Two weeks ago, prior to the "Enhanced Kaddish" ceremony we held for my father, Jody and I attended a very different musical memorial. Together with several thousand Israelis, we trekked to Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, for a special outdoor performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, also known as Kaddish.

The symphony was being performed with a text written and narrated by Samuel Pisar, an international lawyer, author and Holocaust survivor. The text, which Pisar wrote at Bernstein’s instigation, is a heart wrenching review of human cruelty in general, and towards the Jewish people in particular.

Pisar recounts his own experience surviving Auschwitz while watching his entire family being killed. The narration is timed to blend precisely with the anguished, atonal music which, according to the printed program, required an unusually large orchestral complement – including a tuba, sandpaper and a glockenspiel – plus two choirs (the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir and the Ankor Children's ensemble) and Israeli soprano Danna Glaser.

The underlying theme to Pisar’s work is an unbridled anger at God for allowing such genocide to occur, coupled with a chilling warning against allowing it to occur again. Pisar finished his “Dialogue with God” following 9/11 and the attacks figure prominently in his narrative.

From Pisar’s text:

I must honor their tragic legacy,
And warn the living
- Of every race, color and creed -
Against the new catastrophes
That may still lie ahead.
For the unthinkable is again possible
A relapse into the darks ages,
As a leap toward a radiant future.

Pisar’s complaint against God is unmistakable:

How can one be sure
That the catastrophe was totally man-made?
We know from the book of Genesis
How wrathful a God you can be,
When You lose your notorious temper.

Concerning the destruction on September 11, Pisar writes that only after “the carnage that ushered in a newly inflamed world vaguely reminiscent of the one into which I was born did I settle down to write” the text itself. The narrative, Pisar adds, represents “a mounting crescendo for universal tolerance, reconciliation and peace between the hereditary enemies of history.”

The symphony with Pisar’s text was first performed in Chicago in 2003 before an audience of 10,000. This was its premiere in Israel. In attendance were Israeli President Shimon Peres and the President of Romania Traian Băsescu.

Our attendance at the event took on a separate meaning for me, removed from the Holocaust narrative. When we first received the invitation, the idea of hearing a work called Kaddish – in the midst of my own year of saying Kaddish – intrigued me. As I’ve written already, I’ve struggled with the words of the prayer and have tried to find refuge in musical interpretations.

So sitting in the audience and listening to a work by Leonard Bernstein felt like another way of honoring my father. Even more so, as I’m not a big fan of orchestral music, despite my father’s best efforts over the years to convince me otherwise.

I remember my parents taking us several times to the San Francisco Opera House to hear the symphony. While I was consistently “wowed” by the sheer talent that such a production entails, it remained rock and roll that moved my soul.

Indeed, had my father not passed away, it is doubtful I would have even been interested in an evening of classical music. And I won’t lie: the music still didn’t speak to me. But the significance of being there on a monumental evening did.

The day after our evening at Yad Vashem, air raid sirens sounded across Israel at 11:00 AM. The country wasn’t under attack; rather we were participating in the largest ever emergency exercise the nation has undertaken. The rising and falling siren – unlike the steady wails for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day) and Yom HaZicharon (Memorial Day) – lasted for a minute and a half during which time we were instructed to hurry to our bomb shelters.

The exercise was meant to raise public awareness and to test the responsiveness of emergency workers, coordinate organizations, and pinpoint any failings in the sirens themselves.

During the second Gulf War, we prepared sealed rooms with duck tape, but this was the first time we’ve used the concrete reinforced bomb shelter next to the underground garage of our building complex. At first, we couldn’t get the door unlocked…not a good omen had it been a real attack. Our descent also seemed too casual, even reckless.

Once inside, we inspected what could be our home away from home for an extended period. The shelter was bare – no furniture of any kind, certainly no beds on which to spend a night. The toilet didn’t work either – the water had been turned off. We made a note of everything.

The alarming juxtaposition of the drill with Bernstein’s symphony and Pisar’s text was not lost on us. It would be reassuring to believe that, 60+ years after the end of World War II, hatred and violence would have plummeted from that summit of hell. Of course, that’s not the case.

“Every citizen in the State of Israel must know that anywhere in the country, at any time, an emergency scenario can materialize, and one must know how to act," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said after the exercise.

Pisar’s text ends on a surprisingly optimistic beat. He acknowledges that, after the Shoah, God taught him to “love and dream again” and blessed him with “a new happy family and with children and grandchildren whose sparkling faces and sterling characters resurrect for me every day the memory of those I have lost.”

He concludes:

Bond with us, Lord
Guide us toward reconciliation
On our small, divided, fragile planet –
Our common home.

Amen.

Since my father died two months ago, I’ve thought a lot about what is the nature of community and, in particular, what is my place in it. It’s not a simple question.

For many years I’ve been what I jokingly call “tefilacally-challenged” (tefilah being the Hebrew for “prayer”). Prayer is not something that’s easy for me to relate to. Yes, I go to synagogue but, more often than not, I use it as a time for introspection, maybe a little light meditation, rather than reading the specific words in the siddur.

One of the strong prayer traditions of mourning is to say Kaddish whenever there’s a minyan. One says it for a year after a parent dies, a month for children, spouse and siblings.

For many observant Jews, this means making an effort to get to synagogue for the three daily prayer services. As I’ve talked with people about the mourning period, I’ve heard repeated stories of ostensibly secular men and women taking on this commandment and deriving great satisfaction from it.

That hasn’t been my experience, though. Indeed, the Kaddish, for me, is even more difficult than the rest of the davening. I’m a very literal person and I find it hard to get my head around the traditional understandings of the prayer: that I’m helping my father’s soul find its way to heaven, or that I am so anguished that I must publicly proclaim my faith multiple times a day, lest I lapse into heresy. In any case, my devoutly irreligious father wouldn’t have wanted any part in all this.

Don’t get me wrong, despite my misgivings I’ve still been saying Kaddish…but only when I make it to shul, which is erratic at best. And yet, as I’ve written before, sitting shiva in Israel was one of the most meaningful moments of my life, primarily because of the power of community. The fact that so many people came from all over the country to support me and to hear stories about my father still brings tears to my eyes.

But I have to ask: does that community expect anything in return? Or to put it differently: what are the essential minimums of participation that qualify one for membership in a religious community?

I’m not speaking about the specific communities to which we belong here in Jerusalem which are as liberal and accepting as any I’ve known. (The joke at shul is that, as long as you show up for Kiddush duty, you’re a bonafide member.)

To be sure, there are many aspects to a religious community: learning, giving tzedakah, hosting guests for Shabbat, celebrating smachot, Zionism, observing Jewish law. But isn’t the prayer community the most central pillar?

Jews for thousands of years have prayed together. The Mishna and Talmud are filled with rules about what to say at what times and in what situations.

Can one come to Saturday morning Kiddush without saying Kaddish? How about if you come Friday night but not Shabbat day? Or if your wife and/or kids are regulars - can you coast by on the zechut of the family?

Many of the same arguments could be made for online communities, by the way. Is it enough to join, or do you need to create a profile, upload some pictures and “poke” a few people? What if you only “lurk” on a discussion forum rather than participate? Are you truly a member of the community if you follow your activity stream but never update your status?

In the midst of all this, I attended a talk by Rabbi David Aaron. A friend had heard Aaron speak on prayer and insisted that we attend. Maybe it would give me a new perspective, she suggested.

I should have known better. The author of such books as “The Secret Life of God” and “Living a Joyous Life: The True Spirit of Jewish Practice,” Aaron’s message was as disheartening as it was exclusionary.

In essence, he said that if you’re not a part of a prayer community, there’s really no point in being in the religious Jewish world at all. The unstated implication: “We don’t want you.” That had me running for the spiritual door.

I had the exact opposite experience during a private meeting with Nachshon David Mahanymi, a Rabbi-in-training with the Jewish Renewal movement here in Jerusalem. His take was that I was getting it all backwards.

The year of mourning is all about creating meaningful ways to remember the person who has passed away, he said. We began to brainstorm alternative approaches for how I could honor my father, in a manner that he would appreciate and to which I could better relate.

There’s an expression referring to the mourning period, “ilu’i nishmato,” which, re-framed in a modern light, might be translated as “to elevate the essence of who he was.”

My father was a writer. And music infused his life with joy. What could I do that would incorporate these two elements of his life, I wondered?

An idea began to form. Perhaps I could sponsor a series of events over the course of the twelve months of mourning that would serve to elevate his name.

And by making these public, it might also be a way where I could connect with community beyond the walls of the synagogue. Call it an “Enhanced Kaddish.”

To that end, the first community event that I have planned will take place on Tuesday, June 9 at 8:30 PM at Kehilat Yedidya, 12 Nahum Lifshitz Street in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. It will be an evening of “stories and song” in memory of my father.

