The Jewish world watches developments in the Middle East with baited breath. 

On the one hand, there is a fear that any regime change in Egypt will be bad for Israel.  Despite its frostiness and fragility, the Peace agreement with Egypt has been central to Israeli security policies for the last 30 years.  The opposition party Muslim Brotherhood, should they be forming a new government, are not likely to make friendly relationships with Israel a central pillar of their new foreign policy.  A post-Mubarak Egypt might open the border with Gaza, and arms will pour into the Gaza strip to be used against Israel’s citizens. 

On the other hand, no Jew can watch the images of the Egyptian people rising up against a tyrant and not relate it to our own history, albeit 3500 years ago.  Then it was a Pharaoh who had ordered his soldiers to throw our sons into the Nile River.  Now we are standing with our brothers on the streets of Egypt chanting for freedom. 

What seems clear from the events of the past weeks is that the Middle East as we know it looks likely to change.  How dramatically we cannot say, but if Tunisia is anything to go by we are looking at what one journalist called “the Berlin Wall moment” of the Middle East.

Any change is painful but also brings hope for a better future.  All we can do is pray that the change will be one that will bring empowerment and civil rights to more people in the region.  And the greatest hope is that it will open the possibility for a new position on Israel, one that will take the whole region’s benefit into consideration and that new windows of peace will open.

Sam Bahour is tall, well spoken and very quick.  When he arrives, one of the Americans who doesn’t notice him come into the room is joking that had there been a hostage situation in his host family’s house, he was relieved that his roommate was worth more money than he and the hostage-takers would kidnap the higher value prisoner.  Sam walks to the front and without skipping a beat says with a smile how he heard that the Israeli Defence Force was going to move in on Bethlehem that morning and so he organised to speak to a group of International Western Jews to ensure his safety.

Sam Bahour talks frankly

He is a Palestinian/American who grew up in the USA and moved to Ramallah in the 1990′s after Oslo to develop the Palestinian economy.  He helped to set up the Palestinian telecommunications industry and is involved in several huge business interests, including the Plaza shopping mall in Ramallah, the first of its kind.  He is the treasurer of Birzeit University, a Director of Arab Islamic Bank and so on and so on.  He runs a business consulting firm and is up-to-date to the minute on American, Israeli and Palestinian current affairs, even exchanging thoughts with two members of our group who attended a high-level conference of American Jewish leaders that week in Jerusalem about their conference, fully aware of their discussions and their implications.  He blogs regularly here, and encourages us to follow the alternative online news in the region as well as the official Fatah position on their website.

What is most impressive about Sam is his ability to see the big picture.  He is not a historian but speaks knowledgeably about the history of Israel and Palestine.  He is not a politician but fully clued-up on the behind the scenes negotiations taking place and not taking place and why he believes they are not going to succeed until they change their focus and arbitration.  Wearing his business hat, he tells us  about the successful infrastructure they have built in the Palestinian controlled areas despite crushing circumstances.  When asked about the settlements question he tellingly explains that as a businessman, if he were asked to invest in the Israeli business plan that included the settlements he would not invest a cent.  He also prophecies that if the PLO leadership cannot bring home a final status agreement that includes a Palestinian state soon, they will lose the next election to Hamas. He explains how complex the negotiations are and also how Palestinians feel like Israel is negotiating over a pizza while eating it at the same time.  All that will be left at the end will be the box. 

He echoes the sentiment of many Israelis when he says that the sooner we can all move past the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, their leaders can address the real problems of the economy and the Arab Middle East – a powder keg that keeps being put lower on the agenda because of the more pressing needs of the negotiations.

I am a rabbi, not a politician or businessman, and much of his talk refers to concepts or personalities that I am not fully aware of, but the overall impression is of a man who could be comfortably wealthy in the USA but who has decided to remain in the region with his family and help build a Palestinian State.

In the evening our group was joined by a large group of Palestinian young adults.  They were university students, youth leaders, and members of youth movements.  They came from Hebron and Bethlehem and there was a mix of Christian and Muslim Arabs.  Some had travelled to the USA or other countries, some had been to Israel, some had never left the Palestinian territories.  I chatted to Wared and to Halit who had some strong things to say about Israel.  For them, the presence of the Israeli state was the beginning of the problem.  They don’t believe that the 2-state solution is a solution at all, and have seen no progress since Oslo.  They believe that we should all share one land, one state and call it Palestine.  I ask them if they have any Israeli friends.  “Impossible” is their response.  It turns out that for most of these young people the only Israeli they have ever met was a soldier in uniform guarding a checkpoint. It starkly reminds me of growing up in suburban Johannesburg in the 70′s-80′s when the only Black person I met was one that was cleaning our house or working in the garden. 

Youth leaders dialogue dinner

We play a game where the leader calls out “Step into the circle if you…” and it starts with some easy sentences like, “if you have a family in Israel” or “if this is your first time in Bethlehem” and then gets to more challenging stuff like “if you lost a friend or family member in the Intifada” or “if you feel afraid when you hear Hebrew/Arabic spoken.”  What is remarkable is how often the number of Palestinians stepping in matches the number of Jews.  I ask “Step into the circle if you know and trust who your leader is in the negotiations” and no-one steps in.

Dinner with students

Seemingly just as things are getting warmed up, George and Najla, our hosts for the evening, want to take us home.  We drive a short distance to their home and meet their daughter and granddaughter and are invited to sit down for tea and later for a beer too (George and Najla are Christian, don’t get the wrong impression).  They tell us that two of their children now live in Dublin as they did not think it was a good time to raise a family in Palestine.  They spend any money they have going over to visit them.   Najla has put together a craft business getting embroidered scarves from Gaza and selling them to tourists and to a Jewish friend she has in Israel who has a shop there.

We are asked by Encounter not to davven in the homes or to speak hebrew or have kippot or tzitzit visible.  The families may well be fine with it, but neighbours might be less so.  I sleep in their son’s room upstairs.

Me, George and Rabbi Marc Soloway

 In the morning Najla feeds us the biggest breakfast  you have ever seen including homemade grapehoney and tehina, homemade marmelade, local olive oil, homemade hummus, homemade za’atar – just delicious.  And of course, she expected us to eat it all – Jewish mothers/ Palestinian mothers?  Then it’s into a taxi and off to our next meeting.

Sitting with us in one room were three remarkable people.  George Sa’adeh is the deputy-Mayor of Bethlehem.  In 2003 during the Intifada, he and his wife were driving home from the supermarket with their two daughters in the back of the car.  They approached an Israeli jeep and tried to drive around it, when the soldiers opened fire.  George and his one daughter were hit.  When the firing stopped, George asked if everyone was OK.  His daughter Christine did not answer.  When he turned to her, she was dead.  It was later explained that they had the same model car as three wanted Palestinians and were fired on by mistake.

The tragedy is heart-wrenching, and there are just as many tragic stories from Israelis and Palestinians, but what is different about George is that he joined a group called the Bereaved Families Forum – a support group of (now hundreds of) Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost members in the conflict.  They work together for reconciliation and against violence.  Besides being Dep-Mayor, George is the principal of the Greek Shepherds School, a Christian and his story is told in the film Encounter Point which many of you will have seen at Limmud last year.

Sitting next to him is Raed Othman, an engineer who took the intiative to start up Bethlehem TV in 1998 and built that up to six independent TV stations and is now the head of the Ma’an Network which provides independent radio, TV and online news throughout Palestine.  Their agency has no political viewpoint and is able to be critical of all parties, including the PA government. 

Next to him is Ali Abu Awwad, who grew up in a politically active family and was arrested for resisting the Israeli occupation during the first intifada.  He was sentenced to ten years in Israeli prison, however he was released after four years after the signing of the Oslo accords. His experience in jail reminds me a lot of stories of the ANC in prison.  Palestinian prisoners formed a strong organisation where each prisoner was helped to read and study and they conducted organised political discussions twice a day. 

Like many in Palestine, Ali was filled with hope after Oslo and with Arafat and Rabin at the helm was ready to be a citizen of a Palestinian state in 1996. The longer this did not materialise, the more he got disillusioned. During the second intifada, Ali was shot in the leg by an Israeli settler and went to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. While there, he received the news that his brother had been shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint at the entrance to their village. Ali and other members of his family later joined the Bereaved Families Forum where they are active in spreading a message of reconciliation and non-violence to Palestinians and Israelis. Ali is also featured in Encounter Point.

