Purim: celebrating solidarity and mutual responsibility

With Purim-masked barista at Cafe Metuka
(close to the Tel Aviv Cinemateque Library)

It is Purim eve here in Tel Aviv (and everywhere outside Jerusalem and all ancient walled cities). Celebrants have already begun planning, creating, and posing in holiday costumes!

A key focus is on bringing joy to needy people as we observe these four mitzvot, commandments:

• Hear the reading of the Megillah (Book of Esther)
• Participate in the Purim feast
• Send Mishloach Manot, gifts to friends, and
• most important, Give Matanot LaEvyonim, gifts to the needy.

Yesterday, at the Beit Avot on Yavne Street — where you'll find me Wednesdays (listening, yakking, and hugging) among the elderly infirm, Gisela beamed, "Tomorrow, the rabbi and his wife are coming. We will hear the Megillah read and there will be gifts for everyone."

A feast for the have-nots, too
Purim’s gifts to the needy are to provide more than mere sustenance.

The commandment of giving gifts to the poor on Purim teaches us that happiness is not the exclusive province of the rich. If it is, the celebrations should be canceled....

... Not surprisingly, Maimonides succinctly expresses this fact in his statement that 'gifts for the poor deserve more attention than the festive meal and gifts for friends because there is no greater, richer happiness than bringing joy to the hearts of needy people, orphans, widows and proselytes' (Mishneh Torah, laws governing Purim, Chapter 3, section 17). [Haaretz newspaper, March 4, 2007 | Adar 14, 5767]

How much to give to the needy on Purim?

I always respond that 'one should reduce what one spends on Mishloach Manot and give more to needy Jews.' — Rabbi Michael Broyde

The Megillah tells that when Queen Vashti refused to dance naked and entertain her husband and his friends, he had her beheaded. Today, many women still suffer physically and emotionally in abusive relationships. Jewish Women International has a comprehensive site devoted to this issue and resources.

"Megillat Esther…reminds us that history is capricious and life is fragile; that willing or not, we must confront our powerlessness and vulnerability, our inability to control everything. Or anything." — Rabbi Sharon Brous

Have a happy Purim!

Smiling at random, from Atlanta to Jerusalem with the Smile Project

Resting on a large boulder on Atlanta's Clifton Road, between the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the fire station, and across from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, I spied it.

An illogical generosity of spirit. The bright painting of a colorful, happy, whimsical creature. And, taped to its lower edge, a note bearing the message:



The proposition intrigued me. I loved the painting, the message, and the random way in which I had come upon it. (I could have taken the bus instead of walking that Sunday morning to Emory’s Cannon Chapel ecumenical, open worship to hear Bishop Bevel Jones preach the sermon on The Ministers' Manifesto. Or, my passing the boulder could have been too late. Or too early.)

Yet I was suspicious. Who gives away such loveliness? And merely for the price of a promise to smile at random people more often?

More self-tormenting questions: Who would check my faithfulness to hold up my side of the bargain? Shouldn't the find go to someone else... more deserving... a child? Yet I wanted it. How could I reconcile my doubts and take up the offer?

Within seconds, I had formulated my plan. I glanced around hoping no one was watching. And then I took it.

The painting and the note would travel with me the following week to Israel, in what has become my semiannual rite of passage, from Atlanta to Tel Aviv (and then back).

Once in Israel, I would deliver the package to my Jerusalem cousins (shown in this and the next photo). And I would task the Zohar family, including Daniel, Ohad, and Aviah (among the stars of this blog) with the proposition.

Checking the web address on the note provided clues to the art and ways of Bren Bataclan. Born in the Philippines and educated at top U.S. institutions, in 2003 Bren began The Smile Boston Project, his street art project to brighten spirits.

Eventually, the project grew and evolved several additional goals, including bringing art to people who typically don't go to art museums and galleries, giving paintings to people who may not be able to afford original artwork, creating murals in schools and hospitals, and everywhere spreading smiles.

Worldwide, Bataclan has left bright and vibrant paintings of his colorful characters on park benches, in subway stations, schoolyards, and other public places — such as the large boulder on Atlanta's Clifton Road. To each painting Bataclan attaches the same note.

Don't you want the project to smile on you, too?


Update | To find out who won the "Smile Project" 2009 feedback prize, meet me here!

Sleepless in Jerusalem: Qassam rockets hit Ashkelon

Late last Saturday night, I finally quit trying to reach Shimon on his cell phone. My havruta (Aramaic: study partner) of more than eight years had not answered my myriad calls after the Sabbath Havdala ceremony (denoting separation between sacred time and ordinary time). And, then I turned on the radio to hear the news.

Hours earlier, the reporter intoned, Hamas militants had fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel quassam rockets, including some longer-range katyushas that hit the large coastal city of Ashkelon, damaging houses and apartments. This is the first time that a quassam has ever reached Ashkelon in the western Negev, in the South District of Israel.

Here, in this ancient maritime area (site of one of the five cities of the Philistines) Shimon lives with his parents while writing his doctoral dissertation in psychology. The bible records that Samson, King Saul and his son Jonathan, and King David, among others, spent time here, too.

Fifteen seconds to find safety
As with all cities and towns that are designated Color Red — the code for an attack on civilian populations, warning sirens pierced the Sabbath quiet as Shimon, his family and entire community understood the dreaded message. Within fifteen seconds, a rocket would land close by. Fifteen seconds to absorb the information, to manage the terror, and to seek and then find and enter a safe place.

Only days earlier, I had introduced Shimon and Josh Gomes (both shown in the photo). (Josh, a grandson of my beloved Stella, of blessed memory, is a professional American basketball-player now helping to bring the local Binyamina team to victory.)

