Day One of the Rest of My Life:

Reflections on Travels and Study

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

I think it is Carly Simon I have running through my head. "Anticipation..." When you have been looking forward to something for so long, sometimes, somehow, it just isn't what you pictured it to be. (The single best example I can think of where something I looked forward to so intensely really ran just the way I hoped and dreamed it would be was the day of Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah last October, one of the best days of my life.) As to this sabbatical, this time in Israel: I remember when the mental sand-dial turned over in my head... when I passed the half-way point between my last trip to Israel, and my current one. I have been counting down ever since.

And on this day, my heart is full, with so much to tell, and such gratitude about being here.

The trip was smooth: the long layover at Newark after being dropped off by my in-laws went comfortably and quickly, El Al security and check in was smooth, and the only glitch was an hour delay on the plane because the in-flight entertainment system was not working. (Glad they fixed it; watched two movies during the flight; would consider an Ambien the next time I take an 11:50pm flight.) My seat had a "wing view" so I missed that much anticipated customary first glance of land when traveling to Israel, but I've seen that before and I'll be coming back soon enough. But the feeling of standing on line at the Israeli passport control, of going to the "foreign passport" holders line, of looking around and feeling on the wrong line because it really feels like coming home... that was the same. The long walk from the plane to baggage claim went alright; the bags were there after not too long a wait. One of the ATM machines behind the bank tellers actually worked, and so I was in a cab with shekels in my pocket and listening to Moshe the taxi-driver from Ashkelon's life-story in record time; it might have been less than an hour from landing.

My pre-delivered cell phone actually had some charge left in it; I reached the landlady, and after some adventures in GPS-land, we found the apartment, in a maze of streets that look more like a warren than they did on Google Maps... The apartment is nice but a bit bare; Julie was right in guessing that "first floor" means the one 21 steps up, rather than ground level. There is an elevator that fits one person at a time -- and that's brand new, so the residents are celebrating it. I had to bring all my bags right through the middle of a shivah service; someone had passed away in the building, and the entire family clan was gathered together taking up the whole entranceway... stepping right into and through someone else's life-cycle event lent a typically intense/intimate Israeli tone to my arrival.

After a quick tour of the apartment (lots to remember: the stove works differently, some lights were out, the hot water heater is on a timer, the instructions on the washer are in Hebrew, which I can kind of handle, and the ones on the dryer are in German -- which is a bit more problematic), my cell phone rings. It is a young woman from our congregation who is finishing up a year in Israel dancing with a kibbutz-based dance company here, in Israel for only two more days and in Jerusalem for that evening. So off we went, along with a friend of hers, hitting the streets just an hour after my arrival. We discovered that the main thoroughfare of the German Colony, Emek Refaim, is just a minute from the apartment -- you have to cross what was once a train track called Derekh HaRakevet (Railroad Way), which is under current construction and transformation into a pedestrian walkway of some sort, so that was kind of torn up and unsightly. But there, steps beyond, were all the cafes, ice cream shops, hip stores, falafel joints and chocolate stores once could want. It was still lively at 10am on a Sunday night.

Whatever it took to get me out was worth it; it was wonderful to hear about my friend's year and see how at home she is here. The friend she brought with her is modern Orthodox; just as the well-known Orthodox boxer (Yuri Forman I think his name is) faces some issues in balancing his religious practice and his sport/profession, so, too, does this woman face some challenges -- complicated by expectations which apply only to women. Beyond just questions of tzni'ut (modesty) which she has somehow found a way through, other lifestyle issues came up. While the young woman from Washington was blown away that, at age 21, one of her friends is getting married, the unmarried modern Orthodox friend of the same age who was with her was describing the number of babies that her friends from home already have. All a matter of where you come from...

And then there was today.

Not sure how I managed to get up early, but I wandered out of the apartment at 7am heading towards the Hartman Institute, the site of my study program, which I had never been to before. I assume it takes around fifteen minutes walking from the apartment, but I have not done it in minimum time yet as I keep getting distracted and wandering off. This morning I found the street where we almost rented a (third floor!) apartment, and, just as described,, a bakery was right next to it. The owner waved me in, gave me hotter and fresher versions of the pastry I was pointing to, and I left tasting one item and saving the rest.

The Hartman Institute itself was... amazing. What a campus. There seems to be a high school on the grounds; today there was a confluence of at least five different programs: it was IDF day at Hartman. Apparently all high-level officers of the Israel Defense Forces now spend a day at Hartman, learning about issues of religious pluralism and democracy and tolerance and respect, from a Jewish-values based curriculum, in their service of the Jewish state. There were the 30-colleagues beginning my three-year program. There were the 30-or so colleagues finishing the last cycle of the previous program (they "graduate" tomorrow and are here for only two-weeks during their final summer). There were the rabbis who come to the open two-week program offered every summer, which also began today. And there were a group of lay leaders from North America, towards the end of their study time here, on a program of study I simply have to get some of our congregational leaders to participate in. (The lay leaders go home next week; I think a whole group of priests and ministers is replacing them; we break bread and share study time with those Christian clergy as part of our program one day down the road.)

Anyone who knows the feeling of seeing colleagues and friends come together after a long absence knows what the opening moment of greetings and surprise-encounters along with expected reunions is like. A friend and colleague from a previous region told me both about a previous mild-heart attack he had had... and how he feels as close to the people he studied with over the three years here as any other colleagues or friends.

