as if nothing had ever happened.  I was a bawling, snotty mess as I walked home, but no one stopped me to see if I was okay.  On any other day, I would not have expected anyone to, but I thought, maybe today… People just looked at me as I walked by, maybe in pity, maybe in empathy, or maybe just because I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt in what is quickly becoming a religious neighborhood.

I have never cried at a Holocaust memorial service before.  Growing up, I read a lot of books written about the Holocaust—memoirs as well as fiction.  When I was 15, I traveled with USY Pilgrimage to Poland, for a grueling and emotional 10 day tour of the ghettos, camps, and mass graves that litter the horizon.  After that, Holocaust museums and services never really affected me in the same way—how could they even compare to what I had seen?  (Which can barely represent the entirety of what actually happened). 

I had entered (and exited) the gas chambers, I had walked along the train tracks, feeling stuck as I tried to leave the Birkenau concentration camp, I had seen the pile of ashes of people who should have been, and I mourned their losses everywhere I went.  Worse than Majdanek, a camp which, it is well known, could be fully functional within 24 hours, were the camps of which nothing more remained than a large field with some bicycle tracks running through them.  For these camps, there is no marker of what once stood there, no proof besides memories and recollection of the atrocities that took place.  Camps like these fuel the fire of Holocaust deniers.  What will the future generations know of what took place here?  How can they possibly begin to understand, when no survivors are left to tell their stories, and all we have are fields of grass?

And how could I, after having seen all of these things at 15, possibly be moved by a museum or a memorial service?   But today I was.  There is something so powerful in the entire sensory experience of what took place today—hearing the siren, seeing life stop for a minute, feeling the way we do when we allow ourselves to really think about what happened.  It’s powerful and overwhelming.

Until today, the Yom Hashoah memorial services I had attended in the United States had always taken place in Hebrew school.  We lit candles, said the Kaddish (the one with the names of the camps inserted in between each word), and sometimes we wore gold stars in solidarity or watched the movie Paperclips.  I had never experienced a memorial on a national level, and if one even exists other than the museums and monuments littered throughout the country, I am unaware of it.  But today I witnessed an entire nation stop for one minute to remember—a memory that lives in the collective conscience of Jews and other persecuted groups not just in Israel, but throughout the world.

This is what it means to be a Jewish State.

This, the act of remembering—as an entire unit, an entire nation—the narrative which tugs at the heart strings of everyone who lives here, the events which directly or indirectly resulted in the formation of this very nation; this is what it means to be a Jewish State.

At 10:36am I finished writing this blog post. 

Each Day is a Gift

There’s a synagogue near our apartment that is well known for its spirited Kabbalat Shabbat service.  The Kabbalat Shabbat service is a collection of psalms sung at sundown Friday evening to welcome in the Sabbath, often represented by the image of a bride.  One of the most popular melodies for the Kabbalat Shabbat service was composed by Shlomo Carlbach.  These tunes are energetic and upbeat, and lend themselves to dancing in the aisles. 

The shul near our apartment is little and unassuming—if you weren’t looking for it, you would walk right by it.  In fact, I had walked by it many times before finally deciding to give services there a try one Friday night.  Although I had arrived early, before services had started, I watched as the women’s section of the synagogue filled up—by the end of services, women were standing in the aisle, from the back of the building all the way to the door in the front.  The little shul came alive that Friday night with a ruach(spirit) I have never seen matched.  The closest thing I can compare it to is perhaps opening ceremonies for International Convention for USY, or a particularly joyous wedding.  Each psalm rang out, loud and spirited, and continued for five to ten minutes as the entire building hummed the melody even after all of the words had been said.  A peek through the mechitzah (divider) revealed the men dancing in circles, arms around each other, banging loudly on a table to keep the beat.

“Why aren’t the women dancing?” my mom asked me.  “Why can’t we have fun too?”

I was actually really enjoying myself, dancing or not, but I could see her point.  Although the women were singing with an unrivaled ruach, their dancing remained on a personal level, each woman bobbing alone at her seat.  And then, one woman, a large smile on her face, grabbed the women sitting near her and began to form a circle, singing, clapping, and dancing to the beat.  Andy would call this woman a Nachshon.  Nachshon was the name of the first man who walked into the Red Sea after the Exodus from Egypt—even before the Sea had parted.  Midrash tells us that it is because of Nachshon’s faith and leadership that the Sea eventually did part.

My mom and I did not dance with the other women that night, but we sang with them and joined in their spirit.

A few months later, I returned to the synagogue with a few friends.  We arrived early—after watching how quickly the little shul filled up last time, I did not want to risk not having a seat.  I was enjoying the upbeat melodies and spirit of the service when one of my friends turned to me and asked “When does the party start?”  (I had promised her a party for Shabbat services).  I was surprised that she had not considered the singing we had done so far a party.

Almost as if on cue, the Nachshon-ette from the last time, who happened to be sitting behind us that week, tapped us on the shoulder and encouraged us to join her and her friends in a circle.  We quickly cleared our chairs for room for a horah.  Slowly but surely, our circle was joined by some of the women around us—we even had the honor of dancing with a woman who would be getting married on Sunday.

“Where else in the world would you sing and dance around chairs on a Friday night?” asked Nachshon-ette.  Her smile radiated throughout the little room and her spirit was infectious.  She truly embodied the joy with which we are encouraged the greet Shabbat, the Sabbath bride.  The evening was beautiful, invigorating, and re-energizing.  After a stressful week of work and obligations, 10 women who I had never met before reminded me to celebrate life, and the joy that each day brings.  To celebrate the good that we are given.

