thinking jewish

The Awe With Which to Love This World

I have so much to write. The words fill my head each morning and bounce around until I sleep. I think of ideas and questions and reflections on all that I encounter.

And then night falls, and I've still committed nothing to paper. There is too much Torah to learn, to much out there to experience, so that the casualty by the wayside is my creative exercise.

In the meanwhile, I leave you, this Shabbat, with the glory of a simple mango tree.

One tree, providing mangos to all who come, on the outskirts of a small town in West Africa. This, too, is God's creation.

Shabbat shalom.

On Love

This place is exhausting. Absolutely exhausting.

The political situation is depressing, the government is half-the time out of its mind. And all that doesn't even begin to take into account all the other (perhaps bigger?) problems with this place: the wanton disregard for common decency in interpersonal relations, the degradation of the environment, the secular-religious divide, the utter lack of good drip-coffee.

So often I find myself wondering, "Was it worth it?" "Is this what Herzl wanted?" "So much work, for this?"

Or, worse, "Get me out of here!"

Please, let me leave. Let me have my Starbucks and Target, straight streets with traffic lights. Let me have my lines and rules, order above all.

So often I am depressed by the momentum and direction of this country, so ready to give it all up and stop worrying, to retreat back to my care-free life in Los Angeles, where I am many miles away from the poverty of Compton and the illegal immigrants of the Central Valley, so very far from Sacramento's political battles and the Death Row of San Quentin.

I want to run, to give it all up, but I can't. Something pulls me back. Despite all the pessimism and short-term depression, I cling on.

My exhaustion stems because I place on the Israeli state hopes and expectations that I would never hold for any country other than America. And, because I am so vested in the success of failure of this place, any deviation from perfection is necessarily a personal insult.

We just ended eight years of leadership by one of the more negligent, inflammatory and criminal governments in the world, I remind you. George Bush saddened me deeply. More than that, actually, he scared the hell out of me. But he made me love America - its ideals, its promise, what it is all about - no less. Rather, just the opposite. He made me care more - enough to do all the little I could to elect someone as amazing as our current President and Nobel Prize winner. He reminded me why it is that I believe in America, why I stand firm in support of the dream of one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

That's what love is. And I love America.

I also love Israel.

In reality, I don't actually think that I have the right to act on my exhaustion in any way other than to stay just as engaged as I've always been, if not more. Who am I to stop loving someone because it seems to scary or difficult?

It would be easier. It would certainly be a more relaxing way of being, to just disengage. But doing so would bring into question, I think, whether I actually ever loved Israel in the first place.

Israel is a real place with real people, onto which I graft lofty hopes and expectations. I know that, some day, these can be achieved. But history is messy. And the road to that perfection is long and hard. There will be turns down roads that terrify me, just as there are new avenues of hope opened.

That is reality.

I'd love it to be different. I would love an Israel that lives up to what it is supposed to be, that is not filled with racism or xenophobia, ecological degradation or petty thievery. I would especially love an Israel living in peace, which did everything, all the time, in the interest of peace, even when that interest conflicted with other desires of the State. But that's probably not real life. It's something more akin to Disneyland. (Or, to be more on-key, Mini Israel).

I love Israel because I believe in the Jewish People. I love Israel because it does invigorate American Judaism. I love Israel because my brethren, against all odds, have been able to create a mildly-functioning commonwealth in the land of my forefathers. And I love Israel because of all the people and places here in this country that I have come to personally know and love over the years.

This place drives me crazy. Not a week goes by without me wanting to throw up my hands. Not a day goes by without a moment where I would like nothing more than to cry over a dream unfulfilled.

But potential unmet is no reason to fall out of love. Rather, it is reason to fight even harder for what can and should be.

Love is the rallying cry to lead us through these moments of exhaustion.

So I will keep on loving.

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These ideas are an amalgamation of thoughts derived from a recent conversation with a friend who, having read this op-ed, was disturbed by its resonance with him. I recommend reading that opinion piece, followed by a direct response by Rabbi Daniel Gordis, here.

Valley of the Ghosts

Atonement Day came and went this year. The Jews pled their case before their Creator, begging for a line in the Book of Life. I am still breathing. I count my blessings, and move on.

Take a second, and zoom in on Yom Kippur afternoon. Walking the streets, one cannot help but notice the glaring absence. It comes in the form of an unsettled feeling in one's stomach.

No, it isn't the fast speaking. It may seem that the lack of food is playing tricks on the mind, but it is not.

In the middle of the day, in the center of the Israeli capital, there is not a moving car in sight. The silence is unsettling. Nothing. Literally, nothing, to be heard.

In place of cars are people, having taken over the roads entirely.

It feels like the end of the world. In the aftermath of some cataclysmic event, the people slowly come outside to see what has become of their planet. It is that odd to the eye. It just does not happen anywhere.

Nowhere but here.

And so, as I stepped down the main street of this German Colony that I call home, reveling in the serenity of peace and quiet, I wanted to grab onto the experience and never let go.

Because it made Emek Refaim feel so normal, so real.

It is anything but.

This street is first mentioned in the Book of Joshua. It is here that the Philistines took position, having been attacked by King David, many centuries later. It is here that, legend holds, a race of giants once dwelled.

Hence it's name, Emek Refaim, "Valley of the Ghosts".

I see these ghosts every morning when I board the bus. The stare at me every afternoon, as I pass shops and cafes on my walk home. They surround me every Friday as I buy groceries for Shabbat.

Look over there! That's where the German Templars first settled this area.

Psst. Just past that cafe, an evil man once murdered innocents, as part of some political game.

Get this: a little beyond that hill, look to the left of that big church. There your ancestors built a home for God.

Every inch of this place is seeped in these stories, history just waiting to be remembered. Like a soaked-through sponge, ready to be wrung out, every step feels full of the past.

The ghosts reach out to grab you; the giants want to catch your attention.

What is the meaning of this place? I ask the same question every day.

I want to pretend it has no meaning.

This is just a place. A place where Jews live. And I am one of them. I have an apartment, I wake up in the morning, and go about my business. I study, I pray, and try to save the world in the process. I watch some television. I go to bed.

But no!

Those Jews, over there, are speaking the language of my ancestors. Were it not for Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the dream would not have come true. That lintel, it has Arabic, because this neighborhood, after the Germans, was settled by Arabs, who fled in '48, the year my people was redeemed, just over there, around that corner.

Every morning, the sun rises over the Jordanian hills to my east. And if I squint just enough, I can make out the profile of Moses, looking here, into the Land of Israel, just before his death.

History comes alive at every moment, the ghosts grab at me continuously.

I tried to use Yom Kippur to shake myself of it all. Let it be. It is what it is. You can't figure it all out in one instant.

Another day passes. Still no answers. Lots more questions.

Not like it's actually a bad thing. We all strive for a life of meaning, infusing each moment with rich ideas and rituals and history. Sometimes, here, it can feel like too much though.

And so I let it be.

In the silent moments, the times no cars are passing, when there is no yelling or shoving or sirens or gunfire, I try to pause. To take in the beauty and love it all. To appreciate it for what it is, all that it has been, and all it strives to be.

Here in the Valley. The Land of the Giants.