Engaging Israel

On Kol Nidre this year I spoke about the need to engage with Israel, to connect and be a part of our homeland:



Within all of the mixed up and challenging parts of Jewish life here in Israel, it is our place and if we do not stand up for pluralism and equal rights and claim Israel as ours too, we do so at our peril. Israel at 62 has its successes and its faults, its failures. On this holy day of Yom Kippur we recognize that we too have faults and failures, and that we too are still growing, striving, a work in progress. Today Israel needs our help to develop a new way of thinking based on Jewish values, taking the moral and ethical language of Judaism seriously in building this Jewish and democratic state. What Israel needs now is an ideology that addresses the state’s identity as a democratic society that is upheld by moral and ethical values of Judaism, that looks to our teachings to answer the dilemmas of power, sovereignty, social justice and human rights. Israel needs to be reminded of the idealism of the Zionist pioneers and that the ideals and dreams of the past can be developed into both new idealism and realism of the future. 



How can we do this?  Get beyond the headlines, go to Israel and touch your roots, walk in the footsteps of our history, see what our people has built.



I can’t tell you how many American liberal Jews I talk to who have been on many trips to Europe, and to Asia, but have not been to Israel.  And, well, when I  say that I’ve never really traveled Europe - I was in England once when I was in my late teens, but that I’ve been to Israel now 5 times, and hope to go many more times in the future, they look at me with confusion as to why I would go there more than once.  



The Birthright trips have been a phenomenal success.  Taglit Birthright Israel has in 10 years brought 250,000 young college-aged Jews to Israel.  And of those quarter of a million kids who have experienced Israel on these trips, 17,000 of them now live in Israel (that’s 1 for every busload).  If you are between 18 and 26, Sign up for a Kesher trip to Israel with Reform Judaism. Sign up now!

I would love to lead a group trip from on our congregation and if there are enough people interested, we can make that happen. Go on birthright, go to study, go on volunteers for Israel, go on a vacation.  

But don’t just go as a tourist.

 As my colleague Rabbi Ed Feinstein says,  “You can go to France or Italy or even Hawaii as a tourist. See the sites, enjoy the museums, eat in the cafes, shop in the markets. You'll have a wonderful time. But it's not yours. It's a lovely place to visit. But it doesn't belong to you. Israel is yours. The museums in Israel tell your story. The sites are filled with your memories. The cafes are filled with your people. Israel is yours. Go to Israel, and join the argument. Because the argument isn't just Israel's. The argument belongs to us as well.” 



Learn more about Israel’s history.  Too many American Jews do not know enough about the events leading up to the Jewish state or the history of present political and social conflicts in the Middle East.  We are unaware of basic elements that are part of our history, and we are not aware of the amazing Jewish cultural and intellectual flourishing that is a result of the state of Israel’s founding. Read, discuss, debate. Read some more. 



Support pluralism and diversity in Israel.  In response to the recent arrest of Anat Hoffman for holding a Torah scroll, WOW has created a campaign to gather 10,000 photos of women holding Torah scrolls, which are being sent to leaders in Israel. Go through your photo albums from your bat mitzvah celebrations, and do the same. Come carry a Torah on Simchat Torah and upload your photo to the Women of the Wall weblink.

Send your monetary support to the Israel Religious Action Center, to Women of the Wall, to ARZA, to Reform congregations in Israel. Support The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, connect to liberal congregations in Israel through the World Union for Progressive Judaism and Kehillot B’Yachad. Subscribe to the Israel Religious Action Center, the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel and Women of the Wall newsletters.  



Learn more about Israeli politics and Israeli culture. Read Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post online. Follow advocacy issues of religious freedom and equality in Israel through Hiddush. Rent an Israeli movie - most are subtitled.  Read Israeli writers and novelists. Your Hebrew’s not so good? Don’t worry, many of them are translated into English. Listen to Israeli music and news on internet radio.  



Find a way to connect to Israel, to engage with Israel this year.  The words “klal Yisrael” are not just about the state of Israel but all Jews. We are all connected. We cannot ever forget that or let go of the challenge that Israel is a place for all Jews - it is ours to claim, and ours to dream.  Im Tirtzu ayn zo agada - If you will it, it is no dream.




L’shalom,



Rabbi Audrey S. Pollack



September 2010 bulletin article

On the morning that the month of Elul began this year, I stood at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem to welcome the new month with the sound of the shofar. I stood with a large group of women, gathered to pray and give thanks to God, and to reflect on the month that was beginning, as we began to prepare for the journey to the new year about to begin in just four short weeks.

