Coming Together, Falling Apart

I arrived in Israel on a Thursday night. As is often the case the first day of a trip is a memorable one. My day was framed by three events that in many ways reflect my active and complicated relationship with this place. The first had to do with the struggle for full acceptance of a plurality of Jewish religious expression in this Jewish State. The second brought me straight into the muck and mire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the third was my nechemtah – entering into Shabbat through heartfelt worship and the warmth and welcome of good conversation and delicious food in the multigenerational company of family and friends.

That Friday was Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the month of Tevet in the Hebrew calendar, and the 7th day of Hanukah. Each Rosh Chodesh for the past 21 years, a group of women called Women at the Wall (WoW) have gathered to mark the new month in prayer at the back of the women's section of the Kotel. The women are regularly the recipients of verbal abuse, and have had garbage thrown at them by gangs of ultra-orthodox men (and sometimes women) who consider women praying in unison and wearing ritual garb to be a severe offense to the holy site and an act of provocation.

The organization has fought numerous legal battles to preserve their right to pray together at the Kotel, purportedly a symbol of Jewish unity, yet all too often, a site of alienation for liberal Jews. Over its history, there have been periods of relative calm and heat. It seems, we are in the midst of a hot zone right now, as the previous month, a young medical student named Nofrat Frenkl who prays regularly with the group, was arrested for wearing a tallit and holding a new sefer Torah which was donated to the Women of the Wall by the Women of Reform Judaism. According to Anat Hoffman, one of the founders of WoW, this is the first time a woman has been arrested on such grounds. This incident hit the Israeli and international Jewish press and caused a flurry of brief attention.

Given the timing of my arrival right before the first of the month following this incident, it seemed the logical thing to join up with the Women at the Wall on my first morning in Israel. In the pouring rain, at 7 am, well over 100 women of all ages – students, mothers, grandmothers – gathered at the back of the Ezrat Nashim to join together in prayer. As we clustered tightly under umbrellas, we were surrounded by a chorus of angry voices shouting bitter insults and curses ranging from the rather mild "shame" and "scum", to the more shocking "die!" or "you're the reason why the Intifada happened." We were not deterred by slurs or weather, and managed to raise our voices together in prayer. There were a number of police in our midst who mainly kept telling us to keep our tallitot under our coats. Given the weather, that wasn't such a hard thing to do. When we finished Hallel, we began a slow procession to Robinson's Arch, the place a bit south of the main Kotel plaza, which the High Court has designated as where WoW can hold their Torah service. On the way, we sang psalms of faith and strength in support to freely express ourselves as Jews in the Jewish state. We were joined by a couple dozen men as well who walked with us in solidarity all the while other men continued to shout at spit at us while the police looked on.

I shared my umbrella with two young women who kept saying, "this just makes me want to cry." A sad statement indeed, that there were men and women who found it more important to throw insults and slurs our way than to direct their hearts to their own prayer. On this 7th day of Hanukah, we sang out for religious freedom and the right to pray peacefully and respectfully in this most holy of sites that is supposed to belong to the entire Jewish people.

Gathering with Women at the Wall was both an act of prayer and protest. I was among friends, both literally and figuratively, and doing what comes naturally to me, actively advocating for the right of multiple forms of religious expression in the Jewish state. I was with a group of women from many backgrounds, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Americans, Israelis, and others and we came together in common cause.

Later that same day, I expressed activism a bit further outside of my comfort zone. In August, 2009, Israeli forces entered Sheikh Jarrah, a venerable neighborhood in East Jerusalem just north of the Old City and evicted nine Palestinian families who had been living in the area since 1956. Soon after, a group of Israeli settlers moved into the homes of these evicted Palestinians under the protection of Israeli Security Forces. According to Ir Amim, a non-profit organization whose mission is "to render Jerusalem a more viable and equitable city, while generating and promoting a more politically sustainable future" , these forced evictions are part of a broader plan to ring the Old City with Jewish development, effectively cutting it off from Palestinian areas, with the ultimate goal of preventing any possible division of the Jerusalem in the context of a two-state solution.

A number of organizations, including Rabbis for Human Rights , have organized weekly marches and demonstrations to protest these evictions and Jewish settlement in this Palestinian neighborhood that was once home to the Arab elite of Jerusalem. Though the police permit the march, they often arrest demonstrators, who typically are held overnight and then released. This tactic seems designed mainly as a deterrent for the faint-hearted. Indeed, it seems to have some effect.

We were told the demonstrators would gather in downtown West Jerusalem and marched together to Sheikh Jarrah. When we got to the meeting point, however, there were just a handful of people milling about. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of RHR, was engaged in a calm discussion with an ultra-orthodox man while another woman started screaming at one of the protestors and then made a grab for Ascherman's phone. After this minor melee, we decided to move on, getting in three taxis to go closer to the site and hopefully, join up with a larger group who had come by bus from outside the city. We got out of the cabs at the main road dividing west from east, just in time to witness the police arresting several demonstrators who seemed to be doing nothing more than walking with a drum.

What felt like about 50 people at this juncture, soon dissolved to around 20. Included were two or three people with anarchist buttons and symbols on their bags, and three "clowns" whose costumes appeared to be based on Israeli army fatigues. This rag-tag bunch spread out as we crossed the street and began walking toward the demonstration site. After 15 minutes or so, I began to wonder what I was doing and whether I had a place here amidst this fragmented group. Though I am solidly against the strategy and tactics being employed by Israel to displace Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, I wasn't so sure I wanted to be a part of a group of anarchists and clowns. So, I decided to call it quits and head back to West Jerusalem for lunch. Later that day, I heard a news report on the radio that there were over 400 people at the ultimate assembly point and that over 25 were arrested. There was another demonstration the following Friday and presumably, there will be yet another this week. More arrests, more news coverage, perhaps a little public unease. I too am uneasy, on so many levels, first and foremost about the State policy of "Judaizing" East Jerusalem, but also about what should my role be as a non-citizen in protesting again the State. Do I feel more within my rights to protest against ultra-orthodox hegemony in the Jewish state than I do about protesting against the democratic state of Israel increasing encroachment on what I believe should remain Palestinian territory? After all, the former is “only” a matter of personal freedom of expression, while the latter is an existential issue of deep geopolitical import. How and where should I raise my voice and take action as a committed Jew with a deep love for this land and people, and profound sorrow and frustration about the direction it is taking as we seem to be moving farther and farther from peace and reconciliation between Arab and Jew, and between Jew and Jew as well?

These questions are not easily answered and certainly weren’t answered on that Friday that ended so peacefully as Shabbat descended and I enjoyed the rich company of family and friends. Yet, the questions of role and responsibility linger. What is my place in this place? That is the ever-present question at that is at the heart of this endeavor. In these pages, I want to tell stories that will spark questions and conversations about where Israel fits in the hearts, minds, and souls of American Jews. The stories will be drawn from the people and experiences of day-to-day life in this often perplexing, always complex and challenging, vibrant, colorful, difficult and wonderful place.