A Tale of Two Shabbats

Topics!
-Shabbat in the Settlements
-Shabbat in Jerusalem
-Bonus Chapter: The Holocaust!


Shabbat in the Settlements
A few weekends ago, Rivka invited me to Shabbat at her parents' house in the West Bank. It snowed here in Israel (which it does, a few times a year). And the hills were just gorgeous, like it was a totally different world.

Rivka: This is considered a dangerous road.

Geva: Most Israelis from Tel Aviv would never drive on it. They wouldn't come here at all.

Rivka: Yeah, sometimes people are shot by snipers on it. This particular Arab village we're passing now is considered pretty hostile. 

Geva: So... why are we here??

Rivka: Because we want to see the snow! And everybody loves the snow. Nobody kills anybody when it's snowing.

It was really windy and cold up there, so we had to bundle up for once!

Always silly

During the drive we stopped by a Samaritan village. 

IT WAS SO BIZARRE.

I'd really only heard of the Samaritans from the "Good Samaritan" proverb in the Christian Bible, and never really thought about them much. But their story is pretty fascinating.

As it was explained to me, when the Jews were exiled from Eretz Israel by the Babylonians, the Babylonians brought in new people, including the Samaritans, to populate the area. These Samaritans had a hard time getting anything to grow, so they consulted with a few Jews who remained, and the Jews told them that nothing will grow in the land if it's planted by people who don't follow the Torah, so the Samaritans adopted the Torah.

They follow Torah strictly, without paying attention to later scriptures or revisions, and feel they are true Jews.  That said, they resent modern Jews because the Jews have not accepted, and never did accept, the Samaritans as actual Jews. There are two main populations of Samaritans. One group lives in Holon, a little city outside Tel Aviv, and is fully Israeli. The other group lives in the West Bank, and have the option of Israeli citizenship but are really more autonomous. They don't like to marry jews because of the resentment above. so they often marry Christians, and in fact frequently import Russian brides, and sometimes marry Arab Christians, so they're sometimes blonde-haired blue eyed, sometimes very dark, sometimes a mix... 

The main street of the West Bank village

Their main temple. They observe Shabbat, and it was close to sunset, so we had to poke around quickly and get out before they shut the gate.

They walked around wearing garb like this!!! This isn't my photo, it's from google, because I felt weird taking pictures of them. But I was basically gawking, not going to lie.

The symbols are for the tribes of Israel, and all the script is in ANCIENT Hebrew.

If my Torah knowledge serves me, we have... Gad (tents), Naftali (deer), Dan (scales), Benjamin (wolf), Asher (tree... or maybe that's wheat, in which case Joseph...), Zebulun (ship)... the flower in the above pic is Reuben

Back at Rivka's house, the power went out, so we made our own fun.

In the morning, we had chamin... which is this delicious stew with meat, eggs, yams, all kinds of stuff... that you make the night before Shabbat and then leave in the oven on low to eat in the morning. YUM.

Alright, so... where Rivka lives, Karnei Shomron, is considered a legal settlement. That means that the Israeli government considers it Israeli territory. The international community has various conflicting feelings about these settlements, but in Israeli national eyes, they are on government approved property.

Then there are "illegal" settlements, which even the Israeli government does not approve of, much less the international community. There are various stories for what these settlements are doing here, but for the most part, they're people with extremely strong religious convictions, who feel that this is the land of the Torah and Jews belong there. We had some time on Saturday so we checked one out.

This house is technically illegal... basically this one guy built it there right after 1967 on top of the highest hill he could find in the area. Now most of the people in the surrounding settlements are somehow related to him.

Illegal settlements are frequently forcibly disbanded by the IDF and the people are kicked out, so they don't usually bother to build permanent structures, they just set up temporary trailers. We were invited into them, and I have to say it was a lot bigger and nicer on the inside than it appears. There were about a billion children inside (okay... maybe 8) having a purim party so they were all in costumes. The people were really friendly and hospitable.

This particular illegal settlement is called Ramat Gilad (Gilad Heights), because one of the sons of the dude who owns that big hill house above, named Gilad, was driving through the West Bank and was shot and killed by some rogue Palestinians.  In response, religious groups built several illegal settlements named after Gilad to send the message that murdering Jews won't get them out of the West Bank. I legitimately don't know how I feel about this.

