Dear Aaron and Wayne,

“Put your tallit inside your jacket,” the woman in front of me turned to say quietly, “so you don’t get arrested.”

Hold the phone.

If I hadn’t been standing in front of Israel’s most iconic backdrop, I would have sworn I was in Soviet Russia. Arrested? For wearing a prayer shawl? In what’s considered the holiest site in Judaism? What the crap is going on?

Oh right. I’m a woman. I tucked the cream and red silk underneath the sides of my open sweatshirt. I was shocked—I could get arrested for this?—but did it anyway, not so much out of fear as solidarity.

I’d almost missed the Women of the Wall. It was seven o’clock in the morning and I’d managed to bumble my way to the Kotel (Western Wall) after Yonatan’s mother dropped me off outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate on her way to the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University. “Enjoy,” she said, hugging me as I got out of the car. “Be many!” I’d made a special mid-week trip to Jerusalem just for this. And I walked right past them.

The Women of the Wall is a feminist group that has held services at the Kotel every Rosh Chodesh (the holiday celebrating the New Month in the lunar calendar). It’s an appropriate opportunity because Rosh Chodesh is traditionally a women’s holiday, stemming from tribal times when the women’s menstrual cycles not only synchronized amongst themselves but also with the phases of the moon. The Women of the Wall protest the chauvinistic Rabbinical regulations governing acceptable practices at the Kotel by holding a monthly service using traditional religious garments and reading from the Torah—both of which are prohibited for women to do there.

I have some serious ideological issues with the Kotel, and they don’t only have to do with the aforementioned chauvinist regulations (which, I might add, also prohibits men and women from even approaching the wall together—there is a wooden “mechitza” separation barrier that cuts the space into single-gendered sections, the men’s being about twice the size of the women’s.) In all honesty, I see the Kotel as more than vaguely idolatrous. It’s completely un-Jewish. We’re not supposed to pray to things. The Kotel is most certainly a thing. And it’s not even a particularly important thing, it’s an outer retaining wall of what used to be the Holy Temple, before it got destroyed [and rebuilt and destroyed again]. I can’t imagine what the Temple’s architects would think if they knew that millions of people would come to worship their outer retaining wall over thousands of years. (“I designed that wall in about ten minutes—can’t you go pray to one of the nice arches or something?”)

And then there’s the tradition of writing prayers on tiny notes and sticking them into the wall. In fact, there’s now a service provided by the ultra-orthodox community that allows you to fax your prayers from the US and have someone reduce it to spitball size and cram it into the spaces between the stones with everyone else’s, only to be swept up with the tissues and gum wrappers at the end of the day. It’s like a giant Jewish wishing well.

I remember my first time at the Kotel. My parents encouraged me to write a little note and stick it in. I remember exactly what I wrote, because my goody-two-shoes seven-year-old self felt guilty about it for years. I wished for a kitten, which was the same thing I wished for with every blown out birthday candle and every thrown penny and every victoriously severed wishbone until I was about 12. I felt guilty about it because even at seven I realized you weren’t really supposed to wish for a kitten at the Kotel, you were supposed to wish for something important. But I really wanted the kitten. So I wished for it. Never did get it though. Must be karma for picking a kitten over the classics, like world peace or an end to a terrible disease like AIDS or gastroenteritis or Republicans.

The whole thing is faintly ridiculous when you look at it like that. I mean, a lot of things in Judaism are faintly ridiculous when you look at them critically. Maybe that’s where the Jewish sense of humor came from—we have to laugh at ourselves because the other option is saying “Eh, fuck it, lets go get a cheeseburger and wait around for the next life like everyone else.” So the idea of praying to a big inanimate object that used to be kind of close to something actually important a few thousand years ago and abiding by a bunch of fascist rules about what I can and can’t wear and read and say based solely on my Double-X chromosomal status doesn’t exactly sound like the breathtaking spiritual experience they tell you it is at Sunday school. (I don’t tell my kids that, by the way. I tell them what the Kotel is, and why it’s very important to a lot of people, and why some people find it problematic, and I let them make up their own minds, because they are a hell of a lot smarter than a lot of adults I know.) Needless to say, I wasn’t itching to go back. But since I’m in Israel, and since it’s the first question a lot of people are going to ask, and since I’d like to be able to answer with “Yes, I went to the Kotel” rather than having to launch into a detailed explanation of my moral and religious objections to the place (the answer to “What’s your major?” takes enough energy) I figured I should probably go anyway. But I wanted to do it right, and for me, that meant doing it in protest. Which meant waiting for Rosh Chodesh and Women of the Wall.

