Tanya Gutsol edits the Russian language blog Jewlicious.ru. She is a staff person at UMBC Hillel, a veteran Taglit-Birthright Israel madrichah, an alumni of ROI120 and a big fan of fine shwarma.

As we get older our opinions and perspectives on life evolve and develop. Things that seemed normal during childhood become completely bizarre during adulthood. Despite our commonly stated intention to not act like our parents, we still inevitably moderate and alter our behavior as we age. With respect to Israel, in my life there has always been a thin line between what is deemed weird and what is deemed normal.

What’s Normal?
- I was born in the 80s in the Soviet Union, commonly acknowledged as and without a doubt the best country in the world!
- My Mom stood in huge lines to get food staples. Twice a month she could get meat. Food was obtained using special tickets. The tickets looked cool because they were pink and square! Was the meat kosher? We had no idea what “kosher” meant.
- My Grandmother used to take me to watch performances at the puppet theatre. She would tell me that the theatre reminds her of a place she used to go to when she was a child with her Mother and Father on Friday nights. But instead of “puppet theatre” the place was called “synagogue” and instead of performances, they had “services.” I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about but it sounded interesting – like a fairy tale!
- Travelling to the train station in order to bid farewell to friends and family who were moving to quasi-mystical places like the United States and Canada. Soon they will be able to drink Coca Cola and visit Disneyland every single day! Then there are the ones moving to Germany. That’s not so far away and they tell us that they never have to work again as the government pays for everything! Too bad it’s not the same at home. And what about this Israel place? All I know is it’s hot. Everyone cries a lot. We’re always both happy and sad and no one is certain when we will all meet again. In 2 months I’ve been here eight times. It was my Grandfather’s birthday and around the table it felt like there was no family left.

What’s Weird?
- After years of unemployment, my Mom finally got a job. It was with some new Jewish community organization. Mom asked me not to tell anyone.
- I got a “Happy New Year” card in the middle of Fall. I thought that there must be something wrong with our postman but then it turned out this was some Jewish holiday. I decided that I need to look into this further. My school teacher suggested I use this thing called the “Internet.” I could find answers to all my questions as long as I knew the “web address.” Technology merely added to my questions. Great.
- By the way, did you know that green and picturesque Kiev park Babi Yar, notorious site of the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust, where 33, 771 Jews of Kiev were shot in one day, has a sign at the entrance that reads “Park of Culture and Recreation?” Nice.
- A friend of a friend told me I could go to Israel for free with some group called Taglit-Birthright Israel. Right. First of all, that’s impossible. Secondly, that’s really kind of random. And thirdly… well, I went.
- Apparently Jewish women in America can and do wear kippahs. I can sort of understand the reasoning, but my eyes still need to get used to it. I am also now finally able to say or hear the word “Jew” without flinching. I can even say it without whispering. Jew, Jew, Jew! Nice.
- There are symbols on food products in supermarkets all across the US that signify that the food is suitable for consumption by Jews who keep Kosher. Not just in Brooklyn or other places where there are many Jews, but everywhere! And it’s not some kind of secret either – even non-Jews know what it means. Interesting.

What’s Awesome?
- Upon my return from Israel, I found a box of Matzah on my desk at work. My co-workers had been eating it with cheese and sausages while admiring the “damn good cracker.” I had no idea who left it on my table until our new driver winked at me while showing me his Star of David necklace – the one that looked the same as the one I was wearing that I had just purchased in Israel.
- I am going to LEAD a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip this winter! Me!
- One of the trip participants, a van Wilder type – king of all parties, the biggest fan of drinking, smoking pot and flirting with girls, announced to me that as a result of his trip he was joining the IDF. He wanted to move to Israel and be a Doctor. He had to move out of his house and stay with his sister because his Mother was furious at his decision. A few days later he booked his flight.
- I ran into a friend of mine from Ukraine in Jerusalem. She told me she originally came to Israel with one goal in mind – to make out with an Israeli soldier. She then introduced me to her children and her husband. Let me tell you that wig really suited her and her Hebrew is great. She looked different, but definitely happy.
- I met an old woman in a small town in the Ukraine. We were at her house as part of a Passover project with American students who were visiting the Former Soviet Union. When we sang Dayenu to her, she recognized the song and squeezed my hand hard. She begged us to take her with us. It didn’t matter where we were going because she had no one left and was the only Jew in the place. We served as a reminder to her that despite everything, the Jews had survived and thrived.
- I’ve become reacquainted with friends of my family. We lost touch a long time ago and then rediscovered each other online. One of their twin girls born in tel Aviv shares the same name as my Mom. How random!

What’s Cute?
- I called my Dad long distance from the US to discuss with him the upcoming ROI conference I was about to attend. I was nervous about the new people I was going to meet, the places to which I’d have to travel, the horrors of flying with Israir (God help me!), the ravages of the hot sun on my delicate Ukrainian skin, my lack of clothes, blah blah blah. He listened attentively and then calmly told me not to worry. “Israel loves those who love Israel. I think by now it’s clear that you really love Israel, right? So just stop, calm down and relax.” So I listened to him and stopped worrying about the details and stupid worries. I was going to Israel again. That’s all that mattered. I was just being nervous, the way you are prior to a date with some hot guy you’re really in love with. Wait a minute… my Father isn’t even Jewish. How did he know??

What’s Eternal?
- I was writing my requests, prayers and messages of thanks onto various scraps of paper. Spamming the Western Wall is so much fun. I closed my eyes as I got closer and silenced my mind prior to my prayer: Спасибо, за то, что привел меня сюда вновь! Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Why was I here again? I knew I wasn’t going to get an immediate response, especially not in Russian. But I knew I’d likely get it at some point. And the response would represent something balanced precariously between “weird” and “normal.”

WTF?
- Are you still reading this? Wow. Hopefully you found something resonant in my words. Thank you Israel for everything you’ve given me. Happy Birthday!

David Elcott, author and teacher, led a progressive pro-Israel advocacy organization and represented the AJC in its interfaith work.

I was fourteen. 1964. Israel was very young and I went with a small group of kids from LA to live for ten weeks on a Youth Aliyah agricultural school near Rehovot. I was Israel infatuated, my mother wanted to go to Palestine from Germany. She settled for saving her life by getting to England and then the U.S. Israel was homecoming and life transforming. I woke up mornings and cleaned the chicken coops. There is nothing pretty about shoveling chicken shit, but I felt that my hands were the hands of God, redeeming the soil and the soul of my people, a Fackenheimian re-entry into history, completing the unfinished work of the exodus, Mt. Sinai and desert wanderings. The land was the promise and I its faithful lover. The song was true, “we came to this land to construct and be reconstructed by it.” My experience was salvational.

By 1968 when I returned to live and study, I was torn between the ecstasy of victory and the dawning awareness of oppression. I began meeting Arabs who called themselves Palestinians. I heard an Israeli Arab poet talk about the soul wrenching identity issues he faced, and I visited impoverished and angry Arab villages. During the War of Attrition in the 70s, I spent time on a kibbutz on the Jordan River experiencing nightly bombings and running for cover when machine-gunned from the Jordanian side. It was there that I, along with my Israeli kibbutz buddies, began thinking about a Palestinian state and the treatment of all those who do not buy absolutely the policies of the State of Israel. As a Zionist committed to justice for my people in our own land, I sought a righteous Israel that would be a “light unto nations.

I suppose as with all passionate love affairs, the poles are extreme, infuriating, tragic, pain knotting, filled with rage and disappointment and then renewed love and exaltation. The same prophet Jeremiah who in his fury declares the utter destruction and desolation of Jerusalem and its people turns to adoringly tells how a young bride Israel lovingly and faithfully joined God in the untiled hot desert. Israel today is the miracle of rebirth, a spiritual, material and cultural oasis of my people’s renaissance, thrilling me to tears in its beauty, its creativity and commitment to justice and compassion. Israel today is a relentless occupier, taking land from the poor, “othering” those it has conquered, oppressing the chained widow and the impoverished orphan while thrusting away Jews and Gentiles whom its rabbis deem not kosher.

I am in love. The joys and the unbearable pains, the hope and the fear all core to the relationship. The slightly altered blessing I recite, “May the merciful bless the State of Israel, that it can become the flowering of our redemption.”

Rabbi Menachem Creditor is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, CA and the founder of ShefaNetwork.org. He blogs at his at rabbicreditor.blogspot.com/

We choose our destinies. Exilic wandering, for the modern Jew, is a choice.

As Reb Chaim of Volozhin teaches in his magisterial Nefesh HaChayiim (1824), “And this is the Torah of being a person…One should never say in their heart, God forbid, ‘For what am I and what is my power to enact anything through my insignificant and and deeds? Understand, know, and set in your heart that every detail of every deed, word, and thought is not lost. Every one of them ascends to its own Source to cause an effect in the highest Heavens. (NH 1:4)” No act is neutral, and we can have a cosmic impact by simply thinking differently.

This is a difficult concept. So much happens in the world. Cyclones and social injustice and all the other headlines combine to overwhelm even the prophets among us. Can we reasonably believe in our power to heal the world? Is ‘Hope’ an illusion? Rabbi Israel Morgenstern of Pilov is quoted as having taught: “One who does not want to see the truth will not see it, even if it demonstrated to him with clarity. Their eyes are sealed from ever seeing it.”

It is time to open our eyes once more and let in the very light which will allow us to illuminate the world. What does the modern State of Israel represent? It is the home of the Jewish soul. It is a place of wonder and encounter, of desert and mountain. It is not a vacation spot – it is the setting for Jewish pilgrimage, where we set out for our own sakes. Have you seen Israel? Is the most you’ve seen news articles? Then you haven’t seen it yet. Every one of us has the ability to choose our own destiny, to let the words of Jewish Tikvah, hope, permeate our every pore. To choose a powerful and empowered Jewish fate.

The words of HaTikvah, with which I close, beg every Jew to choose to see, to yearn, to become – to actualize the deepest power of their soul. May we all feel that blessed, soon and in our days.

As long as the Jewish spirit yearns deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, staring toward Zion,
Then our two-thousand-year-old hope will not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Am Yisrael Chai! The People of Israel Lives!

Lee Meyerhoff Hendler speaks and teaches about family philanthropy. The author of The Year Mom Got Religion, she is also the principal writer of Freedom’s Feast, a thanksgiving celebration for the American people, available at freedomsfeast.us. A co-chair of the Institute for Christian Jewish Studies, she serves on several of the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds.

Sometime near the turn of the 20th century I almost became a sabra. My great grandfather, Oscar Meyerhoff, traveled with three male relatives to what was then Palestine from his tiny village near Kiev. He hoped to become a settler, then send for the rest of the family. Oscar was not afraid of hard work. He could wield a scythe, butcher a cow, roll a barrel, manhandle a plow. But after traveling to Haifa, a city of “desolation, terrible swamps and primitive people” and considering Trans-Jordan, they returned to Rishon LeZion. a fledgling colony run with an iron fist by the Rothschilds. Then his strapping young brother-in-law caught typhus and died. His father-in-law, distraught and depressed, returned immediately to Russia. Oscar wanted to stay but his cousin found conditions so discouraging that he too argued to leave. “People are still making a living in Russia, and if it gets worse we can always go to America.” Besieged with letters from home once his father-in-law returned, Oscar acceded to family pressure. “What was the use in struggling there when we were still making a fine living…so their advice was that I come right back and later on we would see.” We would see….

Nearly 50 years later, my grandfather, Joseph Meyerhoff, returned one year after the founding of the state of Israel for his first trip to the newly established homeland of the Jewish people. What he saw began a 30 year long relationship with the Palestine Economic Corporation during which he invested and helped to raise millions of the infrastructure dollars the new nation so desperately needed. Grandpa, a first generation American, had become a successful real estate developer. Oscar and Hannah may have chosen America but they transmitted a love of Israel to my grandfather who participated proudly and resolutely in the holocaust to the founding of the state of Israel redemption drama of his and my parents’ generation. I imagine that the work was sanctifying after the Shoah. But I don’t know. I wasn’t even born yet.

Here’s what I do know. I am almost 60 ( like her) but I’ve had it easy by comparison. A privileged and relatively easy life. Not free from pain; but a relative stranger to strife. I am… the great-granddaughter of a Ukrainian Jew who went to Palestine but eventually chose America… the granddaughter of a successful real estate developer turned philanthropist for whom Israel was a consuming passion from the moment of her founding… the daughter of parents who continued to extend that legacy through libraries, cultural centers, educational programs, political and intellectual exchange programs… and the funder, along with my father, siblings and cousins, of numerous projects and programs that seek to educate others about her complexity and to foster learning, diversity, civility and a rich cultural life for all who live there.

They passed it on to us. This country matters. It must be there even if no one else wants it. There’s a difference between want and need. The world needs Israel and so do we. We need a home so that we can make the fullest contribution of which we are capable. We won’t always get it right but we’ll try. That’s what we do.

Jews choose life not death. Blessing not curse.

And in 60 years that’s mostly what we have done. Not all the time. Not every day. Not every year. But more often than most countries. And against greater odds.

I am proud of the endless lists of Israeli contributions in science, medicine, technology, agriculture, culture, literature. I am proud of the dissent we allow and the open press we encourage. I am proud of the ethical uneasiness we live with–the knowledge that we don’t always do the right thing and must deal with it when we don’t. I am proud of our anger, fear, creativity, anxiety, sorrow, joy, and our unabated restlessness. I am proud that we insist on living with it all instead of pretending that we are having a polite cocktail party where the goal is to make sure that everyone has a pleasant time and noone remembers anything.

I love the noise of Israel: the sing-song of the shuq, the babble on the streets of Tel Aviv, the raucous sound of three Jews with four opinions or, as Abba Eban once put it when speaking of the Knesset, “Everything has already been said, but not everybody has said it.” I love that I have the continuing privilege to be a part of the uneasiness and the noise.

