Listening to the sounds of silence in Jerusalem

September 13, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

By Rabbi Bill Berk, Keshet

Most people rarely give a thought to the sounds of Israel, but when I led a trip here with a young girl who was blind, I had to think completely differently. Traveling with Arielle was quite a treat. We tried to hear and feel Israel. I remember touching old stones with ancient graffiti written on them. It was a new way of sensing history. Close your eyes at the Kotel (Western Wall) and you’ll “see” sounds you didn’t know were there.

Bicyclist in silent street

At Yom Kippur the streets of Jerusalem are deserted. Photo by Yossi Zamir/Flash 90

Israel is a young country. Pregnant women are everywhere. Therefore the sounds you hear here are often the sounds of children. Go to almost any mall in Israel and you’ll hear the raucous sounds of kids making a playground out of anything they can.

If it’s really loud noise you want try one of the most colorful markets in the world—Jerusalem’s famous Machaneh Yehudah Market. This outdoor/indoor market has some of the most entertaining “hawkers” I’ve ever heard. The prices of fish and strawberries are yelled out and seem to be changing minute to minute. You walk by an olive stand with 14 kinds of olives and you will likely be invited to taste.

I’ve never heard it but just before Shabbat begins there’s a guy that comes through that market yelling at people to close and then blowing the shofar (ram’s horn). This custom goes back 2,000 years and is recorded in the Talmud.

The sounds that really get me, though, are the sounds of silence. Every single Friday afternoon as the Sabbath nears you can hear the city of Jerusalem start to get quiet. Jerusalem is a city of 740,000 people. To hear the city close up is one of them most amazing sounds I’ve ever heard. I’ve compared it to the sounds in America when people are getting ready for Thanksgiving or Christmas. There’s that special “something” in the air. Then the great quiet descends.

The greatest quiet, though, is not on Shabbat. It’s on Yom Kippur. Except for emergency vehicles no cars travel on Jerusalem’s streets. I call it the “Disneyland of the Spirit.” Not only do you hear the sounds of silence, but you smell the trees. With no cars running and no exhaust whatsoever you suddenly realize that Jerusalem is just a big mountain village. Your senses know that you are in a different dimension.

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The “mechinistim”

September 11, 2011 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: education, Israeliness, Life 

On the road to mechina

School officially started a week ago, and along with it the beginning of the “mechina” year. As our daughter is one of the new mechinistim, I thought this might be a good time to talk about what is a mechina, in large part also because our friends and family overseas have never heard of the concept.

Basically, it’s possible to defer one’s army induction date by a year to participate in mechina, a program that combines study, volunteering, hiking and getting to know who you are as a person. Up to seventy 18-year-olds live together, cook together and play together, becoming better citizens and hopefully more sensitive human beings. They also do a lot of pre-army physical preparation. The army likes the mechina system because it delivers more mature and motivated new recruits.

There are tens of mechinot in Israel, with more sprouting up every year. There are several types: all religious, all secular, boys only, girls only, and mixed boys and girls / religious and not religious. Our daughter chose the latter.

A recent article in the Jerusalem Post quoted Shmaryahu Ben-Pazi, the director at Aderet (that’s the name of the mechina our daughter is attending), as explaining that these “programs teach young people to leave behind indifference and deepen their Jewish and democratic principles and values.”

Aderet’s educational director Assaf Perry added that his mechina aims to mend the rifts present in modern day Israel. He defines those as “the rift between the religious and secular, between rich and poor, between the center of the country and the periphery.”

Studying starts early in the morning and discussions go late into the night. This is not learning for a grade; it’s what you’d call in yeshiva “Torah l’Shma” – studying for its own sake. The same is true at the mechinot, as they debate provocative questions like “is it a Jewish value to die for your country.”

As excited as I am for our daughter, saying goodbye was another matter entirely. My wife and I both drove her to the drop off point last week – we only really needed one parent in the car, but we wanted to get a chance to see what the other mechnistim looked like when they were still raw individuals, before they jelled (or didn’t) into a tight group.

At the parking lot next to a McDonald’s in Beit Shemesh, I felt like I was sending my child off to college in the States (she’ll be 18 later this week and she’ll no longer be living at home, so the comparison is apt, even though she won’t be out of the army for another three years).

I also hoped to give her a big hug as she was swept away into the crowd of other eager 18-year-olds. But she wasn’t having any of that, as she instructed us to leave her a good 100 feet from the other kids.

It’s often hard (it certainly is for me) to let your kids fly away after spending so many years carefully raising them with all the right values and extra-curricular opportunities. But if we have to set them free, sending them off to a mechina might be the best thing we’ve done yet.

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Nostalgia Sunday – 9/11: The international view

September 11, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: coexistence, General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, War 

Often, I write with seeming fondness about the days when Israel had only one television station, or the days when radio and newspapers were the primary news delivery systems.