Joining us will be Yoel Sykes and Daphna Rosenberg, musicians from Nava Tehila, who have composed seven original songs based on psukim from various places in the Torah, prophets and psalms. By weaving together the music with the text, my hope is that you will get to know better what my father was like and what he was passionate about.

I’ll continue saying Kaddish in shul – at least when I make it in time - while at the same time bringing my Enhanced Kaddish to the greater community. Beyond that, my year of mourning, I expect, will be challenging and constantly evolving.

I'm OK with that. Are you?

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Please RSVP to brianblum@gmail.com if you are planning to come to the June 9 evening so we can arrange the space accordingly.

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot begins tonight and I’ve dug up another TNL classic. This one first appeared just before Shavuot in 2005. The kids are, naturally, a bit younger in this story but the learning is just as relevant today. Enjoy…and chag sameach!

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“What are we going to do today?” six-year-old Aviv demanded as he shoveled in his tenth spoonful of cornflakes in as many seconds.

It was shortly before Shavuot last year and the kids were off school. Then ten-year-old Merav and twelve-year-old Amir were now looking up from their breakfasts as well, waiting for my pronouncement.

But I was ready. I had concocted the perfect plan.

Now, one of the traditions of Shavuot is to eat dairy products. So I declared in as animated a way as I could: “We’re going to a cheese farm!”

“A what?” asked Amir with more than a hint of cynicism.

“I read about it in the paper. There’s an organic goat farm that sells these incredible cheeses. It’s only a few minutes outside the city. Wouldn’t that just be perfect?

But to my surprise, the kids were into it. I should have known; they like just about anything that has to do with eating.

[Unfortunately, the Har HaRuach Goat Farm has been closed since this story was originally written. But there are other great goat farms in Israel, including Eretz Zavat Chalav u'Dvash near Petach Tikva, the Zook Farm outside of Beit Shemesh, a farm in Sataf and another in the Negev (see this link for more information on all of the farms.]

As we drove home from our cheesy day, the conversation turned to the upcoming holiday. Shavuot symbolically marks the day the Israelites received the Torah on Mount Sinai after leaving Egypt.

“So, does anyone know where the custom of eating dairy on Shavuot comes from?” I asked.

Blank stares.

“Um…I think it had something to do with when they left Egypt, they didn’t have enough time to take any meat...” Merav ventured a guess.

“That was the matza,” Amir corrected her.

“Maybe they didn’t have meat plates?” I joked.

“They didn’t use dishes,” Amir and Merav both shot back in unison.

All the joking, however, didn’t diminish the fact that we hadn’t the foggiest idea why we eat dairy

So I proposed a contest. We have several computers at home. We would divide into teams and scour the Internet. Whoever came up with the best explanation would get an extra helping of quiche at dinner.

Amir and I headed for the computer upstairs. Merav and Jody took control of the downstairs machine. We came back together and shared the results of our research.

From Team Merav:
“Shavuot was when the Jews accepted the Torah which means it’s also when we learned about separating milk and meat and the various laws governing animal slaughter. Before that, what else could we eat but dairy?” OK, but that sounded a little too much like my joke about the dishes!

And:
“Israel is known as the land of milk and honey.” But then why don’t we eat honey cake on Shavout instead of cheesecake and blintzes?

From Team Amir:
“The gematria (the practice where each Hebrew letter is assigned a numerical value) of chalav – the Hebrew for milk – is 40, the same number of days that Moses was up on Mount Sinai.” Maybe, but a whole holiday based on what essentially comes down to an ancient magician’s card trick?

And:
“Receiving the Torah was a form of rebirth.” So we celebrate by eating baby food. Namely: milk.

Even Aviv shook his head at that one.

Finally, it was Jody who found what we all agreed was the most acceptable, if somewhat obtuse, explanation.

According to the mystical book of the Zohar, for the 49 days of the omer period – the amount of time between Passover (leaving Egypt) and Shavuot (receiving the Torah), the Jews needed to be in as pure a state as possible. Abstaining from eating meat, which is inextricably connected with death, facilitates such purity.

“But wait a minute,” I said. “If Shavuot is supposed to be the night we got the Torah, then we should be celebrating by eating meat. The 49 days of purification are over. Time to break this flesh fast. Let the party begin!”

“Meat, meat, meat,” the two older kids began to chant [this was several years before Merav became a vegetarian].

Jody, however, turned to us and, with a single withering look that encapsulated exactly why it is so difficult to change 3000 years of tradition, said simply:

“So, what am I supposed to do with all that lasagna?”

I have seen the future of reading and it is not print books or newspapers.

On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Kindle DX, a larger version of its popular Kindle eBook reader. The DX’s 9.7-inch screen is two and a half times the size of the original Kindle, making it perfect for reading newspapers, magazines, textbooks, even large format printed material such as cookbooks.

Essentially the height and width of a sheet of paper and 1/3 of an inch thick, the Kindle DX, like its little brother, uses a technology called e-Ink which displays black text on a white background, much like a real newspaper or book. It’s far more readable than an LCD laptop or computer screen monitor (or even an iPhone or iPod Touch). There’s no backlight, meaning you can’t read it in the dark, but you can view it in high sunlight like at the beach.

The new Kindle comes complete with a built-in MP3 player, font size that can be adjusted to soothe tired eyes, and direct access to Wikipedia and The New Oxford American Dictionary. Books and newspapers can be downloaded anywhere wirelessly (in the U.S. at least) within 60 seconds. About the only thing missing is color and video, but hey, this is just version 1.0.

The DX follows on the surprising success of Amazon’s first Kindle which came on the scene a year and a half ago and proved that, after years of over optimistic predictions and false starts, a pent up desire for books that can be read electronically on a paperback-sized portable device truly exists.

Forrester Research says that 400,000 Kindles have been sold since its Q4 2007 launch. There are now 275,000 titles in the Kindle library, with bestsellers and new releases priced at only $9.99. Late last year, Oprah endorsed the Kindle on her TV show.

Kindle isn’t alone either. New portable newspaper-sized readers are being readied for release later this year from media giants Hearst and News Corp., and from startup Plastic Logic whose device has a touch screen. Apple may release the long awaited tablet-sized version of its popular iPod Touch as early as June.

But what’s important is that electronic book and newspaper readers are going to change the way we consume the written word. In the last year alone, sales of eBooks have quadrupled. Notwithstanding the Luddites who will always insist a print book or newspaper is an inherently superior reading experience, it’s my firm conviction that within 10 years - 20 years tops - most people will be reading on portable digital devices and it will be nearly impossible to buy anything in print.

And why not? You can load on thousands of books; newspapers, blogs and websites can be updated in real time; and you’re helping the planet to boot by cutting down fewer trees. Plus think about the poor college student who has to lug around a backpack full of heavy – and ridiculously expensive - textbooks. All that will be gone.

So, why am I writing about all this tech goodness on the This Normal Life blog? Because the future of reading will also fundamentally change halacha – Jewish law.

Think about it - what happens when most reading goes electronic? It will no longer be permissible for observant Jews to kick back on the couch with a good eBook or eNewspaper on Shabbat and holidays since using electrical devices on those days is forbidden. I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s the main day of the week I have to catch up on the week’s events or to curl up with a favorite novel.

Now, it’s possible that a number of frum Jewish print houses will crop up and continue to publish newspapers and books “the old fashioned way.” But that market would be necessarily small and would inevitably be limited to Torah-centric content. If you want to learn a page of gemara or peruse HaModia, sure go ahead.

But the modern Orthodox want to read the same newspapers and the same books the rest of the Jewish community does. Will the Jerusalem Post come out with a special print edition on weekends? Maybe. How about Haaretz? No way. And what about outside of Israel? Once The New York Times goes all digital, there’s no turning back.

It’s already happening. The Times has been on the Amazon Kindle platform since the beginning. The paper now has 10,000 paid subscribers. Doing the math, if the electronic Times costs $13.99 a month, that would mean the Times’ Kindle edition is generating in the neighborhood of $1.4 million a year total. With the new Kindle DX, those numbers should soar.

Indeed, the large format electronic reader is being touted by some as a potential remedy for the woes of the beleaguered newspaper industry. An analysis by Nicholas Carson in Silicon Valley Insider suggested that even if The New York Times bought every one of its subscribers a Kindle, by killing its print run, it would still come out ahead by some $346 million.

Then there’s the Christian Science Monitor which announced last year that it was ceasing publication of a print edition entirely except on the weekend, encouraging readers to go online. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went all digital last month. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver shut down entirely.

“We’re clearly now seeing a path to the end of the printed daily newspaper – a trend that is escalating much faster than we had anticipated,” commented Jeffrey I. Cole, director of USC’s Center for the Digital Future, in a report released this week.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a transition that outpaced all expectations, of course. When CDs first came out, purists argued that the sound on LPs was far better. Today, other than a few specialty stores, where can you buy a vinyl record? Now CDs are the also-rans with MP3s and iPods taking their place at an even faster clip. I recently ordered a terabyte hard disk so I could convert all my old CDs and stream them over our wireless home network.

I think the only answer to the Shabbat and holiday reading conundrum is that observant Jews will have no choice but to use the new fangled eReaders. At first, this may be clandestine. But when other forms of reading no longer exist, there will be a clamor amongst the religious public that will force more progressive rabbis to deal with the changes.

That might be in the form of alternative devices created by organizations like the Tzomet Institute that builds electronic devices that are kosher for Shabbat-observant soldiers, doctors, and other professionals in need. The organization’s Shomer Shabbat telephone, for example, allows dialing in an indirect way – an electronic eye scans the phone buttons every two seconds. If one has been pressed, the eye activates the phone’s dialing system.

Could a similar indirect paging system be employed on a Kindle?

But it might also be that the whole concept of using electricity on Shabbat and holidays gets thrown topsy turvy. The Jewish Worker blog posted a fascinating article outlining the origins of the prohibition on using electricity on Shabbat and holidays. The Daat website goes into even greater detail. As it turns out, there’s no one single reason.

One authority says that completion of a circuit creates sparks and is thus similar to the biblical prohibition of kindling a fire. Another explains that it is prohibited because it is a form of building. There is also the opinion that using electricity is analogous to creating something new, another no no.

When these explanations are applied to turning on an incandescent light bulb, which involves heating a metal filament until it glows, there is general agreement among the poskim that this is a prohibition from the Torah. Turning the light off, however, is less clear. And using a fluorescent light, which does not heat a filament at all, is considered by some to be entirely permissible.

When it comes to electricity used for appliances rather than lights, the responsa are much cloudier, to the point where Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach concludes in his Minchat Shlomo that electrical appliances may actually be permitted on Shabbat and holidays. He writes:

“In my opinion there is no prohibition [to use electricity] on Shabbat or Yom Tov…unless the electricity causes a prohibited act like cooking or starting a flame...However, I am afraid that the masses will err and turn on incandescent lights on Shabbat, and thus I do not permit electricity absent great need.”

“Great need,” however, may be coming sooner than the rabbis expected. Is using an electronic book reader akin to switching on an incandescent bulb? How about an e-Ink screen which displays black pixels on a white background without a back light? Will the Rabbinic authorities be forced to re-open the discussion when modern observant Jews demand it?

I for one am looking forward to the year 2029 when I can read my Kindle-delivered newspaper over a cup of coffee after Shabbat morning Kiddush and later curl up with a good eBook in bed.

I have paid many shiva calls but I never truly realized how important they are until I sat on the other side of the chair.

My father, Walter Blum, died on a Sunday. He was buried on Wednesday. I sat shiva for one day in California at my parents’ home. Then I returned to Israel to complete the mourning process with my community in Jerusalem.

My first act of shiva came Saturday night after the Ma’ariv minyan (the evening prayer) that was held in our living room. As I sat down in the low chair prescribed by Jewish law, wearing my ritually torn shirt, some 25 eyes, many of them strangers, bore down on me.

The tradition is that those who come to comfort the mourner do not speak first. It is up to the bereaved to direct the conversation. Never having done this before, I nervously began to tell of my father’s last days, of how he went from diagnosis to death in less than three weeks.

When I paused, about half of the men and women present got up to leave. I breathed a sigh of relief. Surrounded now by just close friends, I was able to open up.

Over the next two and a half days, I shared stories about my father. At first I was timid. But the more I did it, repeating the same words and answering the same questions, I became more “polished.” I perfected my inflections; I even started doing voices.

Everyone experiences shiva differently. I know it sounds strange to say, but I actually had fun. To the point where one of our friends told me the following Shabbat “I really enjoyed the shiva. I felt like I got to know your father.”

And that was the point. My father was a performer. He started his career as a radio disc jockey. Then, as a journalist for 35 years, he had a magical way with words. By putting on my own “show,” I felt as if I was honoring his memory, celebrating his achievements with joy and verve.

And as I told the stories, I learned even more about who my father was and how much he shaped who I am today.

My father grew up in New York in a modest apartment on W. 83rd Street in a Conservative home. His parents went to synagogue and kept two sets of dishes. But Dad was an iconoclast. As soon as he left the house for college, he rushed to the first non-kosher restaurant he could find and ordered a bacon double cheeseburger. He never looked back.

Dad received an M.A. in Music Composition from Columbia University. During his 10-year career in radio, he played classical music on air and hosted a “romantic” morning show. It was during a gig in Philadelphia that he met my mother. She had fallen in love with his voice on the radio even before they met at a local Jewish students social.

My parents moved to California a month before I was born. My father intended to get another radio job but the town was unionized and he couldn’t find one. Instead he took a part time job at the San Francisco Examiner. They liked him and eventually he became the senior feature writer for the Sunday magazine.

(My own experience paralleled my father’s in many ways: I also intended to pursue a career in radio after college but came to Israel where, in 1984, there was only one rock and roll station…in Hebrew, plus the Voice of Peace, a pirate station broadcasting from a ship off the Tel Aviv coast. I didn’t come to Israel to work at sea. So I too turned to writing.)

My father’s real dream was to write a novel. So every night, he would retire to his den and work for two hours on his old IBM Selectric typewriter. When he’d finished a book, usually after a couple of years of work, he would retype it with carbon paper, then carefully place the original in a box, put a rubber band around it and ship it off in search of an agent.

We would then wait and wait. Inevitably the box would return. There would be a few days of depression. But Dad was tenacious and another book was always on the way. If there were blogs in the 1960, I imagine my dad would have written a very good one.

He did publish one book, a commissioned work on the life of Benjamin Swig, a well-known banker and philanthropist in San Francisco. As we were looking over the book during the shiva, one of the guests flipped to Chapter 3 which was all about a man named Charles Ponzi – yes, that Ponzi – whose actions eventually forced a bank owned by the Swig family into bankruptcy. It was fascinating to read a fresh account of the original Ponzi that wasn’t primarily a comparison with international scammer Bernard Madoff. (I’ll post an excerpt from the book in an upcoming blog.)

In addition to writing, I’m sure my passion for music also came from my father, though our preferred genres differed. When I was a teenager, I tried valiantly to convince my father that Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was on a level with Beethoven and Schubert. I never won that argument, but now my 11-year-old son Aviv is convinced that Queen’s 1975 ode to histrionics is one of the greatest songs ever written.

My father arrived home from work every day at exactly 5:25 PM. Dinner was served precisely at 5:30 PM. We ate together every night and were expected to talk. Dad took the role as itinerant professor, leading us through discussions on science, history, philosophy, politics (a lot of ranting about Richard Nixon) and religion (a superstitious anachronism of a primitive era).

Those dinnertime debates instilled in my brother and me a life long passion for intellectual pursuit. I can see that now as I try to keep things lively around the Shabbat table. More recently, in the computer age, Dad’s emails have been a constant source of call and response. I will sorely miss our electronic back and forth.

My father’s life wasn’t easy. He was disabled as a child from polio and although he was able to walk well – albeit slowly – for many years, as he grew older an ailment known as “post polio syndrome” set in and he found himself combined to a wheelchair. That made him crotchety for sure, but he could also be quite the charmer, something that many of the residents of my parents’ retirement community cited when they paid their shiva visits.

Above all, he was a fighter. When the cancer was raging in his body, he was given the choice to do nothing (in which case, the doctors said, he had anywhere from three weeks to three months) or to try chemo which would be very hard on his body but that could give him up to a year more. He opted for the latter. It’s probably what killed him in the end.

My father wasn’t perfect by any means. Although he liked my writing (and edited the articles I wrote for the local newspaper while I was growing up mercilessly), he rarely said “good job” or “that’s a nice paragraph.” I don’t remember him ever saying “I love you.” Emotion wasn’t his thing.

That was hard for me. So hard, in fact, that I’ve spent much of the last 30 years being angry at my father for what I didn’t get, losing sight of what I did.

And that’s why shiva has been so profoundly moving. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the good. To appreciate how he positively influenced my brother and me.

140 friends came to visit during the short time I was back in Israel. The more I spoke, the more the things that hurt began to fade away. Now it seems so foolish, to have spent all that energy on something that ultimately proved so unimportant. It propelled me to hold individual talks with each of my kids on the importance of communicating now, not just at the end.

At the end of shiva, our friend Rabbi Ruth Kagan facilitated a “getting up” ceremony. Several close friends shared words of wisdom. Then they physically pulled me up out of my low chair. I changed out of my torn shirt and they accompanied me in my first walk outside since we re-started shiva at home.

When shiva is over, you’re supposed to go back to work. I had a meeting in Tel Aviv and my business partner was frantically calling to tell me about an important presentation we had scheduled for the next day.