I don’t have to live there to do it (although it’s easier and in some ways more legitimate to participate in the noise than the uneasiness as an episodic visitor.) I just have to believe in the privilege and the underlying premise. Choose life, not death. Blessing not curse. I am convinced that this belief and the conviction to act on it is the reason we are celebrating this moment. I believe that no matter what we must never forfeit this conviction, for it is what makes Israel the light she is always becoming.

Antonio Villaraigosa is Mayor of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, where I was born and raised, has a special relationship with the State of Israel. Despite the thousands of miles between us, we share so much – connections of culture and commerce, and ties of blood and family.

We are people who have made our deserts bloom; who have been strengthened and sustained by our immigrants; who take pride in our flourishing ports; who share the values of pluralism and democracy; and who strive for peace, prosperity and a brighter future for our children.

Los Angeles and Israel are both homes of creativity and bastions of innovation - places defined by a deep respect for diversity, a longstanding belief in what’s possible, and the fervent hope, dream and commitment to build a peaceful tomorrow.

Here in Los Angeles, we celebrate the state of Israel and our own Israeli community in a variety of ways. We host the largest showcase of Israeli films in the United States and we have built a strong relationship with our sister city, Eilat. Thousands of Israeli students of all ages have attended and enriched our schools and synagogues, and Israeli security specialists have come to the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport to help protect airline passengers and foreign visitors. Each year, the city’s Israel Festival brings together over 40,000 people in the largest celebration of Israeli culture anywhere. And, overcoming the obstacles faced by so many immigrant groups, the vitality and vibrancy of L.A.’s Israeli families never diminish and only grow stronger every day.

Israel’s 60 years have been shaped by the resilience, strength and devotion of its people. Through criticism and condemnation, the Jewish state has stood up for the values and principles that have long made the Jewish people a “light unto the nations.” Israel’s citizens have kept faith with the hope – “ha-tikvah” – that they might live as a free nation, in peace and security, in the land of their ancestors. I know the City of Los Angeles and our people will continue to benefit from a close relationship with the State of Israel long into the future.

John Leonard currently lives in the Queen City - Charlotte, NC. You can read about his three years in Israel at Nun Bet.

My relationship with Israel began in a wooden church pew in a small North Carolina town. As a boy growing up in a conservative Baptist family, I was at church at least three times a week: twice Sunday and once on Wednesday night. My black, faux leather-bound, zip-up childhood Bible had pictures and maps of the Holy Land. Bored in the church services, I would flip through these images and imagine what that foreign land must be like. Little did I know that about twenty years later I would be able to see these place in person.

In 2002 I was hanging out with friends in a dance club in Chapel Hill, NC. I saw a cute guy on the dance floor and approached him. We shouted to each other over the loud music but mainly we communicated with our eyes and bodies. He asked me how old I was and not believing me, he asked to see my ID. I was 25. Later in the evening my friends and I were walking to my car. I was telling them about a boy I’d met that I though was cute. Just then I heard someone shouting and saw them running toward my car, “John! John!” It was Y, the guy I had met, and he had written his email address on a tiny slip of paper. I still have that paper - somewhere.

My relationship with Y bloomed. He was Israeli and studying at a local university. I lived in a nearby city. Eventually we moved in together and I had my first chance to visit Israel. When he returned to Israel for a school break, I traveled to visit him there. We didn’t travel together so I arrived in Israel all by myself and half asleep from the long flight but totally petrified. This was back when they used the old terminal at Ben Gurion airport and you got bused from the plane to the terminal. Y drove me from the airport to his family’s home in Pizgat Ze’ev. I was gobsmacked as we drove on the highway past beautiful scenery and checkpoints where people younger than me were armed with automatic guns.

When Y finished his Ph.D., he went on the job market both in the US and in Israel. He landed a job in Israel working for the Supreme Court. I decided to leave my life in the US and move with him to Israel. I sold just about everything and came to Israel with what would fit in two big suitcases.

We settled into Jerusalem life - Y went to work and I went to ulpan. It’s hard to find the words to describe how difficult this was for me. The first two weeks sort of felt like vacation. Everything was still novel. However as the weeks went on, I began to feel very isolated. More and more I realized the difficulties of starting over in a foreign land. Over time this changed however. There were benchmarks like when I was able to determine the value of something in shekels without having to convert it in my head to US dollars. Or the day I realized that I now knew how much it should cost to get just about everywhere in the city in a taxi - so I could tell when the driver was trying to screw me. Or when I would sing along to a song in Hebrew on the radio and I knew what the song was about. Or when something happened on the news and I understood most of the story.

