1) Meet a Cult Leader
2) Caption your own photography exhibit
3) See incredible Israeli dance
4) Have deep conversations with Charedi people
5) Have a panic attack and then practice radical acceptance
1) Meet a Cult Leader
Last Thursday we had a Dorot seminar in Dimona. Dimona is a periphery town in the Negev desert. It sprouted up to strengthen Israeli's territorial borders and for not really any other reason. There are no natural resources nearby, there's nothing to do, nowhere to go... it's very Tatooine-y. It was settled mostly by people who didn't particularly want to be there, such as Indian Jews who were placed there after immigration, Russian Jews, and Moroccoan French Jews, all of whom had a very different idea of what life would be like in Israel than Dimona. The only industries that can work there due to the conditions are factories, which is pretty miserable work, and the Nuclear Research Facility (which doesn't exist... *cough*, and neither does the fact that cancer rates in Dimona are twice the national average...).
First we met with the Deputy Mayor of Dimona (not a cult leader).
She was really amazing. She's so determined and optimistic about her community. She's working on getting employment rates up and has already made some progress, and is finally connecting Dimona to the Israeli train system (currently it's a real pain in the ass to get to Dimona from anywhere at all.) And she's helped to vastly improve Dimona's education system. And she has a really 'picked myself up by my bootstraps' backstory.
So then we went to another of Dimona's minority groups, the African Hebrew Israelites. So... the AHIs think that first of all, most Israelite Jews were basically black, and that after the fall of the second temple, some Jews fled south into Africa, and gradually migrated to West Africa, and were taken as slaves to the Americas, and are basically black people in America today. We heard all of this from Ahmadiel, who grew up in DC and is now the minister of information for the AHI community. Here he is:
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| He kind of looked like a black version of my dad o_O. I would have loved to see them in a debate. |
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| Doroters listening. Note the MLK poster. |
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| A painting of the Princes Council, their leadership... board? |
He explained this history, and about how they came to Israel because they feel it is also their homeland. Most of them are here illegally because Israel doesn't recognize their Jewishness, but after a generation of kids were born here, Israeli, and they served in the army, they just kind of naturalized. The kids don't really speak Hebrew though...
They all live on this compound, all 3,000 of them or so, and have their own schools and housing and gardens, and they all wear this very peculiar getup (I couldn't get a picture but I bet if you google you can find out...) and it's a very insular community. They speak English with a sort of Chicago accent for the most part, but they identify as Israeli. Sometimes Israel deports some of them but they seem to find a way back.
They practice the Torah as they see it, which means they're all strictly vegan and they have fringes on their clothes and they observe Shabbat and the men have multiple wives, amongst many other things. Israel said they need to stop practicing plural marriage, but Ahmadiel said that doesn't make much sense since in any given generation there are more available women than men, so if men don't take multiple wives we'll have all these poor spinsters on our hands.
But we also left the compound and met a social worker named Sarah...
Sarah was raised in the AHI community, on the compound. She never went to primary or high school, she never learned Hebrew. She married young and she said girls in the community are raised to treat their husband like a king and serve him. And she had four children very quickly. She used to take a folding table and chair on the bus to nearby malls to braid hair for extra money. And she always wanted more for herself so she started taking classes at the community center. A very long and harrowing story short, she ended up getting all the way through college and getting a degree in social work. When her husband chose to take an additional wife, she objected and they fought publicly, and she was punished with social exile, essentially, an outcast in the community. Eventually she moved out and got her own apartment, though her kids are still on the compound. She didn't tell us too much about her personal experience, but she did mention that sexual and domestic abuse are rampant on the compound, as is corporal punishment and child abuse. And not much is done because people are basically brainwashed to be suspicious of outside influence. It was all pretty intensely horrifying to hear about.
We ended the day going to an Indian Jewish home and having a delicious meal and talking about the day. Dimona over all creeped me the hell out. It was a big relief for me to get out of there.
2) Caption your own photo exhibit
On Saturday I went to the Eretz Israel Museum ("Land of Israel" Museum) to see a photo exhibit my advisor thought was relevant to my research project. Since my Hebrew reading skills are still very basic, I didn't get too much out of it historically, but it was cool to see a new museum and it was nice to go for a long walk there, since there's no public transport on Shabbat.