But I wasn’t ready. I had spent the last week in a fog, thinking and talking about nothing other than my father. I was constantly surrounded by people. Now I was without that framework but I was still grieving, I felt lost, confused. During shiva, I kept my composure. Three days letter, after watching a stupid Jim Carrey movie, I broke down into hysterical sobbing. The post-shiva period has turned out to be far more difficult than the shiva itself.

I will never forget the shiva experience. It was without question one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done. Judaism got this one spot on right. Of course no one wants to have to sit shiva, but when the time comes, being part of a supportive community makes all the difference.

My father’s name now lives in Jerusalem as well as San Francisco. My fervent hope is that I’ve brought a taste of who he was to my friends and community here in Israel.

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An obituary for Walter Blum appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Here's the link.

The most disconcerting thing about my trip to the U.S. for my father’s funeral was the “pre-shiva” period (known in Hebrew as aninut).

Shiva is the seven days stipulated by Jewish tradition for mourning following burial. My father died on a Sunday. But the funeral didn’t take place until Wednesday.

The official reason was that it took time to process all the paperwork. The cemetery wouldn’t start digging a grave until they had an official death certification. But doctors generally don’t work on Sunday, so we had to wait until Monday and then it took until the end of the day to get everything processed.

In the meantime, my mother, my brother and his wife, and I found ourselves in a kind of a limbo. Dad was dead but the formal shiva didn’t start for two more days. What were we supposed to do? No one quite knew.

Should we be all happy and normal? Maybe go shopping? I’m not near a big American mall all that often and I needed some new jeans. Would a quick trip to Sears be inappropriate? My mother suggested a movie. She had a video from Netflix she had to return. Eventually we settled on a board game. My father loved games.

Mind you, it’s not like we didn’t have anything to do. I arrived Monday afternoon and within a few hours we had met with Rabbi George Schlesinger from Congregation Beth Ami, the local Conservative synagogue. He was wonderful, able to bridge my brother and mother’s less observant world and my more traditional concerns.

On Tuesday morning we dealt with the funeral preparations.

Carol, our funeral home “salesperson” (for lack of a better term), was as personable and chipper as could be under the circumstances. “Hello and welcome to Daniel’s Chapel of the Roses Funeral Home and Crematory,” she burst out with an ear-to-ear smile. “We’re here to help you with everything you need.” And then, while patting my mother on the shoulder, she added “Oh, so sorry for your loss. Now let’s take care of business,” she exclaimed, returning back to perky persona.

Despite her abundantly outgoing nature, Carol was patient and professional as she explained to us how the funeral home itemizes everything into products and services. “Services” include caring for the body, refrigeration and transport. The main “product” is the casket which is jarringly priced like a holiday sale in a clothing store – for example, $1,595…plus California sales tax of 8.5%, for a total of $1722.60.

The caskets can cost up to nearly $7,000 for a deluxe model made out of steel and mahogany. Now, Daniel’s isn’t a Jewish funeral home – there are none in the small Northern California town of Santa Rosa where my parents live – but there is a corner containing several plain pine caskets appropriate for a traditional Jewish burial.

My mother was already reeling from the price of the funeral – the total eventually came out to close to $8,000. “We’ll take that one,” she told Carol, pointing at the perfectly acceptable basic model.

Next stop was Santa Rosa Memorial Park. Tim, the cemetery guy, had the same demeanor as Carol – charming and upbeat, a quiet “so sorry” and a pat on the shoulders, then down to work. I suppose it couldn’t be any other way. If you spent all day sporting a deliberately dour expression, you’d quickly go mad.  

We drove to the small Jewish section where our task here was to pick out Dad’s plot. Did we prefer a location near the bench or the tree? How about next to the road?

The biggest issue was whether Mom would buy two plots or one. She had long held that she wanted to be cremated – only $1,695 plus an urn starting at $80, according to the 8-page Daniel’s price list. Now she wasn’t so sure. There was a discount on the second plot if you “pre-pay.” It was all so much, coming at us at a time when we scarcely in the frame of mind to make these types of eternal business decisions.

One other comment from Tim: all graves in California are required by law to be lined and covered with concrete, something that’s frowned upon by Jewish tradition because it prevents the grave from being filled in entirely with earth. The reason? Flooding. A few years back there were some intense rains and a number of coffins residing in a cemetery built on a hill went sliding down into the backyards of local residents.

We went home and had lunch, but my day wasn’t done yet. I had missed seeing Dad before he died. Now, I decided I wanted to see Dad in the funeral home. I had asked the rabbi if that was halachic – he said there was no clear direction as not much had been written about the subject in Jewish literature - but I knew I needed to say goodbye in person.

Dad was lying on a bed in the corner of a large room. There was a curtain, couches and flowers. He was alone – no shomerim to guard over him (they would come that night as part of the services provided by the local chevra kadisha). Dad’s face looked much more gaunt than when I’d last seen him at my brother’s wedding a year and a half ago. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.

I started to talk to Dad, at first in a whisper, but steadily I gained the confidence to speak in an almost conversational tone. Tears flowed down my face as I reviewed his life, our times together, his challenges and his successes.

As I walked out, I kept turning back, filling up another tissue. I’d reach for the door, then turn again. I knew once I walked out, I would never see Dad again. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

By the time the funeral was held the next morning, I was more composed. It was an entirely “kosher” funeral. We did everything you’re “supposed” to do – tearing kri’ah (or ripping a garment), saying Kaddish and walking out between two lines.

We returned to my mother’s house and began the shiva. A friend of my mom brought over a tray of cheese and crackers, bagels and fruit. Another made brownies. Many residents from the retirement community where my parents moved 9 months ago stopped in to pay their condolences. A surprising number of my friends made the hour and a half trip up from Berkeley. Later in the day, Rabbi Schlesinger came back to lead an egalitarian minyan for Ma’ariv (the evening prayer) where we said Kaddish again.

It was clear that there would be no more formal shiva the next day. People were already moving on. My brother had generously offered to go through paperwork with my mother and to set her up on the computer (Dad had always handled all the email communication). Mom had started negotiating with the retirement community management to secure a smaller apartment.

But I wanted to sit a complete seven-day shiva. I didn’t want to work. Going for a run didn’t seem right. What would I do all day? There are only so many hours you can surf the Internet.

It’s become traditional for members of our community in Jerusalem to try to “finish” shiva at home with friends and family, even if just for a few days. I wanted to honor Dad’s memory by telling stories about his life to our friends waiting in Israel.

Plus my family needed me. Jody had been fighting pneumonia the entire time I was gone, and the kids were quite broken up over the loss of their grandfather. I re-booked my ticket and headed out at 4:00 AM for the drive back to the airport and a morning flight.

I felt guilty about leaving so quickly. My mother was stoic – “don’t worry about me, I’ll be OK, I’ll sit here in the dark.” OK, she didn’t say the last line, but you get the point.

And my mother is in a good place. She has tons of new friends in the retirement community. It’s a very upscale place. My brother calls it the “cruise ship.” There’s a small library, a private movie theater with plush leather chairs and popcorn, a fitness center and even a man-made lake with paddle boats. Instead of an ordinary dining hall, there’s a restaurant with waiters, menus, daily specials and an executive chef. And there are tons of trips and activities - visits to museums and the theater. Last month they went to the City to see Wicked.

Dad loved it too. One of the saddest things is that he only got to be there for 9 months. On the other hand, his last months were very good ones.

When I was saying my goodbye to Dad in the funeral home, I found myself trying to make some sense of it all. He looked so singular, so disconnected in death. But then I began to imagine him differently. A part of something bigger. It’s kind of cliché to say that if Dad wasn’t there, neither would my brother or I be around. But it’s true. Dad was his own person of course. But he was also a critical link in the continuity of the Jewish people. Dad was the result of 4,000 years of Jewish history. And his children will be responsible for the next 4,000…this time in Israel.

I don’t know if Dad – a proud Jew but never one who yearned to visit the Holy Land - would have seen it that way. But it gave me some peace, some closure. Maybe that’s what’s meant by the phrase traditionally said to the bereaved, “may you be comforted by the mourners of Zion.”

I had planned on running in the Jerusalem Half Marathon last week. Instead, I found myself running half way around the world in a frantic attempt to kiss my father one last time before he died.

The sprint from the diagnosis of cancer to his final days went alarmingly fast – less than three weeks from start to finish. There was barely any time to think through treatment courses, let alone work out emotions that were hitting our family like blunt objects hurled with laser precision.

One moment he couldn’t breathe, the next he was starting chemo and the oncologist was optimistic. Then he stopped eating.

When the call finally came to “get on a plane now,” my mother wasn’t sure he’d even know who I was when I got there….if I arrived in time. Over Shabbat, he had told my mother he just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.

It all happened so fast. Just 4 days earlier, my mother had asked the doctor if her son in Israel should come. No, the doctor said. He has time.