On learning of the katyusha rocket attack about fifty miles from my radio, inside my head images of Shimon danced to rippling sounds of his voice, his laugh — broadcasting his signature wit and wisdom. Shimon: a human anchor in sea of chaos, seeding humor and intelligence, goodness and compassion — in danger? Unthinkable. Untenable. Possible.

In her blog diary entry, March 1, 2008, Karen Alkalay-Gut muses —

Thank goodness we only paper-trained our dog. Even though she goes out four times a day she still pees on the paper at home. And there is much to piss on today. What terrible developments. Katyushas on Ashkelon. Kassams on Sderot. Attacks on Gaza. Human lives targeted. And of course both sides become more and more determined. We of course would stop as soon as the rockets cease.

Life may go on amid this madness, but sometimes I can't get my head around it. So I almost didn't go to my good friend's birthday party, but I did, and I forgot everything in the celebration - until the final song of the sing along - Shalom-Salaam. Then suddenly the absence of the very thing we were singing about returned to me with such pain. How many people were killed since we began the party? How many people irretrievably traumatized? How do we get around this?

Early the next morning, my phone rang. As I grabbed it, spotting Shimon’s name and number in the caller ID window, relief engulfed me.

Cut-to-the-chase Q&A
Me: Are you OK? How are your parents? You must have a long list of calls to return so I won’t keep you.

He: Yes, I’m OK. My parents are in denial. I accidentally left my phone in the car last night, and it was too late to return messages when I discovered it. Yes, I have lots of calls to return.

Our staccato exchange ended, I burst into smiles as I temporarily blocked out thoughts of lingering terror and the immediate tragedy for others in Ashkelon (and elsewhere), unlucky this time.

Bridging two worlds: How-To

Sitting next to me on the bus back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem was the gentle elder whom I met in the line to board Bus 480 in the Jerusalem Central Bus Station.

While most people pushed to mount the steep steps of the bus first, a small woman, clutching a large bulging bag in each fist, waited her turn patiently. When I bowed to indicate that she enter before me, she insisted, “You got here first, I saw you.” And I knew exactly next to whom I would plant my self, jacket, Brookstone backpack, and stuff-filled Whole Foods eco-friendly bag.

An old message: Jews, get out of Iraq
In the habit of strangers who meet on a journey, we bonded quickly, and I learned that my companion had arrived in Israel as a refuge child from her native Iraq. “They drove out the Jews, and we left in haste.” And, we segued into exchanging the outlines of our lives during the 45-minute road trip.

As our bus neared the Tel Aviv Bus Station, police blockades along the major arteries were causing delay, confusion, irritation, and rumor-mongering among the passengers. Everyone's dreaded unasked question: Were the blockades on account of a “suspicious object” (a possible terrorist bomb planted in an abandoned container found nearby)?

Within minutes, in a scene reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard's opening frames of Week End, spaghetti-like streams of stalled vehicles, their passengers-turned-pedestrians took to the highway. Here, helicopters droned overhead along the barricades where protesters, holding placards — UNDER FIRE IN SDEROT, chanted, “We want a military solution! We want the army to do what's right and to fight the enemy!"

An old message: Jews, get out of Israel
Sderot is the southern Israeli town where, during the past seven years more than 8,000 qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip have been pouring on schools, homes, streets — everywhere. Here, where 33% of the children suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), civilians and even schoolchildren act as medics, attending to injured family, friends, pets, animals — anyone.

The protesters came from Sderot to Tel Aviv to demand that the Israeli army kill, besides the terrorists who are missile launchers, Gaza's political leaders who meet every Saturday afternoon to decide where and when to terrorize Jews, then order the missile launchers to fire and to kill.

Bridging hemispheres, cultures, eons: tips —

• Choose, if possible, a bus seat companion who is gentle and thoughtful.
• Pay attention that Iraq/Babylonia drove out its Jews, who had been living there more than 2,500 years since their earliest expulsions from their native Land of Israel.
• Pay attention that Iraq’s cousins in Gaza and elsewhere are doing their best to drive out the Jews from the State of Israel.
• Therefore, choose life! !וּבָחַרְתָּ, בַּחַיִּים

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that you might live, you and your seed. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה; וּבָחַרְתָּ, בַּחַיִּים לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה, אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ — דברים ל:יט.

Bishop Bevel Jones and The Ministers' Manifesto

My previous post on Dr. King's birthday continues here.

With Bishop L. Bevel Jones,
coauthor of “The Ministers' Manifesto”

As a child growing up in New York City, I watched images on TV that were forever etched in my young soul — police and their dogs attacking small children. In resistance to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in favor of integration, mobs of men, women, and children waged obscene deadly battles in Little Rock, Arkansas. In one of the ugliest chapters in the nation's history, citizens and state leaders — elected officials, clergy, school personnel, police, and firefighters partially shut down Central High School.

The uproar pervaded the deep south. Georgia deliberated closing its public schools rather than allow black and white children to attend them together. Here, fewer than 100 principled, courageous ministers of the all-white Atlanta Christian Council took a bold stand where church leadership (really, any leadership) was desperately needed.

“Where there are no men, strive to be one ” (Rabbi Hillel)

Then age 30, retired United Methodist Bishop L. Bevel Jones III and fourteen other clergy drafted an appeal for moderation, communication between the races, racial amity, and obedience to the law. Eighty clergy signed it, and on November 3, 1957, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published on its front page what became called The Ministers' Manifesto. It was credited with helping Atlanta desegregate peacefully by discouraging city officials and Atlanta citizens from pursuing a course of massive resistance to federal authority.

Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild, whose moral convictions and bold actions — like those of his Christian colleagues, evoked the ancient biblical prophets did not sign this historic statement by Christians. Still, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) responded to his partnership with them and related activities by bombing the Temple, the city’s oldest Jewish congregation. The bombing aroused new fears of racial extremism, prompting more than 300 ministers to issue a second manifesto calling for the creation of a citizens' commission to debate alternatives to massive resistance.

The promise of this nation's founders
Last Sunday, Bishop Jones preached the sermon at Emory University’s Cannon Chapel ecumenical, open worship. Susan Henry-Crowe, Dean of the Chapel and Religious Life, welcomed the group that included Emory organizations — from Jewish to Muslim and from Catholic to Protestant. The Bishop's sermon was part civil rights history, part autobiography, and part personal principles and beliefs. He said:

Nothing is quite as uninteresting as a religious moralist, always on the side of angels but never fighting any devil. We must be willing to take sides on moral issues of the moment. And our ideas must be linked to actions that address specifics, tangibles. — Bishop Bevel Jones

And, Bishop Jones remembered —

• "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement," Rosa Parks who, too tired to move to the back of a segregated bus, sat down, and the world stood up.

• Mahatma ("great soul") Gandhi who pioneered resistance to evil through active, nonviolent resistance.

• Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant theologian, civil rights activist, and contributor to modern just war thinking.

• Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who called us to address the monster triplets — racism, economic injustice, and militarism, and insisted that the nation be a beacon of light, not a bastion of might.

Bishop Jones closed the morning service with a benediction that spoke to me as I prepare to cross “the pond” to resume my life on the other side, in Israel.

As you go, may God go with you —
Before you, to guide you,
Behind you, to guard you,
Beneath you, to uphold you,
Before you, to inspire you,
Beside you, to befriend you, and
Within you, to give you peace.

On Dr. King's birthday, listening to "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

Forty-one years after Vietnam, in the midst of our current unjust war — the invasion and attempted occupation of Iraq, heed Dr. King's call —

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.

Dr. King delivered the sermon (full text here) at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, April 30, 1967. Black Forum records, a subsidiary of Motown, released this recording, which won a Grammy in 1970 for the Best Spoken Word Recording.

StoryCorps' Dave Isay and Atlantans tell their stories

Valerie Jackson interviews Dave Isay,
StoryCorps founder and journalist

Sister-pal Sherry and I were among the throng that arrived an hour early to get a seat in Atlanta's Georgia-Pacific auditorium for a special live taping of the weekly author interview program, Between the Lines. In welcoming us, host and former First Lady of Atlanta, Valerie Jackson, instructed us to maintain strict silence and to save our questions for the Q&A after the show.

And then, the ace interviewer with the velvet voice introduced StoryCorps founder and journalist Dave Isay, who shared stories of love and healing from the largest oral history project in the nation’s history. Many of the stories are recorded in his latest book, Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

Dave Isay on telling stories

• Stories tell who we are. They are the poetry, grace, and wisdom of people walking down the street or sitting next to us on the bus.
• People want to know that they matter and that they won’t be forgotten.
• We all own family secrets, which can be destructive so we need to talk about what’s real and important and to put things out in the open.
• Everybody can participate in telling stories (directly; not through politicians, journalists, academics, or others). Their stories might be about a first date remembered 25 years later, the Sunday school teacher who inspired a generation, a widowed father who raised healthy children amid profound loss, a hospital orderly who prays for patients, and families whose loved ones have Alzheimer’s disease.

To listen to the radio program, click here.

Update | March 27, 2008 In a virtual StoryCorps booth — this blog, Sherry told her story, Sherry's baby pictures: a portrait of Jim Crow segregation laws.

Bethlehem bound: Is it safe?

Janet, Brian, Caroline, and Vivienne Reed 

Janet, Brian, Caroline, and Vivienne Reed are in Manger Square, in the center of Bethlehem. Here, in the Church of the Nativity, in the Grotto where tradition says Jesus was born, they are celebrating the ancient birth narrative in lessons, carols, theatrical enactments, and liturgical services.

The Reeds rode an armored bus from the Anglican Church in Jerusalem to cross through the large Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint to Bethlehem, a short though security-conscious journey that they hesitated to make.

Their hesitation? In May 2002, Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted when Islamist terrorists seized the Church of the Nativity, holding hostage dozens of Christian nuns, priests, monks, and pilgrims for weeks, and desecrating their holy site. For this and other reasons, many Western governments warned against nonessential travel to Bethlehem. Yet new peace talks among the fighting parties encouraged my friends to join today's flow of pilgrims, tourists, families, and clusters of friends.

Green light to Christmas Eve in Bethlehem
Aviah, my cousin who recently completed three years' service in the IDF elite Paratroopers Brigade, relayed this message to the Reeds when I called him to inquire on safety conditions:

. . . Tell your friends the Israeli army will protect them.

Lisa Goldman, freelance journalist/writer, resident of Tel Aviv, and uber blogger, replied to my email:

. . . Bethlehem is quiet and safe, and there will be plenty of people around. I'm sure they'll have a good time.

* * *

Closer to home, here in Atlanta, I joined Stephanie's family to watch the children, Bethlehem bound in spirit, retell the Nativity birth story (that Angela directed) in their church.

Seated behind these angels (waiting in their wings for the cue to perform) and basking in their sweetness and light, their wonder moved me to tears. Reflecting on the same wonder I have felt at their age and since, listening to and retelling my family’s millennia-long Jewish history, tradition, and lessons, I knew this:

We — the Reeds, Stephanie's and Angela's families, others', and mine all experience sacred time, and we all retell our sacred stories.