Hayarkon River during my walk
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The exhibit was in a building dedicated to Israeli Postal history, which is very serious business. It was a collection of photos from mostly kibbutzim in the galilee by Oppenheimer, and it was a really nice exhibit. I enjoyed it.
And since I couldn't really read the captions of the photo, I've decided to caption some of them myself.
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| "Jews CAN swim!" |
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| "Zion and summer camp are synonyms" |
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| "Man carrying bananas. For Zion." |
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"Gone are the days of turning swords into plowshares. Zionists turn trees into beat-sticks." "Boy holding goose." |
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"Early acro-yoga." "Couple takes photo to use as facebook cover in 90 years." |
Elsewhere on museum grounds, they had a ceramic flower display.
A wooooooooorld of pure imagination
I also went to an exhibit about Baron Rothschild, since I live on his boulevard and all. I learned a lot. Like that he was opposed to early zionism, and felt Israel was important only as a safe haven for distressed Eastern European Jews. But eventually he came around.
And there was a "folklore pavilion" which I was disappointed to find had nothing to do with folklore whatsoever. This is a mistake made the world over. People... "lore" is storytelling. Crafts, rebuilt synagogues, jewelry making, textiles, etc... are not "lore." Folk culture maybe, folk art, folk crafts... but not "lore." It was still pretty interesting though.
Misty view of Tel Aviv from the museum patio.
3) See amazing Israeli dance
In addition to all the other amazing opportunities Dorot provides, we do this thing called cultural hevrutah (study pair). Where we're given money to go see something cultural and then send a review out to the group. Kiyomi and I chose to see a performance called "The Hole" at the Batsheva dance company here in Tel Aviv.
WOW. Have a look at the trailer alone...
Kim I think you'd have died for it. You'd have LOVED it!
It was super intense. What stuck out about this show for me was the division between the genders. For most of the show, the men were on the inside circular stage and the women were around the perimeter of the room, with the two meeting somewhat at the end. Most meetings of the genders were fraught with tension and conflict, until a duet at the end which seemed to describe romance for the beautiful melancholy that it is, with movements expressing tenderness and shifting power dynamics and pain. What fascinates me even more is I saw a video online of this performance with the same choreography except the genders switched - with the women in the center and the men on the outside. Imagining the show that way has an extremely different message to me and I wonder about the choreographer's thinking... creating a show with clear gender duality but that can be performed interchangeably...
And of course, as others have reflected, these people are amazing technicians of their own bodies! (I think technician was your word, Sam). I was especially impressed by the synchronization and precision. The music was very indistinct so the timing must have come from some intense internal counting and link between dancers, which always amazes me.
In any case, it was beautiful and disturbing and powerful and I'm eager to return for another Bat Sheva show.
On another note, my little Zionist heart was really excited to hear the opening announcements (turn off your cell phones) in Hebrew, and to think about this Israeli dance company in this gorgeous dance theater built in this amazing Israeli city. We started our own country! And in it our own metropolis! And in it our own art! Yes everything seems to come down to that for me here, even this :).
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| The really pretty courtyard of the dance theater. Luminarium needs its own dance theater stat, I say! |
4) Have deep conversations with charedi people
Then yesterday I returned to Jerusalem to meet with more charedi people.
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| Will I ever get tired of Jerusalem architecture? All signs point to no. |
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| It's almost Channukah, which in Israel means DONUT TIME! |
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| Did I eat one? Is that a real question? IT WAS DELICIOUS, HOLY SHIT. |
So I put out a feeler on a Jerusalem facebook group to see if anyone knew anyone I should be talking to about charedim. To clarify, charedim is a general term for Ultra-Orthodox Jews. You know... suits/black hats/hair covered/long skirts, etc. I'm just starting my research so definitely don't use me as a scholarly source. Anyway there are lots of sects within the charedim. So I got some messages back on facebook and I reached out to these people, and for the most part people were really helpful and responsive!