As my Delta flight wound its way to the U.S., I prepared myself by pouring through “Wrestling with the Angel,” a pluralistic compilation of essays about Jewish approaches to death and morning edited by Rabbi Jack Riemer. I took notes to share with my family when I arrived in preparation for what now seemed inevitable.

Q: Why do we tear kri’ah, an article of clothing, when a person dies? A: It’s a very graphic act that serves to remind the mourner of the importance of life at a time of loss.

Q: How should one act at a shiva (bereavement) visit? A: Don’t turn it into a cocktail party with finger food where the mourners have to play “host” and everyone avoids talking about what’s most important.

Q: Why is it traditional to put stones not flowers on the gravesite? A: Stones are permanent and more appropriate for preserving memory. Flowers wither away.

With my head swimming in Jewish thought and the exhaustion of being up all night, I switched on my cell phone as the plane landed in New York. It rang almost immediately. Jody was on the line.

While I was in the air, Dad had died, she said. My mother, my brother and his wife Jen were there at the end and saw him take his last breath. Jody was crying. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Somehow I had a sinking feeling that this would happen, that he would pass away while I was en route. I reviewed my flight options. The only way I could have gotten there in time was if I’d rushed to the airport immediately after I spoke to my mother at 10:15 PM on Saturday night and went from counter to counter looking for a open seat on the midnight flight to New York before they closed the gates.

In the meantime, I still had another plane trip to go. The next six hours on the way to San Francisco were among the hardest I’ve ever experienced. I was fighting back the tears the whole time, in order not to alarm the flight attendants.

I had so much I had wanted to share with my father. Even if he didn’t understand a word, I wanted to hold his hand, to tell him I could have been a better son, to forgive him for his own shortcomings, to say I love you one more time.

In our last major conversation since the diagnosis, Dad told me that this wasn’t the way he wanted to die. He didn’t want it to be drawn out and painful. He wanted to die at home not in the hospital. And it was too soon. He was only 81. He still had things he wanted to do.

But death of course doesn’t play by a schedule. If there’s anything I’ve learned by the process so far, it’s that we’re not in control. Dad had his expectations of how he’d die; I had my vision of saying goodbye.

Some might say it’s all in God’s hands. I’d simply say it’s not in ours.

(Today's post is a holiday-inspired TNL Classic first published in 2002.)

I know they're bad for me. But I can't resist.

I'm talking about doughnuts, of course. Whatever shape, size or variety, I go do-m'shuga-nut over them. And at this time of year, in the midst of Hanukkah, Israel is overflowing with that uniquely Jewish version, the sufganiya.

Sufganiot (that's the plural) are a very simple but tasty version of the classic doughnut. Start with fried dough, don't even bother digging a hole, then inject jelly, caramel or chocolate directly into the middle. Finish off by coating the creation with plenty of powdered sugar.

Sufganiot season starts earlier every year, in some cases kicking off just after Sukkot. By December, they are ubiquitous. At Aviv's class Hanukah party, I watched in awe as a large white van from a local bakery drove up to the school gates, opened its doors and revealed platter upon platter of white frosted mass-produced tempting and scandalously scrumptious sufganiot.

There are sufganiot in the kitchens at work, sufganiot at Kiddush in shul, and sufganiot at the checkout counter of every supermarket from here to Haifa.

All of this reminds me of when our family was in the States a few years ago and I became obsessed with finding the ultimate doughnut:

A Krispy Kreme.

Now a tad passe since its stock price took a bath and the company was forced to close many of its free-standing stores, when we first heard about the chain, it was still as hot and fresh as its signature doughnuts and was taking North America by storm. I had also heard their doughnuts were to die for. And I had never had one.

So the running theme of that summer was Abba's obsession with finding that illusive Krispy Kreme. But on highways from Toronto to Cleveland to Chicago, our holy grail eluded us. It wasn't until I was out shopping late one night, in a forlorn suburban mall in the middle of nowhere, that I chanced upon a Krispy Kreme franchise store, beckoning to me from the middle of the nearly-empty parking lot.

The big deal about Krispy Kreme is that when the sign outside is lit, that means hot glazed doughnuts are rolling off the assembly line that's a prominent feature in every store.

The sign was lit.

I approached the store and, through the windows, I could see hundreds of just-baked lightly browned doughnuts rolling out of the ovens, then floating down a river of boiling oil before being tenderly flipped and arriving at the end of their journey: an earnest Krispy Kreme employee offering free samples to us, the lucky consumers who had timed our arrival just right.

I sampled. I smiled.

Maybe it was because it was hot. Or because I had waited so long for this moment. But I declared to my fellow consumers, and maybe to God herself, that these were the absolute best doughnuts I had ever tasted.

I proceeded to buy a couple dozen for Jody and the kids.

As much as I fawned over the Krispy Kremes that summer, I still have a special spot in my heart for the Krispy's more humble Israeli cousin. I think it must be the scarcity: you just can't run out to get a hot sufganiya in the middle of July. You have to wait for Hanukah to come near.

Which gives me an idea: why not create a year-round sufganiya phenomenon. We'd have to modify the formula a bit. Turn it more into a full meal. And stuff the sufganiya with more than jelly

How about spinach, broccoli and zucchini? Creating something more like a quiche.

Or fill it with chopped meat or shwarma or chicken schnitzel. We could replace the tired boring pita and the no-longer-trendy baguette with the hottest new trend: the fried dough sandwich!

From Ben Yehuda to Binyamina, this could be all the rage. Think of the entrepreneurship. The satisfied customers. The profits.

Shuki's Falafel, move over. Here comes Brian's Doughnut Quiche.

50 days after Yom Kippur, on the 29th day of the Hebrew month of Heshvan, thousands of Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia converge on our southern Jerusalem neighborhood. This year, my wife Jody and I joined them.

The gathering is for the Sigd festival, a holiday that symbolizes the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Sigd – which comes from the Amharic word for prostration and is also one of two Ethiopian Jewish terms for synagogue - is unique to the Ethiopian community and this year was declared by the Knesset to be a national Israeli holiday.

When the festival was held in Ethiopia, there was a clear longing to return to Jerusalem. Now that 80 percent of the community is in Israel – a total of more than 120,000 - the Sigd gathering is held on the picturesque Haas Promenade with its stunning view of the Old City. Tens of buses bring Ethiopians in from all over Israel to participate.

Central to the ceremony is a raised stage where the Kesim, the spiritual leaders of the Ethiopian Jews, lead the crowd in communal prayer.

Sigd is quite a spectacle to outsiders like Jody and me. The Kesim are decked out in traditional white robes and stand under multi-colored umbrellas while chanting the Torah and other blessings in a repetitive atonal cadence punctuated by a few familiar words (we were able to make out “Jerusalem” and “Adonai”).

The congregation itself is divided into two types – elders, many of whom were similarly garbed to the Kesim, and their children and grandchildren who dressed entirely Israeli and appeared to be more interested in the social scene than its religious undertones.

The older immigrants were a diverse bunch: women with colorful head scarves tossing white woolen shawls over their shoulders as if they were tallitot; several men in black suits donning tefillin (a Talmudic custom not known in Ethiopia where Jewish texts only went as far as the Bible); and everywhere a sea of kippot, hats, baseball caps and more umbrellas.

The youth were also not all of one type. There were girls dressed in national religious garb – long skirts and sleeves – and others in tight jeans and low tops. The boys spanned a similar range from religious to rebellious.

That rebellion is one of the less positive aspects of the Ethiopian aliyah. I would like to say that Israel has learned from the discrimination the Ashkenazi pioneers meted out on Sephardi immigrants from Arab countries following the state’s establishment. Unfortunately, the Ethiopians got an even sharper end of a bad stick.

There’s a sad joke that goes something like this: The Ashkenazim look down on the Sephardim, the Sephardim look down on the Russians, and everyone looks down at the Ethiopians.

The younger generation is perhaps the hardest hit. Not knowing where they fit in, segregated into slums with poor schools, crime, drugs and alcohol, and facing an enormous generation gap with their mostly illiterate rural parents, it’s not surprising that many Ethiopians feel alienated and resentful.

The irony is that, while the rest of the world is running to embrace multi-culturalism, Israel – at least as far as the Ethiopian community is concerned – is still pushing an aggressive melting pot as a primary value.

My friend and journalist Ruth Mason wrote an article for The Jerusalem Post a few years ago that painted a bleak picture. Immigrants from Ethiopia make up the poorest Jewish subgroup in Israel, she said, “with 70 percent living under the poverty line.” Ethiopian pupils complain that they can’t progress like their peers who have “private tutors when they need them and have parents who can help them with homework. It’s frustrating.”

But the picture isn’t entirely hopeless, Ruth adds. Government and non-profit organizations have invested billions of shekels into trying to ease the absorption process. The Jerusalem Conservatory of Music and Dance, for example, gives full scholarships to promising Ethiopian youngsters.