Today, I am sending love to my Christian friends worldwide, among them the Reeds, David and Hope, Faye and Jim, Josh, Madeline, Jonathan, Luther and Helen, Joe, James and Anissa, Danny, Marlene, Olga, Budd and family, Ellen, and virtual pals Nizo and Bronze. And, I am remembering my Christian loved ones, whose memories are a blessing: Stella, Jean, and Kathy.

Related posts

• Green light to Christmas Eve in Bethlehem
• Christmas "pearls" from my Christian friends
• James and the Giant Christmas Concert

Remembering Aunt Ruth and Uncle Leo Friedson (and more)

On the eighth night of Hanukkah: first victory for freedom of worship, my cousins Gila and Chaim lit candles, sang holiday songs, and ate holiday foods in their Jerusalem home.
And then, with Gila's sister, Miriam, they began sorting through the sisters' late parents photo collection —  each image a frame in the human story.

Among the photos is the one Gila is holding in the photo that Chaim captured and sent to me. "Thought you might enjoy this shot," he noted in his email message. Chaim was right! The photo was a Hanukkah gift for the ages. Here is why.

Portrait of two sisters
In the photo, I am about nine or ten years old and my sister, 15 or 16. To prepare for the photo studio session, I got a haircut (probably at Best & Co.) and chose my outfit. When I saw the finished product, I protested the false colors of my dress: Washed-out rose pinks had replaced the original rich reds. And it bothered me that my sister’s dress was more grown-up than mine, its waist bound by a tie.

Until Chaim sent me the image, I had no idea that my parents had sent the photo to my Israeli Aunt Sarah and Uncle Matityahu, parents of my cousins Gila and Miriam who lived in Kiryat Motzkin, on the outskirts of Haifa.

I did know that my parents distributed copies of the photo to my maternal grandparents (who lived  less than a mile away from us, in Manhattan) and to my mother’s only sibling, Ruth, and her husband, Leo (who lived in Norwalk, Connecticut — an hour's train ride away). Aunt Ruth and Uncle Leo were childless, and winning their hearts was the upside of lacking American cousins.

Me: part brat, part trooper
I am not proud that I could practically wrap my pudgy finger around my Uncle Leo. And I am ashamed that I once hijacked my father into buying me a beautiful coach-style doll carriage, taunting, “Uncle Leo will buy it without requiring me to read Hebrew books.” My father caved and bought the carriage, which triggered my guilty feelings for being manipulative and rude. Though I dearly loved pushing those fancy wheels along West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.

Fortunately, I had a softer, sweeter side. When I turned 12, I got a parakeet, which I brought with me on occasional solo weekend visits to Aunt Ruth and Uncle Leo. The bird, traveling in a little carrying cage they had bought for these journeys, rode the train with me from New York’s 125th Street and Lenox Avenue station to South Norwalk. There, my aunt and uncle met us and drove the bird and I home, where their guest room offered a bed for me and a standard-size cage for the bird.

In appreciation
Aunt Ruth and Uncle Leo played central parts in my childhood. They took me to restaurants and the beach, and Sundays and holidays we rode in my uncle's grey DeSoto around their neighborhood — exotic haunts to a kid from Manhattan. In their grocery store (Friedson and Sons), I drank all the chocolate drinks I could swallow and munched on bags of Wise Potato Chips and I played with a steady supply of kittens my uncle kept to do a job I understood (thankfully) only years later.

My aunt, whose stock of Revlon nail polish included every shade of red, let me paint my stubby nails with abandon. Through my childhood years, she bought me red shoes, summer and fall outfits, and, in my early teens, taught me to knit — even supplying wonderful yarns and pattern books and the occasional “kit” to knit slippers and a scarf that cleverly doubled as a hood.

My aunt and uncle spoiled me rotten, which felt like sheer heaven. My happy memories with this childless aunt and uncle offset some of the pain of losing my father when I was 12, the same year my sister went off to college and then got married. And I am grateful, too late for them to know, for their care and affection.

So, when my Jerusalem cousins' discovered their copy of the photo of me and my sister, and then send me a photo of the photo, they triggered for me memories of special times and missing important people from a childhood and youth vanished yet never forgotten.

A Hanukkah gift for the ages.

HAPPY THANKSGIVEN

My gorgeous amazing Chilean-born friend and former neighbor in Atlanta is a five-year survivor of ovarian cancer. Today, at age 72, she updates me (from across town) in her signature Spanglish, which I adore —

I have been worry about my healt. My last test show somethink that could be serious, so I will have to get another one (Pet CT) in a few weeks more, until then I am not going to be sure if I have metastasis and probably a new treatment. I am very concern and nervous. I miss you, I love you. HAPPY THANKSGIVEN.

Curiously, my friend's misspelled valediction bears a profound message: THANKSGIVEN. Or, giving thanks for what has already been given.

Just days before this most glorious of American holiday traditions — giving thanks in a national, coordinated way across the ridiculous artificial divides we humans create, I celebrate my friend and her attitude of gratitude. And, I celebrate all life by giving thanks for all that has been given. (Celebrating this all business, admittedly, can be mighty challenging, often requiring a perspective informed by a few dozen millennia...).

So, what are you THANKSGIVEN for?

I am humbly thanksgiven for security guards... who save lives (while often sacrificing their own). Here's why.

On Thanksgiving Day, we fourteen celebrants around Janet's and Brian's table took turns sharing memories of Thanksgivings past. My memory was of last year, in Tel Aviv, where, days before Thanksgiving, our hostess rode the train (choo-choo, not subway) to a farm where she purchased a freshly killed turkey. She then boarded the train back to Tel Aviv, though not before security guards (not only at airports in Israel...) demanded to know, why the bird?

