#tetucson

For our final day in Israel we had a special experience planned.  Congregation Yozma in the growing Israeli city of Modi’in, midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, has a fabulous program with a local home for developmentally challenged children and young adults.  They share Shabbat weekly with them, have a tutoring program for them (and others in the community), and work with them and prepare them for bar and bat mitzvah, which the children experience at the Kotel followed by a party at Yozma.  There is a great deal of peer-to-peer teaching and sharing, and because of the yozma, the initiative of a lay leader, Yuval Newman, their leadership and their rabbinic team of Kineret Shiryon and Nir Barkin, and Executive Director Eyal Ronder, they have created a wonderful model for Reform Jewish living in Israel.  

Yozma itself is a unique congregation.  They chose to begin by making it a true community center rather than focusing on the synagogue aspects first, and became the first Reform congregation in Israel to receive their own land to build on.  I visited Yozma first many years ago on an ARZA rabbinic mission, and at that time they were still trying to figure out how to find the means to build on the land before they lost the opportunity.  Their ECE, their gan for preschool and kindergarten children, was very successful, and they wanted to eventually move to creating a Reform Jewish day school.  It was clear even then, back in the 1990’s, that Modi’in was a perfect place to build a successful Reform Jewish entity in Israel.  Modi’in has an ancient history as the small town where the Maccabees came from and where their revolt against the Syrian Greeks began in 167 BCE.  But it was always a small town until recently.

Then, the Israeli government decided to encourage development in some centers aways from the Haifa-Tel Aviv-Jerusalem axis, spreading the population centers out.  Beersheva in the Negev has grown exponentially.  And Modi’in in the center, midway between the high tech, business, art and fashion center (and beaches—I saw a teen carrying a surfboard to the buss stop in Modi’in) of Tel Aviv and the government, financial and religious center of Jerusalem.  Moshe Safdie, the architect of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and many other beautiful modern buildings was contracted to design the entire city, an unusual and extraordinary opportunity.  Modi’in is thus either beautiful and unified, if you like Safdie’s work, or a modernist nightmare, if you don’t.  I like it a lot, and so did our group.  

From an Israeli’s perspective, the Safdie-designed medium-sized, fast-growing city of Modi’in, with lots of park space, all new homes, very little crime and no slums, is a kind of yuppie-heaven.  It is a bedroom community located in Israel proper, although close to areas that are technically in the West Bank, and it is less expensive, far less congested and stressed than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or even Haifa.  In some parts of Modi’in on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean, and the commute by train, bus, or car to jobs in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem might be 30 minutes.  It is a very pleasant place, up in the hills so it’s not too hot in the summer, but not as high as Jerusalem so it’s not as cold as the capital city in the winter.  

We began our visit to Modi’in with a stop at the construction site where their new day school is close to completion.  It is a large building that will house over 500 students for grade school through middle school, with hopes to expand to a Reform Jewish high school eventually.  Unlike Jewish day schools in the US this will be supported by the state, and it promises to be very, very successful, as their preschool has been, in creating Reform Jews in Israel.  If most Israelis used to say that the only true form of Judaism they didn’t practice was Orthodoxy, today there is a growing population of young Jews who understand the Reform movement and like it very much—making it, as Rabbi Barkin said, the true form of Judaism they choose not to practice.  

Our visit continued with a meeting with virtually the entire staff of Congregation Yozma, with the exception of the founding, Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, who was in the US raising funds for the construction of their new sanctuary.  Rabbi Nir Barkin, the very charming and articulate co-rabbi, a recovering high-tech veteran, explained the vision of Yozma as a community center in which they began with a very successful preschool, then created a place where Jewish activity was going on all the time.  This is contrast to the Orthodox synagogues in Modi’in, of which there are a number, as always in Israel, staffed by government-funded rabbis, but they are generally empty except on Shabbat, and not so full even then.  Yozma is a busy place, filled with learning, social action activities, simchas, and services.  Clearly it is now a very successful congregation, and while much of the financial support continues to come from abroad, particularly America, it has become a magnet for positive, Reform Jewish identity in Erets Yisrael.  

My family’s foundation, the Rabbi Samuel S. and A. Irma Cohon Memorial Foundation, gave a sizable grant to Yozma last year for their inspirational work with the children and young adults of Beit Eiden, the home for developmentally challenged in nearby Ramle, and the leader of their volunteer driven effort joined Rabbi Barkin in speaking about the program.  We were presented with a beautiful mosaic created by one of the students in the program.  It was quite moving for me, on behalf of my parents and my family, to accept it.

After a talk about Yozma’s history and vibrant Q & A about their congregation and its model and growth, we had the distinct pleasure of sharing Havdallah with their oldest pre-school class.  It was a lovely service, about as long as our ECE Shabbat, and the children were engage, attentive, and unbelievably cute.  The climax of the Havdallah was a presentation the class had been working on dramatizing the story of David and Goliath to an Israeli kids’ recording of the tale from the Tanakh. It was nothing short of fantastic.

After more dialogue with Rabbi Barkin and Eyal Ronder and the staff, and more refreshments—we have eaten very well and too much here in Israel!—we headed back to Jerusalem and talked about this upbeat finale.  

While we were touring Saturday afternoon Doron told some of us a great story about the famous Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai.  It seems that a few years ago two of Doron’s fellow guides were leading a teaching session with some visitors from Mexico, and they stopped in the Yemin Mosheh neighborhood to do a bit of learning.  The subject was the contrast between the antique qualities of Israel and its current vibrant life, and how tourists miss it.  To illustrate the point, they were reading the classic Amichai poem “Tourists” about a man bringing home groceries underneath a Roman arch and the tourists looking at the arch instead of the man.  And as they read this poem who should walk up but Yehudah Amichai himself, who lived in Yemin Mosheh!  One of the guides knew him, and he called out to Amichai, who stopped and actually read the poem for the stunned tourists himself, and then stayed to talk about it with them.  The tourists were convinced the whole thing was staged, but it genuinely happened by chance.  

We talked about that story, and the poem, and the fact that we had just seen vivid evidence that after all of our explorations under- and over-the surface of Israel, our immersion in its history and culture, what was most impressive was the incredible diversity and energy of contemporary Israeli life.  We delved deep into the past, but it is the future embodied by the energy of those adorable children, and the markets, cafes, parades, religious services, and cultural centers, the concerts and the cacophonous chorus of the streets, that embody what Israel has come to mean to each of us over this pilgrimage.

At the Beit Ticho concluding dinner—more great food in yet another fascinating older area of the “New City” of Jerusalem—we shared what we each liked best or felt was most memorable about our experience in Israel.  And each answer was different, and came from varying parts of the trip, and none was really predictable.  

Neither is Israel.  Each visit is unique, every one nearly miraculous in new and unexpected ways.

I landed in the United States this afternoon, just returned from the incredible Temple Emanu-El congregational pilgrimage to Israel, to hear the tragic, horrible news that the bodies of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frankel were discovered near Hebron.  They were apparently murdered shortly after they were kidnapped near the Gush Etzion junction.  It is a terribly sad day in Israel, and for Jews everywhere.

I can tell you that the overwhelming focus of every news story, and nearly every conversation we overheard during our pilgrimage, was on the three teenage boys, yeshiva students who were trying to get home early for Shabbat from their schools.  Everyone in the entire country, secular and religious alike, was focused on their fate.  Every adult of a certain age knew the potential pain of losing a child.  Every younger person could relate to the danger in an immediate way.  The whole nation responded as though family members were missing—as indeed they were.

These three were not soldiers, nor combatants.  They were teenagers studying at respected yeshivot, two of them students of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who wrote today, “We cannot just light a candle and say a prayer.  It is up to us now to live our lives al Kiddush HaShem, to sanctify God through our deeds and our lives.”  

We expect Israel to seek justice for their murderers, and to respond to this horrific outrage.  We must unflinchingly support its right to do so.

But we also know that those who wish to destroy must not be allowed to triumph, and that eternal hatred is not the path that God wants, or that the Torah teaches.  And we must remember that innocent lives taken in this way are not redeemed through blood.

May their families find comfort in God, who alone can bring consolation at such times.  May they feel the solidarity of am Yisrael, the entire Jewish people, who mourns with them.  We pray that this will be the last time such a horror is perpetrated.

I have often written about Shabbat in Jerusalem, that day of peace and tranquility in a city better known for other things.  There is a magical calm when you begin walking through the city on the way to services, with few if any cars on the streets, a cool, calm air, the scent of pine unmingled with car exhaust, and a general sense of the experience of a true day of holiness and rest.  I always lead a group on an exploration of Shabbat morning services at various synagogues of many different Jewish ethnic traditions, and it is always an interesting and unique experience.  Nowhere else on earth can you participate in Shabbat services using the authentic melodies and traditional prayerbooks and ritual practices of Jews from literally hundreds of different countries, and a number of beautiful and subtly varying cultures. 