They stand in tight cluster just at the bottom of the ramp to the Women’s side of the Kotel, and I didn’t know it was them until I walked past them, did a double take, noticed a few kippot, and asked a woman towards the back of the group, just to make sure. In addition to hiding their tallitot under their coats—necessary these days in Jerusalem’s November mornings—the woman leading the service stands in the middle of the group, singing so softly I could barely hear her from where I stood.

I had a hard time following the service. In addition to the deliberately low volume, I decided not to bring a siddur (prayer book) with me to Israel—the weight limit on baggage is a bitch—so I had to use one from the pile provided at the Kotel, and of course couldn’t find one I was familiar with. No matter. I know most of the shacharit service by heart anyway, a fortunate byproduct of nine summers at Jewish summer camp and regular attendance at Shabbat services when I was little, until my family became uninspired to go due in large part to frequent moral objections to various practices at our Conservative (Jewishly, not politically) Raleigh, North Carolina synagogue. Because my pluralistic tendencies have led me to many different types of services over the years, I knew most of the tunes as well, so when the words failed me I sung along in monosyllabic harmony.

I think it was the least spiritually fulfilling service I’ve ever participated in. It was hard for me to feel prayerful while half whispering the prayers, hiding my tallit under my jacket, and being watched closely by three police officers in case someone decides to start trouble. After the morning service was finished, the women closed their prayer books and began gathering their things. I started to take my tallit off, thinking to myself, “That’s it?” But I quickly noticed that I was the only one removing my tallit. One woman produced a large green duffel bag from a bench nearby. The rest of the women began following her.

I quickly deduced that the duffel contained a Torah, and we were moving to another site in the Temple Mount area—but not at the Kotel itself, in accordance with a Supreme Court decision on the matter—for the Torah service. Safely away from the police and Hareidim (ultra-orthodox Jews), we liberated our tallitot from our jackets and extracted the Torah from its duffel bag ark. One of the women was celebrating her 55^th wedding anniversary and her husband, sons, and grandsons came to meet us at the new site. To my surprise, they were told to stand away from the rest of us, on the other side of an imaginary mechitza. We read Torah and concluded the service.

Afterwards, I got a chance to talk to some of the women. I asked if you could really get arrested for being female while wearing a tallit at the Kotel. They said they didn’t know of anyone who had recently, but that yes, if the right people made enough noise about it, you certainly could be. I asked about disturbances the group has experienced.

“They’re never spontaneous,” one of the group’s organizers said. “They only happen when someone comes to make trouble. And then they start a commotion and we get blamed for it.” She noted how unobtrusive the group is, and she’s right, as I said, I almost missed them myself and I was looking for them.

The women were extremely warm and surprisingly grateful I’d come from Tel Aviv just to join them. I seem to have found myself in that position many times over the years, participating in events I hear about by chance and shocking the hell out of the organizers. I don’t see why Women of the Wall should fall into this category—they’ve been active for about 20 years now, and they’ve even had a movie made about them. Some women are regulars, and some have participated whenever they happened to be in Israel during Rosh Chodesh for the past number of years, and some were first-timers, like me.

The sun had barely decided it was officially time to start the day when I walked out of the Temple Mount. I had some time to kill before meeting up with Yonatan, so I decided to get myself lost in the Old City for a while and think about things. I followed one of the Women of the Wall into the Jewish Quarter, and followed my fancies from there. Taking random turns and passing through stone arches, I came across little plaques set into the walls: “Here stood the such and such Yeshiva, which became a hiding place for the Irgun in 1946 and eventually moved down the block.” Children’s voices rang out from a playground of a religious school. From one of the classrooms, a heavily Ashkenazi-accented man read short lines of prayers, echoed by a juvenile choir. As I eavesdropped, I thought about whether these kids were thinking about the prayer, or, more likely, like any other kids, concentrated on who said it the loudest or the fastest or in the ear of the person in front of them or with emphasis on the syllable that turns a holy word into a dirty one. I wondered if the heavily accented man knew that’s what they’re thinking.