Now, it is true that there was a certain charm in being able to walk down the street at 9:00pm on a sultry summer night, listening to the sounds of the news broadcast emanating from the open balconies and never missing a story. Nonetheless, when all is said and done, the situation today leaves us better informed. In addition to channels 1, 2 and 10, 23, 24, and the Knesset Channel, we also have a variety of radio stations, cable television, satellite television as well as, digital terrestrial television, (which I’ve complained about at length on another occasion). And the Internet, of course.

All these forms of communications media have served have made us more worldly, brought us in line with Western trends in music, fashion and popular culture. In addition, they lay out a smorgasbord of news broadcasts from all over the world to watch — if you’ve got the stomach for it.

Since I firmly believe that knowledge is power and that people should know about things they don’t agree with, or even like, I took a look at how the media in other countries was reporting the story of the day: a look back at the decade following 9/11. (Sad to say, the weekend attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo was only a blip on the international news radar).

Some outlets were unsurprising, like Russia Today, with headlines like “American aggression breeds terrorism”, “Post-9/11 crusade created more enemies” and “US war on terror: the longest-ever knee-jerk reaction”. One of the milder reports, almost sweet in a way, was entitled, “What’s this ‘nineleven’ you conquered us for?” Take a look.

Britan’s Sky News’ interview with Dan Rather is a rather depressing outlook on the declining quality of news reporting over the past 10 years.

Given Israel’s strong identification with the events of 9/11, the Israeli news networks presented stories that were similar to their US counterparts: interviews with families and preparations for 9/11 memorial ceremonies. France 24 created an excellent timeline chronicling key events since 2001. China’s CCTV International went for a slide show of the new memorial, Tribute in Lights.

But I must say that the most impressive item comes from Al-Jazeera in English. Their 47 minute-long documentary, The Image War, essentially pits al-Qaeda’s media and public relations skills against those of the United States, and is truly worth watching, if not enjoying.
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Remembering 9/11

September 11, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, War 

The past week has been full of conversations and discussions about the events of September 11, 2001. Where were we that day, what were our thoughts when we heard the news, the fact that children born since then or even right before 9/11, are too young to remember the day and what it was like for all of us living through it.

Here in Israel, as Rachel writes in Foto Friday, there have been a number of memorial sites established as Israelis strongly identify with the thoughts, feelings and experiences of New Yorkers from that period. And yet, with the day here, marking ten years since that terrible period in time, it can feel strange to be so far from the place where it all happened.

My sister and brother-in-law, who at the time worked a few blocks away and lived just over the Brooklyn Bridge, both say they find it hard to see images from the day. The experience is just too raw for them. But for some, it can be helpful to look at images from that time, and recollect how it all took place. Here in Jerusalem, local entrepreneur Robby Berman has installed an exhibit of his photos from that day that will be opening this evening. He was a journalist at the time, living in Israel but visiting in New York and found himself near the Twin Towers at the time of the attacks.

His photos aren’t those of a professional, but rather of someone who couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, and simply snapped shots of everything that was happening around him. Here’s an account of his story from the weekend’s Ha’aretz. There will be a ceremony today at the exhibit, including the sounding of a a siren — in Israeli memorial style — to commemorate those who perished in the 9/11 tragedy.

The exhibit is being held at the Jerusalem House of Quality, across from the Jerusalem Cinematheque, 4 pm — 11 pm, until September 30.

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How bad is the neighborhood getting?

September 11, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics 

Egyptian protesters run from tear gas during the clashes outside the Israel Embassy in Cairo on Friday. (Reuters)

On the same day the daily papers in Israel splashed headlines across their front page about the Egyptian mob that attacked and laid siege to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, nearly lynching the six Israeli staffers inside, US President Barack Obama wrote a commemoration for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 that appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

The articles about Cairo described a frenzied mob of some 5,000 Egyptians swarming the embassy after breaking down a concrete barrier and the Israeli security guards being holed up behind a metal door and having to be extracted by Egyptian commandos upon the special request of Obama after a phone call from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Obama’s essay included a reference to the ‘Arab Spring’ that has swept across the region over the last year that perhaps he may have changed had he written it after the Cairo incident. He wrote:

“Meanwhile, people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence, not mindless terrorism and violence. It is clear that violent extremists are being left behind and that the future belongs to those who want to build, not destroy.”

The weekend’s violent extremism against Israel in Cairo shows that the US president is perhaps being a premature in his assessment, and causes great reason for concern in Israel, as it should in the US.

For those of us who have taken for granted the peace treaties we have with Egypt and Jordan, enabling at least two relatively incident-free borders (although last month’s attacks from infiltrators from Egypt show that even that is tenuous), the reality that we may unfortunately soon be returning to the days of being ‘surrounded by enemies’ is indeed a depressing and frightening thought.

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