Jerusalem Day--The Beautiful and the Ugly, Plus We Are Legal Now

 



Yom Yerushalayim, the Beautiful. This past week we celebrated Jerusalem Day, essentially the day on the Hebrew Calendar that Jerusalem was recaptured from Jordan during the Six Day War and a united city once again. After the War of Independence in 1948, Jews were removed from the Old City of Jerusalem, not even allowed to visit sites like the Western Wall, and that lasted until 1967. This day celebrates the day. People, especially children of all ages, walk around with Israeli flags and sing songs about Jerusalem. The passion and pride in the people is a beautiful thing to watch. I attended a very special morning service at the Haas Promenade, which overlooks the entire Old City. Here are a couple videos and pictures, which should give you some idea.

Overlooking the entire Old City


And a protest for those who feel it came at the expense of the Palestinians.

Just so you know I'm there




Yom Yerushalayim, the Ugly. Unfortunately, over the last few years, the day has become excessively nationalistic in a way that is disturbing. Many teenagers run through the Old City, the Muslim Quarter specifially, taunting the Arab population there, chanting violent chants, and causing damage. It has become so bad that Israel commits 10,000 police officers to monitor it and prevent it from becoming worse. I don't know what else to say about it other than to acknowledge this ugly side. 

A Quick Trip to Cyprus. Well, we are legal now. The main purpose of a quick trip to Cyprus was to see if we could reset our 3 month tourist Visa. It worked. When we returned to Israel, we just put our passports into the machine, and it spit out a new card giving us 3 months from May 21. No need to meet with the miserable bureaucrats at the Misrad Hapanim, the Minister of the Interior. 

Cyprus is an interesting place on its own. It has a lot of history with Israel. It is, first of all, where many refugees fleeing the Holocaust were interned before being allowed to enter Israel. Secondly, Israelis go there frequently, not only because it is only a 1 hour, inexpensive flight, but because they can marry there outside the Orthodox rabbanut and have it be recognized by the State of Israel. It's a sleepy country, but it was a nice relaxing time at the beach there, plus the Shabbat at Chabad there with over half visitors from Israel, was really fun. I don't intend to go back, but it was well worth the trip for the Visa reset!


Visitors. Had a very nice visit with TBA graduate Hannah Reback, and my brother and his wife Lauren are in Israel. More to come on that next week, I'm sure.











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kibbutz Beeri and Nova Beggar Description

Image
The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the near future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”   Dwight D Eisenhower This famous quote from Eisenhower could well describe what we experienced today with visits to the site of the Nova Music Festival where hundreds of young people were slaughtered on October 7 and to Kibbutz Beeri, the largest Kibbutz in what is known as the Gaza envelope, the main area outside the Gaza Strip that was infiltrated by Hamas on October 7.  It felt very much like my visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp, though it’s entirely possible that the cruelty perpetrated in these places was even greater, as hard as that is to believe. We heard from one of the survivors , a young man named Or, all am
Read more

Hartman Institute and JCC Maccabi Games

Image
  Scholar Micah Goodman of the Hartman Institute Learning at the Hartman Institute . I have spent most of the last 10 days learning at a think tank called The Shalom Hartman Institute . They call themselves the " leading center of applied Jewish thought and education, serving Israel and North America." They are an intellectual center that has some terrific and famous (at least in the Jewish academic world) scholars, and they run all kinds of programming, including a fair amount of Israeli-Arab dialogue. Every summer about 100 rabbis, mostly Conservative and Reform but a few others as well, for an intensive learning seminar centered around a common theme. This year the theme was exploring the tension between individual autonomy (a very American value) and communal obligation (a very Jewish value). In the modern world, they are held in great tension, and each speaker, utilizing Jewish texts, explored a different facet of this, such as Creed, Sacrifice, Shabbat, Holiness, Convic
Read more

Jerusalem Week 2--Pesach and Politics

Image
I said to another TBA member who is in Israel right now, if you didn't read the news, you wouldn't feel any of the tension that you are reading about in America. Mostly you'd just feel the peace of Jerusalem and the rhythm of the Passover holiday. I got into that a little bit last week, but a little more now. The Longest Seder . We attended the longest and latest Seder we have ever been to at the home of the Swidlers, a family who lives in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem who we met when they hosted us 12 years ago through shabbat.com (it's a real thing), and we have become good friends with ever since. Since they are constantly hosting us (our apartment could never really meet their Kashrut standards) we took them out for a pre Pesach Pizza Hut dinner. Then, the next night, their Seder went from about 8:45 PM to 2 AM. But it was not just an all Hebrew/mumbling type of Seder. It was filled with questions and discussions and beautiful, beautiful singing. The entire
Read more