For example, I met this one Rabbi who said he wasn't charedi but he was definitely ultra-orthodox, and he was very linked into the charedi world. I'm going to leave him anonymous for now since people are super sensitive in and around this community. Anyway, this rabbi is pretty well known, because when we met up at a yeshiva (place of religious study) in the Old City, I saw the coordinator that I knew, and he said "I thought that was you! Back again? Who are you meeting?" And I said, "Rabbi ______" and he said ".... how did you get him to meet you???" and I said "Uh... I e-mailed him."
I will say this for Israel... people here are just generally much more willing to meet than in the States. Sure, they're busy and there are plenty of self-important people, but generally if you want to meet someone, even someone who's kind of a big deal, if you reach out to them there's a decent chance they'll respond and agree.
So I met up with this Rabbi who was secular and atheist until his 20s or so when he became religious, moved to Israel, became a rabbi, etc. We didn't talk too much about his personal history, more about the charedi lifestyle and his current life. It was a really fascinating conversation.
First, he was talking about going into Mea Shearim, which is the most intense ultra-ultra-ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in the world, basically, and it's right here in Jerusalem of course. So I was dressed basically as I was in the photo at the beginning of this post, and he said "I bet you think you're dressed appropriately, don't you?" And I said, "Aren't I? Chest/elbows/knees covered? Skirt?" And I stood up for him to see.
Since he used to be secular, he had a really fascinating perspective on the UO Community. He said, "Theirs is a Torah lifestyle at all costs. And the costs are getting bigger. The costs are getting too dear to keep paying, but they will keep paying, and they're totally united on that."
And he said, "Charedim aren't trying to be lame. They're not all thinking 'how can I be the most lame today?' It's important to understand why they're lame." This made me laugh because the truth is most secular Israelis find charedim very lame indeed... they wear super heavy clothing in summer in the desert, they generally don't serve in the army, they generally are on welfare, they generally don't work but study in seminary all day, they generally have 10+ kids, they generally do not interact with other citizens of the country, on and on... and later on I'll tell you some of what I found out about the roots of this 'lameness.'
Anyway, the thing I found most interesting that the rabbi told me was about his family dynamic and marriage. He described how when UO couples get married at 17 or 18, they can be totally open and vulnerable to each other because they haven't known anyone or anything else. They're not jaded. They're not damaged. They're fresh slates. He sees in these couples a closeness that no other kind of marriage can achieve, that he said he and his wife hope to achieve after another 30 or so years of marriage, he already sees his 18 year old newly-wed daughter has that.
Whereas, he said, in the secular world, people wait to get married until their 30s, at which point the dating pool is like a "used car lot, and every car is totally bashed in." People are jaded and heartbroken and scarred and unable to ever be totally vulnerable and close to someone the way they could when they were younger.
She's already pregnant with her first child. And I said, "Isn't that intense, for a girl to become a mother when she's 17?" And he said, "At 17? Girls become mothers in our community at 10 or 11, when they're in charge of their little siblings. There are often 19 or 20 kids in a family, and the kids look at their siblings as parents often more than their parents. It's a conveyer belt of children growing up."
And I said, "Okay, but then what do you make of the fact that they are never independent adults? If they become mothers and fathers at 11, of their siblings, and then at 17 mothers and fathers of their own children, and the cycle continues ad infinitum, they are never ever independent people."
And he was kind of quiet and then he said, "Huh... their single adulthood doesn't exist, does it? Did I rob them of that?"
And I said, "I don't know. It sounds like from your perspective, it wasn't robbery at all, it was a gift they don't have to suffer through that."
And he rubbed the back of his neck and said, "I never really thought about that. You kind of blew my mind here."
He also blew my mind. Under no circumstances would I become Ultra Orthodox, and it's too late for me to be anything other than a super banged up mustang anyway. But I think of my breakups, and the breakups of my friends, and it's basically always because of some scar or history someone has, some bullet that their flesh closed around that's still keeping them up at night. (In Israel sometimes that is even true in a literal sense.) And I always figured marriage would be stronger between developed people who know themselves, but is that true?
Anyway, later Mati and I went INTO Mea Shearim to meet with a woman who's very prominent, the daughter of a great rabbi and the wife of another great rabbi, and I'll also leave her anonymous.
