The Cup

I was asked to write something for my professional organization newsletter (it still comes out in paper!). The topic was how Torah stories intersect with our lives - they always have a piece from Israeli colleagues - and the specific Torah story we were asked to write about is the upcoming parshiyot about Joseph. I am posting it earlier than it will appear in print because of our upcoming trip. The piece I wrote seems especially relevant today - we spent the afternoon at the Thanksgiving celebration of neighbors - many anglos there though including Canadians, British and Australians. The food was terrific but Thanksgiving is really the only US holiday I miss and I've suffered from some homesickness as you read in my last post.

I began and ended the day singing the sentimental song Halley's Comet by Mary Chapin Carpenter to Gabi and Sasha - lots of tears in the morning but managed not to cry in the evening - Gabi said "you're almost crying" after I promised not to! I will mention the kids and I also did a great hike to and from the horse farm today today with some high risk bimba riding (with helmets of course). As a result Sasha was asleep at 7:30 pm with Gabi not far behind!

Here's my piece about Joseph:

The Cup

I want to use this space to explore what it means when members of our families and close friendship circles are far from us. The Joseph Story is of course the first extended treatment of life outside the land of Israel that we find in the book of Genesis. For a period of his life, the years in which he grew up and matured, Joseph lived far from his family. He seems to have brought with him to Egypt values and natural talents, but he exercises them without the benefit of parents or siblings, not to mention without the internet or facebook. Or we might say he is able to exercise his talents precisely because he is far from his father and siblings.

I know something about being an immigrant – I come by it honestly. My mother left her native England and moved to the US when she married my father at the (then late) age of 29. In some ways, she was a Joseph. She dreamed of going to the US and getting away from the small, closed London Jewish community and the multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins that surrounded her.

My mother-in-law, may her memory be a blessing, lived a similar story. She dreamed since high school of traveling around the world. She met her Trinidadian husband at university in England and eventually traveled to make her home halfway across the globe in Trinidad. In her last years, she traveled around the world for work, and she died while working in Africa. Both these strong women have been models to me as I try to make sense of living away from "home".

In the Joseph story, the cost to Joseph of his distance from his family is apparent. The distance is one of estrangement and his desire to reconnect with his brothers when they appear is palpable. In thinking of the story, my mind is drawn to the cup that Joseph sends back hidden with his brothers. To me, the cup symbolizes that part of Joseph that can never be reconciled with Egypt – the part of him that wants to run back with his brothers to reach his father. It reminds me of the special smile that I only see on my partner's face when she's laughing with her brothers in Trinidad – so like the special laughter my mother shares only with relatives in England. The cup is that piece that doesn't fit in – the feeling I sometimes have when I'm trying and failing to make connections with native Israelis – the feeling that I am always on unfamiliar turf.

At the end of the Joseph story, though, Joseph does not return to Canaan with the cup. Instead, he is the instrument of bringing his father and brothers out of the land of Canaan. Unlike Joseph, neither my mother nor my mother-in-law tried or succeeded to bring their parents or siblings from England. Rather, both experienced the same costs Alen and I feel today, raising our children far from their grandparents, aunts and uncles. As our remaining parents age I feel more acutely the distance. I also feel the pain of distance from friends and colleagues as they face illness and other challenges.

Joseph becomes whole when his brothers and father arrive in Egypt. I don't feel that wholeness is available to me, so I find ways to live each day with a missing piece. And when friends and family come to visit, I send them home with a cup.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our US friends and family.

In honor, I roasted pumpkin last night for a pumpkin pie and there was extra. One thing we have a lot of in Israel is pumpkin. I found this recipe for pumpkin oatmeal muffins in a recipe book with Nancy VDP's handwriting - gave my heart a pang of missing home and childhood. Adapted it with an idea from Irish Oatmeal muffins in Fannie Farmer and got up and made them and put in the oven by 6:30 am!!!

Sasha is playing with the story cubes Grandma gave him - they are people (Mommy, Ima, Grandma, Grandpa, Gabi & Sasha) riding in cars and airplanes! And here's the recipe-

The night before put one cup of oatmeal in one cup of milk (or other liquid) and put in fridge. Roast or buy 3/4 cup pumpkin mash. In the morning, preheat oven to 400 and grease about 12-18 muffin cups. Sift together 1 & 1/2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. In another bowl, mix 2 eggs, the pumpkin, 2 tablespoons oil, 1/4-1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup apple juice. Mix together the dry, the wet and the oats that were soaking up the liquid - just till everything is mixed. Put in the muffin cups and bake 20-25 minutes until a knife comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes in pans.

I'm off to taste them. And I'm thankful for Nancy and for all my friends and family, for being able to love across miles and close by. Love and hugs from me and Sasha!