One of the neatest things about my time in Israel is that I could actually live there. I am not Jewish. However, the State of Israel recognized my committed same-sex, unmarried relationship with Y as a legitimate one. There was a process (a long drawn-out one) for me to become a legal permanent resident in Israel - with health and social security benefits just like everyone else.

Y’s project at the Supreme Court ended and we moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I LOVE TEL AVIV! The glorious Mediterranean weather suited me well. I got a good job working in retail and used Hebrew every day with the customers. It wasn’t perfect, but going from zero to conversational Hebrew in two years was nothing short of miraculous.

Eventually my relationship with Y changed and we decided to go in separate directions. I decided to move back to the US. Now after almost a year back in the States, I look at my time in Israel as a life-changing blessing. Somehow even those times when I felt helpless and hopeless in Israel - like crying in the grocery store because I couldn’t tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner - have made me stronger and more open. I’ve learned to ask for help. I learned that the world isn’t always hard, cold, and out to get you. My time in Israel helped me to become flexible and to accept life on life’s terms. So for this gay, goy boy from the foothills of North Carolina, Israel really became holy land.

Leah Koenig is the Editor of The Jew & The Carrot: Hazon’s blog on Jews, food, and sustainability. She’s also a freelance writer and a serious foodie. Check out her other work on her website.

I’ve only ever been to Israel once and that was last year at the age of 25. I’m not exactly sure what took me so long, though it was probably some combination of not being particularly involved in mainstream Jewish activities as a teenager, my parents’ fear of the “situation” in the Middle East, and my own complicated emotions around and relationship to he holy land.

But last year, I was given the opportunity to go to Israel for free - no not through Birthright Israel - but through Hazon’s Israel Bike Ride. The deal: if I staffed the Ride (lugging suitcases, setting up rest stops, attending to riders, etc.) then Hazon (my employer) would fund my trip. Sweet.

As a foodie and food writer, it seemed like every piece of advice I got from friends in the weeks before I left for Israel was food-related. “You must go to this hole-in-the-wall falafel stand in Jerusalem,” or “You have to go to try the most amazing hummus at…,” or “Israel has the absolute best cheese ever” - that sort of thing. A friend of mine who studied at Hebrew University recounted her weekly trips to the shuk where her lunch consisted of a seedless cucumber, a fresh, red tomato, and a hunk of bread. “That’s all I needed,” she wistfully recalled.

By the time I boarded the plane I was starving. I was going to get my taste of the land of milk and honey.

So, did Israel taste good? I’ll spare you from the typical “hyperbolic trance” that people seem to fall into when talking about Israel. Because, in all honestly, not everything was THE ABSOLUTE BEST EVER! For example I wasn’t completely blown away by the shuk’s selection. Yes, the vegetables there were gorgeous and fresh, but I’ve been there done that many times over at any number of the farmers’ markets in the States. And the restaurants were tasty, but come on. I live in New York where even the bad restaurants are good.

Still, much of Israel was really really delicious. I loved how so many culinary traditions - European, Russian, Moroccan, Syrian, Italian and American to name a few - converged and overlaped across Israel’s homes, restaurants, and cafes. I swooned over the loquat trees - fat with ripe orange fruit on my friend’s organic farm. I was equally delighted and frightened by the buffet spreads at Israel’s hotels, where shakshuka and gooey chocolate cake were considered equally appropriate breakfast items. And yes, the crispy green falafel covered in pickled beets and - omg french fries! - which I sampled at a hole-in-the-wall joint in Jerusalem, was out of this world good. Like tahini dripping down my chin good.

Of course, my trip to Israel was certainly about much more than the food - it was about visiting the Wall, jumping into the falls at Ein Gedi, biking 20 miles outside of verdant Jerusalem into an entirely different and arid eco-system, squirting water guns at parched bike riders along their route, and sleeping outside at Kibbutz Ketura where the desert wind whistled me to sleep. Still, connecting to the food in Israel was my own way of kissing the “holy land’s” soil.

Leah Jones is a writer and occasional talker based in Chicago where she pens the blog Accidentally Jewish. The former stand-up comic is now the Digital-Culture Evangelist in Edelman Digital and she’s an active ROInik.

March 11, 2004

I’m working in London where I manage an international student residence. We have 24 hour security and the guys who work nights and weekends are all Israeli. The weekend after the bombings in Madrid, I walk with my Spanish students through the streets of London to the consulate. There we light candles, leave notes and walk back with the Spanish flag between. “Todos somos Madrilenos.”

One of my Israeli guys says to me, “Leah, if we stopped working every time a bomb went off in Israel, we wouldn’t get things done. This is life.”

July 2005

One of my closest friends is back from his annual family trip to Israel. We are in his car, driving to dinner and he gives me a souvenir. It’s is wrapped in that perfect way gifts are wrapped in Jerusalem shops and is a kiddush cup. I’d asked him for one, it was the only major item missing from my household Judaica that I started collecting when I decided to convert to Judaism.

Around the base was a Hebrew phrase and with my very beginning Hebrew skills, I sounded it out. I’m sure it was painful for him to listen to me butcher his first language, but I was triumphant at the end. “Ha… ga…. fen!”

March 2006

Just four months after my conversion and I was in Israel. I went with a group from the JUF in Chicago to TelAviv1. Two nights in Jerusalem for Shabbat at the David Citadel, then a mad dash to Tel Aviv for the conference, then a few days alone tacked onto the end.

Masada? Check.

Dead sea? Check

Kotel for kabbalat Shabbat? Check. Check.

Avocados, strawberry juice, cheese, Israeli salad, falafel, coffee, wine. Israel tasted great. Oh and I felt safe. I could safely go home and tell my mom that the, “When you die in Israel, what should I do with your body?” conversation hadn’t been needed after all.

On my way out of the country, I explained to El Al that I wasn’t visiting family. In fact, I don’t have family in Israel, because I converted. The agent pulled all of the stickers she’d put onto my luggage off and put a new color sticker on them. Then she sent me through extra security.

July 2007

I lie in a bed in my private room in a Tel Aviv hostel, wondering why I’d paid for a single room and not paid for air conditioning. I can’t tell if I am incapacitated from the heat or from jet lag, so I don’t move until the sun sets and then I go to the beach.

After a couple days, I go up to Jerusalem and drag my luggage up Ben Yehuda from Zion Square. I have a map, but more important I seem to have an inner magnet that helps me find my way around the city. I spend the next few days at the ROI120 conference, then finish the trip with a Chicago friend in Jerusalem and on my own in Haifa.

When I leave Israel I’m prepared. This time I have my beit din papers to prove I’m Jewish. I still have my luggage searched and all my gifts unwrapped. At 2:45 in the morning am sobbing while an El Al agent looks for a siddur for me to read from, to prove I can read Hebrew with vowels.

May 2008

I’m going to Israel again this summer for ROI120. I consider myself very lucky to have gone to Israel once a year since my conversion, but each trip makes me sad that the country I love so much doesn’t count me as a Jew because Reform rabbis supervised my beit din and mikvah.

Despite that twinge of not counting, I still love to laugh in Israel, walk in Israel, eat in Israel, listen in Israel, watch in Israel, smell in Israel, dream in Israel, and pray in Israel. I am beside myself that I get to do all of these things again, this summer that she turns 60, and hope I can again and again and again. I’d like to keep writing postcards to Israel.

A.  A conversation with an Israeli friend who grew up in the US. 

 Me:  True, we have a lot of problems here.  But I believe in Israel.  We have done so much in 60 years that I have no doubt we can go the rest of the distance. 

Friend:  (condescending) Oh please.  The government is corrupt. The people are corrupt.  No one cares about anything but their own wallets. Really, nothing is going to happen to change that.  

Me:  Of course change can happen!  Look at the United States! The federal and local governments were completely corrupt until people got up and called for change.  We can do that here. We are already doing that. 

Friend:  You know, I know you like to believe your pretty little fantasy world. But you cannot compare the US and Israel. The US was built on a good, solid foundation.  Israel was built on a bad foundation. 

Indeed?  Please, take a moment and Google the following: 

Tammany Hall.  Robber barons.  Tenement Slums.  Slavery.  Star Route Frauds. Decimation of the Native Americans. Discrimination against women. The Red Scare and McCarthyism.  Jim Crow.  Pollution.     

I present you with two potential conclusions to be drawn from the above list: 

1)      The United States and Israel have equally solid foundations.

2)      The United States and Israel have equally weak foundations. 

Choose whichever one suits you. Once you have done that, please take a look at some the following: Charles Henry Parkhurst.  Mary Harris (”Mother”) Jones.  Jacob Riis. Thomas Garret. Dorman Bridgeman Eaton. Sarah James.  Susan B. Anthony. Edward R Murrow. Barbara Johns. Rachel Carson.  

 To save you some time, let me provide you with the common factor linking the names above. Each of the names is that of an ordinary person who said “enough”…and who proceeded to change the United States and make it better. It is thanks to the above people and thousands upon thousands like them that the United States, for all of its faults, is so often cited as an example of good government and a well-functioning society. 

