Chanukah 5770 - Kiryat Sefer

Exploring Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv Post coming soon! Until then enjoy the pictures of my trip to Tel Aviv



Some great beach shots. Yes, they have a gym on the beach in Tel Aviv. Yes, there is an older religious guy on the workout bicycle with his kippa. Also there's a guy in mid-flip on the pull-up bar.

My First Real Shabbat

This past weekend was my first Shabbat in Israel. I have never been “shomer Shabbat” (literally ‘guarding Shabbat’ – someone who keeps the mitzvahs of Shabbat), so it was a very new experience for me. I always thought the ‘day of rest’ was just meant for not going to work. I got the part about G-d creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. The part that I didn’t know was that He sanctified the seventh day, making it the holiest day of the week. It’s meant to be the most spiritual day of the week, when we are closest with G-d. I’m embracing this in my quest for spiritual enrichment; and as such, I’ve decided to try keeping Shabbat while I’m in Israel (at least), and hopefully continue after I leave.

Being in Jerusalem for Shabbat was amazing. The entire city shuts down. Stores close mid-day Friday to prepare for the Friday sundown to Saturday sundown holiday. You can walk down the streets and see cars racing to get home on time, people hurrying around to prepare for Shabbat, everyone wearing their best clothes, all while the rich aromas of Shabbat cooking seep into the streets and leave you with anticipation of the celebration to come. Shabbat is considered a festive day, when a person is freed from the regular labors of everyday life, can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life, and can spend time with family.

I never made time for Shabbat before. I could only think of how unproductive I’d be; how much I’d have to catch up on; all the work, missed calls, and unanswered emails. Though I had no idea what I was missing. It’s amazing how completely unplugging from it all, even for just 24 hours, can change one’s entire outlook on the week. I can only imagine what impact keeping Shabbat might have on one’s entire outlook on life.

Sukkot in Yerushalayem

This is my first time really celebrating Sukkot. I was surprised to realize how little I knew about the holiday. Over eight days Sukkot celebrates the harvest and commemorates the passage through the wilderness. It is a particularly important holiday because we fulfill the important mitzvahs of building a Sukkah (a hut) and the mitvah of eating each meal under it. Throughout the holiday the sukkah becomes the living area of the house, and all meals are eaten in it. On each day of the holiday, members of the household recite a blessing over the Four Spices.

This is my first time really celebrating the holiday. What I am finding particularly meaningful in it is that Sukkot is centered on sanctifying the ordinary. Almost any other day, a meal is just a meal. But during Sukkot, we are completing a mitzvah just by eating our meals in the Sukkah. We even sanctify the water, and all of the sudden something so common becomes holy, with much more spiritual valor than normally. Eating and sleeping in the Sukkah; a make-shift temporary hut (that we each construct), makes you really appreciate what you have while also realizing that our needs are far less demanding than our desires. Simple food, simple drink, and simple shelter for eight days maintain us; and yet beyond the eight days would seem unbearable for most of us; especially considering how privileged and fortunate we are to live comfortably. Yet not only do we stick it out for eight days, we spend each day celebrating with friends and family under the Sukkah. It’s not a time for TVs, cell phones, computers; it’s all about making face time.

Last night all the guys from Machon Shlomo went to Rabbi Sigler’s house to have a Sukkot celebration in his Sukkah. It was a great experience. What came after was even more interesting. A number of us went to Mea Shearim, a neighborhood in Jerusalem that is one of the most ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the world. They are a very small population, some of which gets its news from posters pasted along the walls of the quarter (as most people there don’t want to have TVs, radio, or internet). It is often making news in Israel; primarily for their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government.

The below pictures and video are from a huge Sukkot celebration in Mea Shearim.

And this is the video:

What a Welcome!

I arrived into the airport yesterday to see a large Israeli flag planted in the ground outside the airport. I couldn’t help but smile looking at it, as it really sank in for the first time that from that moment forth, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of in being Jewish.

I arrived just in time to catch Sukkot (more on Sukkot later). I walked outside of the airport and I saw a few Orthodox Jews literally running around with the Four Spices of Sukkot (lulav, hadass, aravah, and etrog). Now this was just plain funny. Every time I’ve ever traveled to a foreign country, I saw scammers and dodgy people hanging outside the airport, preying on the tourists. Here I saw Orthodox Jews praying for the tourists. They were running around to people offering them blessings and lending them their Four Spices so they could make the blessings of Sukkot if they so chose. They didn’t want money or anything; they just wanted to welcome people and help people fulfill the mitzvah of saying blessings for the holiday. How about that for culture shock?