It is not beyond imagination that a twisted mind would seek to detonate a bomb-stuffed turkey, blowing up self, bird, train passengers, and more. A non-cheery thought, especially on Thanksgiving, though we guests found the security check report entertaining. Where death, really annihilation, is a constant threat, you develop a taste for gallows humor and find laughter value in turkeys questioned at the border between a railroad station and just steps before entering it.

My grandmother's amber pin. Snow in Vienna and Jerusalem. (Yes, the subjects connect.)

Wearing my grandmother's amber pin
while embracing fabulous cousin Anat
at her family home in Jerusalem's Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood

In his recent email, Vienna-based world traveler Stefan wrote, "We are on the way to Denmark on Sunday," to which I replied, "I have a magnificent amber pin (photo attached) that my maternal grandfather gave my grandmother when they lived in Copenhagen."

On Nov 11, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Stefan Schaden wrote:

Great amber pin! :)) Go and see Copenhagen (if you did not)! Wonderful city, modern, progressive. I can easily imagine living there! So interesting your cosmopolitan family [SNIP].

First snow in Vienna this morning, by now everything is gone, but you have pics attached.

shavua tov!
stefan

Stefan (who guest-blogged an Urgent Message on Austria's "sick people") wrote, "interesting your cosmopolitan family!" Yet I consider him family, too. While bloodline is one way to be family, and marriage confers family status, we also have family of choice: the one we populate with people we claim and who claim us.

On Nov 11, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Tamar Orvell wrote:

After I visit you in Vienna (this year?) and when you move to Copenhagen, I will visit you there, too. Your snow report reminds me of snows we trudged through together in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem snows

Stefan and I trudged through Hulda Hanevi-ah Street
and others in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood

Snow formed down quilts
blanketing roofs, balconies, and wrought-iron work

In the central-heat-free stone residence, I wondered,
"What about Stefan's pate? Will it freeze?"

Wrestling with texts and observing shoes in havruta, a study partnership

With Felegosh, at the entrance to our havruta campus,
on Lavista and Briarcliff Roads, Atlanta

While a quick glance at the photo might suggest that I am promoting a popular coffeehouse chain, I aim to praise another kind of commerce. A transaction in which no monies are exchanged and whose value is incalculable: a havruta [Aramaic: study partner].

The glowing, incandescent Felegosh is my Torah MiTzion program havruta. Eighteen years ago, this Sherut Leumi (Israel National Service Corps) volunteer alumna rode on her father’s shoulders as he walked Ethiopian lowlands, steppes, and semi-desert for six months with his family and extended community. Their destination? Addis Ababa, the African nation’s capital from where a plane brought them to their ancestral home, Israel.

This year, Felegosh is an emissary in Atlanta, Georgia, where her team of Bnei Akiva volunteers is working with the local Jewish community to strengthen Jewish identity and instill a love for Israel and study of Torah through havrutot [plural of havruta], Shabbat and festival celebrations, community programming, and other kinds of informal education activities.

While Jewish tradition has always valued learning with others, learning with a partner is special.

I have learned much from my teachers, but from my friends more than my teachers.
— From the Talmud (BT Ta'anit 7a)

For our most heterogeneous study partnership, mutual respect and affection help bridge differences in our ages and cultural backgrounds. And though Felegosh and I approach our Jewish tradition from vastly different worldviews and assumptions, and our religious observance and practices are at almost polar-opposite ends of a continuum, we are learning much and well as we tap into the differences.

What have we been studying since Felegosh arrived in August?

• Selected paragraphs on repentance by Shlomo Aviner and Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal (contemporary Jerusalem rabbis and ideologues of the national camp in Israel) and excerpts from Hilchot tshuva (Laws of Repentance) by Maimonides, the 12th century Spanish-born Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician.
  
• The d'var Torah (words of Torah) that my cousins wrote on the invitation to the presentation of a hand-lettered Torah scroll commissioned as an ilui neshama, an elevation of soul (or spirit) of Noam Yaakov Mayerson, of blessed memory: son, brother, uncle, and friend killed in the Second Lebanon War.
  
• Psalm 119
  

Yet I am learning not just by studying texts but also by noticing the attitudes that drive much of my partner’s input.

Last week, for example, we sat at a table where Felegosh was squinting in the light of the setting sun while speakers broadcast loud music over our heads. Both distractions bothered me, and so I asked, “Do you want to move to a shadier spot, and should I ask the barista to lower the volume?” “Not at all,” her reply. “These are mere incidentals to our business, our learning. Almost nothing merits distracting or interrupting us.”

It has been said that if you want to learn from your rabbis [Hebrew, Aramaic: teacher], study how they ties their shoes. And so I am studying how Felegosh “ties” her turquoise Crocs!

Nichols family-by-choice reunion

John Nichols and his "big sister"

    Unless you have heard me gushing about Stella, my decades-long spiritual mother, you wouldn’t understand why John introduced me to his Atlanta friend as “my big sister” when he was in town visiting from his home in Hawaii. Looking at our faces (shown in the photo), you’d wonder, How? What’s up with that?

Simple. In the late 1960s, when I launched my first career as an early childhood educator, in Cambridge, MA, I met John, his ten siblings, and their parents, Joe and Stella Nichols. And I immediately claimed them as mine. Since then, neither time, distance, life, nor death has changed this belonging. So, I rearranged my schedule on short notice to catch up with my brother-visitor on his East Coast tour seeking galleries, institutions, festivals, and marketplaces to show his art.

Karen, John's youngest sibling, was among my first beautiful and brilliant Head Start preschool students. When Karen arrived on the first day of school with her slightly older sisters Esther and Linda, the elder sisters' expressions read: "What kind of place is this? Who is this child-woman who calls herself teacher?" Today, Karen, who has earned a degree in education from Gallaudet College where she met, then married a fellow student from Nigeria (now, a professor at their alma mater) is mom to three beautiful and brilliant kids.