Are you asleep, O our nation? What have you been doing until 1882? Sleeping and dreaming the false dream of assimilation. Now thank God, you have awaked from your slothful slumber. The pogroms have awakened you from your charmed sleep. You eyes are open to recognize the obscure and delusive hopes. Can you listen in silence to the taunts and mocking of your enemies? 

Where is your ancient pride, your old spirit? Remember that you were a nation possessing a wise religion, a law, a constitution, a celestial Temple whose wall is still a silent witness to the glories of the past…

 Bilu Manifesto 1882

 If they can do it, we can do it.  Do not forget who we are. Do not forget where we came from.  Do not forget what we have endured.  And most of all, do not forget what we have accomplished despite everything we have had to endure. For us to doubt ourselves and our abilities as individuals, as a people and as a sovereign nation is patently ridiculous.  A corrupt prime minister?  קטן עלינו. 

B.  A conversation with a co-worker.

Friend:  My husband and I sometimes talk about how we wish we had been born during the early days of the State.   

Me:  Why is that? 

Friend:  Times were different then, better.  You know…more idealistic and heroic.  People had something to believe in. The people were different then as well.  They were more Zionist then, less disillusioned, less selfish and more self-sacrificing. They cared about the State of Israel.  

Me:  I don’t get it—why can’t you and your husband be like that? Do community service. I don’t know…take your kids to volunteer at an old aged home once a month.  

Friend:  Oh no! We used to live across the street from an old aged home—it was really frightening. 

Me:  Well, then do something else. 

Friend:  Well, you know…things get so busy. 

Now here comes the rub.  We can…but do we want to?  Let us have a little reality check.  It is not “the times” and it is not “the country” that is the problem.  You are the problem. Do you want to be idealistic?  Then be idealistic! What is stopping you? What the hell are you waiting for? Either you want this or you do not. If you want it, you will do it. (Do not worry—I am saying this to myself as well). 

אני רוצה להתבגר במדינה שמתגברת על כל הקשיים, בכל המובנים.  דואגת לילדים שלה-וגם למייסדים.  קולטת עליה, לומדים מניסיון אז נזכור מה שהיה ונעשה את זה נכון. ניקח אחריות, המדינה הזאת שלנו.  אז בוא נצעד צעד צעד ללא פחד.  נציג את כל שנבקש אם נשאר ביחד.  נביט למציאות עמוק בתוך העניין ונבנה עתיד טוב יותר בעבודת כפיים.

סאבלימינל והגבעטרון”בת 60″

I want to grow up in a country that overcomes all obstacles, in all meanings of the word.  That cares for her children and also for her founders.  That absorbs olim, learning through experience so that we will remember what was and will do it right.  We will take responsibility; this is our country.  So come march in step without fear.  We will achieve everything we want if we stick together. We will look reality straight in the eyes and we will build a better future with our own hands.” 

 

Subliminal and The Gevatron “Sixty Years Old”

 Being idealistic in action is not as difficult as it sounds. Volunteer. Teach your children to volunteer.  Go to demonstrations. Vote! If the party you voted for does not keep its election promises, kick the bums out.  Write letters.  Give to charity. Add a tzedakah box to your kitchen décor.  Think about the environment. Turn off the water while you scrub the dishes.  Fight corruption on every level, and wherever you can.  Remember—corruption does not emerge, like Athena, fully formed from the minds of top government officials. It exists everywhere—it is just a matter of scale. The corrupt clerk in the iriyah who has an illegal side arrangement with the black-market guy who buys cars from people looking to leave the country (as encountered by my friends) may well “grow up” to be the mayor with illegal side arrangements with real estate developers.  Fight corruption in your own behavior as well. Obey the law. 

 C.  A juxtaposition of two comments made to me by two Israelis.

 Comment One:  (On the Israel she knew growing up, in the 50’s and 60’s).  Yes, Israel was not rich, but we were also not poor. We did not have as much, but we were happy.  It was good to live here. People really cared for one another and cared about the State. It was a community.

 Comment Two:  (On the changes in Israeli society and the claims that the upper classes are disconnected from the rest of the country).  Can you blame people if they want to give their kids all of the things they did not have growing up?

 Herein lies the rub. Getting back the idealism may entail some amount of trade-offs.  It may entail giving up some of the things people did not have growing up but that they are now able to give to their children. Like, for instance: misery, cynicism, obsessive keeping up with the Joneses, rampant consumerism, self-absorption, and complete disregard and disrespect for the law when it interferes with your shopping or any other pleasure.  On the flip side, this may also involve people giving their children what they did have when they were growing up:  happiness, community and pride in their country.

 Yeah. Definitely.  A tough call.

 The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became…. There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country.   