Men in dark suits with long pe’ot (sideburns on steroids) and huge fur hats looked at me as I walked the alleys of the Jewish Quarter. Am I supposed to be here? Is this private property? I got more and more nervous the deeper I got in, but consciously set these thoughts aside. This was the Jewish Quarter. I’m a Jew. I shouldn’t feel like I’m intruding on someone else, right?

Then why did I feel so out of place?

It’s not that I hadn’t realized it before, it’s just that the notion hadn’t congealed completely from a viscous pool of experiences into a more solid conclusion: I don’t feel I have anything more in common with these Jews than I do with someone of a completely different religion. I feel just as uncomfortable in the orthodox streets as I do in the mainly Arab neighborhoods. The difference is that in the Arab neighborhoods I worry that they’ll see my presence as an arrogant flouting of my freedom to travel where I please and intrude on their lives, while here I worry some fanatic will spray bleach on me for not being dressed to their definition of modesty, even though I’m wearing calf-high boots, long jeans, a crewneck shirt and a sweatshirt and jacket. In the Jewish neighborhoods I’m not necessarily trying to offend by my immodest secular womanly presence, but I’m not displeased if I do. I feel it’s my place to be positive in my Jewish identity and not defer to their standards just because I’m around them—they don’t change the way they dress to honor my understanding of Jewish texts, so why should I change mine for them? I’m a Jew by even the strictest definition, regardless of what I’m wearing or doing or saying. My customs and interpretations are just as valid as theirs.

I was talking to my suitemate’s boyfriend once about how I’m not completely convinced Judaism is monotheistic based on the multiple names of God and their distinct personalities, and in the discussion I mentioned something about the multiple writer theory, which postulates that there were several biblical editors, if not writers, that correspond to the various names of God. “No,” interrupted one of my suitemates, “the Torah was written by Moses.”

I guessed she’d never heard the multiple-writer theory before. “Well actually, there’s a theory that there were several writers, and each of them used a different name for God. In fact, they even think one of them was a woman—“

“No,” she shook her head, bemused, “the Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and Moses wrote it down.”

“There’s really no point in me telling you about this then,” I said to her, “because you have a religious belief and I’m not going to convince you otherwise.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she replied, and went back to whatever she was doing. I continued the conversation with my suitemate’s boyfriend.

I’ve had similar conversations throughout my life, although admittedly they’ve been mostly with Christians who were convinced that, despite my being (even in their eyes) a very good person, I’m still going to hell in 70 or 80 years. It’s bizarre to encounter the same [more than faintly ridiculous] religiosity here, and the difference is that I feel much more empowered and much more justified in challenging these interpretations. I have no grounds on which to challenge misogynist practices in Islam or Christianity, but I feel not only fully vindicated but morally obliged to challenge them in Judaism.

A couple weeks ago, I was explaining to Yonatan about how I really oppose the idea a lot of Americans and other foreigners have that they can come to Israel to study Torah and “explore their Jewish identity” which has nothing to do with the conflict or the Palestinians. I was telling him that, in fact, the Torah is a system of values, and it has a hell of a lot to say about how we treat other people, other peoples, and our neighbors. If someone wants to really “explore” Judaism in the context of Israel, I feel these things are completely unavoidably applicable to the modern situation of the Jewish state.

He said, “The Judaism you know is a lot different from the Judaism we have here.”

He’s right. The progressive Jewish community doesn’t exist in Israel like it does in the Diaspora. It exists, to an extent, but only to an extent. Even the feminist congregation Shira Chadasha (“New Song”) in Jerusalem operates with a mechitza; even the feminist Women of the Wall don’t allow men to pray with them at the non-Kotel site where they’re permitted to read Torah. No one here knows about the Reconstructionist movement, and for Israelis, post-denominationalism necessarily means secularism.

