There is no Such Thing as Routine in Jerusalem (10/28/02)

Dear Friends,

So many of you have responded to my letters -- one has even written to complain that she hasn't heard from me in several weeks -- thank you.

ONLY IN JERUSALEM

I've been here almost two months and still cannot believe it. I wake up every morning and drive past the President's house, past the King David, down Mamilla (which I remember from 1958 as the border with Jordan), up and through the Jaffa Gate, and around over the walls of Jerusalem with their breath-taking view of the Mount of Olives to the Wall. Who am I to be able to do this every day? I park below the Wall and get my cardiac exercise walking back up. I greet the beggar ladies who are there before me -- I arrive at 4:45 a.m. -- and I give them something. I wash hands, go to the Wall and recite Psalms 133 and 134. Then I join my group; everyone has a group. Actually I have three groups. First is Rabbi Darzy's group; they meet inside, in front of the place closest to where the Holy of Holies stood; they pray very slowly. Second is Philippe's second group; they meet outside and comprise men of some standing -- the man who runs Zakka, the organization that picks up the pieces of the dead; they pray very quickly. My own group is outside, next to Philippe's, and is comprised of the "banker" (an older man who makes change), Dovid (who examines the poor and gives money, lots of it, only where needed, and there is real need), an elderly retired man who was a liberator, and others; they pray slowly, more my speed. I change money, leaving a contribution with the "bank," and then give out shekel pieces to about ten people every day. They are my regulars and include an old Yemenite man named Aharon, two very old men one of whom has a beatific smile, Shmuel who anywhere else would be institutionalized, and a couple whom I like less but give to anyway. By now, we all know each other. There are others I do not give to and they are learning not to ask. I do not give to young or middle-aged persons who, as I see it, should be working. Nor do I give to the few who are known as fakers; the man who for years has been claiming that he is about to get married, or the man who is a cripple who is nicely provided for by the state. Another of the older men is a very remote relative of the family. He, too, is descended from Hacham Tsvi Ashkenazy (17 ^th century); our boys are tenth generation and he is eighth from another son. He was thrilled to see the family tree. We cannot just give him money so, whenever anyone is sick, we ask him to recite Psalms and give him a gift. For the record, this is $2.00 a day; I do $1.00 a day in Atlanta and, for the extra amount, I get to be in Jerusalem. I put on tefillin (phylacteries) and say prayers and, when we come to the priestly blessing, Philippe appears and I cover us both with my talit. Can you imagine blessing your child every day? At the end, I go to the Wall again and, on the way out, recite Psalm 122, the Psalm of Jerusalem. As Rabbi Darzy says, "Blessed is our God Who created us for His glory."

For Shabbat Bereshit (when we begin reading the Torah again from Genesis), I went to a Yemenite synagogue. I guessed they would start early, at 8:00 a.m., and had trouble finding it. By the time I got there, they were already in the middle of the Torah reading. It turns out they start at 7:00; no problem if I had known. I couldn't believe my ears. They read the letter gimel, if it has a dagesh (dot) in it, as "dj" ( we read it as "g" as in "gag"). I had already become accustomed to the vav read as "w" and the taf read as "th" because Rabbi Darzy, being Iraqi, does it that way. But the "dj" really made me look up. I had read about this but never heard it. Then, each verse of the Hebrew was followed by its Aramaic Targum (translation). This too I had read about but never heard. Finally, they auctioned off each aliyah (honor for the Torah) which, though unusual, is something I've seen before. But, then, the person who gets it must read his own portion from the Torah scroll. This used to be the ancient practice but was given up because, for this system to work, every person must know perfectly every reading. Remember that the Torah has no punctuation, vowels, or musical notation so this puts an enormous burden on the community. Today, except for the Yemenites, there is a reader who prepares and reads for everyone who is called up to the Torah. But this small synagogue in the middle of nowhere was populated by men and boys who could do it themselves for each and every reading! Further, when someone made a mistake in the musical notes, he was corrected. We never do that; we correct only serious mistakes in the Hebrew. One of the men invited me back for Kiddush -- food I've never seen and home-made Arak (kind of absinthe alcohol) at 9:00 a.m. When the discussion turned to women's rights, you could see that being able to read the Torah and Targum was not the same as being educated in a western sense. His wife and his mother never go shopping; the men do it. In fact, the women never go out (though his wife works in a bank). The ideal is Kinder, Küche, und Kirche (children, kitchen, and piety).

I bought Jerusalem bourgainvillias, the deep purple kind, for our porch; I couldn't resist.

For Shabbat Lekh Lekha (when we read the stories of Abraham), we went to the Bar Mitsva of the son of a Debbie Greniman, a former student who now lives in Jerusalem with her family. The men and women were separated but only a curtain down the middle of the synagogue divided them. When the Torah was taken from the ark, it was carried by a man around the men's section and then passed to a woman to carry around the women's section. When the dvar Torah (short sermon) was given and when the announcements were made, the curtain was opened. Having been there before, I also know that women occasionally give the dvar Torah. It was also good to hear the women singing as a group, a kind of descant to the men. The more orthodox are missing something by relegating their women to closed rooms and silence. At the reception afterwards, I met Ben Hollander whom I have known since I was eight years old. He was a member of my father's congregation, eventually became a rabbi, and has been living in Israel for some years. He and his wife, Judy, invited us back for lunch where I met his mother whom I remember well from my childhood. Ben introduced me to the "Mt. Vernon mafia," people from my father's community who live in Jerusalem. One of them, Sharon Greenblatt, told me the following story: My father ran a study group every Tuesday evening for fourteen years. They studied the Torah with the medieval commentator, Rashi, and everyone had to bring in his or her comments. This, of course, I knew. Mr. Greenblatt was a member of that group and, when my father retired, he kept the group going. Sharon's father died recently and now she has started the same kind of group in Jerusalem. I was very deeply moved to hear this. How proud my father would have been. My mother was equally moved when I told her. Another figure from the past surfaced at the Bar Mitsva reception: Cliff Churgin, a former student from Emory. At that time, Cliff was quite a wise-guy and, together with another student, insisted on teaching a course at Emory on Jewish humor. We discussed it and I agreed to host it if they could do more than tell jokes. They did, and we taught the course twice. He now lives here with his family. Small world.\

Americans are everywhere and English is spoken widely. There are even several of them in Rabbi Darzy's Iraqi kabbalistic group.

ROSH HODESH (the New Moon)

On Rosh Hodesh, Philippe and I prayed with Rabbi Darzy. Everyone else took about 40 minutes; we prayed for 2 1/2 hours. Lots of meditations. It is good not to have to rush through a service, to have time to say and mean each word, and to be able to add your own prayers without falling behind the congregation.

At night, I went with the group "Go around Zion; circumabulate it" (Psalm 48:13). We visited each of the entrances to the Temple Mount or, to put it more correctly, we got as close as the police would let us. We were about 100 men and 50 women, most of them teenagers who had come from all over Israel. The men and women separated, with the women walking behind the men. When the group had to back up, the women did too in order to let us pass. Very orderly. At each gate, the leader gave a short talk about the gate, mixing politics and fundraising. Then, we chanted one or two of the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-34) which were sung on the steps of the temple when it stood. Then, we said a prayer. I had brought our shofar which I sounded. And then we sang and danced our way to the next gate. As soon as we reached an open area, the boys broke out in circle dancing. Very spirited. Security was tight. We had police and soldiers with us and, at every point, there were police waiting for us. Since we did this at night, the city was almost deserted. A few Palestinians watched us go by. One group got rowdy, so the police and soldiers pushed them back. A few of the Jewish kids wandered where they shouldn't and were swept back into line by the police. They stopped traffic when we reached the open roads -- as much crowd control as security. It was very joyous, especially being with the young people. It was also very moving to blow shofar at each of the gates to the temple. Maybe if I do it right, the messiah will come. The others may have thought that too because the group fell silent when I blew the shofar. For the final gate, the leader put the microphone in front of the shofar. At the end, he told me to come back and bring it again. When we reached the southern wall, we could clearly see the bulge that has been created by very unwise digging by Palestinians under the al-Aksa mosque. The U.N. is sending a team to look at it but, if you ask me, it is very dangerous. When the rains come, it is likely to collapse, taking with it the al-Aksa mosque -- the holier of the two mosques on the Haram al-Sharif -- and anyone in them. Not to speak of the political fall out because the Palestinians will blame the Israelis anyway.

The second night of Rosh Hodesh, I went to a chamber music concert: several different renderings of "Out of the depths have I called You" (Ps. 130:1), known by its Latin title "De Profundis," including Bach, Avni (an Israeli), Schoenberg, and De Lalande. As the first concert since Rosh HaShana, it began with the national anthem of the State of Israel. Only in Jerusalem can one do "Go around Zion; circumabulate it" reciting psalms, dancing, and blowing shofar on one night and hear "De Profundis" the next!

After a short night, I got up to go to the Wall, not quite sure why. You can tell a lot about a person by how he recites his prayers. Since the text is the same, it is the words emphasized and the tone of voice that make a difference. I like the davening of Rabbi Porush; he has seen a lot of life and his voice resonates with faith. After services, a group of teenage boys with kippot and draped in Israeli flags came in singing what I have come to call "redemption songs." They quickly formed a circle and began to dance. It was a Jerusalem Yeshiva group that had just returned from a trip to Poland; they came directly from the airport. I stood there with the tears streaming down my face. How many Jewish boys that age were exterminated in Poland, and here these boys are -- free, singing, and dancing, ready to pray, at the Wall, in a Jewish state. In two years, all of them will be in the army, on the front lines, ready to die again but in defense of the Jewish people. Rabbi Benny Elon, the son of Justice Elon, and their Rosh Yeshiva arrived. They ran to greet him and danced him to the Wall. He put his head against the Wall and just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

TIYYULIM (TRIPS) AND VISITS

We made our first tiyyul (trip) with Naftali and Rachel Stern to Rishon LeZion to see a collection of Salvador Dali's works dealing with Judaism. It was amazing. He was a master craftsman and a person with some commitment to Jewish existence. We saw a whole room of his biblical illustrations. There were several of verses from Psalms which he interpreted in a Christian way and, for the first time in many years, I was able to appreciate how the Psalms sound to Christians. The exhibit also included his series, Aliyah, done for the twentieth anniversary of the State of Israel. I saw it many years ago and Ursula bought an original copy of the set (there were 250 copies of a set of 25) for me from friends. The set in the exhibit was done on a different color paper, which changed the color of the prints enormously. We also saw Dali's Song of Songs, his Ten Tribes, and other pieces. A good first tiyyul.