I jumped in a sherut and headed for Jerusalem. [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”] I arrived at my Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Machon Shlomo, and was welcomed very warmly by my fellow Yeshiva Bochurim. Everyone offered to help me carry my things, get my room set-up and settled in, etc. The one person who couldn’t be there to greet me went so far as to write a thoughtful, one-page note saying he had heard about me and was looking forward to learning together this year. He added an apology for not being able to be there when I arrived. This should give an idea as to the caliber of the guys I am studying with here. All of them are from the US, so having made the trek out themselves they knew exactly what was on my mind: “You must be starved and exhausted.” So my choices were to go pass out or to leave immediately for dinner with a Rabbi in Kiriyat Sefer.

“Wow,” I thought, “I’m not even here 15 minutes and I’m already packing into a sherut and headed to a settlement in the West Bank.” [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”]

Since it is the Jewish holiday Sukkot all week, we ate with Rabbi Lessen outside in his sukkah. Besides taking the opportunity to get to know the Rabbi and his family, I had a chance to chat with them a little about living in a settlement. I could tell we were coming from very different worlds. His children were particularly interested in the fact that I spoke Arabic; apparently they rarely meet Arabic speakers. The kids said they were interested in learning. I naively asked, “Don’t you have any Arab friends?” and one of the daughters gave me a petrified look [the type of look I imagine you would get from a flight attendant by saying ‘bomb’ on an airplane].

-Jacob chimed in, “Don’t you realize people here are scared to death of Arabs?”
----I lifted my eyes brows and said, “Do they really think all Arabs are out to kill them?”
-“Yeah, they do. You might have had a different experience because you’ve met Arabs from all over the world. But realize the only Arabs people in the West Bank interact with are the Palestinians throwing stones and blowing up buses.”

I naively thought to myself, “I’m sure people here would be much less afraid of Arabs if they actually met them.” My idealism got the better of me and I suggested to the Rabbi’s young daughter that she make some Arab friends. She seemed genuinely perplexed. She took my advice to heart but wasn’t sure how to act on it. “So I just go to an Arab town and try to make a friend?” –at which point someone interjected, “Whoa! What are you telling her? Are you trying to get her killed?! Now she’s going to think it’s safe to just run around and try to make friends with any Arab.”

I’ve tried to stay far away from the Israel-Palestine debate for as long as I can remember. On my first evening here I received a jolt of realization that there’s no way to avoid it here. At least here I can bypass the intentionally misleading “reporting” that we are hand-fed all over the world (and especially in the US). I am finally going to get a first-hand perspective from both sides and see the truth behind what’s really going on without the veil of the profit-driven, pop-media.

Just the Beginning

I left my country, my birthplace and my home. After a long journey, I arrived in Israel today. I wasn’t ready to leave.

I rushed to get to the airport, only to find that the airlines would delay my flight by 2 hours. The awkward feeling I got from the 2 hour wait in front of the gate was an interesting metaphor for where I’m at right now with my (Jewish) identity. I was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. As a rule I never wear a suit for a long flight unless I’m 99.9% sure that the ‘I look more important than I really am’-look will score me an upgrade to Business Class as it has in the past.

My shirt bore the logo ‘US Embassy Abu Dhabi,’ where I had worked through the State Department four years ago. This is only worth noting because UAE does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and as such does not, for example, allow any maps in the country that do not have Israel crossed off the map—something I noted upon seeing maps, even in the US Embassy in UAE, with Israel crossed-off in pen. A poor choice in shirts to bring to Israel one might say, though very reflective of the fact that I have had more exposure to Arab/Muslim communities than Jewish.

I was carrying a backpack in one hand, my black hat in the other. My attire likely marked me as secular, yet my black hat was undeniably Orthodox. I saw the puzzled looks from the other passengers waiting for the plane. The Orthodox Jews, dressed in black suits with white shirts (along with black hats), saw my hat and looked at me as if to ask where my black suit and white shirt were. The more secular Jews looked at me and eyed the hat, maybe under the assumption that I was holding it for some Orthodox Jew who left for the restroom.
Alas, I answered all these imaginary questions by putting the hat snug on my head. People stared at me for a good 1-2 seconds. Then the moment was over and people went back to being concerned with their own matters. Nobody said anything—until our descent into Israel. Sitting next to me was an older Israeli woman, who was trying to chat with me in Hebrew, to which I smiled, nodded, and said the only Hebrew I knew, “אני לא מבין עברית” (I don’t understand Hebrew). She returned the smile and spoke to me in perfect English, asking what I was doing in Israel.