Ali points out that the way forward is not to be pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian.  The way forward is to be pro-solutions.  that is what his organisation, Al-Tariq, aims to promote.  He saw how debilitating the 2nd Intifada was and wants to ensure that a democratic, non-violent Palestine is the future.

Next stop is Claire Anastas’s house.  Claire’s family ran a number of businesses before the intifada – they were a prominent and wealthy family. She remembers as a child running in and out of Rachel’s tomb playing hide-and-seek.  During the intifada her house was a key strategic position, so the Israeli soldiers used is as a base from which to shoot.  That meant that at any time in day or night she and her family would be forced downstairs while soldiers shot out of her windows and were shot at.  Iin 2002, the wall was constructed literally right in front of the door of their house and shops.

Claire Anastas house - walls on three sides

The wall now runs around three sides of the house, effectively cutting her off from the town.  Security cameras on top of the wall look into her house.  She and her nine children are expected to leave, but she wants to stay – she has started a new business selling souvenirs from her house and hopes that tourists will buy from her.

The wall towers over the house

 I wonder what it might feel like to wake up each morning with that concrete wall towering over me.  Would I decide to leave too?

The view from Claire's porch

The locals have done their best to personalise a wall that aims to dehumanise.  The graffiti reads, “This wall will not bring peace” and “Is this what you call a fence?” and “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees.”

After leaving the school, we meet Leila Sansour, a documentary filmmaker who will take us around the town.  We are asked not to have any visible Jewish/Israeli symbols, so hat over kippah and tzitzit tucked in.  Feels weird and sad.  The last time I was here was when I was 13 with my family doing an Egged Bus tour and I have photos of myself in a kippah at the Church of the Nativity.

Bethlehem’s main income is tourism which has been crushed in the past 2 decades.  Many younger people have left seeing no future there.   Leila (a Christian herself) points out that the Christian Arab population is the one that has most been devastated with their livelihood so closely connected to Christian tourists coming to the holy sites there.  in 1947, Bethlehem was about 75% Christian and 25% Muslim.  The proportions are now completely reversed.  Most of her friends from youth live abroad - something I can relate to having grown up in Johannesburg.  It’s obviously a sensitive point, as later that day I asked the Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem why the Christians are leaving and he completely glossed over it and denied it was an issue.  Having said that, it was amazing over the time I was there to see how much the two are integrated.  We met with a large group of youth leaders later that night and the Christian/Muslim mix up was impressive.

Leila take us to a viewpoint on a hill overlooking Jerusalem in the distance.  We can see the tunnel road we came in on.  No Palestinians are allowed on that road.  It is for Israelis only.  She shows us the separation wall being built and asks us if we think it is for Israel’s security. We are sure it is.  I lived in Jerusalem when the Second Intifada began and there were bus bombings and suicide bombings weekly and sometimes daily.  A cafe that I used to visit regularly was blown up and a week after Andi and I left, two students at Pardes, Ben and Marla (z”l) were blown up by a suicide bomber at the Hebrew University.  Once the wall came up, the bombings stopped.

Tunnel Road, Separation Barrier

Leila points out that the bombings were already stopping when they decided to build the wall and that the wall is still not complete – if you (or a bomber) want to walk from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, you can do it without a problem.  The wall does not run along the Green Line (the border set up in 1949 to demarcate Israel from the Palestinian territory) but weaves into the West Bank around Jewish settlements and cuts through villlages and towns, even houses.  More about this later.  According to Leila, the Israeli govt is using the wall to grab land.  With the route it currently takes, if completed it will extend Jerusalem to include the settlement of Gush Etzion.

When asked about the govt.of the Palestinians, Leila gets angry.  What govt? Until there is a state, there can’t be a government.  What she wants, she says, is a Palestinian country so she can expect her leaders to be democratically accountable and if they aren’t they can get voted out.