That same afternoon, I returned to the Kotel, and witnessed the swearing in ceremonies for new IDF soldiers. Friends and families gathered at the Kotel plaza, watching with a mix of pride and anxiety, knowing full well the dangers that might lie ahead for these young men and women, who must serve in order to protect and defend our Jewish homeland.

And later, I went into the tunnels that have been excavated underneath the Kotel, and pressed my hand onto the stones closest to the Holy of Holies, the same stones that have witnessed history for thousands of years.

In the Yiddish play The Dybbuk, the author Shalom Ansky, conveys a sense of what it must have been like to be among those at the Temple in ancient times:

“God's world is great and holy. The holiest land in the world is the land of Israel. In the land of Israel the holiest city is Jerusalem. In Jerusalem the holiest place was the Temple, and in the Temple the holiest spot was the Holy of Holies.... There are seventy peoples in the world. The holiest among these is the people of Israel. The holiest of the people of Israel is the tribe of Levi. In the tribe of Levi the holiest are the priests. Among the priests, the holiest was the High Priest.... There are 354 days in the [lunar] year. Among these, the holidays are holy. Higher than these is the holiness of the Sabbath. Among Sabbaths, the holiest is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of Sabbaths.... There are seventy languages in the world. The holiest is Hebrew. Holier than all else in this language is the holy Torah, and in the Torah the holiest part is the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments the holiest of all words is the name of God.... And once during the year, at a certain hour, these four supreme sanctities of the world were joined with one another. That was on the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and there utter the name of God. And because this hour was beyond measure holy and awesome, it was the time of utmost peril not only for the High Priest but for the whole of Israel. For if in this hour there had, God forbid, entered the mind of the High Priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world would have been destroyed. Every spot where a man raises his eyes to heaven is a holy of holies. Every man, having been created by God in His own image and likeness, is a high priest. Every day of a man's life is a Day of Atonement, and every word that a man speaks with sincerity is the Name of the Lord. Therefore it is that every sin and every wrong that a man commits brings the destruction of the world.”

As we move through the month of Elul and prepare for the Yamim Noraim, we each prepare to enter into our own holy of holies. We consider all that has happened in the past year and all that we hope and pray for in the year to come. With prayer and song and reflection we enter into a sacred and holy space, a place which transcends time and space and sets us back on the path of remembering, where we have been, who we are, who we are meant to be. On the High Holidays we leave behind our ordinary lives and enter into the holy of holies, and hear again the ancient call of the shofar, summoning us to return - to God, to our true selves, to the path of teshuvah and tikkun olam.

May this year 5771 be for all of us a year of blessing, health, joy, and return,

Rabbi Audrey S. Pollack

Returning Home

I was very sad (we all were) to leave Israel, knowing that our time here has come to an end. It has been a wonderful, enriching, challenging, and growing journey. My Hebrew has improved, so have my text skills, I am learning slowly, to play a new instrument, and I have relished the time with my family to play with them and see them grow and see Israel through their eyes. I’ve been able to slow down, to walk more, to take time for myself to do what makes my heart sing. But duty calls, and the school year is now upon us.

I’m making an ongoing commitment to myself to make time for my own study and growth, to set aside time each week to continue to cultivate what I have been learning, Torah lishma, for its own sake, not just to prepare to teach another class.

We arrived home very late at night, jet lagged, after a somewhat challenging journey, to find that someone had tp’ed our house in a serious way. We think it was a case of mistaken address, but it does seem strange that it was the night we came home. We are not enjoying the clean up.

In the aftermath of the summer storms here (we received pictures over email), the house looks fine, the goldfish are still alive! and the kids are starting back to school (so what’s a little jet lag the first week).

And we went out into the yard to see our apples, growing, red and round and delicious from the summer sun and rain.

