Goldie:
Hafokh is the term used to order the incomparably delicious
Israeli-style coffee latte we had only a few weeks ago.
Hofokh is also the term many Israelis use to speak of their current
lives and politics.
Hofokh is how my heart, mind and spirit feel after
returning from Israel to America.
In Torah, as a word, hafokh hardly happens (hmm, sounds like a line from
My Fair Lady). Hofokh appears as the root term for when G*d shifts the
winds and blows the locusts into the sea, ending that plague when
Pharaoh initially recants. The root hafokh appears again, a bit later,
when Pharaoh’s attitude shifts back and he comes chasing after the
Israelites as they are crossing that very same sea. That time hafokh
also happens, as the waves drown the pursuing Egyptians.
Yes, the
Ruakh HaKodesh, Life’s Winds, blew us to Israel for a month and
then immediately, I went off to teach in Arizona. Barry stayed in Philly
for the next phase of launching of his first book, “Communication Skills
that Heal: Toward a New Professionalism for Medicine,” via a Public
Radio interview. [Tune in via the menu link at
http://www.processmedicine.com].
Now we’re back in Philly, delighting in Pesach and pondering, where and
how a Jew is meant to live.
Both in Arizona and Israel, very different kinds of exquisite deserts
are in full bloom. “Stamen!” shriek the brilliant colors of each desert
flower as they extend passionate welcomes. Or, as my Hubbatzin Barry’s
extensive world-wide South African family and friends say wherever and
whenever we land at their sides, “Hey, don’t be stupid, stay man!” Stay?
It sure was intensely difficult to leave Israel.
I, for one, feel like the middle matzah from the seder plate – one half
of my soul here in the Diaspora, and somewhat ‘out of order (seder)’
from already yearning for the experience of completion as a Jew I felt
so strongly this time in Israel. Perhaps Israel is the afikomen, and it
takes all of Diaspora Jewry to make up the other half? Last time I
visited Israel the population was about 3 million, today it is over six
million, 2 million under age 18 - the streets and parks are vibrant with
young families.
We happened to be there during field trip week for the public and
private schools. Every wonder of nature was teeming with school kids,
which led to this encounter:
-A high school teacher helped us up the smooth stone banks of the wadi.
We walked along together as he explained the crucial importance of such
field trips so that every Israeli child knows and respects the land. He
asks Barry and I where we’re from and what we do. Upon hearing I’m a
rabbi, he says, “I was raised religious but I’m not anymore, it doesn’t
speak to me.” So Barry replies, “I’ve reconnected through the story of
Moses at the burning bush, by reading Ehyeh asher Ehyeh not as “I am
that I am” but as “I am becoming what I am Becoming,” or “I will be what
I will be,” I experience the idea of God as role modeling for us the
concept of SELF as constantly evolving and not being a fixity. We are all
‘becoming what we are becoming,’ like your students, like yourself, like
Israel.”
The teacher stops in his tracks, tells us his parents were born in
Morocco, and he never heard this wonderful interpretation from them or
in school. As a native Hebrew speaker, he muses, ‘Why didn’t I see this
before! Is there more of this approach I can learn?”
21-25% of Israelis call themselves Orthodox, the hunger among the rest
for accessible, meaningful Judaisms proved during our visit to be as
thirsty as the land. Most don’t know an alternative with integrity is
even possible.
Another day.
-Soothing rivulets bathe our hot feet as we walked upstream towards a
plateau that will overlook the Dead Sea. Yours truly is wearing a red
hat and a red long sleeve sun repellent shirt, pants rolled up over
calves. I frolicked beside a pool filled with girls in long sleeved pale
blue shirts and long black skirts and black stockings, all soaked to the
knees, having the time of their lives.
“What do you do in America?” one such girl asks me, “Ani rav.” “I’m a
rabbi.”
“You mean you make shidduchim (matches),” gently, she corrects me. She’s
in for a surprise. “No. I am an actual rabbi, for weddings, gittin
(divorce documents), teaching, prayer, counseling, answering shaylas
(religious questions) and such.”