We took our second tiyyul this week with Benjamin and Alexia (our son and new daughter-in-law who are visiting for a week), together with the Sterns, to the sea coast. It also gave us a chance to recite the benediction upon seeing the great sea. I'd forgotten how calming being on the water can be. We also stopped at the artists' quarter of Jaffa. Like the rest of tourist-Israel, Jaffa is empty; open stores waiting for customers.

One Friday afternoon, we paid a call on Emil Fackenheim, the philosopher. We've met him at conferences in Jerusalem, Rome, and Atlanta. He is very fond of Ursula, though I am not sure what this world-renown expert on Hegel has in common with my wife. He talked about his life in Germany and his decision to move from Toronto to Israel. It was really a post-shoah conviction that the life of the Jewish people really must take place in its homeland, and he wanted to be part of that.

We also went to visit some of Alexia's relatives. They live on an acre of land they bought decades ago and have a house for themselves, one for one of their daughters, and one for some of the grandchildren. Now there is a fourth generation living there too. A real family compound which also includes an orchard and a garden with flowers, vegetables, oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and nuts. A truly wonderful family from the pioneering period. They put on a sefardic banquet for the young couple, and a large number of cousins turned up. (I have trouble believing that Alexia is really related to so many people.) After the meal, Alexia's grandmother asked Benjamin to recite the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) and, just as he came to the prayer for the soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces, a young, blond cousin entered in uniform carrying her semiautomatic rifle. Everyone has a child in the army, and every soldier is also the child of someone. This is hard to get used to.

I stopped at the office of one of the secretaries of the Institute for Advanced Studies and she was on the phone in animated conversation. She stopped long enough to explain that it was her son who is in the army on active duty. I only heard one side of the conversation: "Did you tell them you haven't been home in three weeks?" "So, I'll come to the Muqatta´a to see you" (this is Arafat's headquarters). "I'll even come to Sinai for the weekend." "May God protect you and all those that are with you."

Aharon Levi, the old Yemenite man from the Wall, invited us to the engagement party of one of his grandchildren in Kfar Sava. We picked him up and, on the way, discovered that he is now 94 and has been married for eighty years! I can't even imagine that. He was married off to his wife when he was 14 and she was about 7. Not much folklore, which was disappointing, but very good humus and pita (chickpea paste and flat bread).

We also went to tour the south wall of the temple compound in Jerusalem. It was too late in the day to get a guide but the signs were clear. One can see the old street pavement from Herod's day and the stones of the temple walls which the Romans pushed over the edge as they destroyed the temple site in 70 C. E. We saw, too, a mikveh, ritual bath. Everyone going to the temple mount had to go into one of these to purify himself or herself.

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

Some of you have asked about what we actually do here. The only regular moments are my early morning prayers at the Wall and Ursula's Hebrew classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On those days we leave the house at 7:30 and go to the University. We have VIP parking but everyone goes through the iron gates and is inspected (foto) -- at the University, as at supermarkets, theaters, cafes, etc. One gets used to this. It is not so much that this prevents a terrorist attack -- the atttack on the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University last spring was carried out by an Arab who was a long-time employee and who went right through security -- but that these measures can be raised to a high level at a moment's notice. I still chuckle when they ask my wife if she is carrying a weapon; they don't believe me when I tell them that she doesn't need one. Our study group has met a couple of times; interesting but we need more time together. I have also been to the National Library. They have the largest Judaica reading room that I have ever been in. They even have two of my books on the reserve shelves and one of those has been rebound. My other books are in the stacks. I should really spend more time there.

The rest of the time we practice Ursula's Hebrew or I am busy preparing a lecture on Maimonides as a mystic which I must give in Hebrew at the beginning of November and in English at the beginning of December. I work on my article for the Emory Law and Religion project. I try to read the Hebrew newspaper every day. We have finally gotten my computer to do the web in Hebrew, and to print in Hebrew. Some days we stop at the Israel Museum where we have become members for the year. And, on Fridays, I go to the shuk (the market) to buy flowers, challah, pomegranates, and other goodies for Shabbat. We've been to a couple of concerts, too. Still, there is a lot we haven't done: lectures, classes, city tours, folk dancing, and the list of people I haven't called is still longer than the list of people I have called. And, we are still waiting for the much-needed rain.

Love from Jerusalem, U&D