My column from the Attleboro Sun Chronicle

It's not new, but it's good. Click here!

In Memory of Sylvia - Natural and Human Resources

Friday was the 6th yahrzeit of my mother in law, Sylvia Kacal. She died of Malaria in Malawi, where she had spend about 2 years, on October 24, 2003.

In thinking about her work, I have been drawn to the concept of resources. It's possible to think that her whole life was about resources. She taught school for many years - helping children build on their resources of intelligence to learn about the world. She ran an art gallery in the Hilton Hotel in Port of Spain, bringing together local Trinidadian artists and tourists with money to spend. Then in her 50s she went back to school to get a degree in Coastal Resource Management - building on volunteer work she had been doing with the Caribbean Forest Conservation Association and other organizations working to preserve Trinidad's natural resources.

For the last 10 years of her life, she worked as a consultant on projects to help preserve local natural resources and turn them into sources of income to local people through eco-tourism. When she died, she had just finished running a course for tour guides in Mulanje, Malawi.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. It was one of Sylvia's great gifts to be able to see all the resources available even in one of the poorest of places and work to enlarge them. After the tour guide course, she became involved in a search and rescue effort to find a Dutch woman, Linda Plonk, who worked for a local NGO who had gone missing. This involved bringing helicopters and sniffer dogs from Europe to conduct the search and Sylvia ran a home base managing logistics for the searchers. The woman they were looking for was never found.

The week leading up to Sylvia's death was not only the week when we try to get back to normal in Israel after weeks of fall holidays, it was also a week of unusual sunspot activity. At the end of the week, we learned she had died.

May her memory be for a blessing and may we learn from her ability to bring resources to bear on all situations. A million people, most of them children, die each year from Malaria. Malaria is first and foremost a disease of resources - basic sanitation, simple resources such as screens and mosquito nets, make a world of difference in eradicating malaria. Find out more and donate at www.malaria.org or www.rollbackmalaria.org. World Malaria Day is on Sylvia (and Sasha's) birthday, April 25.

Losing and Finding Love

Lots of people are commenting on Jay Michaelson's recent piece in the Forward, How I'm Losing My Love for Israel. When I got a link to it on the Jewish Mosaic weekly newsletter, I decided I had to post my thoughts.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for Jay Michaelson. But I don't actually know Jay Michaelson, I just admire him from afar as an out Jewish gay leader, part of a new younger generation who have moved so far forward on Jewish LGBT issues. I see him referred to often in Jewish Mosaic posts. In the awful aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting August 1, I was so touched by the response of Jewish Mosaic. I felt that I really was part of a worldwide Jewish LGBT community responsible and committed to one another. So Jay's article was a big disappointment.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the USA. Of course, that goes back awhile, to 1993 when I met and fell in love with a woman who is not a US citizen. The year we married the US passed DOMA, and four years after that we were on our way into exile here in Israel because the US has no same-sex partner immigration rights. But my love for the country I was born and raised in and its ideals has been on the upswing since the recent elections and I still entertain hopes that some of the grave injustices present there will turn around.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the American Jewish Community, but that would be pretty self destructive to write. I've spent the past 16 years working full time in or for the American Jewish Community - one way or another it's the resources of that community that pay my salary. And half my family and most of my friends are part of that community. So despite my frustration with how easily many North American Jews are willing to dismiss Israel, as though somehow it might be possible for them to disconnect from the world's largest Jewish population center, from the history, the heritage and the miracle that Israel is despite its faults, I can't say I'm losing my love or giving up on the community I grew up in.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the Gay Community, but such a statement would feel even more heretical and betraying. I've often felt very ambivalent about the gay community, which makes very little place for observant Jews like myself, but organizations such as Jewish Mosaic and Nehirim have help me maintain a sense that I am part of something, and this blog is in part my attempt to be more out and more connected in the aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting last month.

So I thought the only honest thing I could call this is How I'm Losing My Love of Love, at least the romantic ideas of love I had when I was younger. From where I am today, love is more an action than a feeling. Love is holding my 3 year old when he was vomiting last night and the 2 hours my partner watched the kids so I could sleep it off this morning. Love is going to a parent meeting exhausted at 8 pm and struggling to understand the Hebrew and the completely foreign culture so I can be part of my daughter's education. Love is the hundreds of volunteer hours put a couple of dozen families here in Tzur Hadassah so that we can have a thriving progressive synagogue, the only one in this area. Love is the hours that I and my co-workers spend helping North American students (like Jay Michaelson once was) find funds, housing, Shabbat meals, and all they need to be here in Israel for however long they can and make a connection. Sure, it's our paychecks, but we do it because of our love and commitment to the Jewish People.