This evening was our orientation programme for the Encounter.  I got to meet some of the other participants and the leaders of the trip.  Wow, what an amazing group.  I feel humbled just to be there.  The participants range from rabbis to activists to layleaders and business people from across North America and I have only met half the group! (the other half had their orientation already on Sunday).  And the staff are amazing – this is not just a trip, this is a journey of self-discovery, reaching in deep to find out what it is that I really feel about the Other.  Besides learning about the programme and what to expect, we were also asked to sign on to an 8-point Communication Agreement which sets out very clear rules as to how respectful dialogue can and needs to happen.  There has been a great deal of depth and love invested in this programme and I am deeply moved already to be on it.

“When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand…

Listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role…so try listening.” (Brenda Ueland, The Art of Listening)

Tomorrow morning at 7:45 we gather to go across to Bethlehem.  I won’t be able to write again until Thurs night.  Laila Tov

I remember when I was a teenager that when the wheels touched tarmac in Ben Gurion airport the whole plane erupted in clapping and cheering.  Was it celebration or nervous relief?  I don’t know.  In any case, I remember it as part of the experience of arriving in the Holy Land.  So when did it end?  I did ask around my fellow travellers and it seems like it wasn’t just Israelis who did it.  In the 80′s and 90′s it was pretty common practise (something like the big party on the oceanliner before it got to port?)  So I suppose it’s just another quaint practise to fall by the way of our too-cool 21st Century world.  Well, I tell you what – I am going to clap irrespective and see if anyone joins.

As you have by now deduced, I have arrived in Yerushalayim – it’s 12:45am and I’m in Caffit, a trendy cafe on Emek Refaim in the Moshavah drinking limonana (lemonade with mint).  Who says that Tel Aviv has all the night life?  It’s hot still – how am I going to feel tomorrow?  I haven’t slept for two nights, and way too wired right now to go to bed!

Tomorrow I get to meet my fellow participants in the Encounter programme at the Orientation session.  I hope to be able to write tomorrow evening to speak about it.  In the meantime, I will try to get some sleep.

Laila Tov

There are many ways to be a Zionist – SAZF conference 24 Oct 2010

[PANEL GUIDELINES - In your presentation we would like you to discuss your understanding of  Zionism in South Africa today and elaborate on the opportunities and challenges of expressing it.]

So, it was Jan 2009 and I was working with Teri Jedeiken who runs TISA, Temple Israel Social Action, to organise interfaith Prayers for Peace in Gaza and Israel during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.  It soon becomes clear that what my idea of a prayer for peace is and someone else’s is very different.  Yusuf Ganief, an inspiring muslim musician who I respect, offers to play a piece that he has written for peace in Israel and Palestine.  Perfect.  Until I hear the lyrics.  “Israel, who is your God, America who is your God, Oh Israel, So who is your God, to who will you pray? When death knocks at your door, who will answer your call?”  This is a prayer for peace?  The thing that staggered me was that Yusuf thought that I would stand next to him and sing along – how did he get to assume that since I am not one of the “colonial Apartheid Zionist oppressors” I am automatically of the assumption that all of Israel is G!d-less.

And this is in the general left-wing peace camp.  In the Jewish world it is just as bad, if not worse. I am a Religious Zionist and peace activist with no camp.  Since the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, Religious Zionists seem to be right-wing defenders of the Settler movement and see Progressive Judaism as illegitimate, and being left-wing means being critical of Israel, anti-religious and Zionism is a swear word.  Perhaps the two are connected.  Perhaps the absence of a nuanced spectrum of Zionist expression leaves our fellow Jews and well-meaning Muslim or Christian friends unable to see that there are many ways, many ways to be a Zionist.

I grew up in Netzer, spent every Dec for a decade of my life in Pringle Bay sitting around the campfire debating the religious, social and political makeup of Israel with madrichim and shlichim – mazkir CT sat on Youth Council during the Oslo negotiations.

Over the last 25 years I have visited Israel and watched with pride a tiny organisation called the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism grow from being a few scattered synagogues mostly led by N.American and British olim into a vibrant Israeli movement attracting sabras and opening synagogues and study programmes each year.

I walked with pride in the 1^st Gay Pride March in Jerusalem and remember crying with emotion when I saw Rabbi Levi Kelman from Kol ha-Neshama walking with a ginormous banner emblazoned with “yesh yoter mi-derech achat lihyot Yehudi – there is more than one way to be Jewish”.

