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Revised from a letter to my parents, because it felt like it was worth sharing more broadly.
Yesterday we had a program through our ISrael education seminar-thing, in which we were sent out in different groups to a variety of schools to see their Yom HaZikaron ceremonies, along with some discussion and processing before and afterwards. I was firmly expecting it to be a weird, alienating and not particularly worthwhile experience for me, so I went in with no real expectations (by which I mean, no expectations of being moved, or anything other than feeling awkward and bored, although I was trying to fight those expectations. There's a power in being open to experiences as they come, and I'm trying to remember that). I ended up going to a pluralistic school, grades 1-12, designed to be half secular kids and half religious kids in each class. I was really impressed at how they built a program that was worthwhile for the whole school, given the age range. They basically divided the program into two parts- for the first part of the ceremony, the little kids were the ones on stage, and the whole school was there. Then, after the siren, the littlest ones left (grades 1-4), and the high school kids took over, and the material was both more artistic and with the sort of emotional power and material that was appropriate for that age group but which wouldn't have been right for say, a first grader. It was pretty fascinating to see- especially finding out that recent alumni tend to come back to their high schools for the ceremony- so scattered among the audience were all these young people in uniforms. I really wonder what those folks were experiencing, from that sort of a program. It was mostly poems, music and short sketches about military losses, along with a couple of personal stories about family members and the like. (The littler kids had mostly shared stories about grandfathers who'd died in some of Israel's earlier wars, a few of them ending with "I'm proud to be named after him", which somehow really hit my heart.)
I found that I was not at all as alienated as I thought I would be. On a theoretical level, I have a hard time quite knowing what to do with these two holidays, which I feel like are mostly Israeli secular holidays. In many ways, this year, my way of finding a connection with Israel and Israeli's is the Jewish peoplehood concept, and the idea that all Jews are family, so a day mourning the losses of the people, even if only those losses that occured in a certain sort of setting, feels like it connects.
I'm doubting that I'll be doing anything special for Yom HaAtzmaut, about which I feel equally confused, in terms of its place in my life. At least thus far, I'm just enjoying it as a day in the midst of the week to get some extra time with H, and if I'm good, perhaps to do some more homework. Still, somehow I'm trying to wrap my head around not wanting to portray the founding of the state of Israel as a proto-messianic event, but not to deny that I think that it is a good thing that the state exists, and that had there been an attempt to found a state and it had then failed, that it would have had pretty lousy effects on the Jewish community. So for sure, it is a secular holiday here, and has some sort of religious impact- there's a notion of saying Hallel- a particular collection of Psalms- on days in which miracles or other major Jewish triumphs occured, for example Hanukkah, and I think that that's pretty appropriate. However, some people try to make it into a major religious event, and I'm really not comfortable with that- I haven't been in the past, and being here has not changed my mind.
And yet I'm aware that it's something significant to the AMerican Jewish community as well, and I don't quite know what to make of that, or what sort of programming ought to be put together for the event. I was at one synagogue a few years ago where they used the Shabbat near to these days to have congregants with different sorts of experiences with Israel speak about those experiences in place of the rabbi giving a sermon, and I found that both interesting and meaningful. That, I think, is something I could get behind. But as far as ritual goes, I just don't know at all.
Last night (for a totally different topic), H and I went out to dinner with this gentleman he's been teaching/doing research for, and his wife- folks probably in their early to mid sixties. (They're in Israel for something like 3 weeks, and he was paying H to find and work through rabbinic sources that he wouldn't have access to on his own due to a lack of strong Hebrew and Aramaic, to help him work on some book he's doing about evolutionary theory and Judaism. H has been alternately interested in the material and frustrated by how much Steve, the guy who hired him, wants to jump around from topic to topic, some of which have lots of material that htey never get to, and others of which are complete duds.) Given several weeks worth of H's reactions to their work together, I was quite unsure as to what the evening would be like, but it turned out to be pretty pleasant. They were very nice folks, and quite involved in their synagogue, which gave me something to talk to them about, besides the stuff H and Steve have been studying, which I was pretty sure was not something that actually interested Steve's wife (it did include a lot of material that interests me, and I've helped H with some of his preparations for working with Steve, so I'd have had what to say, but still...).