I informed her that I would be attending a Yeshiva in Jerusalem, to which she replied, after nonchalantly looking me up and down, “You sure don’t look religious to me.” I laughed and told her that I was curious and interested in learning more. She looked at my black hat and said, “Well, at least you’ve got the right hat.” I immediately thought about my black hat story, and everything that has brought me to this point. I chuckled a bit and agreed with her. I watched out the window as we landed into Israel. This is just the beginning.

A New Year’s Resolution from a Closet-Jew: And the Story of the Black Hat.

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

--T. S. Eliot

I just discovered this quote last month, but I feel like it has been waiting for me my entire life. I’m leaving the country in less than a week. This particular voyage will be far different from my countless adventures around the world in the past eight years. I’m going to Israel for my first time. All my family and friends ask how I've managed to travel all over the world and somehow I've never made it to Israel. So what, right? If I could skillfully articulate why I’m going and what I’ll be doing, the quote and the hype might make a little more sense. Allow me to give it some context.

As Rosh Hashanah approached in mid-September, I already had a New Year’s Resolution in mind. Something simple enough to stay focused on, yet challenging enough that I’d have to work on it throughout the year: come out of the “closet” about being a Jew. In a nutshell, this story is about two things being in the closet, the Jew and the hat. Strangely enough, there’s a great connection between the two.

The Hat in the Closet:
I had a 5th grade project for Ms. Merriman’s class where we had to research our family tree and then do a presentation on the country and heritage of our ancestors. Since my grandmothers were the oldest living link to my past, I tried to get the information from them. Each time I tried asking them what country we were from, they said they didn’t know. I’d give them a hard time for not knowing, insisting that I needed to present on something for my class project. All they could tell me was that our ancestors were all Jewish. But that wasn’t going to help me for my project.
-“I told you dear, we’re Jewish.”
-----“Grandma! That’s not what I asked! What country are we from?”
-“What country? How should I know, we’re Jewish.”
-----“No grandma that’s not good enough! I have to know the country for my class project.”
-“We’re from Russia…or is it Poland?”
-----“What part of Poland?”
-“No wait it’s Germany, that’s right Germany. Or was it Hungary?”
-----“Is it Hungary or Germany, grandma?!”
-“Actually it might be Romania. It can’t be Ukraine, so it must be Romania.”
-----“So we’re from Romania then, grandma?”
-“Well I’m not, but our family is, I think.”
-----“You think? How do you not know what we are?”
-“But I told you, we’re Jewish!”
-----“No that’s not good enough!”
-“What do you mean being Jewish isn’t good enough?”
-----“No grandma, that’s not what I meant. I mean I can’t do a class project on being Jewish. I have to do it on the country of our ancestors.”
-“Oh I see. Well do your project on Russia then.”
-----“Russia? I thought you said Romania?!”
-“Russia, Romania, how do I know. Just pick a country and do your project.”

Shockingly, I had a similar conversation with my other grandmother. So I went to my mother and asked for advice. Knowing that I had to bring in food from the country, and her being the expert baker, she suggested I stick with saying we’re Russian so we could make Russian tea cakes.
-“Mom! I can’t just make up where I’m from!”
-----“Oh please, nobody will know the difference as long as they like the tea cakes.”
And so I became Russian.

By the time I hit middle school the Russian thing wore out. I started embracing my Italian “heritage.” I tried learning some Italian phrases with a computer program (to no avail), and became a chef in an Italian restaurant, after completing some culinary training. Then I discovered the pop culture Italian mafia. Movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas, and the Untouchables, plus the eventual debut of the Sopranos made me fascinated with this sense of community in the Italian mafia. Everyone belongs, everyone takes care of each other, everyone’s significant, and they “don’t take no nonsense from nobody.” This came at a time when the harassment at school continuously escalated for me being ‘the Jew;’ to the point where I couldn’t eat in the cafeteria without the frequent ‘heil Hitler’ salute from bullies.

Still not getting any further information from the grandmothers about our heritage, I began to embrace the ideals of La Cosa Nostra. In 8th grade I even bought a big black fedora to express my new-found heritage. This was my favorite hat in the world. I wore it alone in my room and felt like a million dollars.
The first, and last, day that I ever wore it in public was second semester, 8th grade. I figured if I wore it to school I would command the same type of respect and significance as everyone wearing fedoras in the mafia movies. I was a bit off. To be precise, I was made fun of to the point that I went home and threw the hat in my closet, swearing to never wear it again.

The Jew in the Closet:
I’ve been outwardly ashamed to be a Jew since I was little. It may have started when I was growing up in a Colorado mountain town of about 500 people, where supposedly there were only 3 Jewish families in the entire county (the county being about 10,000 people). Whether in the mountains or in Boulder, where my family later moved, I always felt foreign for being Jewish. Kids were quick to point out that I was in fact different. They teased me for being Jewish, all throughout elementary, middle, and high school; anything from name-calling, to harassment, to threatening me and even physically attacking me.

I never felt a very strong connection with my Jewish identity when I was growing up. It was more of an obligation and a tradition to me more than anything. Since I was always harassed and teased for being Jewish, all through school, I associated it with far more pain than joy. It wasn’t until I went abroad for my first time that I found more importance in my Jewish identity. When I was 17 I went to live in France for a year. I lived with a Christian host family in a town of 1,000 people. I attended a private Catholic High School in a neighboring town. Talk about being the odd-man out!

I never realized how important being Jewish was to me until I was in this entirely new environment. That same year, around 40 synagogues had been burned, bombed, attacked, or destroyed in France. Luckily I found naiveté more often than hatred, where most people thought Judaism to be a branch of Christianity, like Catholicism or Protestantism. I was removed from everything Jewish and anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic, and yet I began to miss it.

My year in France did more than inspire a little bit of Jewish identity. It inspired me to explore more of the world. One year later I found myself teaching English, French, and Portuguese in Ukraine. I had no idea how much anti-Semitic sentiment I would find there. There were swastikas carved in the walls all over my apartment building as well as all over the city.

My students, who did not know I was Jewish, spent an entire class one day talking about how evil Jews are, though they admitted to never having met a Jew before. One student approached me after class and told me she had Jewish friends. She said she really admired Jews and wished she could be Jewish too. I asked why she hadn’t spoken up in class and she said she was afraid the classmates would ostracize her.

I had two colleagues there who still stand out to this day. One was Ukrainian, teaching German, who thought it was hilarious to give me the ‘heil Hitler’ salute every time he saw me. The other colleague had become a good friend. One day he called me to say he needed to speak to me urgently in person. He came over promptly. We moved to my kitchen and he told me he had heard a rumor at work about me being Jewish. He sat me down and said, “We’re friends, I want you to be honest with me. You’re not a Jew are you?” I was blown away. I asked him what difference it would make. He responded that he didn’t have any Jewish friends and didn’t plan on making any. He said that I should have told him I was Jewish when I met him. I asked what that would have changed, to which he responded that if he had known I was Jewish from the beginning, he wouldn’t have wasted time getting to know me; that he wouldn’t have been my friend in the first place.

Somehow I’ve become a magnet to anti-Semitism; death threats in Egypt, prejudices everywhere from Korea to Costa Rica, Brazil to United Arab Emirates. Every country I have been to I have noticed some level of hatred and disdain, particularly when people don’t realize I’m Jewish. Surprisingly this has happened a lot in DC as well.

As you can imagine, these experiences left some deep scars in my Jewish self-image. I quickly found, as I began traveling around the world that anti-Semitism was prevalent everywhere. I noticed this particularly when people assumed I was not Jewish and felt at ease disclosing their true sentiments. All these experiences made it harder and harder for me to “come out” as a Jew, and yet it has made my inner Jewish identity perpetually stronger.

“Outing” the Jew from the Closet:
I have never in my life been somewhere I felt comfortable being Jewish. I always felt like I had to hide it for my safety or comfort. As you can imagine, it was a bit of a shock when I moved to Washington, DC. I saw a Jew wearing his kippa in public and I recall saying to him, “What are you doing wearing that in public? People might know you’re Jewish!” Looking back I realize what kind of damage all of these negative experiences have had on me. I made a resolution to myself to ‘get over it.’ I wanted to become more comfortable with being Jewish. One part of that is learning and understanding more about what it means to be Jewish.