M. Scott Peck explained this in The Road Less Travelled. I'll paraphrase him badly no doubt, but he said that when we love, we want what is best for our beloved, and through our love and commitment, we work toward that. All kinds of wonderful things here in Israel, from the Israel Religious Action Center, the Reform and Masorti movements, the Jerusalem Open House, Rabbis for Human Rights, BeTzelem, etc., are here because of the actions and the love of Jews in North America.

So if you feel like your love for Israel or for anyone or anything in the world is waning, think about what the last thing you did was to nurture the connection. Love is an action.

What Happened Tuesday Morning?

IDF forces opened fire at an Israeli Arab driver who broke through a checkpoint close to Beitar Illit

From the official IDF website:

On Tuesday morning (Sept. 22), an Israeli Arab was hit by IDF forces that opened fire at him after he broke through a checkpoint close to Beitar Illit, west of Bethlehem, in his vehicle. He approached the checkpoint at high speed and after the soldiers fired warning shots, refused to slow down, threatening the life of the soldiers. After the vehicle broke through the checkpoint, IDF forces followed it. As they tried to stop the driver, he attempted to run them over with his vehicle. The soldiers opened fire at the vehicle and hit the driver. An IDF soldier was lightly injured in the incident.

A Magen David Adom emergency team arrived at the scene and declared the driver dead. The circumstances of the incident are currently being investigated.


The shooting apparently happened right outside the town where Sasha goes to gan - that is, across the street from the entrance to our town. I'm still trying to find out what time the incident happened and whether the driver had anyone else in his vehicle.

I found out about it because when I went to take Sasha to gan, the area at the entrance to the moshav across the way, Mevo Betar, was filled with army, police, etc. A few minutes after I dropped Sasha off, I heard on the radio about what had happened. I am sure that on the radio they said the driver who was shot was known to the security forces for transporting people illegally from the territories into Israel. But this does not appear in the official army reports.

The reason the hour that it happened is important to me and whether there were other people in the vehicle is because I think it likely this man was transporting or known for transporting illegal workers. The checkpoint he broke through is not a passage checkpoint for Palestinians. The checkpoint, which I drive through twice a day every work day, goes from my part of inside green line Israel into the West Bank. Immediately on the other side of the checkpoint are a small Arab town, Wadi Fukin, a large Arab town, Husan (60K residents) and an ultra Orthodox Jewish settlement, Beitar Illit (30K residents, median age is 11).

Because the checkpoint is not a passage checkpoint, Palestinian residents of Wadi Fukin, Husan and other towns are not allowed to cross westwards into Israel even if they have valid work permits to work in Israel. A Palestinian from Wadi Fukin who wants to build houses in Tzur Hadassah or Nes Harim nearby us would according to law have to travel into Jerusalem through the tunnel road checkpoint (east and then north) and then back around out of Jerusalem to the towns 5-10 minutes from his home. The journey would take him 1-2 hours, depending on how long he waited at the tunnel checkpoint.

Because of this, the area around my house has a constant flow of workers crossing illegally into the green line. The soldiers can never stay ahead of the traffic, much of which is on foot.

When Haaretz posted this story Tuesday night, they framed it as happening close to Beitar Illit and talked about the expansion of Beitar Illit and the context of Obama's demand to stop building in the settlements. It seems to me an equally or more crucial issue for my Palestinian neighbors is their freedom of movement and ability to earn a living. Mr. Prime Minister Netanyahu, if you care about economic peace as you say you do, please give my neighbors a legal way to get to the jobs that are awaiting them in my town and the surrounding towns. Mr. President Obama and Mr. Senator George Mitchell, don't let one issue - settlement expansion - blind you to the other important issues such as freedom and ease of movement. Readers, if you know anyone who works for these important guys, pass on this link!

P.S. Before the intifada in 2000, there were 120,000 workers from the West Bank and Gaza working inside Israel supporting 1 million family members. At the height of the intifada in 2002, 120,000 had dropped to 10,000. Readers, if you have current statistics or know where to find them, let me know.

Comes by it honestly

Gabi has a free moment with the day off school. She's sitting on the sofa studying the excel spread sheet of her class members, learning their parents' names. She tells me, "There are 4 kids in my class who live on Rechasim." I feel such a mixture of pleasure and regret seeing her occupied with the way I spend my work days.

As I clean up, or try to, I think of my Grandma, Zena, of course. There will never be a time that a household task does not have her tremendous presence looming over it. I realize the depression mentality where everything could be used and nothing should be thrown away is not an asset in the world of pre-school crafts and tiny toy parts.

I have a long list so this is a short post. Shanah tovah to all!