We began our shul-hopping on this Shabbat in Jerusalem in the Nachlaot neighborhood.  That small area close to the Machanei Yehudah market has always been home to a variety of ethnic Jewish communities from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, all of whom came to Israel with few of their possessions—after Israel was declared a state in 1948 by the UN they had the right to return to their homeland of the heart, but not the right to take any of their stuff with them from Arab or European or Asian countries—but a great sense of their own form of Jewish identity.  This deep awareness of the ancient and elevated aspects of their communal identities remains present in their synagogues in Jerusalem, and it makes attending services at each one both meaningful and powerful.

For me, this sense of meaning was enhanced by visiting the section of the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial the day before and beginning with the monument to the communities.  This is a monumental structure that you walk through which includes areas for all of the kehillot of Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean islands that were essentially annihilated by the Nazis.  While some of these communities remain active, and even strong, none are close to what they were prior to the Holocaust.  In many cases, the one place you can experience Jewish services as they were conducted for many centuries, even millennia, is in Jerusalem. 

This means that in one Shabbat morning you can travel, both by foot and figuratively, from a Syrian Jewish environment to an Italian one, then on to an Eastern European grand choir shul and finally come to a Reform Jewish experience.  It’s pretty fantastic.

Of course, it can also be frustrating and confusing at times.  For reasons I cannot fully explain, I have always had a directional block when it comes to finding the Aleppo Synagogue, my favorite way to start Shabbat morning in Yerushalayim.  This beit Knesset is more properly known by its full name, The Great Ades Synagogue of the Glorious Aleppo Community (est. 1901), which is what’s visible in large letters on the side of this small building on the corner of Beersheva and Shiloh streets just off of Betzalel Street.  I include all this information because in spite of having that information I nonetheless I nonetheless led our traveling minyan of service attenders wandering the empty streets near and through Nachala’ot for about 20 minutes until we got to the Ades Synagogue.

For the men, this was pretty easy.  We entered the first floor of the high ceiling little building, put on tallises and got siddurim, they moved some benches a bit to make us comfortable, and we sat back in this pleasant, highly decorated shul.  The Ades Synagoge is considered the center of hazzanut, cantorial chanting in the style of the Aleppo Jewish tradition.  Many of the Jews from Aleppo came to Israel together at the beginning of the 20th century, and they were joined by the remainder of the community whenever they could get out of Syria.  Many other Syrian Jews went to New York and New Jersey, where they remain a closely-knit group.  By the way, there is no “Syrian Jewish community”, from their perspective; there is “Aleppo”, the Chalabi Jewish community, and there is the Damascus Jewish community, and the two aren’t the same, although to other Jews the differences are not so discernible.  

The Aleppo Jews, even in summer, are more formal than many Israelis, some wearing ties and some wearing coats.  There is an air of formality but familiarity to the service experience.

The Ades Synagogue is used for cantorial training for Syrian hazzanim, and their style is to have different members of the congregation chant various prayers and sections of prayer.   It is a unique nusach, a musical pattern that is quite distinctive and very traditional.  The temple itself has a beautiful, ornately carved dark wood ark that was brought over from Aleppo and covers the entire front wall of the Temple, with benches in front of it for sitting.  The whole effect is unusual and very beautiful, and they are tolerant of non-Aleppo visitors.  They have now restored the painted images of the tribes on the walls above the sanctuary, which are beautiful.  We stayed for the majority of Shachrit, the opening morning service, and it was very cool.

Which was fine for the men.  The women found that because of substantial remodeling the upstairs women’s gallery was now behind a substantial new screen that wasn’t there when we last visited two years ago, and there wasn’t enough room for them to even sit.  And so they left and ended up being warmly invited to an entirely different service by a woman on the street nearby in Nachlaot, called Kol Rina, an Orthodox service but one with considerably better involvement and warmth for women.  Their prayerbook included English and transliteration, which the Aleppo siddur did not, and after a bad start they had a very good experience as well.   

From Nachlaot we walked to the Italian Synagogue, the best expression of this every ancient Jewish religious culture to be found outside of Rome.  Here they had begun later—the Aleppo service started at 7 AM; Israeli Jews generally pray early on Shabbat since they have only one day off a week, and must maximize the use of this precious day of rest—and were still on the Psukei d’Zimrah, the Psalms and poems of praise section of the service. 