Esther, John's eldest sibling, raised her family in the home where her parents raised their own family, then sold it and retired to Mashpee, on Cape Cod.

Joe and Stella Nichols in their Cape Cod garden
(during my visit, spring 2004)

Today, at age 87, Joe continues a lifetime of gardening, fishing, keeping bees, preparing meals (and sharing his bounty with neighbors and guests), visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents, ministering to his flock, mentoring new church leadership, and welcoming family, friends, and seekers of his light.

The night before Yom Kippur we spoke, among other topics, about Unetaneh Tokef, a signature Hebrew prayer in the High Holy Day liturgy, and then Joe asked me to read it aloud in English translation. We spoke our usual brief time — more than an hour, and only ending the call because of my bedtime!

Stella, the woman whom I called "Inspiration" since our meeting that first Head Start year for Karen and for me, died 21 months ago, at age 83. She remains a tree of life — many roots, many branches, and my beloved surrogate parent, adored sister, treasured friend — a permanent force for good.

Family. Tracing blood lines is one way to define family. Marriage confers a family status, too. And then, there is a family of choice, the one we populate with people whom we claim and who claim us. It is easy to accomplish. Just reach across artificial divides. Remain open. And, only connect.

Related post
Josh Gomes is scoring points for Israel

Au revoir, Marcel Marceau

My childhood heroes continue to exit the stage, as do heroes of my adulthood. One by one, they release their tools — pens and papers, uniforms and costumes, needles and threads, batters and mixes. Now, they live in memory. And, in some lucky situations, preserved on paper, canvas, vinyl, and digitized bits of reality in multiple formats.

How I dearly loved them, and how they fascinated, entertained, and enlightened me endlessly with their courageously creative signature expressions.

Marcel Marceau spoke loudly in an inaudible voice.

I was a child in New York City when my parents took me to see the French mime who died this week, at age 84. Watching his speechless performances thrilled me as did listening to stories of his courageous exploits in the face of the monster Hitler and his systematic war to exterminate the Jews. Marceau's father was deported and died in Auschwitz. In his twenties, the mime forged identity cards (much as my grandfather did), proving youths too young to be sent to labor camps, and hid Jewish children from the Gestapo and the French police.

The artist spoke to and about all humanity. From an interview, quoted in The New York Times obituary —

Mostly I think of human situations for my work, not local mannerisms. There is no French way of laughing and no American way of crying. My subjects try to reveal the fundamental essences of humanity.

What were the fundamental essences of humanity that my ten- or eleven-year-old girlhood memory stored? Fortunately the wonderful online magazine Salon.com captured some —

. . . going up and down an invisible escalator . . .; attempting suicide; personifying all seven sins; and acting out the creation of the world, from amoeba to man, in 10 minutes or so. . . . His [was] . . . a world fashioned out of thin air. You see a statue, a pickpocket, a matador, a lion tamer, a soldier, a man passionately embraced by his lover.

How does the child in me remember so much about the mime from so long ago? Salon explains —

It's no accident that children are his best audiences, because his art demands active participation, imagination.

In the photo, which I took at the Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, Israel, a bevy of children express themselves joyfully, silently!

Probably, they never heard of the great mime whose art was for them, too, of course.

I pray that some day these children will see his work and listen to his clear unspoken messages on the fundamental essences of humanity. Equally, I pray that they and all children will develop their talents and perhaps bring to audiences the enchantment, comfort, inspiration, and hope, as Marcel Marceau brought to me when I was a child.

Yom Kippur thoughts: Our choices do matter

Blowing the shofar (greeting card image)

Eastern Europe, early 20th century. Courtesy of
the Fund of the New Synagogue Berlin, Centrum Judaicum.

The shofar calls

Awake, you sleepers from your sleep, rouse yourself you slumberers . . . Examine your deeds, return in repentance and remember your Creator. Those of you who forget the truth in the follies of the times and go astray the whole year in vanity and emptiness, which neither profit nor save, look to your souls, improve your ways and works, abandon your evil ways every one of you!
— Maimonides, in Hilchot Teshuvah, The Laws of Repentance 3.4

"And when the great shofar is sounded. . ."

. . .  a small quiet voice is heard, and the heavenly beings are thrown into fright, and, seized by a terrible dread, they declare: Behold, the day of judgment has arrived, when even those in heaven's court are judged for none can be exempt from justice's eyes! . . . You do not desire a person to die, but only to change and to live. . . 
— Unetaneh Tokef, a Hebrew liturgical poem (English translation in Mahzor Leyamim Nora’im, Prayerbook for the Days of Awe, The Reconstructionist Press)

* * * 

Since the Hebrew month of Elul that precedes Tishrei, when Rosh Hashanah begins, the shofar has been calling, its sounds ringing in my ears. And I am eager to continue this evening, Yom Kippur, the difficult spiritual work during this mandated pause in Jewish time. Guiding the congregation and service leaders will be the High Holy Day machzor, a rich anthology of prayers, hymns, and passages from the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar that tell the story, vision, core values, and history of the Jewish people.

The hard part of spiritual work is reflecting on my specific deeds and thoughts (intentional and not) and critically assessing my mis-takes (split word intended) the preceding year. Without this work, how would I recognize my past choices and discern the possible consequences and results each choice entailed? How else could I identify my responsibilities and make wise choices today?

It is this ability to choose that makes us human. And I want to know, How will I make choices that matter?

Last month, the popular author of the children's classic ''A Wrinkle in Time" died, at age 88. From The New York Times' obituary of this deeply faithful Christian:

Why does anybody tell a story? [Madeleine L'Engle] . . . once asked, even though she knew the answer. . . . It does indeed have something to do with faith, she said, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically [emphasis mine].

