Simon Hochberg

August 8, 2008

Israel

            Shabbat Shalom.  I’ve been telling Israel stories for a little over a week now, and no matter who I’m talking to, the same question always seems to come up: “What was your favorite part?” Favorite part?!  It’s hard to pick one spot, one moment out of five solid weeks – that’s 840 hours (or 806.5 if we exclude the hours spent on the planes).  I mean, I can describe some of the smaller things like my favorite Shabbat Service, or the best sunrise or sunset, but I have trouble deciding on the “bests” of the more important parts of the trip, like what my favorite meal was…Druze? Bedouin? FALAFEL?  And I figured that in a situation such as this, summarizing the Israel trip as “amazing” and leaving it at that – as I’ve done many times to my friends – well, that would be a remarkably insufficient.  It definitely was amazing, but to elaborate, I’ve come up with some superlatives, and assigned to those the memories and moments that fit them best.

            Best First Impression of Israel :  Seeing the Israeli flag flying was my “welcome-to-Israel” moment – when I realized where I was.  Around here in Silicon Valley , the only place that you can really see the Israeli flag is here at Beth Am.  And even though this place is full of flags, they’re not really flags, but images on display somewhere.  There are the streamers of flags that the Sunday School kids made, and those streamers hang across the hallways up the hill there.  In that respect, there are a ton of Israeli flags at Beth Am, but those flags are paper.  They don’t fly.  They are stapled up and rigid.  The flags around Beth Am that are actually flags hang up in classrooms or in the sanctuary – but there’s no wind inside.  The flags are there, but they’re all furled.  When we got to Israel , it really stuck out to me that the blue and white flies everywhere you’d expect an American flag to fly – and everywhere else.  And those flags are flying too.  They catch the wind and open up over buildings, and cities, and people, and Zion .

         Best Sunrise: We were camping in the Negev, the vast desert in South Israel (or statistically that sprawls out over 2/3 of the country), and our counselors and guides would wake us up early, say 5 AM and it would still be dark outside. They'd be cheerful and banging pots and pans together and hollering in those usually endearing Israeli accents that are the farthest you can get to endearing at 5 am in the dark. No one would want to get out of his or her sleeping bag. I was cold and dark, and what did you have to look forward to when you're in the morning mindset? Great, another day of sunburns, forced waterbreaks, and dirt. That kind of tunnel-vision, coupled with the staff's instructions that nobody gets tea or cookies until his or her stuff is loaded back onto the bus is enough to put the group into a really foul mood. Those rules at that temperature at this time, well, they create a somewhat -- hostile -- environment, but as soon as the sun comes up, everything changes. It's not cold or dark. You can find your socks from the night before. You can pack. It's comfortable. Everyone's mood improves, though some peoples’ more than others (there's still sunburns and dirt ahead), but the group is ready to go out and have a day. So it wasn't a beautiful sunrise that was the best -- well, everything is beautiful in the Negev -- it was the effects of that (or those) sunrises. When the sun comes out and there's light and hope, peoples' moods pick up, they feel different and ready to face the challenges ahead of them, and it's then that changes happen. It's not the beauty of those sunrises, but the beauty of what comes once there is light in the sky that makes those Negev sunrises the best sunrises in Israel .

         Best Shabbat Service:  Shabbat was always my favorite day of the week because it was just as it is biblically – a break from the work of the week, and believe me, with NFTY, we were working.  There was rarely a free moment during the week, so for the hour and a half of Shabbat Prep time to Sunday morning the relaxation that was granted us was much appreciated.  For that reason, Shabbat was always a welcome event.  And we had some pretty special Shabbats – for a Friday night service in a park by the Knesset, when we all stood during (prayer name) to face to Jerusalem, no one knew which way to turn – any way we turned faced Jerusalem.  That was Shabbat No. 2 of 5, and at that point I didn’t think it could get any better. Oh, but it did.  On the night of our last Friday night service, we were staying in a hotel right in Maccabim right out side of Tel Aviv.  We, Group 12, were the only group staying in that area, and we were looking forward to having a Friday night service that was just us.  We later found out that, because we were the only group in the area, we would be going to what turned out to be the first government funded reform synagogue in the State of Israel.  When we got there, late as always – I mean, we were the “ California group” – we were ushered in quickly and handed the bilingual version of the prayer books.  Their sanctuary was about the size of a classroom portable that you’d find at an elementary school.  Where we have pews, they had white plastic lawn chairs.  There was no bimah, the rabbi and cantor sat in the same chairs, just facing the congregation, with their siddurim on a small wooden table.  The congregants were seated, scattered around the room, clothed in jeans and t-shirts.  The kids banged along to the songs and psalms (or to the beats in their own heads) on the drums that the synagogue had lying around.  It was cute for about forty seconds.  The rabbi, a young man who exuded the same amount of warmth and friendliness as Rabbi Citrin (and he had about as much hair as Micha did too) told us the page numbers generously in English every time a change was necessary.  The service was the same, except for all of the readings and comments to the congregation were in Hebrew.  The most memorable part of that service, however, came towards the end, during MiShebeirach.  We were singing the same version we sing here, the Debbie Friedman melody, and at the third line, when we all sing in Enlgish, “May the source of strength who blessed the ones before us,”  the Israelis continued on in Hebrew with the same melody.  What happened was a beautiful “stew” of a song.  Sixty or so voices, two languages, one meaning.  And both versions had “refuah shelimah” at the same time.  There was common ground between us.  It was a moment of togetherness. Of America and Israel .  Of Israel being all of us.  Of knowing the culture without living there.  Of the Holy Land , the Promised Land, the Home land. Eretz Yisrael.

         So, with T’sha B’av tomorrow, we commemorate the destruction of the Second Temple . And though the temple and the Holy of Holies were ruined and gone, the land and its people – our people – are not.  Even without a temple, we still have our promised land – the land of Israel -- and she’s gorgeous.  If you don’t believe me, or if you just need a little reminding, head on out there.  It’s pretty close – what, 18 ½ hours of plane rides? – it doesn’t matter.  Israel is worth it.