It's always sobering to look at the view from these settlements. Those skyscrapers in the not so distant background are Tel Aviv. Approximately 15 km (about 9 miles) away.  You can imagine how easy it would be to fire on Tel Aviv if you were so inclined. This is a complication I think a lot of people urging Israel to vacate the West Bank don't consider... the West Bank is the high ground, and strategically pretty scary to launch rockets from. 

Even though the settlements like these are not government condoned, the IDF is stationed at them to protect them. Partially this is because there has been violence against them by Palestinians, but also because if the IDF doesn't protect them, they tend to arm themselves and protect themselves, which is definitely illegal and extremely dangerous.  So usually some poor kid on reserve duty has to spend a few days here. Like this guy, who was basically playing on his cell phone and looking really bored. I like the scarecrow of a soldier you can kind of see next to him.

The settlers put up this GIANT star of David to send a pretty clear message. At night it's lit up and you can see it for miles and miles. It's pretty intense.

Annnnd there's still a ton of mines all around that haven't been removed from '67, so you have to watch your step.

It's complicated. Oiiiiiii.

Shabbat in Jerusalem

Then last weekend, Yahli took me with him to Jerusalem to spend Shabbat with his Mom at their beautiful home in the suburbs there.

Yahli and his mom!

Yahli's mom is really sweet. She's a psychiatrist at Hadassah hospital. She's really smart and thoughtful and we had a lot of interesting political discussions

Yahli had to wash his uniform so I got to inspect his insignia

Ariane: The sword and the olive branch is for officer's school, right?

Yahli: Yep.

Ariane: And the wings... paratroop training?

Yahli: Nah, it's my specific unit. The wings... uh... well, L2 means level 2, as opposed to level 1.

Ariane: What do the levels mean?

Yahli: Like... what kind of project it is. But I can't say what my project is.  And the wheels mean we make everything work, I think. And the arrow... uh... and the diamond...

Ariane: You don't actually know, do you?

Yahli: No. And the stripes are the second Lebanon War.

Ariane: What do the colors mean?

Yahli: The red in the middle is for the people who died, and the white and blue is for Israel and the green and orange... um... yeah I don't know.

After dinner, a bunch of us went out to the bar

Then we took silly pictures around Jerusalem

At one point we found ourselves under the famous Jerusalem string bridge

The boys found this absolutely amazing

On Saturday, we went for a little stroll with Yahli's mom near this dam/reservoir thing near Ein Kerem. It was really pretty!

There were lots of nice flowers!

Somebody had a small watercraft out. The Israeli idea of what designates an actual body of water, as opposed to a large puddle, amuses me.

Then we went to this place, in Abu Gosh, and Arab town near Jerusalem, which is famous for having arguably the best Hummus in Israel. As you can tell from this blog, lots of places in Israel claim to have the best hummus. 

I still think Abu Hassan in Jaffa is better, but it was tasty!

Bonus Chapter: The Holocaust!

The most recent Dorot seminar was about the Holocaust, focused on how descendents of survivors in Israel are dealing with being "second or third generation" survivors. It turns out that there are a lot of things these survivors have in common.

-Their survivor parent/grandparent hoarding everything... food, supplies, clothing, foreign passports and money...
-A pressure to be extremely successful (More than even most Jewish children...)
-A pressure to be extremely happy... no excuse not to be cheerful and grateful all the time, considering what their parents/grandparents went through
-Overall a feeling that they need to make up for the loss their surviving relative experienced

I also learned that although survivors are now somewhat treasured here in Israel, when they first came here at the beginning of the modern nation, they weren't generally treated so well at all. Native Israelis (or earlier settlers) often were critical of them for "going like sheep to the slaughter" and not fighting more than they did. Inversely, they were scrutinized because in order to survive a death camp, people often had to do questionable things to beat out their fellow prisoners. So they were double shamed for being victims AND for being survivors.

I see this so often... the way A-bomb survivors were treated in Japan (Terribly) the way Vietnam vets were treated in the US (Terribly) the way Chernobyl survivors were treated in Russia (Terribly) the way sexual assault survivors are treated everywhere (terribly). What's with humanity and being cruel to the people who most need our care? What's with that?

***

Also, a total non-sequiter... Schopenhauer. This guy is hilarious. Am I right??? I think he meant to be serious, but he cracks me up. I haven't read many essays that are funnier than "On the Suffering of the World." It laughed out loud multiple times per page. Highly recommended pick-me-up.