My related Yom Kippur posts

• 5769 (2009) Yom Kippur:"Tamar, Why do Jewish people vote Democratic?"

On the anniversary of 9/11: One hour, three conversations (excerpts)

• 2:15 PM — Today, after seeing my periodontist and before leaving her office, I conversed casually with her assistant, who suddenly blurted out: I am 44 and my father abused me until I was seven. I have forgiven him and my mother for allowing it because today I know he was a sick person.

• 3:00 PM — On my way home, waiting at the subway station platform for a train to the bus depot, I chatted with a fellow passenger. When our friendly conversation turned to religion, she announced: Oh, you are Jewish? All Jews are rich.
  
  
• 3:15 PM — Waiting for my connecting bus at the depot, I picked up a longstanding conversation with the station master. On his six children, he began: My eldest is a sniper in Baghdad. When he left for Iraq, 24 months ago, I told him, 'I wish I could go in your place. Just obey orders and concentrate on protecting your buddy to your right and your buddy to your left.'

During each conversation, I wondered, What is this person really telling me? And later, I pondered, How is each person connected to me and to the others?

L'Shanah Tovah, Happy New Year: On this day, the world was conceived.

Traditional holiday fruit, a pomegranate pregnant with seeds

Hayom harat olam.
On this day, the world was conceived.
These words conclude the first and most central idea in the Rosh Hashanah Jewish festival prayer service that begins this Wednesday evening of the year 5768 in the Jewish calendar.

. . . throughout this day and the ten days of return and renewal that it introduces, we remind ourselves . . . that the universe is a cause for wonder, for acknowledgment, for worshipful thanks, and for responsibility. . .

. . . Birth always inspires us with awe and wonder. . . But today we are to reflect not on the birth of a single child, not on the mystery of our own existence, not even just on the existence of whole species of life, but rather on the conception and the birth of the entire universe.

— From the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL)

A call to profound awareness.
What responses are possible?
The ruminations, thoughts, and introspections — the responses drive the cheshbon nefesh, accounting of the soul work I have already begun this High Holy Day period.

About the pomegranate.
On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, we eat a new seasonal fruit that we have not yet tasted. Why a pomegranate? The pomegranate, one of the Seven Species, or fruits and grains that the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 8:8) lists as special products of the Land of Israel, is considered "pregnant" with 613 seeds. The Bible mentions 613 mitzvot, commandments of good deeds to perform, and so we want our mitzvot in the coming year to be legion.

Related posts

• "Have you a sweet year"
• Shanah Tovah! Country on a String
• May the Jewish New Year and its blessings start תָּחֵל שָׁנָה וּבִרְכוֹתֶיהָ 
• L'Shanah Tovah, Have a Happy New Year 5767: Clean the slate and move on.

atlanta craigslist > housing wanted (part 2)

staying with relative since i got back from iraq but she lives middle of nowhere snellville...

i had more fun in iraq. this place sucks... need a break

Less than three weeks ago, I posted atlanta craigslist > housing wanted to share — no, really more to cry out — my horror and sorrow on reading the ad of a fellow's exquisite pain on being rejected as a candidate for housing on account of the color of his skin. (Craigslist, the mother of all online urban communities, is among many ways and places I advertise to sublet my home . . . and comb ads of housing seekers while I live the next months in Tel Aviv.)

Visitors who read that post and left comments resonated with what the housing seeker spoke to — injustice, unfairness, violence, and cruelty we witness (and, sometimes even perpetrate) in our society.

Yet I don't know what to make of the advertiser who identifies himself as military male, the human being who wrote: i had more fun in iraq.

• What kind of a military or civilian person, male or female imagines this perversion?
  
• What kind of life has he lived that shaped the sentence: i had more fun in iraq?
  
• What was he doing in Iraq? Where is he going?
  
• What is the USA doing in Iraq? Where are we going?
  
• What can I do to help stop this obscene war, expose the vulgarity of the enterprise, push back the dogged ignorance, greed, hell-bent arrogance, and mean spirit of its champions, decision-makers, and cannon fodder — destroying a country, and calling it fun?

Zichron Menachem in "Green" Holland refreshes Ohad

You haven't already met my cousin Ohad in person or via these three previous blog entries?

• When a child starts to go bald כשילד מתחיל להקריח (English and Hebrew versions) on Ohad's health crisis and his thoughts on becoming bald temporarily
• Ohad is Bar Mitzva!
  
• Ohad's timely email on my flight from Tel Aviv to Atlanta to resume my other "other" life

No problem. This update can inspire you to claim as your shining light the bright, sensitive, and loving 13-year-old from the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem, Israel.

With his Zichron Menachem pals, counselors, and a bevy of Zamzamiot (B’not Sherut Leumi [National Service Girls] volunteers), our hero spent a week in Holland this summer!

Zichron Menachem, an internationally recognized prize-winning organization that has been supporting kids with cancer and their families in Israel since 1990, led the odyssey for scores of participants — free to this special population, without discrimination to religion, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status. (I culled these photos of Ohad from the many hundreds on the trip that the organization posted to its web site.)

Q&A via Skype

"The experience was brimming with attractions, and there were solutions for all [to participate] — crippled and wheelchair-bound kids, among them," Ohad related in our conversation on Skype the other day. "The counselors were so devoted. Nothing was lacking."

• Me: About Holland — how did you find the country?
  Ohad: It's amazing. Everywhere it's green — trees, plants, bushes, everything is green!
  

• Did you get homesick?
  Not at all. It was nice taking a break from everything.

• How was the Dutch food?
  We brought everything from Israel because many participants keep kosher, and we needed easy access [to food that fulfills requirements of Jewish dietary law].

