It is almost
impossible to do justice to the trip in words, because so much of it is about
the feelings that this place can inspire in people. Instead I want to share
three experiences.
On our first
Friday we set out to explore the city of Tel Aviv. As part of this tour we made
our way to Levinsky Street, in south Tel Aviv, an area that tourists rarely
visit. But for me, this area is my Israel. In our New York context, you can
think of this neighborhood like the Lower East Side, the original area where
Jews built up the city. And on a Friday morning it is a place filled with
locals trying to get all of their shopping done in time for Shabbat, when
virtually everything will be closed.
But for me, in taking our group to this neighborhood, I was able to
share my Tel Aviv. It was in this neighborhood that my great-grandparents
settled, after arriving in Palestine (as it was then called) from Romania and
Austria respectively. These are the streets where they had their shops and
these are the streets that I still walk with my Saba סבא (grandfather)
stopping in virtually every shop for him to say hello to all of his friends.
In the middle of our trip we made our way to the south
and faced the challenge of climbing Masada, the desert fortress constructed by
King Herod, and the place where zealots made their last stand against the
Romans. As we arrived in our bus we saw what seemed like hundreds of young
Israeli soldiers making their way to climb the path up to the fortress. They
had completed their basic training and where at the end of a 50 kilometer,
through the night, hike to Masada. Some of them were limping, many of them
looked exhausted, but to us they were an inspiring sight.
When we stood at the top of the mountain, as Uri (our
tour guide) told Masada’s story, he was repeatedly interrupted by their cheers
for one another, by the soldiers’ chanting, and then ultimately by their
singing of Hatikva. And then following this with our own morning service, in
which three recent Bnei Mitzvah were called to the Torah added a new layer of
meaning to this site as a place of rebirth, not simply a place of loss and
sacrifice.
And the final experience didn’t happen in one place, it
happened over the final days of the trip. Sitting in a pizza restaurant I
suddenly noticed that three of the boys on the trip were there too, and that as
they sat at the bar, eating pizza, all of them were still wearing their kippot
from our earlier visits to the Western Wall and the Old City. Another one of
our younger participants also started wearing his kippah for the final days of
our trip. I’m not sure if any of them had ever worn a kippah outside of the
synagogue before, but Israel inspires people and it was wonderful to see them
claiming this symbol of Jewish identity as their own.
And through these three experiences perhaps I can sum
up the Israel trip.
Israel is a place with which I have a personal
connection, and for me sharing it with our group, in places like Levinsky,
allowing them to form their own individual connections and memories was so
special. It is a place where we see the Jewish people not just surviving, but
thriving, as we did atop of Masada, the youth of our trip and of Israel offer
us reasons to be very optimistic for our future. And Israel is a place where Judaism
is everywhere, and as such when you visit the country, Judaism enters your soul
in new and powerful ways, allowing for a deeper pride and stronger connections
to our tradition, people, and heritage.
During this month at our Sedarim סדרים
we will say “Next Year in Jerusalem”, and I hope that in due time every member
of our community will have the opportunity to turn them into reality. There is
nowhere in the world quite like Israel, and joining with our community on a
trip around the country was definitely one of the highlights of my rabbinate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment