Jerusalem Photos

Challenging Questions

These are among the challenging questions raised in our seminars regarding the relationship between Israel and American Jewry:

• Will Israel continue to be able to energized American Jewry or will Israel increasingly become perceived as a liability?
• Can Americans be trusted to address fundamental existential issues about Israel’s security?
• Can the American Jewish community be trusted with their own existential issues?
• Do American Jews have the tools anymore to handle complexity?
• Can Americans and Israelis talk to each other as grownups?
• How do we create a relationship (between Israel and America) where you are engaged enough to fight for the Israel each of us want rather than accepting or rejection the reality that is? 

WE NEED EACH OTHER

• We need each other to help each community get through their own individual challenges.
• Israel needs Americans expansiveness and Americans need Israelis' depth.
• Israel needs the optimism of American Jewry.  
• We need to continue to view Israel as the project of the Jewish people and Zionism as the ideology of the Jewish people.

Honored to meet a great leader of the Jewish People

Photos from the Hartman Seminar

Its Complicated

Hartman Institute

Over the last days we have been immersing ourselves in the complexities of peace process and the West Bank and Jerusalem.  Brilliant lectures by Tal Becker, who has participated in many of the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and Dan Kurtzer, former US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt raised challenging and difficult issues.  A day-long bus trip among the neighborhoods weave in and out of the pre-1967 borders brought the challenges to life.

The boundaries that had defined pre-1967 Jerusalem seem to create an intricate mosaic or jigsaw puzzle.  Creating any rational separation as part of any long-term agreement seems no less than a Herculean task.  Years of negotiations have struggled with the question of how to carve out space for a contiguous Palestinian state, while acknowledging Israel’s need for safety and security and recognizing that there are blocks of land that house very significant populations of Israelis. 

It is a Gorgon knot.

             

How does that impact our efforts on campus? For me, on a most basic level, the phrase “it’s complicated” needs become our underlying awareness and perhaps the framing in which we engage students around these issues.  Students for Justice in Palestine call for full Israel disengagement from the West Bank.  But it’s complicated.  Negotiations have taken place of this issue for decades and solutions are elusive – not because the parties lack good will or because they are not motivated to find a solution – but because it is complicated. 

The issue of economic injustice of Palestinians living in the West Bank is raised.  It is easy to point a finger at Israel.  But, its complicated. Yesterday, on Mount Scopus, facing east, we saw a completed, but unused road.  The road would provide a convenient linkage between Bethlehem and Ramallah, cutting travel time dramatically and would enhance the day-to-day lives of Palestinians who live in those cities.  However, it is not the Israeli government that is preventing the opening of the road but, rather, the Palestinian Authority. Why; the status quo must not too comfortable for the Palestinian residents of the West Bank lest they become complacent and comfortable in this political reality.  There are legitimate issues of economic disparities to be raised – but it is complicated. 

There is a desire, perhaps a need to define our world in simple, bi-polar terms.  There is the Force and the Dark Side and the difference between the victim and the villain is clear for all to see.  And that is the narrative that many on campus would seek to create about Israel.  But its complicated.  Somehow, we need to elevate the quality of the dialogue and move away from finger pointing.  But black and white is easy.  Nuance is complicated.  Thus the work to be done. 

The Shalom Hartman Institute is a pluralistic center of research and education deepening and elevating the quality of Jewish life in Israel and around the world. Through our work, we are redefining the conversation about Judaism in modernity, religious pluralism, Israeli democracy, Israel and world Jewry, and the relationship with other faith communities.

It’s complicated……..

This seems to be the overriding theme of our wonderfully complex and engaging lectures and conversations about Israel and its relationship with our American Jewish community.  Donniel Hartman, Yehuda Kurtzer, Yossi Klein Halevy, Tal Becker; each present us with nuanced and profoundly thoughtful perspectives and open doors for rich, meaningful dialogue and questionings.  It is wonderfully thought provoking and we, the 15 Hillel professional participants, are being given the great gift of taking a step back and engaging deeply in issues that are central to our efforts as Jewish campus professionals and educators, and equally as important, central to our lives as Jews. There is a remarkably soul nourishing quality to our studies here.  Each of us loves and is passionate about Israel.  