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| This sign greets you on entering the neighborhood |
I always kind of gulp when I pass it, but basically all that's inside is a really enclosed, rather low income neighborhood with tons of litter, tons of laundry, and tons of kids running around every which way.
So we went to this woman's house and it was really something. She has 9 children so far. We sat in her dining room which looks like the dining room of every one of the Jewish homes I went to in Worcester growing up... floor to ceiling books, dark furniture, huge glass cabinet of Judaica, a clock set with the Jewish date. They don't have a TV or internet or cell phones, although the cordless landline kept ringing. The kids, of all shapes and sizes, kept running in and out and screaming and crying and laughing and playing and being generally endearing.
She had SO much to say. I really liked her. I didn't take notes because I didn't want to make her uncomfortable, but she fed us cake and said some very interesting things, such as...
Her: What is your book about?
Me: Oh, a Jewish girl in Boston. It's a love story.
Her: And what happens in the love story?
Me: What do you mean?
Her: Do they get married?
Me: No... it's complicated. It doesn't quite work out between them.
Her: ...I don't understand.
"Ultra Orthodox love... this is real love. When my father introduced me to my husband, we only spoke for half an hour and didn't see each other again until the wedding, but I knew he was the one for me. By the time we met at the chuppa I was so excited, I was so high. He's everything to me and I'm everything to him, we're each other's first priority. I know he doesn't even look at other women, and he knows I don't look at other men. He would do anything for me, anything. And because we can only touch two weeks a month, in the time apart I miss him and crave him more each day until we're allowed to each other again and it is the most blissful feeling, every month. We could never tire of each other."
And she said, "Every Jewish child is such a blessing. All of my children, they are my joy. They are not a burden, they are a joy. They're not just children, they're Jewish souls. You don't know what they will turn out to be or do. They are each such a treasure. A woman's womb is like a Torah scroll, so sacred, kept inside an arc. And each soul she brings into the world is such a miracle. You know I hate to say this, but I think we should be like the nazis in this way... the nazis would turn an entire town upside down looking for just one Jewish soul. That's the importance they placed on it. We need to do that, too, we need to always know the value of it."
And she talked about her Grandmother, whom she aspires to be like, who had about 500 great grand children clamoring around and pouring into the hospital hallways when she died. She had no money, no material possessions to leave, but 500 people who'd give a kidney if it meant she'd live for one more week, and thousands of people bawling at her funeral. And she said she also met a woman who had a huge house in Rehavia and a son who was a famous doctor in the States, but he was too busy being a doctor to marry or visit her, and she died alone. "Who was successful?" She said to us. "Who was successful?"
I have no idea, but she seemed legitimately, deeply happy. Her husband came home and her daughters closed the door to the dining room and we never saw him even for a second, though I heard his voice.
We left and met with another contact, Erica, who is rather secular and works with job placements for Charedim who DO want to work, and she taught us some FASCINATING things:
-> Of all Western economies, Israel has the highest poverty rate and is right behind the US in terms of an extremely large gap between the wealthiest and most impoverished people.
-> Although Israel has a 6% unemployment rate, which is quite low, that does not count "workforce non-participants", that is, people who have never entered the workforce and aren't actively looking for work, which in Israel is mostly charedim, arabs, ethiopians, young adults at risk, and people with disabilities.
-> Over 50% of Arab and Charedi families live below the poverty line
-> Roughly 1 OUT OF EVERY 2 Kindergarten students today are Charedi or Arab, so if it's not a huge problem now (and it is), imagine Israel in 15 years...
I nearly spit out my coffee at that. In 15 years Israel is going be...
HOoooooOOoooly Shit.
-> 42% of Charedi men work, and most of the others study full time, some with government stipends and some without.
-> 67% of Charedi women work, which is not so far from the national average, except in the case of Charedi women, most of them are religious school teachers within their communities, which pays minimum wage and only part time.