With much hesitation, this past August I went to a Jewish “retreat" to learn more about Judaism. I met some truly amazing, wise, honest, inspirational people who really helped me get a better idea of what it means to be Jewish. I cannot describe how great the environment is. A place where there are no locks on the doors, which not only shows the trust and honesty of everyone there, but stands as a metaphor for all the people I encountered, who show true compassion and concern for each other without the barriers that we as a society are accustomed to.

One person in particular, Rabbi Styne, left a lasting impression with me. He told me stories about how, before studying to become a Rabbi, he too felt embarrassed to be Jewish and tried to hide what he valued most. He didn’t realize the true value until a non-Jew commented on the nobility of traditional Jewish practices and ideals of righteousness, honesty, and compassion for others.

Inwardly I feel like a much stronger, prouder Jew than I have ever been. Outwardly I don’t though, and I never have been. All my horrible experiences in Colorado, DC, and abroad have made me associate being Jewish with this certain and ultimate pain; that if people know I am Jewish, I will be treated differently.

What Rabbi Styne helped me understand is that we will be treated differently regardless; but we have the power to affect how people treat us differently. On one end, I’m plagued by all the prejudices, stereo-types, and hatred that scare me from being outwardly Jewish; with the thought that if people know I’m Jewish they will immediately judge me negatively. But he made this an opportunity for empowerment and said this is the perfect chance to be an “Ambassador of the Jewish people;” to show everyone that real Jews are honest, righteous, compassionate, generous, caring people.

This, combined with my recent exposure to a positive, warm, loving environment of what it really means to be Jewish, has empowered me to be proud of who I am, given me more confidence in being a Jew, and much more curiosity and desire to more-fully understand what it really means to be a Jew.

There’s a common expression, that every time you learn a foreign language, you gain another soul. I believe this to a certain extent. I feel like every time I have learned a new language and have been exposed to a new culture, new people, and new way of life, I have found something within myself that I didn’t know existed before. Out of all the souls I have gained in my life, nothing feels as fitting, as comfortable, and as true to me as my Jewish soul.

With this, I’ve decided to go to Jerusalem for a year to attend a fantastic Yeshiva, Machon Shlomo. With all the crazy adventures I’ve been on, it’s about time for a more spiritual trip. I figured that after all my world travels, learning about many world languages and cultures, it’s about time to learn about my own heritage.

This year in Yeshiva will help me gain a better grounding on my Jewish identity and become a better, more-rounded person. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I am confident that any school that preaches seeking knowledge, honesty, righteousness, and compassion for everyone regardless of faith or creed, could only be a positive experience. It will also allow me to phase out the distractions and physicalities of “the real world” in order to focus on what is truly meaningful to me.

The Hat, the Jew, and the Closet:
I’ve been fortunate to have exposure to many countries, languages, and cultures. I often think back on the conversations I had years ago with my grandma. For 14 years I have searched desperately to understand where my ancestors were from; to discover my heritage. Recalling my conversations with my grandma, her telling me we’re Jewish, and me telling her that wasn’t good enough; after all these years I’ve finally realized something. I’ve realized that being Jewish is good enough; and not only is it good enough, but it’s great.

After 11 years, I still have that black fedora I bought in middle school. What’s funny is that hat has followed me every where I have gone. Every time I have moved, from one house to another, I have brought it. From Boulder to DC, from dorm to dorm, from apartment to apartment, I still have it in my closet for some reason. For 11 years I didn’t wear it once and yet I brought it with me everywhere I lived and just left it in the closet.

And what’s even funnier about that black fedora hat that has followed me around for 11 years, is that I’ve never found a use for it; just as I’ve never found a use for any of those heritages I attempted to adopt. You might know where I’m going with this. Anyone who has seen Torah Jews (Orthodox Jews) on Shabbat has seen them with their black suits and their black fedoras.

To come full-circle, I bought that black fedora 11 years ago because I thought I found a heritage I could connect with. And by now, I’ve explored every heritage but my own. Throughout all the years, I’ve kept my hat and my heritage in the closet. And now I realize how unique my heritage is, how meaningful it is to me, and how I’ve had the right hat all along, I just never realized it.

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” --T. S. Eliot

I leave October 5 for Israel. See you in Jerusalem.

Shalom,
-Andrew