• What was the best part?
  The go-carts!

• Uriel [eldest brother] told me you were recently featured on Jerusalem radio. What was that about?
  Zichron Menachem asked me to talk about the organization.
  

• No surprise they picked you!
  [never one to boast] Because I am the oldest in the group now.

• Your dad told me you played guitar and sang at a recent commencement ceremony.
  That was for a big graduation for the Zamzamiot, and I played the popular Israeli song, Achshav Tov [Now, it's good].
  

Achshav Tov [Now, it's good]

Oh, is it ever good when this young man chooses to sing this song.

And in just a few weeks, Ohad will resume his school studies with his class after an amazing summer that concluded an amazing twelve months.

During this year, close to when he became a Bar Mitzva, Ohad shared with me some meanings and messages he formulated since he has been fighting leukemia.

Life experiences shape us. When I meet children as young as age four in the hospital, I have great compassion for them because they don't understand why they must get treatments and take medicines they don't like. OK, I am young, too, though I understand, and it helps.

As is his name — in Hebrew, "will sympathize," so is Ohad. In the photo shown below, a sympathetic young man, in the red sweater, shares his feelings openly, understands those of another easily, and expresses compassion freely.


NOTE I dedicate this post to a dear friend, Rabbi Dr. Michael Berger who, on learning of Ohad's health crisis, immediately included Ohad in his personal prayers during the daily prayer services. He also added Ohad ben Ditza to the list for the MiSheberach blessing for healing at the Young Israel, Atlanta. Michael, who has not yet met Ohad, is among the righteous souls who walk this earth.

atlanta craigslist > housing wanted

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Bookmarked: Israeli English-language blogs

So where in the blogosphere do I turn for news on life in Israel?

• Independent Israeli journalist Lisa Goldman recently made a couple of trips (passport in full view of government airport authorities) to Lebanon, causing no small amount of buzz, horror, gratitude, and awe on both sides of the border and beyond. Lisa lays out her tourist goals and itinerary in recent On the Face posts and in her replies to scores of comments on those posts and in some traditional media. For a random sample of what became a cause celebre, and the attendant conversation, watch Lisa dialog with a Lebanese professor on CNN's "International Correspondents" on his (and some others') criticism about the journalistic ethics of her coverage of life in Beirut, one year after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Then browse her blog.

Uploaded by zenith87

• At Not a Fish (profile: The meaningless chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother no longer trying to make sense of current insanity) Imshin shouts, pouts, mourns, laughs, opines, doubts, and questions goings-on where she lives (with her husband and daughters Eldest and Youngest). To bring home her points, she shares personal stories and family history along with Israel's stories and history. Her captivating writing and images (verbal, visual, and sound) that cover what's on TV, in the market, on the streets (for example, bicycle helmets . . . she disses them), and in the fields make Imshin an incredible credible voice of a political view more conservative, or closer to the "right," than where my instincts usually lead me. Why does this difference draw me here when so many other different voices repel? Perhaps clues can be found in these labels, among several by which she organizes her posts: pretending to know something and politics - yuck.
  
  Or in this example post: Monday, May 10, 2004
  Israel is not all about abusing Palestinian rights, you know
  
  . . . Anti-Zionists don’t seem to realize, or care, that abolishing the State of Israel, would create terrible suffering and misery, and it would probably not even alleviate all the suffering of the Palestinian people (at least part of which is self-inflicted, and will continue to be so, until they learn to take responsibility for their fate, regardless of Israel). . . .
  
  
• Poet, performance artist, Tel Aviv University professor, traveler, restaurant goer, recreational shopper, and tireless advocate for survivors' rights, Karen Alkalay-Gut's Tel Aviv Journal reads in staccato-like scream [yes!]-of-consciousness on exactly how she sees, understands, and responds to teeny and huge issues as they impact Israelis and their neighbors one person, neighborhood, balcony, and bunker at a time.
  
  Example: August 5, 3007. My friend calls up to invite me to join her in the march in Jerusalem in protest of the lack of government support for Holocaust survivors. They've been waiting for the money that was supposed to be given them years ago, and are dying out. Since they are always with me, the survivors, it seemed natural that I should join. And I've never been a friend of this government. . . . I want to know what happened to that money. I want to know what has taken so long and now that the government has finally made the first offer ever, why it is so low (84 shekel per month). And I continue to believe that the survivors were never compensated properly by this society which rejected the whole image of the victim, even while we based our national identity on the fact of these very victims. We don't like victims.
  
  
• Immediately below the header, Occupied, Yudit writes, The word "home" carries many associations. Mine is located in Jaffa (Yafo), once (meaning before 1948) "The Bride of the Sea," now a slummy southern Tel Aviv suburb. Yudit, a photographer who illustrates her work with text, covers Middle East politics, human rights, community involvement, and things right smack in front of you: street names, explosions, demolitions, nature's course. Yudit's exquisite sensibilities sometimes veer to the "left" of my responses, and I welcome the resulting tension. She makes me think or rethink, especially so-called moral or ethical issues. At the companion blog, Occupied Image, Yudit explains her mission: שלוש מאות ששים וחמשה צילומים בשנה כל יום תמונה חדשה . . . [my translation] 365 photographs in a year, every day a new photograph. What grabbed me on a random first visit to this blog pair? The photograph shown below, titled: Monday, May 2, 2007, In the neighborhood.
  

So where else in the blogosphere can you turn for English-language news on life in Israel? English-writing Israeli-bloggers lists pages of blogs of every stripe, persuasion, style, message, focus, and look and feel.

And when you find a voice that, as in my four bookmarked blogs, is free from nonsense, self-absorption, stridency, and dogma, let me know. Oh, and I would also be grateful for recommendations of male voices.