We walk along silently, navigating rolling dry rocks under a relentless
sun blessedly tempered by a sweet spring breeze. Perhaps 15 years of
age, she keeps turning as though to eye my huge red hat with curiosity
and finally inquires: “In America are there now red hat hareidim
(ultra-orthodox Jews) and women rabbis?” I chortle, “No, even in America
a hareidi women can’t yet be a rabbi, I’m from one of the more liberal
Jewish groups. Are you hareidi?” She laughs and calls out to her
classmates a few yards ahead, “The American thinks we are hareidi! No,
we are modern Orthodox from Ashkelon! We wear light blue shirts. Don’t
you know?”
French Jewish tourists were prominent during our visit, some recounting
brushes with anti-Semitism; many were buying apartments as ‘insurance’.
Tourism is up 70% in Israel over last year, those we met told us “we no
longer feel safe in Moscow, Paris, New York City, or Madrid, so why
avoid Israel?”
This time we didn’t want to go on yet another Israel mission to learn or
listen - left, right or center - this time we wanted to look, listen and
feel all on our own. The trip was actually instigated by my father, Sam
Milgram, who, at age 86, is an alert, radiant-with-wonder
wheelchair-dwelling World War II veteran who never wants anything for
himself. Poppa has, for ever-so-many years, been primary care-taker for
my mom who has Alzheimers. In January, when mom ceased to recognize any
of us, dad astonished us by saying: “Now that your mom doesn’t know me,
before I die, the one thing I want to do is finally experience Israel.”
What a gift, to hear a parent’s deepest wishes and to be able to fulfill
it. We leapt into action, with an 86 year-old, waiting wouldn’t be
prudent. Besides, we’d been yearning to go back, I hadn’t been for 18
years – mostly out of shame and ambivalence, Barry not for 14, and we’ve
certainly been every where else!
A good bit of research yielded a driver with an accessible van and
electrified scooter-type wheelchair accustomed to locating accessible
bathrooms, entrances and sidewalk ramps throughout the country. Did you
ever take a young child to Disney Land? You can’t do that happily if you
go with adult judgementalism, so too, we who have been many times to
Israel, suspended that part of ourselves and experienced Israel through
my dad’s eyes.
In the Meaning and Mitzvah conference call courses I’ve been teaching,
our studies yielded the realization that the mitzvot of ahavat HaShem
[love of G*d] and yirat HaShem [awe of G*d] together form a mobius strip
of higher consciousness when one begins to understand and practice them.
In just this way through Dad’s eyes Israel came alive anew for me, as
though G*d is the glassblower and in our hands – yours, mine, and
especially the Israelis – has been placed the tender and infinitely
challenging mitzvah of continuing to create a gem in the diadem of
creation, Israel.
Pappa was with the signal corps during World War II, his unit had the
first portable radar used in a war. They were given coordinates to reach
in order to transmit. Then they were given coordinates for three days
furlough. When they reached those coordinates it was a town, stunned by
the human skeletons piled high and similar ones staggering through the
streets, my dad didn’t see the truck coming with its German driver that
would crush his lower body against a wall.
I
never heard the true story of his injury until this trip; he’d
always sloughed off our questions. In every hotel lobby I would find him
late at night chatting with the omnipresent security people, some who
themselves had been wounded in action. For a moment I was irritated that
dad might miss a tourist site because of all the talk, then I listened
in and realized they were healing each other, by retelling and
commiserating about what they wouldn’t or couldn’t have told their
families.
Imagine Poppa, with the memory of the walking skeletons of Auschwitz
engraved on his very body, arriving to imbibe a heady new brew, history
hafokh - millions of Jews of greatly varied backgrounds and vociferous
opinions dwelling surprisingly coherently in a space somewhat smaller
than New Jersey.
For two weeks Dad was with us, rolling along joyfully, other times
nodding off, and, when necessary for access, using a walker. While we
would stay on to teach and be most shifted by visiting family, friends,
students and colleagues throughout the land, with dad we had a scenic
tour of most every bathroom and many a stunning view of nature and the
density of fascinating and well-interpreted archaeological residue from
the regions many sequential empires.