End of Pardes

It’s the end of my study time here in Yerushalayim. For the end of our study session, we had a siyyum lunch, and people shared their thoughts on the summer in the form of words, poems, and songs. I didn’t get up and give a speech, but here’s what I would have said: I will miss getting up every day and walking to the bus, riding the bus and listening to the radio or to the conversations in Hebrew, seeing people reading Hebrew newspapers, or studying gemara, or praying tehillim on the way to work and school. I will miss the slowed down rhythm and the peace of Shabbat where you can walk and walk and not hear any sound except those of your own footsteps and a very occasional car on your way to shul. I will miss the possibility of being able to attend more than a dozen, perhaps two dozen synagogues in less than a 20 minute walk from where I live. I will miss wishing the guy in the corner makolet or the clerk at SuperSol “Shabbat Shalom” and have them answer “Shabbat Shalom” in return as if it was the most natural thing in the world, because here in Yerushalayim, it is. I will miss the quiet of knowing that right now all that I have to attend to is this piece of gemara in front of me, even if I am seriously questioning the meaning of the Aramaic and wondering where all of the things that I used to know went out of my head - was it the 16 years of rabbinic work, or lack of sleep from the kids, or does the hard drive just have too much information being stored there. It’s the end of Pardes (yes the English word paradise is related, probably they are originally from the Persian). In Hebrew and in Jewish text, the word Pardes is an acronym for ways of understanding text: P’shat (simple or plain meaning); Remez (hint or allegorical meaning); D’rash (the midrashic or interpretive sense); and Sod (the secret or mystical meaning). Yerushalayim is a place of Pardes. It’s a place that has many planes of existence.

Rosh Chodesh Elul

This Wednesday morning, I again woke early to join Women of the Wall for Rosh Chodesh Elul at the Kotel. Again a large group of more than 100 women gathered on the women’s side of the mehitza, and male supporters joined in solidarity opposite us on the other side. Elul marks the beginning of the daily sounding of the shofar and the chanting of penetential prayers as we move towards the High Holidays, and you can feel changes in the air as the days begin to shorten, and the summer begins to move closer to its end and the new year approaches. This month Anat Hoffman, the leader of Women of the Wall, could not join us, as she is still banned from the Kotel, so she waits for us at the entrance to the Southern wall with the Torah.



In the bright sunlight that began to move across the Kotel plaza, we chanted the morning prayers, and listened to the sounds of men praying on the other side of the mechitza, the divider; and listened to the sounds of both men and women screaming and cursing at us for daring to pray in a group and allow the sounds of our voices singing to be heard. We chanted Hallel, loudly, amid admonitions to “shush” and “lower your voices”, praising God for the new month that had arrived. We listened to the sounds of several shofarot being blown across the divider, in the men’s section, and then recited the blessing to hear the sound of our shofar, as it been sounded at the Kotel by Anat Hoffman, for these past 21 years. We said the blessing, and then as we listened, instead we did not hear it, because the shofar was snatched out of the hands of the baalat tekiah (shofar blower) by the chief of police.

We were then able this month to move calmly to the Robinson’s Arch at the Sourthern wall where Anat met us with the Torah. While several women donned tefillin, as is their daily custom, the Torah was prepared for reading. I was delighted to recognize several friends in the crowd, including Rabbi Jackie Koch Ellenson, director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, and Cantor Rikki Lippitz, who lives in New York but is from my home congregation (where I grew up). Here we heard several shofarot blown, as well as beautiful Torah readings.

Opponents of the group question why Women of the Wall doesn’t just settle for holding all of their davening here at the Southern Wall. The answer is simple - the wall belongs to the entire Jewish people. It is not an orthodox synagogue. It is a symbol for all Jews. That is why the MK Nitzan Horowitz, leader of the Knesset’s lobby for civil equality and pluralism plans to introduce a bill that proposes the Kotel be divided into three sections, including a space which is non-segregated and inclusive. Stay tuned.

For more:
Jerusalem Post: Women of the Wall to Hold Kotel Services
Rosh Chodesh Elul and Women of the Wall
Time Magazine: In Israel, A Fight to Make the Wall More Inclusive
The Forward: For the First Time Since Leaders Arrest, Women of the Wall Gather Amid Angry Protest
Perfect Harmony

Time is Flying By

We are realizing just how quickly time has flown by in our time in Israel and so we’re trying to pack in as much as we can in the short time we have left here, in and around my class schedule and the kids activities.

Gil is doing a ceramics class at an art studio in Talpiot and he is making amazing pieces. The kids are continuing to enjoy getting together with friends they made at camp, and we are enjoying invitations to Shabbat lunch after services. One way to keep cool in Israel’s hot summer is to get into the water. We have been in the Dead Sea, the Kinneret, the Jerusalem pool, and this week we went to Tel Aviv to the beach to swim in the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

We’re also enjoying the rich cultural heritage of Jerusalem. It seems like there’s always some sort of production, show, musical theater, lecture going on. These next few weeks Jerusalem hosts Khutzot haYotzer, the Jerusalem arts and Crafts festival, going on in and around Sultan’s Pool and full of lots of artists, food, and music. We’re taking in the sights and sounds of Jerusalem and its history. Wednesday evening we enjoyed the night spectacular at the Tower of David, a multimedia presentation that reenacts 3000 years of Jerusalem’s history projected onto the city walls. We also learned more about the history of Jerusalem at the Time elevator, a presentation that whisks you through history. These are great interactive experiences for learning about Jewish history, that happened right where we are walking today.