-> Because so many Jewish scholars and theologians, mostly Charedi, were killed in the Holocaust, David Ben Gurion (Israeli founding father) agreed with the Charedi community that the best of the best of their scholars would be exempt from army service and would get government stipends to study full time, in order to revive Jewish thought and make up for that extreme loss in WW2. AND SO, there became an idea in the Israeli Charedi community that if you're not studying, it means you're not that smart, you're not the best of the best, you must be a loser. People wanted their daughters to marry scholars. To this day there is a stigma against men who don't study because of this tradition. Most secular Israelis interpret the study-not-work behavior as laziness or selfishness but actually it's source is here.
WHICH FASCINATED ME. I had no idea.
-> Nowadays you have swathes of kids who grew up in poverty and have had enough, so you're starting to see more charedim interested in working. You're also seeing a few rabbis of different sects saying, "Hey, it's also a commandment to provide for your family, so you can work, it's not a dishonor to work." There's also a new army unit just for charedi men, which teaches them practical skills with which they can get a job after, like mechanics and stuff like that. But since these army stipends need to be higher than most (stipends for married men are always higher, and they're all married) it's an expensive unit to maintain and there's a lot more demand for spots than the army can provide.
5) Have a panic attack and practice radical acceptance
The other day I had a pretty impressive panic attack. I think the combo of lack of sleep, illness, and stress over the amount of stuff I have to do before Europe just snapped my resolve. I actually haven't really panicked much in Israel, other than when my housing situation kind of dissolved last month. But yesterday I panicked. I called my parents crying and freaking out because I was overwhelmed by this sensation that I don't know what I'm doing. Do I want to live in Israel? Do I want to live in the States? Where do I want to live? What do I want to do? Do I want to be a writer? Do i want to be a lawyer? Do I want to be a therapist? Do I want to be a journalist? What do I want to do? Who do I want to do it with? How am I going to do any of it? What am I doing here? Why did I come here? Should I stay? Why should I stay? Should I go home? Why should I go home? I mean classic, first-world existential angst. And my parents basically told me to chill out and live each day.
And today I had a great day meeting charedim and learning new things and having great conversations, and I was in a really good mood at the end of the day. A really fabulous mood, actually. And I was talking to my Dad...
Dad: Sounds like a great day! So what are your plans now?
Ariane: Well, right now I'm in Jerusalem walking to the bus station so I can go back to TLV. And tonight I have a lot of Hebrew homework to do. Tomorrow I have Hebrew early in Jaffa, and then I have my first tutoring volunteering at the Jewish/Arab school, and then I'm maybe having coffee with Rabbi Scott, from that spring program I did? And then I'm going to see the IDF Chief of Staff speak, which should be cool. And then Tuesday I'm coming back to Jerusalem for hopefully more Charedi meetings... I think I'm meeting a Charedi psychiatrist and then I'm getting a tour of a Charedi branch of Magen David Adom (like 911), and then I'm meeting the soldier who spoke to us about Lebanon to give him some feedback about his presentation. And then I think I'm having dinner with Deeds, and then staying over with Ilona. And Wednesday I'm still in Jerusalem because I have Hebrew and then I have yoga, and then I'm coming back to Tel Aviv and having a drink with someone and then prepping because Thursday I have community day all day with Dorot and I need to prepare stuff. And then Thursday night I'm packing because we leave 3 am Friday for Budapest!
Dad:... JESUS, ARIANE. You complain about not knowing what you're doing but you have plans every second of every day!
Ariane: I know... I guess I just feel like I don't have a big picture. I'm just doing a lot of random stuff.
Dad: So you don't see the forest for the trees yet! Life is a Seurat painting. Pointilism! Enjoy it! Enjoy each dot! And then after, look back and see the tapestry. You're still such a chess player... you look at the board and want to see the end game. But even Fischer acknowledged that sometimes the other guy makes a move you don't expect. You can only control your moves, and then life will do what it does.
Bobby Fischer: I mean, it seems to me in chess... you have to have the talent, but, the guys who reach the top keep at it and have the character. They don't get distracted by other things in life until they got the title, or whatever they wanted out of chess.
Reporter: Can you have any other life and be a great chess player?
Fischer: Not at the moment, no. First thing's first, right? Get the title, and um... you know...
Also I just got home totally beat and Ido greeted me and said, "Ariane?? Do you want some hotdogs????" and I said "I would LOVE some hotdogs!" and he said "ON THE WAY!"
Life is good.
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