Perhaps the Ethiopian experience in Israel should be seen as the experience of Jewish immigrants worldwide. My grandfather came to the U.S. from Romania at the beginning of the last century. He was traditional (though not what we’d call Orthodox today). His son (my father) moved away from tradition, and I didn't re-discover my roots until I was a young adult. My own children were raised in Israel with a solid Jewish upbringing.

The same may be true for the Ethiopian community in Israel. The current generation is like my father, eager to shake off traditions perceived as belonging to an older, irrelevant world. Their children may be more interested in reconnecting with their Ethiopian heritage.

It is now the responsibility of the Kesim and those young people who are already willing to listen, to ensure that, when the next generation is ready, the Sigd will still be around to receive them.

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that in the ancient Jewish Temple, the Levites used to play music on Shabbat and holidays. What did it sound like? What instruments were used? How is it that the tradition of music on the holy days became lost and later even prohibited?

Ilan Green had a similar interest. An established rock and roll musician – he was formerly a member of the popular Israeli group Nekamat HaTracktor (in English “The Tractor’s Revenge”) – Green has spent the last year and a half building putative versions of 16 out of the 30 musical instruments that are mentioned in the Bible, Mishna and other Jewish texts, as well as trying to reconstruct the music that he surmises would have been played on them.

His work resulted in an October concert by Green and three band mates, commissioned by Jerusalem’s pluralistic Beit Avichai cultural center, that was both full of wonder and not a bit perplexing. Wonder because the music itself – a blatantly anachronistic mix of jazzy funk, chants and rap, with a pinch of anthem rock and audience sing along – was inspiring. Perplexing because I couldn’t help asking: How could he possibly know what the instruments and the music were really like?

The truth, admits Green is that he can’t. Instead, he’s taken a large dose of creative license, and his interpretation is more personal than historical.

For example, Psalms 8:1 refers to David, the harpist king, as playing something called a gittit. Green turned that vague mention into an instrument resembling a small ukulele.

Green’s main percussion unit is shaped like a Star of David, each point generating a different sound. Next to it stands a metal tree with small bells on each branch that Green calls ayelet hashahar, meaning morning star or dawn. Instead of tambourines, Green took the reference to the shivat haminim, the seven species of grains and fruit mentioned in the Torah, and turned them into wooden rattles with biblical names, including the pomegranate, grape, fig, olive and date (the latter looked like a Mancala board strung with real date pits).

There’s also a stringed instrument that looks like a piano and that is plucked and tapped with a mallet; a triangular harp with a dove carved into its base; and a contraption called David’s Violin that is the closest to the instrument we use today.

The concert was billed as “Voices from the Levites,” named after the tribe that played the music at the Temple. Up front and center among the four musicians and their panoply of strange instruments was a female vocalist, Avital Raz whose piercing contralto would definitely not have been heard in the male-only Temple itself, but which sounded entirely at home in the Jerusalem of today. Raz spent five years in India learning Indian devotional music and, on her return to Israel two years ago, has gained a following on the alternative music scene here.

Going alternative has also been Green’s direction since leaving Nekamat HaTracktor. His repertoire of late ranges from electronic and trance to the more academic, in keeping with his day job as head of the music department at the Naggar School of Photography, Digital Media and New Music in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood.

An interest in Jewish roots has also been shown by other pop musicians, including Ehud Banai and Erez Lev Ari, both of whom use Biblical texts and liturgical songs in their music. While the latter two are newly religious, Green is still avowedly secular. It doesn’t seem to have blunted his fascination with what biblical music was like.

Green and his band lament the fact that Orthodox synagogues don’t allow instrumental music on Shabbat and holidays, even though it was permitted in the Temple. There are many possible reasons, including the fear that a musician might be tempted to fix a broken string, a Torah prohibition referred to in Tractate Shabbat of Babylonian Talmud.

Conservative and Reform synagogues in Israel also generally do not use instruments on Shabbat, unlike many of their brethren overseas. But one congregation that does is Nava Tehila, Jerusalem’s only Jewish Renewal community and one which welcomes musicians of all types to its once a month Friday services. At a recent Kabbalat Shabbat in the basement of the Kol HaNeshema Reform synagogue in the city’s Baka neighborhood, there were at least three guitars, several darbukas (the local version of a bongo drum), a violin, a French horn and a didgeridoo. The atmosphere is ecstatic, drawing more on rock and folk than cantorial crooning.

After the Jerusalem concert, I invited Shachar Kichke, the band’s main percussionist to come to the next Nava Tehila service. He promised he’d try..

Green hopes to take Voices of the Levites on the road to the United States and other Diaspora communities. In the meantime, they’re working on cutting a disc.

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This article originally appeared in the November 24 edition of the Jerusalem Report. An excerpt is available here. To subscribe to the Report visit https://secure.jpost.com/Subscribe/report.html.

Just when you think you’ve seen all that Jerusalem has to offer, along comes a surprise in the most unusual of spaces.

For weeks, the Jerusalem municipality has been running full-page ads promoting Art Jerusalem 08, an exhibition with hundreds of mostly new and unknown artists. The setting was the Underground Prisoner’s Museum just off Kikar Safra (City Hall Plaza) in the Russian Compound neighborhood.

The fair was fabulous, ranging from under appreciated impressionists like Reuven Rubin to up and coming artists such as Ra’anana-based Estee Kreisman whose paint-on-photo panoramic canvases were one of our favorites. There was also a fair sprinkling of multimedia new age video and music-centric installations.

Art was also for sale. In one gallery, you could pick up a pint-sized version of David Gerstein’s striking multi-layered metal-on-metal sculptures or gaze longingly at an authentic Agam. There was an exhibition of just Bob Dylan photographs and even a Sotheby’s gallery featuring paintings for sale (at prices jumping to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some works).

The highlight, though, was not the art itself but the interplay between the exhibition and the museum. The Underground Prisoner’s Museum was new to us (though both of our older kids have taken school field trips there). The museum is set in and around a former British jail used to house inmates ranging from petty criminals to political prisoners from 1918 to 1948 when the British quit Palestine. The building itself dates back to 1858 when it was served as a Russian pilgrims’ hospice for women.

The exhibits depict life in the prison and tell the stories of the underground groups and their members in order to perpetuate their memories. Incarceration resulted from offenses that included putting up posters, training and possession of weapons, and physical assault. At its height, the prison population totaled 250.

There are several long corridors lined with prison cells where inmates slept 8 to a room on thin woven mattresses on the floor. We toured the solitary confinement cells, the infirmary, synagogue and death row. Prisoners from the Jewish underground were put to work making coffins and gravestones for British policemen and soldiers they had killed in combat.

In retaliation, the British executed tens of Jews from the Irgun, Hagana and Lechi brigades during the time the jail was in operation (most of the underground members were transferred to the prison in Acre for execution). Large photographs of each of the underground fighters executed are displayed in an emotionally wrenching gallery.

Special mention is made of Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barzani who were sentenced to death in 1946. Rather than face death at the hands of the British, they smuggled in two grenades (hidden in orange peels and placed in a fruit basket) and blew themselves up at the foot of the gallows.

Yes, the sentence of death was by hanging. The gallows is still displayed in the museum, but the room has now been transformed into a testament to the fighters who gave their lives to help establish the state of Israel: a large illuminated plaque with the words to HaTikva, the Israeli national anthem, appears just behind the hanging noose.

For the art fair, the museum was sprinkled with sculpture and paintings throughout. In the locked solitary confinement cells, for example, modern art works appeared, bracketed by the metal cell doors. Golden etrogs (the citron fruit used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot)were stationed near the bakery. A set of calligraphy prints, highlighting Jewish and religious themes, were hung in the room where 12 inmates surreptitiously dug a tunnel before making a daring – and successful – escape.

The building served various purposes in the 40+ years after it ceased operating as a prison, including as a storehouse for archives from the Jewish Agency. It was transferred to the Ministry of Defense in 1991, which restored the prison and turned it into a museum.

Even without the art fair (which closed October 21), it’s well worth a visit for Jerusalemites who’ve never been and for visitors for which it is off the well-worn tourist track.

To get to the Underground Prisoner’s Museum, park in the Kikar Safra parking lot and take the elevator up to the plaza. On the east side of the plaza there’s a walkway into the Russian Compound. The museum is on your immediate right. Number 1, Mishol Hagevura. +972-2-623-3166. Guided tours in English are available for groups if booked in advance.

A video walkthrough is available on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ZBeRY7664

The show may be ending but the fun has just begun. Srugim, the popular television series about young Israeli singles living in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood, airs its last episode on Israeli TV tonight. But don’t fret: the show, which was previously only available on the YES satellite network, is coming to Israel’s Channel 2.