And, we are reconnecting with our family’s history as well, visiting with my father’s cousin Sarah at her home in Rishon LeTzion. During my year in Israel at HUC, I was a frequent Shabbat guest for the weekend. It is amazing to me that it has been 16 years since I have seen her, and how could I have been away so long, and she looks the same to me, although she is really much older and not able to cook such a feast as she wanted to for our visit, and she apologizes for this many times. But the kids are happy with the chocolate treats and cookies and the boys settle into the kitchen and try to converse with their relatives, Sarah’s grandsons, who are dressed in their white shirts and dark pants, wearing tzitzit and kippot, while our boys are in colorful t-shirts and shorts. They get along well enough despite the fact that our boys don’t speak much Hebrew and they are too shy to try much of their English. It doesn’t matter, family is family. And then out come the photo albums and we try to decipher who is who and how everyone is related and when these pictures were taken, and I am again amazed and overwhelmed by hearing the stories, the stories of Sarah’s family and her long and arduous journey to survive and to come here to Israel and live here, where she can be free to be a Jew, to have a place to call home.

Pardes

My second study program in Israel is through the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. I have heard great things about Pardes for years (really ever since I was a rabbinic student) and promised myself that if I ever had the chance to go sit and study in Israel, Pardes would be one of the places that I would go. Pardes is a place to go and immerse yourself in the study of classical Jewish texts, like Torah, Talmud, TaNaCH (Bible), Midrash, and Halakha. They welcome both men and women, from across the Jewish spectrum, and this is still pretty unusual in the world of Jewish text study - men and women studying together, and welcoming people of diverse backgrounds.

Both Pardes and Hartman are orthodox institutions, but they are welcoming to Jews from across the spectrum. I learned on the first day that Pardes does not consider itself a pluralistic institution, they will follow halacha, but you are free to do what you want. Of course, then you might decide to become more observant as a result of your experiences there. I really appreciate the opportunity to study here with very knowledgeable teachers and to look at things from a different perspective, and again to be learning with students from diverse backgrounds. It is taking me out of my comfort zone and challenging all of us to look at things in new ways and from new perspectives. And, I’m learning text and backgrounds to text in ways that are very different from my Reform rabbinical school training. Sometimes that is a bit unsettling, and in some cases continues to be so (particularly from my feminist perspective), and other times it was like a whole new window opening on something I thought I had understood before, and now have an additional understanding. That’s what it means to truly wrestle with the text. For my part, although other Reform rabbinic colleagues have studied at Pardes before me, I had a bit of trepidation about announcing myself as a Reform rabbi, but found that people accepted me pretty much without issue.

Most of the students at Pardes tend to be younger - college students or post-college studying in the year program, but during the summer programs there are more older students. In my group there are about 1/3 my age or older, and 2/3 are twenty-somethings. This group is a mix from the US, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, and Israel. Interestingly, there are more women than men (or maybe not so much since it’s harder for women to find programs that welcome them). Many come from day school backgrounds, but there are some beginners as well. I am really energized by the fact that there are both young and older people who take their Judaism seriously enough to devote their time and money to coming to sit and study text over their summer break - it gives me hope for the future of the Jewish people. Sometimes I get very depressed over the lack of interest or knowledge within the Jewish community of North America.

The theme for this summer session is “Israel is Real”. I’m finding the approach here to be very different from Hartman, which is good, considering that the themes are very similar. Classes are also yeshiva-style, meaning that we spend some time with the teacher giving introductions and instructions for the materials, and then we sit in the bet midrash in chevruta (traditionally Jewish texts are learned aloud with a partner) and learn the texts together. During this time our teacher is in the bet midrash to offer help and assistance. My Talmud class is “Eretz Yisrael in Halacha and Aggada, through the lens of the last chapter of Ketubot; My TaNaCH class is “The Ideal State”, a view of Israel during the time of King Shlomo’s reign, and the attempt to build an ideal state, (maybe it will give us some insights about modern attempts) as we read the book of Melachim.