I find it difficult to explain my Jewish identity here. I’ve never considered myself a religious person, but I enjoy certain practices for traditional and non-traditional reasons, and I feel they enrich my life. I have studied and learned religious texts practice, and made my own decisions about how to incorporate them into my life. I don’t allow it to be dictated to me by a religious movement or a particular Rabbi, and I feel connected to other Jews with similar attitudes, whether they draw the same conclusions as me or not.

But I feel supremely disconnected from this militantly orthodox world that defines religious Judaism in Israel. Either you’re orthodox, or you’re not religious and you don’t participate in religious practice, aside from perhaps celebrating holidays, but that doesn’t include attending any kind of service. After I wrote about my experiences at the pseudo-orthodox synagogue in London, Aaron wrote that I’d find a similar attitude towards Judaism among Israelis. You’re right, Aaron, it is similar; only Israelis make no postures at being orthodox once or twice a year, they just say “fuck it” and disengage themselves from any possibility of Jewish practice. In the progressive Jewish communities I’ve visited since I’ve been here, almost everyone—all the Women of the Wall, nearly everyone at the Beit T’fillah Yisraeli congregation Rachel and I went to for Simchat Torah services—is American.

“The Judaism you know is a lot different from the Judaism we have here.” So I guess the question becomes, if I feel so utterly void of connection to the only viable Israeli religious sect, what connection do I feel to secular Israelis? The truth is that we make these statements about Israeli secularism, but in my experience, secular Israelis are not as secular as they think they are. Whether they realize it or not, they incorporate a lot of Jewish practice into their lives, be it surrounding holidays, Shabbat, or lifecycle events. The Judaism I know is certainly different from what exists in Israel. I have a distinctly Diaspora experience, even more so, one could say, than someone who grew up in the largely Jewish enclaves of New York or New Jersey, where the secularism that emerged is very similar to Israeli secularism because one didn’t have to be actively Jewish or part of a religious Jewish community to maintain any sense of Jewish identity. I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. I went to public school where I was one of a small handful of Jews. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been “saved” (or at least had attempts made on me). I think the first time I can remember was when I was in Kindergarten and a girl on my bus told me she had to prepare my soul for the messiah. Neither she nor I really understood what any of that meant, but it’s the thought that counts I guess. I like to tell the story of when I was a sophomore in high school and I had a crazy Spanish teacher, three hundred years old and spoke Spanish with a deep Southern accent: “Bwaynos Deeos, Clah-say.” One day, she was teaching us the word “costumbre” which means “custom”. Of course, she turns to the one Jewish girl in the class.

“Charro,”—that was her chosen Spanish name for me—“why don’t you tell us about one of the kow-stoom-brays your family has for Hannukah.” I came down to a choice between taking the opportunity to educate my classmates even though I was being put into a fishbowl, or just giving a smartass answer. I’ve been in classes with you both. Guess which option I picked.

“Animal sacrifice,” I said, deadpan, straight into her eyes. She almost had a stroke. Needless to say, she never called on me again.

That was growing up Jewish for me. It was also summers at Jewish summer camp where I finally felt relieved, if only for a short period of time, that my Jewish identity wasn’t what made me stick out. (Instead it was my frequent use of multi-syllabic words and lack of the Tiffany’s bracelet that seems to be standard issue among the rich girls at my camp.) It was going to a Conservative synagogue but teaching at a Reform temple because my own congregation wouldn’t have me as a teacher when I wanted to start at age 15. It was having my mom come into my classroom every year to talk about Rosh HaShanah and Passover because she refused to only speak about Hannukah (as if it were the Jewish Christmas). It was always knowing I was different for some reason, that I was living in a culture that wasn’t completely mine and wouldn’t completely understand me, ever.