That means the whole country will now be able to cheer on the budding romance between Amir and Yifat; boo the boorishness of Nati, the sexy but immature doctor; and watch Hodaya’s descent from the “daughter of a Rav” to confused datlash (formerly religious).

Among the religious audience, Srugim has become an entertainment obsession. The popular Anglo blog The Muquata has run no less than 12 posts in the last 2 months on the show, from nit picking about whether a character is reading the correct haftorah to episode summaries with “spoilers” and even an attempt at “live blogging” while watching an episode. Each post has anywhere from 20 to 80 comments by rabid fans. One writer translated the song played over the opening credits, the soulful “Where Will I Turn” by Erez Lev Ari, from Hebrew to English. Numerous articles on the show have appeared in all the Israeli media including  Maariv, Yediot Ahronot and The Jerusalem Post.

Viewers without YES have been downloading the show at a furious place (see the instructions at the end of this post). In our house, we have taken to having Srugim “parties” with a roomful of fans watching and then discussing the issues raised afterwards.

After my own obsessive search for more background on Srugim on Facebook, the show’s director Laizy Shapriro “friended” me and wished me a happy birthday (a complete interview with Shapiro can be found on the excellent Jerusalemite blog). And for the totally obsessed, there’s now a new Facebook app called “Which Srugim character are you?”

Why has Srugim been so popular? Among religious viewers, it has touched a nerve, presenting real issues among the national religious community - from the stigma of divorce to whether a woman can date two men at the same time (the answer is yes…if she is nearing 30 and time is running out – i.e., read “desperate”).

Two of the most powerful scenes during the show’s 15-episode run revolved around Hodaya, the character with the greatest conflict around religion. For much of the show she was dating a secular man who wanted their relationship to become more physical. Hodaya wanted that too and visited a mikve because the primary prohibition against sex before marriage is that a couple can’t be intimate without dunking in a ritual bath. While Hodaya eventually backed out of going all the way, the issue is quite real – and practiced – by at least a minority of single religious women.

The other scene with Hodaya concerned a visit by her rebellious teenage cousin, “Shvut,” who was evacuated from Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip during 2005’s disengagement. When Shvut runs off one night, Hodaya was sure she was partying somewhere in town. When it transpired that she had gone to the Western Wall to see if she still “felt” anything, - asking “Why did God not answer our prayers?“- Hodaya commended Shvut for being angry at God. That at least means she has a relationship with the creator, in contrast to Hodaya who admitted she doesn’t feel anything at all anymore.

Perhaps the biggest controversy over the show, though, came when prominent Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, from the West Bank settlement of Bet El, ruled that it is “forbidden” to watch. From an article on Ynet, Aviner is quoted:


The Muquata blog countered that R. Aviner’s comments were an all too typical “knee jerk reaction” where the religious community complains that it is not portrayed positively. The show is not meant to be a promotional film advocating a particular lifestyle, argued the blog.

Many of the some 51 comments on that post tended to agree, with one pointing out that R. Aviner has also banned women from wearing pajama pants to bed! Another post on the subject lauded Srugim for depicting religious characters as “flawed, imperfect human beings” and not as typically shown in the Israeli media as “one-dimensional, strange people who are estranged from the modern world.”

Laizy Shapira, the show’s director expected such a response. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he said "I knew it was going to come. It's uncomfortable for me to see talkbacks saying, ‘This director should take off his kippa, because he's not religious.' But I feel good about what we've done - no regrets. We do some scandalous things with provocative issues, but we do it well. It's not giving in to ratings. It's serious issues, in the cleanest and most modest way."

Shapira added that originally, the characters were less flawed and more pious, but as the creative process evolved, the writing team abandoned that concept in favor of one more nuanced and compelling. "We had to make room for them to repent," he recalled.

While the show is fictional, many of the scenes come from Shapira’s personal experience as a 30-something religious single finding his way in the now-infamous Katamon “swamp.” And the show’s themes resonate not just for religious viewers: issues of commitment, the difficulty of finding the right partner, loneliness and fitting into a community cross the religious-secular divide where people can say “It’s the same as our lives…but with a twist (and) somewhat different rules” Shapira told the Post.

With the show coming to a close, Srugim devotees can breathe a sigh of relief: Israel’s most talked about drama has been picked up for a second season – although not until the end of 2009. The producers are negotiating to export the show internationally and there is even speculation that a version with English subtitles may be forthcoming as well.

In the meantime, if your Hebrew is up to the challenge, you can download the show (tip of the hat to Moshe Mattiya). Go to the tvnetil.co.il website. If you’re not registered, do so. Then return to the main page and type "סרוגים" into the search box near the upper-left corner of the page. Click the link for the episode you want. You’ll see a file name. Copy that then follow the link to the Fave website. Paste the text you copied and click Enter. You’ll now see a page with a list of various download links. Just follow the links.

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Srugim airs tonight on YES Stars 3 at 8:00 PM with a repeat showing on YES Israeli at 10:00 PM

When I was growing up in San Francisco Bay Area, there was nothing more politically correct than being a vegetarian. Meat was murder, and all good wannabe hippies (like me) would necessarily consider the eating of meat to be an unforgivable sin.

While I never adopted vegetarianism myself – I admit to my own human frailty: I like my burgers too much – my predisposition to the lifestyle has remained intact. That’s only been furthered by the Jewish take on the matter: Rav Kook, the first chief Rabbi of Israel and a vegetarian himself, believed that the permission to eat meat was only a temporary concession given because, in the time of Noah, people had sunk to such a low level of spirituality it was necessary that they be given an elevated image of themselves as compared to animals.

So why has it been so hard now that my 15-year-old daughter Merav has decided to go the veggie route?

I think the problem is that Merav isn’t just a vegetarian; she’s a militant vegetarian.

At the dinner table, if some of the family is eating meat while she’s chowing down on rice and veggies, she’ll crow “Ecch…I can’t believe you’re eating that stuff.” To which her seventeen-year-old brother will taunt her with “Mmmm…meat…charred chicken flesh…” or similarly inflammatory barbs.

If someone asks her to “please pass the pot roast,” Merav will throw her hands up in the air and announce haughtily “Disgusting. You expect me to touch that plate?”

I’ve been hoping that it’s just a phase; that she’ll eventually mellow out or return to her carnivorous ways. But so far, the militant stance has stood firm.

Eating out has been equally challenging. Our neighborhood has become somewhat of a gourmet gulch…for meat eaters that is. The majority of the eateries that have opened in the last few years seem to be flesh-centric (heavy on the steak, not a lot of quiche). A recent trip down Emek Refaim resulted in four rejected restaurants before we found one suitable for the entire family.

Fine, you say, she can order salmon while the rest of us are getting our meat fix.

Except that, did I mention she’s also an anti-fisheterian?

Now, I have nothing against vegetarian meals. My wife Jody makes a killer lentil-pineapple concoction. And her Indian tofu with vegetables in coconut milk is to die for. Merav is using her new found dietary decision to learn more about how to balance meals and how to replace the protein she previously would have received from carnivorous pursuits.

We’re trying to teach a little tolerance as well – moderation over militarism. After all, if we can embrace her alternative lifestyle, hopefully she will see the value in diversity in other areas too. And as my teenage daughter’s first major act of rebellion, it’s really not such a biggie.

Except for one incident that has had us baffled.

One time, when Jody and Merav were grocery shopping, Jody bought some frozen chicken and turkey necks for soup. There were also several wrapped up slices of luncheon meats – salami, turkey, pastrami – that somehow, mysteriously, “vanished.”

Jody looked for them everywhere. Maybe they got put in the same pack as the frozen meats and were stuck to the side of the chopped hamburger? Or maybe they were accidentally thrown into the back of the pantry with the cereals and juices…well, we’d smell that one sooner or later.

But no, the meat slices were nowhere to be found. Finally, an idea dawned on Jody. She turned to Merav who was unpacking the cucumbers and tomatoes.

“Did you by any chance take the sliced meats off of the checkout counter and put them aside?” Jody asked.

Merav was defiant. “No, of course not!” she replied. “How could you say such a thing?”

But the teensiest of smiles, almost imperceptible if you weren’t looking for it, indicated otherwise. Or at the very least, that she thought it was a good idea.

For next time, that is...

A new TV show that debuted earlier this month on the Israeli satellite company YES is the talk of the town across certain sectors of southern Jerusalem. “Srugim” (in English: “knitted kippas”) is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the religious singles scene in Jerusalem.

Set in our own neighborhood (Katamon and the German Colony in particular), the show chronicles the trials and tribulations of trying to find one’s place in the grueling “swamp” that represents the modern Orthodox world in Jerusalem.

Though the show is about Israel singles, Anglos in the city will easily recognize their own lives, between coffee dates at local cafes, shul hopping and the ubiquitous plastic bags containing quiches, humus and drinks that singles carry around on Shabbat as they head to a group meal with other like minded young people.