The Italian Synagogue is a lovely example of Italian Jewish baroque imported into Jerusalem, white and gold and ornate in a kind of classy way.  The men here are less formal but somehow more elegant, in an Italian way, nicer shoes, better slacks, unbuttoned shirt collars but with a stylish flair.  They have a more relaxed approach with more smiles, but are still very serious about their service and its customs.  There are certain unique customs in evidence, including the use of hand gestures to illustrate the trope, the cantillations used to sing the Torah reading, and a kind of silver frame to spread out the Torah for reading initially, which has its own place nestled into the wood of the raised bimah.  The melodies are more in the major mode, reflecting the nusach Roma that traces its origins to some of the oldest Jewish musical traditions.  The men’s section feels like a kind of club to which you have been invited for the day, with a gracious sense to it, an appreciation for a certain measured enjoyment of Shabbat. 

Apparently, the women’s section was more prayerful than in previous visits, when they were often very talkative among themselves.  The overall impression of the Italian Synagogue was quite lovely.

From there we headed to the Great Synagogue, home to the greatest—and perhaps only—Eastern European chorshul, choir synagogue, still in existence.  For some reason, every time we have been here on a Temple Pilgrimage it has been the week to bless the coming new month, and we cleverly managed to arrive just in time for the conclusion of the Torah service and the chanting of the blessing for the coming month of Tammuz. The end of the Torah service included a special and fairly elaborate prayer for the three kidnapped Israeli teens, both sung and spoken by Hazzan Adler.

The cantor of the Great Synagogue is quite a spectacular hazzan, Chaim Adler who is not quite as artful as the former cantor, an exquisitely artistic singer named Naftali Herstik (with whom I had the privilege of studying many years ago), but who has more vocal power.  The choir is the best men’s a capella Jewish choir in the world, and they performed magnificently with Cantor Adler on a variety of compositions and improvisations.  It is a religious concert, and attended hugely by modern Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, and tourists from all around the world.  I sat next to a chasid in a silk robe who sang along beautifully on the refrains (and softly with Adler on some of his chazzanut as well), and a couple of times we harmonized. 

The last two pages of the Torah service and the blessing for the coming new month took about 40 minutes to sing in this grand opera style.  It was very beautiful, and as a cantor and musician I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it is perhaps not for everyone…

The synagogue itself is huge and impressive, kind of a modern Jewish version of a cathedral.  I’m still not sure I like it, but the stained glass reveals different patterns and quotations from the Bible each time I see it.  This was certainly not a time to sneak a photo of it (on Shabbat, surrounded by the Orthodox).

From the Great Synagogue—where the women are so high up it appears they are ascending to heaven—some of our hardy band continued on to Hebrew Union College for our first non-Orthodox service of the morning, cleverly arriving at one of my alma maters in time for the concluding services, Aleinu, Kaddish, and a beautiful Israeli Adon Olam that sounded like a Western movie score.  Rabbi Michael Marmur greeted the late arrivals cheerfully, and we heard instrumental music for the first time this Shabbat day, as well as woman’s singing voice, a fine young cantor.  It was, for many of our group, like a wonderful tour through the world of Jewish cultures and arriving home. 

At the brief Kiddush afterwards Rabbi Marmur had us introduce ourselves, and in addition to seeing rabbinical friends like Ron Segal from Atlanta and Dr. Barry Kogan, my thesis advisor from HUC-Cincinnati, we met Christian visitors from Oro Valley(!).  If you want to see every Jewish person you have ever known in your entire life, simply stay in Jerusalem each summer.  They will eventually be there and greet you as though it were something quite ordinary but delightful.     

Our afternoon featured a guided walk to the Christian sites of the Old City, open on Saturday, and led by our guide Doron.  We were joined by Andrea and Peter Lichtenthal from our congregation, visiting Israel for Peter’s family reunion and some medical meetings, a lovely connection.  We walked to the Holy Sepulcher, entering through the small, claustrophobic Ethiopian Church into what ought to be the holiest site in the world for Christians but is mostly a very odd and intriguing place.  Shared unhappily by many different Christian denominations—Roman Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Greek Orthodox, and Easter Orthodox, although I might be missing some and might have added one—this is a complex, spooky, crowded space of crypts, altars, and monuments all intermingled, using a time- and space-sharing agreement worked out under the Ottoman Empire and left in place by the British and the Israelis out of bemused confusion.

