Defining and Redefining

August 11, 2006

A few more days of significant group introspection, somewhat taxing, somewhat exciting. Now enroute to Boston for the wedding weekend and then off overseas on Sunday night.

Much of the past few days would be categorized as TMI, but I will share one interesting conversation. Along with a representative “young Jewish leader” to facilitate our discussion, we had a fascinating discussion on obligation, spirituality, and community among this generation of new Jewish expression. I ingratiated myself to the facilitator by immediately objecting to his categorization that my generation’s new Jewish communal and artistic projects were of a different character and measure than all preceding generations. Now while I do think that Matisyahu and the Hebrew Hammer are new forms of Jewish expression that should be recognized by the established community, I just had trouble with the notion that these upstart minyanim somehow differ in character and intent from the havurot of my parents’ time. Every generation reinvents their own modes of expression, sometimes substantively different from their parents’ modes, sometimes more similar.

In a larger sense, I had some trouble with the idea of a generational shift in ritual and communal practice as speaking to the power of a mono-generational community. While I do appreciate the security and hominess of the same-age communities my friends and I have created (and that my parents created), I think we lose a certain perspective and breadth when we just spend time with people our own age and demographic. I also feel a sort of allegiance with the older shul members who call out, why don’t you just join a synagogue rather than starting your own thing? Maybe it’s just where I’ve thrown my lot over the past few years, but I have less and less patience for those who reject an intergenerational perspective in favor of hyping our generation’s innovations.

I write this from the train to Boston, a ticket for which I last-minute booked after the craziness on the planes in Heaththrow. When I told my mother about the emotional upheaval of the last week, she said, “you’re at one with the world.” Between bombs falling in the north and our destruction of Beirut to liquid explosives on airplanes in the UK, the world seems to be moving closer and closer to crisis. May this coming year be better than the one that’s passed….

In the trees

August 7, 2006

A day of orientation, ropes courses, team building jargon, interspersed with some terrific conversations with the other fellows. While I’ve done a fair amount of rock climbing, the experience of climbing outside is so entirely different from climbing indoors. The height of the ropes outside, the trees rustling overhead, and mostly the torrential rain as I finished my climb made for an experience quite different from Metro Rock. I walked the ropes overhead, quiet in the trees while my compatriots kibitzed below, peaceful in that state of almost-falling and yet confident in my ability to stay steady.

At the end of our jargony day, one bright spot was a brief conversation about the matsav, the security situation that’s rapidly encroaching upon the country. While I expressed my mother’s mundane fears—“how will you find an apartment with all these refugees from the North?”—others spoke movingly about their insights on the situation. The picture they painted of life in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is on the one hand, of business as usual, but also of cities where everyone knows someone called up for reserve duty, where giant screens are set in the streets to broadcast news of the bombings in Haifa. While I’m still not nervous for my safety—and I have no reason to be, I think—I am realizing more and more that I am actually walking into a war zone, far away from the front lines but as much an unsettled life as the life my parents lived in 1973. I worry that my presence as a tourist for a year will be more disorienting than nurturing, more voyeuristic than helpful. I guess in a way my integration will swing one direction or the other: either I will be an integrated part of Israeli society, feeling the casualties of the war with my adopted country, or else I’ll be another American in my little Anglo world, comfortable and sheltered by my stipend and American passport. Which to choose?

Introductions, no wireless

August 6, 2006

Arrived today in the woods with eleven soon-to-be not-strangers and several very interesting staff members to build our team. I’d thought of this trip to Israel as a very personal junket, an opportunity to learn some Torah and make some new friends in Jerusalem. I didn’t really think of the other fellows as necessarily the people who would be my main crew. Unsurprisingly, I guess, these fellows all seem to be top-notch, interesting people, who I’d like to be my friends if so it turns out.

What is more surprising to me is that the “team-building” aspect of the group seems to be a main part of the orientation, and more of a key aspect of the year than I’d have thought. We begin our week with a hired “adventure planner,” a facilitator for corporate groups who will train us on a ropes course and help us bond. Despite his somewhat facile statements and corporate jargon, he does seem to be adept at making diverse groups bond. I had a fascinating time over dinner learning about the army stints of one of our teachers, and I do think this week will help ground me on the white space of my page in Jerusalem.

That said, I’m missing the Torah learning that Bronfman was so good at, the niggunim of Havurah Institute, the ways that short divrei Torah or little bits of text study can unify a group. I miss my context for such a retreat; I’m ready to begin my openness to Jewish learning now. I wish I had the credibility of my father or another teacher or Torah, to inject a few words into the gathering or mobilize us with a song. And I guess I also miss this week at the NHC: similar woods, very different vibe.

How the Israeli Army Calls Up Its soldiers, as told by A.:

“There’s not a bureaucrat in charge who calls up each reserve unit. It’s a pyramid: someone you’ve served with for twenty years will call you and say: My brother, I am sorry we did not spend enough time talking in cafes over the years when we were not fighting. It has been a privilege to serve alongside you these twenty years, and now I am sorry to tell you, we have been called to fight again.”