When I was nine and my family moved to Israel, I felt more at home than I ever had, but I remember even then feeling somewhat alienated from the typical Israeli notion of Judaism by orthodox standards. Once, the family of one of my classmates came to lead my class in some Jewish ritual or other, and when I volunteered to my classmates that I knew a lot of this already, they shushed me, “Listen to them, their family used to be Dati (orthodox)”. Even in the minds of these kids, there was no way I could know anything about Judaism compared to someone who used to be orthodox.

My Jewish identity is no mistake. My parents raised me with a more than cynical attitude towards orthodoxy of any kind. So now I find myself in a tiny cross section of my already tiny minority that doesn’t believe the orthodox own the religion and the traditions, but also that refuses to forget the culture entirely.

So what do I do with all of this? Does it change the fact that I feel uncomfortable walking around orthodox neighborhoods of any kind, but I get really mad walking around orthodox Jewish neighborhoods? It’s judgmental. If I’m honest with myself, I judge their society as much as they judge mine. I believe misogyny and chauvinism and homophobia are wrong, just as their society perpetuates the notion that women are worth less than men and gay people are an abomination. I make assumptions based on how they look about what they think just as they make assumptions about my knowledge of Judaism based on how I look. I can recognize it for what it is, but it doesn’t change the fact that the worry going through my head as I walked the streets of the Jewish Quarter was of violence enacted upon me for bringing my secular, mainstream society self where I’m not wanted. It’s not out of the question. I could be sprayed with bleach, or stabbed, and it wouldn’t be the first time. And I had the thought, even though I’m sure no one I passed on the street is probably the kind of person who would do such a thing. I judge them for how they look, but I feel less guilty about it than if I were to judge religiously-garbed Arabs in the shuk, who I make a point of associating in my mind away from negative, violent images because I know that’s the Western impulse. So what do I do with it all?

But enough about religion. Lets talk about politics.

Racism in Israel is funny. In America, racism is against Black people and Latin@s. In Israel, racism is against Kurds and people from Georgia (the country, not the state). It’s funny. There’s no noticeable difference among various European peoples, but there’s still racism. Of course there’s also racism here against Black people—there’s a sizeable Ethiopian population—and Arabs, including Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews, who are physically identical to Arabs. And of course there are other racisms in America. But Kurdish jokes, Georgian jokes, they strike me as so ridiculous. And the split between the Ashkenazim (Jews of Eastern European descent) and the Sefardim (Spanish, Portuguee, French, etc.) and Mizrahim is much greater than I thought it was. I never knew racism when I was little here, not that I could remember. And it never occurred to me to have “other-ist” feelings towards Arabs in the sense of race because I never saw a physical difference between Arabs and Jews in Israel. It’s interesting now, from an adult perspective, to discover that regardless of how arbitrary the differences, racism can be found in any society. Dr. Seuss’s story of the Star-bellied Sneeches comes to mind. How strange, how completely bizarre these miniscule distinctions are. As an Ashkenazi and American Jew, I always felt the Israeli and largely Mizrahi culture was just as much my own as traditionally Ashkenazi culture. I identified—and still do—with the beats of the music, the language, and especially, the food.

I would be remiss, in this discussion of Mizrahi culture, if I failed to discuss the very important issue of hummus. I’m thinking of changing my Div II title to specify just what kind of hummus is on the side.

A few weeks ago, I was coiling cables in the theatre when Ziv came over to me and told me to put the cables down. “We’re going to eat hummus,” he proclaimed. I wasn’t going to argue.

The two other stagehands knew where we were going. Abu Hasa is famous. It’s only open until around 3 pm, so you have to get in while you can. The place is packed, and it’s impossible for a group of four to sit together without a significant wait. There’s little choice, they pretty much just serve hummus, prepared on the premises, with either whole chick peas, pine nuts, or ful (a similarly pasty food made of ground fava beans) and plenty of olive oil in the middle. With it comes a plate stacked high with pita and another with a quartered onion, if you’re really in it for the experience.

This is hummus like you’ve never had it before. It’s an event. The waiters fly through the room, nearly impossible to catch to ask for a coke or a napkin. They hastily set the plates on the table and leave you to sort out which belongs to whom. And it’s completely worth any discomfort or inconvenience. This is not the hummus you buy in the grocery store. It’s smoother but with less thina (tahini), and much more flavorful. I don’t know how they do it. I think they boil the chick peas for a long time. It’s no small feat. There are only a few places like it in the country; this one in Yafo, one in Acco, and of course, in Jerusalem.