Srugim is peppered with location shots of local hangouts. And the dumpy apartments with their tiny kitchens will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who’s ever been single in Jerusalem.

The show has caught on not just with religious residents of the capital. The Muqata blog reports that the series has received rave reviews from publications across the religious/secular divide including Achbar Ha'ir, Maariv, NRG, and others.

That’s because the acting and writing is uniformly excellent. While the show is essentially a soap opera, it’s certainly not as trashy as hop in and out of bed programs such as the infamous Ramat Aviv Gimel. Imagine Melrose Place…with yarmulkes.

Director Laizey Shapiro has gone to great lengths to make sure even the finest details are reliable. “Every time religious people are presented on the screen, the kippa is in the wrong angle or the text doesn’t make sense,” Shapira told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. All the more important given that all of the actors in the show are secular.

Shapira is a 32-year-old religious bachelor. He attended the Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts, the only religious film program in the country. The series was originally titled “Sex and the Holy City” because, as Shapira says, “I couldn’t ignore the sex issue because I would be ignoring reality. (Nevertheless) there is something pretty special in the fact that you can see such things in a series on religious people.”

So far the show has focused more on dates than sex. Srugim revolves around five main characters. Hodaya and Yifat are roommates. Yifat has a crush on Nati, the cute 30-something but immature doctor who keeps standing her up. Amir likes Re’ut but she wants to keep it as just friends. Hodaya is going out with a non-religious professor at Hebrew University.

Some of the best situations concern the clash between tradition and modernity. In perhaps the show’s most infamous scene to date, Hodaya brings a date home after midnight. He’s drunk and he lives out of the city, so he sleeps in her room (we assume nothing else happened).

In the morning when he crawls out of bed (to Yifat’s horror – “we have rules here, Hodaya”), he asks the roommates if they have a pair of tefillin. They don’t but they knock on the door of their next-door neighbor, a heavily accented American woman who offers her tefillin to him. Hodaya’s date rejects the offer dismissively. He’s not about to use a "Reform lesbian’s tefillin," he huffs, his religious sleep over hypocrisy notwithstanding.

Nati is asked to join a minha minyan at the hospital where he works. He bristles at the request – he’d prefer to spend his free time napping. However, when he notices that the kashrut license for the lobby sandwich vendor’s kiosk is suspicious, he’s not so meek. He reports it to the Rabbinate, which quickly results in the kiosk proprietor’s sacking.

Yifat meets a cute guy with a kippa and asks him out. He tells her he’s not for her – he’s not religious. “Do you keep Shabbat,” she asks. “Yes,” he responds. “Do you keep kashrut?” Yes. “So how are you not religious?” “In ways you wouldn’t like.” As he’s leaving, he tries to give Yifat a peck on the cheek. She recoils. “Now you get it,” he says.

Perhaps the most conflicted of the bunch is Hodaya who starts dating a non-religious professor. She can’t bring herself to tell him she’s religious. He asks her out to a movie on Friday night. “Shabbat?” she asks, then adds hastily that she has “other plans,” not that she doesn’t go to movies on Friday night. In a later scene, her beau cooks her up a plate of his special spaghetti with meatballs. He sprinkles cheese on top and urges her to try it. Will she eat it or not? We found ourselves screaming at the screen – "don’t do it, Hodaya!" She takes a tiny bite and promptly runs to the bathroom to retch.

Director Shapira was asked in his Yediot interview about his own personal dating do’s and don’ts as a religious single. He responds honestly. “With us everything is much more dissolvable in terms of keeping a distance. It also looks very ridiculous – even though this is Jewish law. People are beginning to cut corners. Many more people are saying out loud that they cannot go out with a girl and not touch her. I'm not talking about sex, although there are those who go there as well. Several years ago I would say this is absolutely impossible, but things change."

If you missed an episode, you’re not in Israel or you don’t have YES, you can catch Srugim online: http://yes.walla.co.il/srugim (the show is in Hebrew, no English subtitles).

Fight the establishment. That was the implicit message my wife Jody and I gleaned this Shavuot from our attendance at a fiery lecture and our participation in a controversial minyan.

First the lecture. Shavuot is the holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The emphasis on the Torah as the central motif of the yom tov has led to a custom of studying all night. Jerusalem probably has more learning opportunities than any other city in the world, in every language imaginable.

For the past few years, we have attended David Hartman’s class at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and training school in Jerusalem (which also happens to be where our 16-year-old son Amir goes to high school). David Hartman, who is Orthodox, typically spends the first half of his lecture railing against iniquities and injustice he perceives in modern Israeli society, with the brunt of his criticism aimed squarely at the religious world of which he is a member.

This year, he chose to expound on the famous Talmudic story of Tanur shel Achnai (Achnai’s oven) that includes the phrase lo b’shamayim hi – translated as “it is not in heaven” - found in the Babylonian Talmud Baba Metzia 59b and based on a biblical verse in Deuteronomy 30:12. The story is long and involved but the upshot is that there is a disagreement between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Gamliel over a particular interpretation of the Torah.

Rabbi Eliezer calls for several miracles to appear if the heavens agree with him. A tree magically jumps 100 cubits, a river runs backwards, and ultimately a voice booms out of heaven to declare that Rabbi Eliezer is correct. Rabbi Gamliel responds: never mind all that, the Torah is “no longer in heaven.” Rather, it is up to the learned men and women in this world to which it was entrusted to rule on issues of halacha.

That principle led Rabbi Hartman to declare in his lecture that not only is decision making on religious law no longer dictated from heaven, but history itself is not and cannot be controlled by God.

Hartman recounted how, after the 1967 Six Day War, many of his peers saw “God’s finger” in Israel’s striking defeat of its enemies. One Rabbi put it this way: in a crucial battle against Egypt, Elijah the Prophet appeared in the midst of the Israeli army dressed in white with a long beard and blowing a shofar. The result: the Egyptians recognized that God was with the Israelis and simply “ran away.”

But how could it be that the same God who was allegedly so omnipresent in 1967 was cruelly absent during the years of the Holocaust and many other incidences of Jewish hardship? Is our God really so capricious, Hartman asked. A man who’s had a life of plenty may remark that “God has been good to me.” Does that mean that God is “less good” to a family suffering in poverty? History winds its own past, based on the actions of man not God, Hartman emphasized.

Yet, the idea that God actively takes a part in history has taken root across Orthodoxy today, strangling rabbinic innovation, Hartman said. If God is dictating events, the thinking goes, then what right do we as humans have to change Jewish law even when it is clearly unjust? Hartman cited several pressing problems - recalcitrant husbands who refuse to give their wives a get, a divorce degree, and agunot, literally “chained women,” who cannot remarry according to Jewish law because their husbands have gone missing.

Hartman saved his most stinging vitriol for the controversy du jure where in recent weeks an ultra-Orthodox Rabbinic court has retroactively annulled hundreds of thousands of conversions to Judaism going back as far as 1999, insensitive to the suffering caused.

The implicit message: we must continue to fight the establishment. We cannot cede control over such important matters to those who do not interpret lo b’shamayim hi and God’s role in history as Hartman says we must.

After such a combative lecture, it’s not surprising that our evening ended with another example of fighting the establishment.

A further custom of Shavuot is to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall, as the sun rises. At 4:00 AM, the streets are filled with thousands of people of all religious stripes and colors making their way towards the Old City. It’s exhilarating to participate in the march. However Jody and I overslept by half an hour and there were only women, children and tourists on the streets as we made our way, bleary eyed, towards our destination: the egalitarian minyan which comprises Conservative, Reform and liberal-leaning Orthodox Jews.

This minyan, where men and women pray together and where women lead the tefiilah, has been no stranger to controversy. The group tried for years to pray at the Western Wall, indiscreetly in the back of the plaza. The keepers of the Kotel were not pleased, however, and tried to scare off the minyan’s participants.

I was amongst the group one year and saw first hand the baseless hatred between Jews. Dirty diapers, garbage and bags of chocolate milk were hurled at us indiscriminately. The police were called in to create a separation barrier before we were whisked away for our own protection.

The minyan eventually settled for a government-sponsored compromise to be relocated outside the main Kotel area to the southern extension of the wall known as Robinson’s Arch. The new location is quite picturesque, located amidst archaeological excavations and the nearby Davidson Center, and actually offers a more fulfilling prayer experience than the overcrowded central plaza.
 
I commend the egalitarian minyan for sticking to its guns and fighting the religious establishment as bravely as it did for so many years. As I see it, the Western Wall should belong to all of the Jewish people, and the egalitarian minyan’s strive to change the status quo is a welcome modern extension of the concept of lo b’shamayim hi.

There is still much to be done. There are times when modern Jews seem to be losing the battle. That’s why we must do our part with steadfast conviction. Jody and I will continue to attend both the Hartman Institute for late evening learning and the egalitarian minyan for early morning prayers, as we fight the establishment in our own quiet way.