“I couldn’t do this every week,” one of my friends said. “But this week, it was perfect.”

But what if—what if we did do that every week?  That little shul does, and I’m willing to bet Nachshon-ette is there each week, with the same energy and spark.  Better yet, what if we greeted each day the way we greet Shabbat?  Not with a mumbled Modeh Ani, thanking G-d for returning our breaths and souls to our bodies, but with sheer joy and elation.  With a true of feeling of celebration, greeting each new morning as the gift that it is.  What if we literally sang our praise out loud, and danced around the room, putting to use the ruach that was granted to us that morning?  Would Shabbat be any less special?  I don’t think so—each morning we can celebrate on our own, garnering spirit from ourselves and our gratefulness—and each Shabbat we can join together to sing and dance around chairs in a true display of joy and happiness.  What if we greeted each day the way we greet Shabbat?

I’m willing to bet that our days would be more positive and that we would be better people for it.

I don’t know if I’ll see Nachshon-ette again—I suppose I may attend services at that little shul at least once more before I leave Israel—but she’s got the right idea, and I think it’s an idea worth spreading.

Self-Reflection

After many years involved in the Jewish world, I’ve been to my fair share of services.  Some are long, some are short, some are engaging, and some are… well, not.  As the regional vice president for religion and education programming in my high school youth group, I even timed the daily evening service to prove to my region we could do it in less than 10 minutes.  We got it down to eight.

Jews are supposed to pray 3 times a day, but not everyone does (I certainly don’t).  This year, many of the services I choose to attend, or find myself attending, have been completed quickly, almost rote, without much meaning or time to reflect built in.  It’s like we’re saying, “we know we have to do it, so we’ll do the bare minimum and just get it done.”  But services devoid of meaning don’t work for me—I might as well not be praying at all, if I don’t have time to make the service meaningful for myself.

The Hebrew word for praying is a reflexive verb—it’s something we do to ourselves.  I’m beginning to wonder whether we should be praying just to get it over with, or if we should truly be embracing the reflective nature of prayer.  Maybe it’s not that we’re supposed to pray three times a day by reciting the same old formula day in and day out, but maybe we’re supposed to truly check in with ourselves three times a day. 

We should ask ourselves, how am I feeling right now?  What do I need?  What do I want?  What am I thinking about?  I’m beginning to wonder if, instead of reciting prayers three times a day, the idea is to truly check in with ourselves and take time for person reflection three times a day.

We often hear of the benefits of mindfulness—of being in touch with our beliefs and thoughts—and it seems to me that G-d might have been aware of them too.  Many of the Jewish rituals have both physical and spiritual benefits—for example, washing our hands before we eat, and taking a full 25 hours each week to rest.  G-d seems to know what’s good for us.  I’m going to choose to understand praying three times a day not as praising G-d three times a day using words whose meanings have been so worn out by repetition, but instead as the self-reflective verb that it is.  By truly checking in with myself three times a day, I believe I can add meaning and spirituality to every day of my life, even if I’m not attending minyan.

The city we live in...

Recently, a lot of web pages have been surfacing about what to do if you are beginning to fall out of love with the city you live in.  And the truth is, they couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.  I remember seeing a graphic describing culture shock many years ago when I studied abroad in Martinique.  There’s the initial spike of absolute love and fascination with the country and its culture, then a sharp drop where your mind overcorrects and you begin to resent the new place where you are living—eventually the love plateaus and the magic of the new place wears off, becoming the simple ups and downs of everyday life in any culture.

I remember thinking, “that’s ridiculous, it won’t happen to me.”  And I also remember after about two weeks, beginning to resent many of the cultural differences between the United States and Martinique.  Although I recall my time there fondly, and would love to return one day, I remember that when it was time for me to go home, I was ready to go home.

Throughout the year, this blog has been a place for me to share my honest impressions and reflections of my time here.  In keeping this blog, I’ve discovered that I have opinions, thoughts, and things to say about issues that I had previously kept quiet.  And I’ve shared them here, to an extremely supportive and positive readership.  So if I’m going to be honest and share my opinion, the truth is—I’m ready to go home.

Ever since I got here, I’ve heard people repeat the same mantra: “Living in this country is hard.”  But in the beginning of the year, I wasn’t living here—I was exploring, learning, playing, experiencing.  After the High Holidays and a few wrong turns in my search for some paying work, I have fallen into a routine.  Granted, it’s a flexible routine that can easily be changed, manipulated, or overturn, but it’s a routine none the less.  And somewhere between waking up at the same time each day, and doing the same thing each day, I found myself with about two months left of this experience, exhausted, frustrated, and ready to go home.

There are days when I don’t feel like getting out of bed, or when I spend the whole day in my apartment, feeling sick.  I’m frustrated with many aspects of living here—the expenses, the healthcare, the culture of the people around me, the fact that I don’t speak this language.  I’m sick of the clothes I’ve brought with me, and I’m ready to get back home to the clothes I left in the States.  I’ve hit a slump, and Jerusalem, for me, has lost its magic.

Does it mean that I’m wasting my time here, if I’m not doing something new and exciting every day?  I don’t think so.  Andy and I did a lot of exploring in the beginning of the year—and now we, and our wallets, are worn out.  Jerusalem is no longer our playground; it’s our home.  We’re here, yes, to grow, to learn, and to explore, but mostly, we’re here to live.  And that’s what we’re doing.  We’re comfortable in our surroundings and our experiences—instead of being new and exciting, much of Jerusalem is just like any other city I’ve lived in.  A city I live in.  And living here is hard.