I was waiting at the Migdal David (Tower of David) for Yonatan after Women of the Wall. He found me writing furiously in my yellow steno pad—the beginning of this entry, in fact, because I wanted to get my impressions and thoughts written down as quickly as possible. Hummus and k’nafe was the plan, so we set off for the shuk.

Yonatan is what we call “yerushalmi”, a native of Jerusalem, so walking around the city with him is an educational experience. I had just finished telling him what a good tour guide he is when a little man popped out onto the sidewalk next to us. Infer a heavily Arabic-accented English.

“Yes please, excuse me,” he started as they all do “but are you looking for a tourguide?”

I pointed to Yonatan as we passed. “I’ve already got one.”

“No no,” he called after us, “I am not a boyfriend, I am a tour guide.” A pause. We laugh as we continue walking. Then, from behind us, we hear, in the same less-than-accurate intonation, “He is a very lucky guy.”

“There are two places to get hummus,” Yonatan began to explain as we entered the shuk. “One is Abu Shukri, and the other is Lina. They’re both very, very good, but different from each other, and people have very strong opinions about which is the best—you either like Abu Shukri, or you like Lina.”

“Which one do you like better?” I asked.

“I like them both.”

We went to Lina, and I have to say, it was delicious, but I’m still going to say Abu Hasa in Yafo is better. I don’t know what I’m going to do without good hummus. I have to get someone to teach me to make it. We always made it in my house growing up, but it’s not nearly as good as this. Canned chick peas in the blender with some garlic and lemon juice is just not going to cut it anymore.

It’s that time again: time to update on my classes. This will be short. There’s not much to say. They still suck, and I wish I weren’t taking them, because it would mean I’d have more time to do other things I feel are actually productive. In the Hampshire Student’s Guide to Field Study in Israel, I will strongly recommend against taking classes here at Tel Aviv unless the student is a native (or as in my case, semi-native) Hebrew speaker and can take all their classes through the regular University. The regular classes through the Overseas Studies Program here are a joke, and the Hebrew class is terrible for someone who doesn’t have a classroom Hebrew background (adapting to this learning style would essentially mean un-learning all the Hebrew I know already, and I’m just not willing to do that) and there is no spoken Arabic class offered by the University. There are a number of spoken Arabic classes offered by other organizations, which would be a better use of money. Also the dorms are terrible, and although I guess I’m glad I was immediately in an environment with lots of people around, these are certainly not Hampshire students. I think at this point my official recommendation would be to get an apartment with other Hampshire students or a room in a young-ish group house, work at some interesting places in the city, and take language classes as desired without enrolling. You can take the Hebrew class without being a student here, and lots of people do. It’s a normal Ulpan like any other.

I have mixed feelings about Tel Aviv. I definitely wouldn’t say I love it here, although it is a fun city with lots of clubs and an endless nightlife, if that happens to be what you’re looking for. While I love the bar scene in some cities, I just haven’t been able to get into it here. I think it’s because the crowd tends to be either American or skeezy Israeli, and I am not particularly interested in hanging out with either Americans or skeezy Israelis at clubs. The cool Israelis have better things to do with their time, even in Tel Aviv.

I like the city for its beaches and openness, and the plethora of organizations and things to keep me busy. But when it comes down to it, it’s a city, mostly like any other, only with much better Falafel. I spend much more of my time in Yafo, where it’s magical and beautiful and full of culture and light.

In the next update, expect news of a new draft of my play Yackagdayou, Brateslayou (And Other Such Nonsense), my day trip to Nazareth, and my upcoming weekend return to Haifa. If I can make myself sit in front of the computer and not move until I finish, I’ll get it to you early next week.

L’hitra’ot from Tel Aviv, where it’s almost December and I still wear tee shirts and sandals in the afternoon.

~Sharon

Labels: Aaron-Wayne Bulletin, israel