The introductions alone of our cohort blew me away. We each were asked to speak for 5-7 minutes, which for some rabbis obviously means 10-12, but... wow. There was one man who was raised in Lakewood, NJ in a charedi (ultra-Orthodox world) and whose open exploration of pluralistic Orthodoxy is a defiant rebellion against his family. There was one woman who is called a "rosh kehillah" by her Orthodox community; the term does not translate as "rabbi" but as "head of the community," a position which she may uniquely hold in the Orthodox world. And that's just two of us...

We had three "content" based sessions today. The first was the introduction of an overarching "theme" for the summer, which will be shared in common by both the new and finishing three-year cohorts and the two-week folks (in other words, by all 150 or so rabbis who are here). That theme is Engaging Israel, and today's talk was led by Rabbi Donniel Hartman, the charismatic Orthodox son of the founder of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi David Hartman (who we heard from this evening.)

I have heard Donniel speak three times now; each occasion has been very powerful. (One such was the occasion on which he said that, were he a Reform rabbi in North America today, he probably would do interfaith marriages.) I wish I had the time to touch base on all of what he said, but, as briefly as I can: he said that they picked this theme (which you may think is an obvious one since we are here but which is unusual for the Hartman Institute to tackle) out of a sense of urgency, almost an emergency in what is going on in Diaspora-Israel relations. He spoke of the inadequacy of Israel advocacy, because it focused on facts, as if having just the right piece of data would allow someone to "win" an argument in a way to which the critics of Israel could not have a realistic response. He spoke about how all the basic stories, the narratives we tell about Israel,are problematic and even contradictory -- either Israel is here in case, God forbid, there should be another Holocaust (and, of course, you know its coming, don't you? Just wait, and then we can say we told you so!), or, that Israel is in danger, and needs support because Jews have to support each other. In the first place the argument is a solution to a problem most Diaspora Jews -- who feel totally and fully at home in their countries -- do not have, and in the second case few people see Israel on the verge of destruction. Five years of Kassam rockets, Donniel said, killed fewer people than in the first five seconds of Operation Cast Led. That does not mean the Kassam rockets did not need a military response, only that Israel's response was that of a country in a position of strength, not weakness. We are telling the wrong stories, and substituting facts for feelings and we wonder why there is a disconnect.

Can we not, Hartman asked, develop a new language, a Jewish-values based language for what Israel means and why it is important? (And he says this knowing, of course, the limits to how broad an appeal Jewish values-language will have to a North American Jewish community that in its majority unaffiliated lifestyle has often evinced little evidence of taking Judaism seriously.) (He managed to state this in a descriptive way; putting people down for what they do not do was not his main point and seems antithetical to his overall approach). He stated the need for a Jewish and democratic state -- clearly commenting that if we can't have both "I'm outta here" -- and the importance for viewing this young country as a work in progress. The five essential issues we will be tackling in the days to come are: 1) the question of peoplehood, because if the concept of Jewish peoplehood exits the value-system of Jews -- and it might in a North American its-all-about-what-works-for-me individualistic environment this could happen -- then Israel is irrelevant. Here the challenge is, frankly, most pointed for Reform Jews, who once stated -- wrongly, I believe, and since corrected -- that Judaism was a faith but not a folk. If Judaism becomes a private experience only, however, any special relationship with Israel becomes essentially meaningless. 2) the question of sovereignty, 3) the challenge of power -- what is a Jewish Torah of power, what does it mean to use power in a Jewish way. 4) the challenge to power (the concept, coming from Europe but spreading beyond it, that the use of power is inherently evil, and when one returns to powerlessness -- and only then -- will one have returned to the domain of morality, and 5) since Zionism was, at its core, an ideology -- what are some of the " big ideas" that Jews can bring to our enterprise of sovereignty.

Then we had lunch. By the time our cohort got there the soldiers were finishing up, but earlier groups got to interact with the IDF officers.

This afternoon we had the first of four sessions in the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism, about which I know... very little, frankly. It was fascinating, even if the opening passage did focus on a poetic call to wake up, out of the slumber of ordinary thinking. This was either a brilliant or unfortunate choice for a group of jet-lagged students.

Finally this evening we heard from the founder of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi David Hartman. We studied a Talmudic argument regarding bringing about redemption between one view which says redemption requires repentance and good deeds, and the other that it means just surviving, and watched that argument play out throughout Jewish history. Israel is, Hartman the elder said, an essential act of belief in the idea that things can change, that redemption is about attitude and action, that the concept of Israel, the reality of it, is an affirmation of the category of the possible, the idea that tomorrow really can be different from today.

Taking all this in clearly called for ice cream. And we're back at it tomorrow morning, in a traditional form of "paired" learning called "chevruta study."

If you made it through this far, I hope you have enjoyed this "taste" of my time here, and I hope to have the koach (the energy) to do this again tomorrow night. I called Arie, our tour-guide for the Temple trip, and at 9pm tomorrow he is free; apparently we will be watching a soccer game tomorrow at a downtown bar. Well-earned drink after all these high ideas and ideals, I would say.

My thanks to all of you -- all of you -- who have any part in my being here...

With my best,

From Jerusalem,

Michael Feshbach