Each of us has both the great honor and the great responsibility of engaging Jewish young and women on college campuses and striving to connect them to Judaism and Israel.  It is a sacred trust.  The opportunity to engage deeply and thoughtfully with complex issues in a nuanced manner is exciting and stimulating. We end each day feeling as if we have run a great marathon; we are both exhausted and energized.

Our seminars began with an overview of “David Hartman’s Torah”.  It begins with core axioms. Based on my notes, and as I understand them:

·       The individual finds him and herself within the context of community.

·       Zionism is the great project of creating a nation based on the core values that Judaism brings to the world.

·       Judaism has to be relevant to all of us in our lives.

We began our studies with each Hillel professional presenting his and her reasons for pursuing study at the Hartman Institute.  Here are mine:

To be in Israel:  Over forty years ago, upon graduating college I journeyed to Israel with the intent of making Aliyah.  I lived on Kibbutz Maayan Tzvi for six months learning Hebrew and raising turkeys.  When I returned to the states six months later I entered, what can best be described as a state of Israel withdrawal.  I ached for Israel – it’s hard to explain, but my body and soul long to be in Israel.  Since that time, I am drawn to return to Israel, following the metaphor, for my Israel “fix”.  To walk the streets of Jerusalem; to speak my stilted and limited Hebrew to a taxi driver or waiter; to meander along the promenade that links Tel Aviv to Yafo.  To breathe the air.

Integrity and Authenticity: If I am to engage my students in dialogues about Israel and if I am to fulfill my responsibility to connect them to the land and people of Israel then I must dedicate myself to learn, to understand, to explore, to question; what does it mean and what does it mean for each of us; where does it fit in with our lives.  It’s complicated; thus, let’s try to unwrap together.

Dugma (Example): As a leader of a Jewish community I must model and demonstrate a personal commitment to Israel and a responsibility to immerse myself in learning all I can.  

Delta Flight 468

I thought it was rather clever of me to procure seat 44D – in the bulkhead row, adjacent to the emergency exit door, as the vast expanse of leg room would allow me to stretch out and get a good sleep on the overnight flight.  However, it was no more than ½ hour into the flight when the open space became filled with men davening Maariv.  As I attempted to doze, my size 12 feet became unintentional targets.  Shortly after, flight attendants pushing food carts made their way past the daveners and negotiated their trays among excited, chatting Birthrighters and mothers walking sleepy toddlers up and down the aisles. For many, it wasn’t a matter of kosher food or not, but whose kashruth supervision or whether any kosher selections offered by Delta met sufficiently high standards of kashruth.

Nine hours into the flight, as the sun began to rise over the sky to the east, men began perusing the aisles whispering “Shacharit, Shacharit.  It didn’t take long before a minyan was formed in the tight space behind the bathroom that links the two sides of the plane.  The Tallises donned and tefillin were wrapped, the muttering of the morning prayers began just as the breakfast service began.  Exasperated flight attendants pleaded with the worshipers to find their seats to allow room for the cumbersome food carts.  But one does not stop the Shemoneh Esrai once it has begun and the minyan continued undeterred in the face of increasingly exasperated and strident flight attendants.  It was at 40,000 feet or so, a wonderful mini documentary on faith and devotion in the context of modern society. 

Twinkling lights appeared in the distance. The flight descended in the dark sky over Tel Aviv. The wheels touched the ground.  The passengers applauded.  Slowly, with babies, hat boxes, knapsacks and rolling luggage in hand, we all deplaned to traverse the seeming endless series of corridors and ramps at Ben Gurion Airport that is so metaphorical of our collective journey. Duly interviewed, passport stamped and luggage collected we stepped, at long last, into the cool night air of Israel.

No one would ever confuse a flight to Israel with any other airline itinerary.  The daveners, the hatboxes, the array of Shadels; handsome young men in knitted kipot headed to study in yeshivot, young children toddling down the aisles; Birthrighters taking selfies.  But of course the flight to Tel Aviv is not like any other journey. Because no matter where they came from, and no matter where their return flight will take them, the majority of passengers on Delta flight 468 to Tel Aviv were going home.