Strength in Numbers
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When the White House asks you to call, you call, even if they don’t tell you why you’re calling. It is, after all, the White House.
Don’t get me wrong — I had an idea as to why. With the falling out between much of the Jewish community and President Barack Obama after his speech on the Middle East on May 19, why else, besides crisis management, would the highest office in the land organize a conference call solely for Jewish community newspapers across the country?
So I dialed in, rather unexcitedly, on the morning of May 27, to have my suspicions confirmed, as I listened to top White House security advisers Dennis Ross and Steve Simon clarify the president’s statements. Ross did most of the speaking, with talking points that included: “We have to have a peace agreement that is based upon borders and security arrangements that do not leave Israel vulnerable or unable to defend itself by itself”; “efforts to delegitimize Israel will continue to be something that we reproach”; and “we see negotiations as the only way to resolve this conflict.”
Yawn. Give me a shout when there’s actual news to report.
I admit I got caught up in the how-dare-you-Obama hoopla. For the duration of the weekend after his speech, I’d made up my mind I was voting Republican in 2012 — and I’m a Democrat. A return to the 1967 borders is absurd.
But, unlike what was reported, that’s not what the president said. Ross explained: “The two sides will negotiate, taking into account the realities of the last 44 years and the different demographic realities and the needs of each side. When they do that, by definition it means that you have a border that’s different than the one that existed in 1967.” The ’67 borders will be a starting point for negotiations.
The conference call got me to take a second look at the speech, which I hadn’t watched live. I’d only skimmed a transcript, and I’d gathered the rest of my information from various media reports. Mistake, mistake, mistake.
I went back and read the transcript carefully. The first thing I noticed? Out of its 10-and-a-half pages, only two were devoted to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Sometimes I find it easy to forget that there are problems in the Middle East that don’t relate to Israel.
My second observation was that Obama wasted very little energy criticizing Israel. At least 95 percent of the time he spent on the Israeli-Arab conflict was used to chide Palestinians, praise Israel or divulge neutral information. This tells me that while Obama is aware that Israel is not perfect and needs to make changes, he knows who is doing the bulk of the instigating.
Am I still wary about the 1967 borders statement? Without a doubt. Even if Israel ends up getting a fair shake in a two-state solution, the breakdown in communications that allowed the president’s message to be so badly misconstrued is nothing short of an embarrassment to the Oval Office.
But before we react to potential borders, let’s wait to see the map. If we as a community can cause enough of a ruckus over one sentence in a lengthy speech that the White House has to set up a conference call to clarify, imagine what the administration will do if we don’t like the map. That strength in numbers makes me feel a lot more secure than anything the White House can say.
And for crying out loud, if you haven’t seen the entire speech yet, you can read the transcript here.
31 May, 2011 > Comment - 0 -
Conflicting agendas
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“Israel was amazing, but...”
Since I returned to the U.S. nearly a month ago, that’s what I’ve found myself telling people who ask me how my Birthright trip went.
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I loved the people, I felt an amazing connection to the land, and I feel more Jewishly connected than ever. For the first time in my life, I can say with absolute certainty how I define myself as a Jew. That’s no small accomplishment.
But I would be foolish to think that any organization would, without an agenda, send young Jews to Israel free of charge. For Mayanot, my provider, that agenda was twofold: Connect young adults to Eretz Yisrael and marry Jewish, marry Jewish, marry Jewish.
For the record, I’m not marrying Jewish. I will, however, raise my children Jewish (“My first Christmas,” Jewish News, Jan. 7).
I understand the divisiveness of the intermarriage issue within the Jewish community. Let’s leave the debate about whether I’m fulfilling my responsibility to further the Jewish people for another day. I’m happy to have that conversation with anyone and everyone who might want to discuss it. I would hope, however, that any stranger, acquaintance or friend — any person who I’ve only known for a matter of days — would have the decency to wait for me to approach them with such a personal, sensitive subject, and not the other way around.
While in Israel, I was not extended that courtesy by Mayanot. More insulting, when I was approached, it was done as if I hadn’t put 10 minutes of thought into the subject, when in reality, I’d agonized over it daily for the better part of a year.
Littered among these unsolicited talks were lectures about how the Judaism is the only religion in the world that is decreasing in population. These were often followed by an explanation about how a child can’t be born Jewish if the mother isn’t Jewish.
There were quite a few people on my trip, born to Jewish mothers, who, even after 10 days in Israel, don’t know aleph from bet, kosher from tref, crackers from matzah. My future children will have a bris or simchat bat, go to religious school, become b’nai mitzvah, get involved with Jewish youth groups and hopefully, one day, make it to Israel. Yet some will consider them less Jewish than those who know nothing about their roots, but happen to have a Jewish mother. Others won’t consider them Jewish at all.
If we’re so worried about our shrinking population, this all seems, to put it nicely, counterproductive.
As a Jew, there’s nothing that frustrates me more — or that’s more marginalizing to our community — than Jews telling other Jews that they’re not Jewish. A free trip to Israel will never change that.
So, yeah, Israel was amazing, but...
01 Mar, 2011 > Comment - 5 -
Celebrating from the mountaintop
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Wow. What an amazing 10 days.
Tuesday morning we woke up early and headed to the Knesset (Israeli parliament), where we took a tour and listened to a lecture given specifically for us by a member of the Knesset. That was the lowlight of my trip. Nothing in particular happened to ruin that experience, just that the speaker was dry and the tour was dull. The fact that the Knesset was the least interesting place I visited in a week-and-a-half speaks volumes about my trip and the incredible time that I had, and I’m thrilled that I got to see it.