When Andi and I got married, my chuppah was in Yerushalayim with a crowd of 200 yeshivah bochers, rabbis and rabbinic students from Israel and CHutz La’Aretz dancing in celebration, but I needed to go to Hungary afterwards for a civil marriage because Israel did not recognise the authority of our M’saderet Kiddushin, Rabbi Einat Ramon.  We could have been married by an Orthodox Rabbi and we did interview a number of Israeli marriage officers from Tsohar who are known to be more liberal – but either they would not allow a dual ring ceremony, or would not allow Andi to speak and did not see an halachic Jewish wedding as in any way being egalitarian.

SA Zionism

So living in S.Africa in 2010, where do I fit in as a Religious Progressive Zionist?  I don’t support the settler movement, I don’t agree with requiring non-Jewish citizens to take a loyalty oath.  I also want to secure the existence of a democratic and moral Jewish state in Israel which will be an Or l’goyim.

Challenges:

The current govt is not who I would have voted in – but then which one since 1948 would I have been happy with?  – that’s democracy!

For the second time this year, just before Limmud Cape Town on 12 July 2010, the David Rotem sponsored Conversion Bill reared its ugly head once again. The solution to the Who Is a Jew conversion problem is to make all conversions subject to the Chief Rabbinate including those performed outside Israel.  In one fell swoop the status of thousands of Jews all over the world is to be decided by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.  Not on my watch!  This was met with email and petitions from all over the diaspora, including from congregants of Temple Israel.  PM Netanyahu stepped in and arranged 6 months period of negotiation.  Let’s see what happens.

In 2009 Nofrat Frenkel was arrested for wearing a tallit at the Kotel.  In July Anat Hoffman was arrested for carrying a torah.  The following week PM Netanyahu’s inbox was flooded with over 3000 emails with pictures of women over the world holding sifrei torah, including from Temple Israel.  Without a vibrant and responsive diaspora, this would have gone unnoticed and Israel would not have learnt that there needs to be a wider sensitivity to different expressions of Judaism.

Debate

South Africans need to be part of that debate.  The only way to truly exercise Zionism in this country is to show that support of Israel is pluralist, democratic and nuanced.  It needs to include free and open debate and discussion within the Jewish community and with religious and secular partners.  As great a threat to Israel as Iran or Hamas is a silent, uninvolved diaspora.  We need to partner with Israel in shaping the present and future of the State.

Encounter

 Tomorrow I am flying to Israel to join a group of North American rabbis who are going to Bethlehem to be hosted by Palestinian families and engage in dialogue.  I hope the journey will bring me some idea of how to bring this need for discussion and depth back home to Cape Town.

So here’s the question – is a rabbi in shorts really a rabbi?  When I was a kid, a rabbi was a revered personage, sorry, male personage, up on the bimah with a black robe who made you either afraid or bored, and pronounced pronouncements on all kinds of things that never really seemed to matter.

And when I decided to become one, it was largely because I had never found one that I could really call, “My Rav.”  Once I hit rabbinic school, I got around a bit.  To Limmud.  To Israel.  To the USA…and saw rabbinic students who were male and female, played basketball and ultimate frisbee, hung out late in bars talking Torah and basically were, well, like me.  Where had they been all my life?  Pershaps they were there all the time, but I hadn’t known.  Anyway, now they are colleagues rabbi-ing it up in places like London, New York, and Boulder Colorado…and I am doing the rabbi-thing in Cape Town.

So on a hot sunny day in February I tend to turn up to work in a pair of shorts.  Respectable shorts below a respectably collared shirt, but shorts nevertheless.  And it often occurs to me that people might find this strange.  Or even offensive.  A rabbi in shorts!  Is that OK?  Is it kosher?  Is it rabbinic?

I decided early on in my rabbinic career that I wasn’t going to try to be something that I wasn’t.   That i would certainly take seriously the responsibility of being a rav u’moreh b’Yisrael – a rabbi and teacher for the Jewish people – but not in a way that would make me into one of those detached rabbis on pedestals.  I even noticed in rabbinic school how people’s voices changed on the bimah.  They got this “O Lord, you are sooo very BLAH BLAH” voice on when I knew exactly how they should sound and it wasn’t like that.  So if I do that, please kick me.