Imagine adherents of a religious tradition not cooperating with others who have slightly varying beliefs…  that would never happen to Jews.

We also visited the Austrian Hospice, whose roof provides a perfect view of the Dome of the Rock, a bit of the Kotel, and the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, all a few hundred yards from each other, respectively the third most important Muslim site, and the most important Jewish and Christian sites in the world.  A nearly unbelievable fact quite taken for granted here.  And under Israeli auspices all of these are available for access to everyone (except that Jews are restricted from the Muslim sites by the Israelis out of sensitivity).

We had a special program Saturday evening, arranged by Bonnie Golden.  Her childhood friend, Cheryl Birkner-Mack, a BBG leader with Bonnie just a few years ago, has made aliyah to Israel, and gave us a great update on the Women of the Wall issue.  For those who have not been following this, the Women of the Wall have been holding women’s services in the Women’s section of the Kotel, and sometimes in the plaza, for 25 years, and have gone through hell the last couple of years after the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authority over the Kotel tried to restrict them and have them arrested.  The ensuing publicity has resulted in a tremendous growth in the profile, and attendance at Rosh Chodesh services, for the Women of the Wall.  After the huge international brouhaha that resulted from the arrests, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu appointed Natan Sharansky, a great Jewish hero, to come up with a plan to solve the “problem” of women’s prayer, and egalitarian prayer, in the holiest Jewish place.

His plan recommended turning Robinson’s Arch, the continuation of the Kotel that is in the Davidson Center Archaeological Museum where we held Jake Gordon’s bar mitzvah two years ago, into a center for egalitarian Jewish prayer.  The Women of the Wall divided over whether to accept this plan, and while Anat Hoffman, the longtime civil rights leader and a co-founder of Women of the Wall, pushed the group to agree with the plan, Cheryl and some of her sisters-in-prayer decided it wasn’t an acceptable alternative.  They wanted to continue to pray at the Kotel itself, in the women’s section, which has the long, deep accumulated history of Jewish emotional and religious connection to it, and felt that an egalitarian section would actually exclude the Orthodox women in the group from continuing to participate.  They broke away to continue to seek to pray at the Kotel.

It now appears that the Sharansky plan, partially acted on but now stalled in Israeli bureaucracy, may not ever happen.  This likely will mean that the split in Women of the Wall may not matter, in the long run, but the religious sensitivity of the issue, and the profound commitment to personal, authentic prayer in the holiest site, was moving for everyone in our combined Temple-St. Philip’s group to experience.

ARRIVAL  

Breakfast at the hotel.

Tikkun Olam interactive visit to Yad LaKashish, a multifaceted sheltered workshop for senior citizens and people with disabilities. Meet the employees in their workshops, and take the opportunity to visit the shop that proudly presents their beautiful wares.

Tree planting at the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, including bird-watching, bird-banding and an insight into the urban wildlife of Jerusalem.

Lunch on own.

Afternoon at leisure for last minute packing and shopping.

Wrap up with members of the St. Philip's Church trip and late check out from the hotel.

Festive farewell dinner.

Transfer to Ben Gurion International Airport for the departure flight to the U.S.A.

SHABBAT IN JERUSALEM | no bus

Breakfast at the hotel.

Shul hopping with Rabbi Cohon.

Shabbat lunch on own.

Shabbat Walk through hidden alleyways to Mt. Zion, including the Temple Mount Overlook and King David's Tomb; OR LaDa'at  Amichai - יהודה עמיחי : guided walk through the streets of Jerusalem using the writings of Jerusalem's poet laureate Yehuda Amichai as a guide.

Late afternoon at leisure.

Ben Kodesh Lechol Havdallah overlooking the Old City.

Free Evening in Jerusalem on Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall or on Emek Refaim Street in the German Colony

MEMORY & RENEWAL

Breakfast at the hotel.

The Memory of the Holocaust in Contemporary Israeli Society: Dialogue with Holocaust scholar, Dr. Rachel Korazim.

Visit the Yad Vashemcomplex, the Jewish National Memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, including:

The Avenue of the Righteous

The new Historical Museum

The Children's Memorial

A concluding Memorial Service

Experience the amazing sights, smells, and tastes of Jerusalem while walking through the Machaneh Yehuda open-air market, with lunch on own.

Free time to relax before Shabbat.

Kabbalat Shabbat services at a local synagogue or at the Kotel (Western Wall).

Joint Shabbat dinner with participants of the St. Philip's Parish.