 The Innocents Abroad, 1869 Mark Twain

 To help you decide, I offer you the Jerusalem Forest. Trust me, this makes perfect sense.  The generations we most admire are the generations that carpeted the “tiresome terrain” with green.  Next time you have a free afternoon, head over there and spend some time enjoying the trees and nature. While you are there, think!  Here is the choice.  Option number one: you can give your children the forests you had growing up, the forests you were proud of, the forests that represent so much of what is good about Zionism.  Option number two: you can give your children a land where there used to be  forests back in the days before developers greased the right palms, and the forests were illegally razed in favor of yet another “exclusive” neighborhood.

 D.  A Conversation With Myself

 Me to myself:  I love this country.  If I ever get married, my relationship with Israel approximates the relationship I hope to have with my husband. I never really understood the mechanics of how people could stay together for years without going stark raving mad and getting sick of one another. Israel has taught me. I came here out of fascination and infatuation. I have stayed out of love and passion, a love that is almost indescribable and that exists despite the myriad of and warts and faults Israel bears and which I have gotten to know over the last seven years.  Recently, someone asked me (seriously) if I would be interested in working in the US for a few years.  The very thought of being separated from the מולדת, my homeland, for an extended period reduced me to something of a mental panic. This is love. This is my home.

 “אם תרצו, אין זו אגדה!”  תיאודור הרצל

“If you will it, it is no dream!”  Theodore Herzl

 This is my home. This is your home.  Either we do it right or we do it wrong but whatever path we choose, we have no other place.  But honestly, I do believe that we can transform the State of Israel into everything it should be. Yes, the challenges we face are huge ones, but think about how much we have done so far. Look at Israel and look at other countries that were established around the same time.  Look at where we are compared to where they are. Look at what we have had to deal with. This place is amazing and a testament to the people who built it. The times are different? The people are different? I disagree.  The times are the same; it is just the nature of the challenges that have changed.  And as for the people?  We are the same people. We are just as good and just as strong.   We can do anything…if we choose to. If we will it.   

“עורי עורי דבורה.  עורי עורי דברי שיר.”  שופטם ה  יב

“Awake, awake Devora.   Awake awake, utter a song.”  Judges 5:12

 Make a choice.  Start with a little exercise. Israel spent approximately a gazillion shekels on her 60^th birthday celebrations.  Ask yourself this:  what would need to change here in order that, by the 70^th birthday, the government could spend nothing —no official birthday song, no air shows, no fireworks, no logo, no excessive Israel Award prizes—and you would still spend Yom Haatzmaut with a goofy grin on your face and you would still plaster your car, your home and your children with Israeli flags.  Now sit down.  Write up a list.  Then get up, go out and make it happen.

 

 

Crossposted to My Shrapnel

 

After studying religion at King’s College- London and earning a B.A. in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Brenner received both his M.A. and rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1997. Brenner has been a contributor to Crosscurrents, The Infinite Mind, Killing the Buddha, Beliefnet, The Jewish Week, The Living Pulpit, Spirituality & Health and The Forward. In 2004, he received a Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism and his fifth professionally produced play - Driving School of America - premiered at New York City’s Vital Theater. Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner is currently the Vice President, Education, for the Birthright Israel Foundation and blogs at Reb Blog.

Eretz yisrael

Motherland

Lactating

tahini

Lukewarm goldstar

Sachlab

I once curled up under a cliff in the machtesh

thousand star hotel

Awoken by the sound of wild gazelles

as they jostled for a choice spot by the spring

Ancestral womb land

Your children are spread out from taipei to toledo,

But they never forget you, tongues cleaving,

a spoonful of peanut butter, right hands withering

left hands waved into the air swinging like they just don’t care,

feet dreaming of return.

You have nice rocks.

Our rock and our redeemer,

Your dust on our toes

A permanent condition

The axis mundi,

Jerusalem

Belly button

Umbilical cord to the other side

We sing halleluyahs into your cracks.

To sip a turkish coffee under the shade of your palms?

To sip a fresh squeezed orange juice on your cliffs that look out over the great sea?

To sip the cool mountain water cascading off your northern waterfalls?

We drink in your mother’s milk, Zion,

At pretentious cafes on streets named for city boy socialists turned farmers,

Plastic chairs in kibbutzim gone condo

On the porch eleven flights up overlooking the rarely open museum of the Diaspora,

On the Ottoman era tiled rooftops of your old cities,

We lift our glasses to you.

Tectonic shifting, trans syro african rifting

Each of your hills and valleys sing a new song unto the Lord on high.

May our dwellings on you be open tents

May we give thanks for your yearly gift of dates,

The goodness of the land.

And may we forever merit to not only have our

bones lie in your rocky soil

but to watch our toddlers crawl across your grassy places.

-Daniel S. Brenner