While dad was with us in Jerusalem, there was one glitch, all of a
sudden he popped a wheelie. My heart about stopped. He had revved up his
wheelchair on a downward sloping sidewalk, come to the lip of the curb
and playfully just kept going. Fwoop, he rounded up into the air and
then landed splat, utterly hafokh (tush over teacups as some say) in the
street. Israelis came running to help him from every direction, even
taxi drivers leapt from their vehicles to make sure he was ok. Dad just
dusted himself off, popped back into his seat and said, “Thanks! Just
needed to try that once.” You see, he’d never before accepted to use of
a wheelchair, preferring to stick primarily to the kitchen at home. He
sure was giving it a hefty test drive!
Two of Pappa’s best buddies flew one of Israel’s four planes in the war
for independence. We learned at Israel’s Air Force Museum that the trick
was how the Israelis kept repainting the planes different colors to make
it look like there were many planes. They also learned to put whistles
in soda bottles and drop them without explosives – the sound resembling
bombs caused those below to scatter. Israel did build its own fighter
jet in recent years, but it turned out to be too expensive to sustain.
One hears fear creep in as the docent says this; to be dependent on the
nations has proven dangerous for us.
History hafokh, only for real. Our people have dreamt about it, chapter
nine of the playful novel turned sacred text, Megillat Esther is one
other place to find a few instances of forms of hafokh, when the rite of
reversal has happened, and the Jews take office, marry royalty, and are
allowed to defend themselves by royal decree no less.
Barry: Snapshot.
Megillah reading at congregation Kol HaNeshamah,
affiliated with the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. The reader is a black-hatted male Hassid, oops, no actually he’s a woman. The room is
packed with those fulfilling the mitzvah of hearing the megillah
chanted. The day before we danced in our masks from New Orleans at a
party at Rabbi Ruth and Michael Gan-Kagan’s. Next day, Barry heads
through the extensive security points into Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street
which has been turned into a spectacle of color, music, entertainment,
smiles. Israel’s every immigrant group is out in celebration – Ethiopian
– South American – Moroccan – Yemenite – Russian and more. Perhaps the
most engaging for me is the troupe of Druze musicians and dancers with
their shrill ear-piercing flute-like instrument, rhythmic drumming and
hypnotizing folk dancing. I feel totally safe here. (More from Barry in
the next travelogue).
Goldie: Barry’s pix (see below) from Purim reveal the intense diversity of this
society – a true ingathering of our people from every society. As it
happens, I find an internet café and no sooner set up to get on line
then the security guard a few feet from where I am seated near the door
leaps to his feet, grabbing the hands of a man. In seconds on the ground
are the man’s jacket and a vest so heavy the guard can barely lift it.
The guard from the café across the street comes running, waiters herd
patrons out a side door and the last thing I hear at the scene is a
girl, about five years old asking her mother in Hebrew “Ima, does it
hurt to be blown to bits and will a kiss make it better?”
Mah laasote (what to do)? Accept with the equanimity of those around me
that these things happen and walk down a block to the next café and
unsuccessfully try to get online again. The fellow to my right says,
“Say, did you give a lecture at the neo-Hassidism conference in NYC two
years ago?” Actually, yes. The fellow on my left says, remember, we met
in Kiev going through customs? Also yes, a Project Kesher trip.
Israelis we meet are relieved the murders in the Jericho prison were
apprehended before Hamas could fulfill their intent to release them once
international surveillance would leave later in the week. It’s all so
odd to me, 18 years ago I slept over, hosted by an Arab family in
Jericho, ate fragrant grapefruit-like huge palmelas (sp?) there, visited
the archaeology. No more an option. Now Jericho is known for casinos. At
Abu Gosht an Israeli Arab restaurant proprietor tells me how thrilled he
is the Israelis have razed the Jericho prison, “Will likely increase my
Palestinian family’s investment in the casino business many-fold if the
prison is really gone.”
Perhaps what hofokh really means is, “shift happens.” Ben Bag Bag in the
Talmud said: hafokh ba, v’hafokh ba d’kula ba. Turn it (Torah) and turn
it for everything is in it. As the scroll turns, these days Egypt
advertises heavily for tourism in the Israeli press and even on
billboards in Israel. Even a cool peace, is good. Let’s pray for more.
We'll try to write another travelogue to cover the second half of our
trip and introduce you to the wide range of family, colleagues, friends,
issues, innovations and characters we met.
It is fine to forward this travelogue to others if you so wish.
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