Yesterday we had a program through our ISrael education seminar-thing, in which we were sent out in different groups to a variety of schools to see their Yom HaZikaron ceremonies, along with some discussion and processing before and afterwards. I was firmly expecting it to be a weird, alienating and not particularly worthwhile experience for me, so I went in with no real expectations (by which I mean, no expectations of being moved, or anything other than feeling awkward and bored, although I was trying to fight those expectations. There's a power in being open to experiences as they come, and I'm trying to remember that). I ended up going to a pluralistic school, grades 1-12, designed to be half secular kids and half religious kids in each class. I was really impressed at how they built a program that was worthwhile for the whole school, given the age range. They basically divided the program into two parts- for the first part of the ceremony, the little kids were the ones on stage, and the whole school was there. Then, after the siren, the littlest ones left (grades 1-4), and the high school kids took over, and the material was both more artistic and with the sort of emotional power and material that was appropriate for that age group but which wouldn't have been right for say, a first grader. It was pretty fascinating to see- especially finding out that recent alumni tend to come back to their high schools for the ceremony- so scattered among the audience were all these young people in uniforms. I really wonder what those folks were experiencing, from that sort of a program. It was mostly poems, music and short sketches about military losses, along with a couple of personal stories about family members and the like. (The littler kids had mostly shared stories about grandfathers who'd died in some of Israel's earlier wars, a few of them ending with "I'm proud to be named after him", which somehow really hit my heart.)
I found that I was not at all as alienated as I thought I would be. On a theoretical level, I have a hard time quite knowing what to do with these two holidays, which I feel like are mostly Israeli secular holidays. In many ways, this year, my way of finding a connection with Israel and Israeli's is the Jewish peoplehood concept, and the idea that all Jews are family, so a day mourning the losses of the people, even if only those losses that occured in a certain sort of setting, feels like it connects.
I'm doubting that I'll be doing anything special for Yom HaAtzmaut, about which I feel equally confused, in terms of its place in my life. At least thus far, I'm just enjoying it as a day in the midst of the week to get some extra time with H, and if I'm good, perhaps to do some more homework. Still, somehow I'm trying to wrap my head around not wanting to portray the founding of the state of Israel as a proto-messianic event, but not to deny that I think that it is a good thing that the state exists, and that had there been an attempt to found a state and it had then failed, that it would have had pretty lousy effects on the Jewish community. So for sure, it is a secular holiday here, and has some sort of religious impact- there's a notion of saying Hallel- a particular collection of Psalms- on days in which miracles or other major Jewish triumphs occured, for example Hanukkah, and I think that that's pretty appropriate. However, some people try to make it into a major religious event, and I'm really not comfortable with that- I haven't been in the past, and being here has not changed my mind.
And yet I'm aware that it's something significant to the AMerican Jewish community as well, and I don't quite know what to make of that, or what sort of programming ought to be put together for the event. I was at one synagogue a few years ago where they used the Shabbat near to these days to have congregants with different sorts of experiences with Israel speak about those experiences in place of the rabbi giving a sermon, and I found that both interesting and meaningful. That, I think, is something I could get behind. But as far as ritual goes, I just don't know at all.
Last night (for a totally different topic), H and I went out to dinner with this gentleman he's been teaching/doing research for, and his wife- folks probably in their early to mid sixties. (They're in Israel for something like 3 weeks, and he was paying H to find and work through rabbinic sources that he wouldn't have access to on his own due to a lack of strong Hebrew and Aramaic, to help him work on some book he's doing about evolutionary theory and Judaism. H has been alternately interested in the material and frustrated by how much Steve, the guy who hired him, wants to jump around from topic to topic, some of which have lots of material that htey never get to, and others of which are complete duds.) Given several weeks worth of H's reactions to their work together, I was quite unsure as to what the evening would be like, but it turned out to be pretty pleasant. They were very nice folks, and quite involved in their synagogue, which gave me something to talk to them about, besides the stuff H and Steve have been studying, which I was pretty sure was not something that actually interested Steve's wife (it did include a lot of material that interests me, and I've helped H with some of his preparations for working with Steve, so I'd have had what to say, but still...).