In the afternoon, we went south to the Negev and spent the night in a Bedouin tent and learned about Bedouin hospitality. The dinner of chicken, rice, corn on the cob and pitas and hummus was hands down our best meal there.
Wednesday, before our midnight flight back to New York City, we rode camels, hiked Mount Masada and swam in the Dead Sea.
It was fun to float in the Dead Sea, but I thought it was overrated. It was dirty and over-commercialized with resorts and factories.
Masada, however, was one of the highlights of the trip. Just like I had no idea people still lived in the Old City of Jerusalem, I was unaware that there was an ancient Jewish village at the top of Masada. The history was awesome to learn, that after Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans in 70 C.E., a handful Jews fled there to avoid slavery.
What’s more, seven people on our trip who had never celebrated their b'nai mitzvah (one guy and six girls) went through the ceremony at the top of Masada. It was incredible to share in that experience with them, and to see the joy in their faces after their accomplishment.
Now that the trip is over, I’m looking forward to reflecting on my time away and coming to terms with what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown. I’m not sure if my period of reflection will take a few days, a few months or even a few years, but I’m certain that Israel helped me grow both Jewishly and non-Jewishly. One thing, however, I know for sure: My first trip to Israel will not be my last.
Bar mitzvah boy Andrew White celebrates on top of Mount Masada.
10 Feb, 2011 > Comment - 0 -
Day of pride, day of sadness
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If Friday was the most amazing day I’ve ever had being a Jew, today was the most difficult.
This morning we visited Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem and saw the graves of Theodore Herzl, Yitzhak Rabin, and Golda Meir, among others. These were interesting sites to see, but the most moving part of the experience was when soldiers from our Birthright trip spoke up and told us stories of their friends who had been killed in the line of duty.
Omri, one of the soldiers on our trip, told the story of how his best friend fell. Tearing up, he told us that today was his friend’s birthday – he would have been 25.
Our tour guide, Kuti, who is in his early 40s, spoke about a good friend of his from yeshiva who was on the last plane of Jews from Iran to Israel before the Iranian revolt in 1979. He was the only member of his family to get out of Iran, and when the students left yeshiva every other weekend to go home for Shabbat, Kuti’s friend and the other Iranian refugees at the yeshiva would stay there because they had no family (except if they went home with a friend). When he was killed in battle, Iran granted his mother a 30-day leave of absence to attend the funeral. She couldn’t defect, Kuti explained, because the Iranian government was holding her family hostage while she was abroad.
That afternoon we went to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. The experience was less intense than our trip to the cemetery, I think because I had been drained of most of my emotions before we arrived. We spent four hours there and heard a survivor speak, and I learned a lot of history, but it took a back seat to that morning’s stories from the soldiers who have become my friends. Tomorrow, they leave our group and return to active duty. It’s frightening to come to the realization that they could end up buried in that cemetery in the not-too-distant future. But it’s also comforting to know that they are here in Israel fighting for our homeland, and that as long as they are here, we will always have a home away from home.
This will be my last blog post from Israel. Tomorrow night, we’re sleeping in a Bedouin tent in the south, and Wednesday night I’m flying the redeye back to New York City. I’m planning to write about those experiences either on the plane or during my 12-hour layover at JFK, so more to come, but not for a couple of days.
We visited the grave of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem.
07 Feb, 2011 > Comment - 1 -
Always connected
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Maybe I’m naïve, but until Sunday (Feb. 6) I had no idea people actually lived inside the borders of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was incredible to see the houses, apartments and businesses that exist in the narrow alleyways.
We had the opportunity to explore the archaeological remains of the Temple, too, and that was amazing to see, but for the second time on this trip the highlight of my day was the Kotel.
All of the men in my group put on tefillin together, and then went to the wall to pray and leave a note behind. I’m not a particularly religious person, and I know that this trip is organized to bring us all closer to Judaism, but I finally understand what it means when people say that it is much easier to be Jewish in Israel than it is in the Diaspora. Judaism is the norm here – it is part of everyday life – as opposed to the Diaspora, where we have to seek it out.
When we were all finished praying, we all exchanged hugs with the understanding that even though we won’t be able to get to know everyone well on the trip because it is so short, we’re going through an experience together that will, on some level, connect us for the rest of our lives.
The men in my group all put on tefillin together at the Western Wall.
07 Feb, 2011 > Comment - 2 -
Direct antenna to God
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It’s safe to say that I will never experience another day as pivotal to my Judaism as Friday.
That morning we went to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where we watched a video on how Israel was created. Then, we went into the room where David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that Israel declared itself a Jewish state. The room, left as it was when the meeting was held almost 63 years ago, with microphones in place and placards denoting where every politician sat, along with two Israeli flags hung vertically on the wall behind the podium, was amazing in itself. But the most moving part was when a museum curator played a recording of Ben-Gurion’s declaration as we sat in the audience and listened. That was followed by Hatikvah, and I’m told that the soldiers in our group stood at attention and sang along. I didn’t see this for myself because I was in my own world taking in my surroundings and fighting back tears.
That evening, we had Shabbat at the Kotel. All that night and into the next morning, many people asked me what I thought of my first time there. My response was always, “I don’t have the words to describe it.” But during Shabbat lunch the next day, a yeshiva student (we were split up into smaller groups and had lunch at the homes of Israeli families) asked me not what I thought, but how I felt, which was a question I had not yet considered. After thinking for a while, I realized (and told him) that when I touched the wall and prayed, it was the first and only time in my life that I felt I had a direct antenna to God.
There are five days left on this trip, which is still plenty of time for me to learn and grow as a Jew. But either one of those experiences in themselves would have made my time in Israel well worth the journey.
