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.

We were walking home from a friend’s house after lunch on Shavuot a couple of years back. It had been a blazingly hot day, a real Jerusalem sharav, but at one point we were sure we felt a slight drizzle. As we entered the courtyard to our apartment complex, we felt it again.

Then we noticed them: a group of 9 to 12-years olds huddled together in what I can only describe as a “scheming posture.” In the center was one child with an enormous water pistol.

That’s when we remembered. The holiday of Shavuot as it’s observed in Israel is also known as “Yom HaMayim” – Water Day.

“Run for it!” I yelled as we scampered towards our apartment before a stream of water headed our way.

We avoided any serious soaking….this time. But the battle had only just begun.

The doorbell rang. Two of then eight-year-old Aviv’s friends were outside. “Can we use your terrace?” one of them asked.

Before I could think if this was a good or a bad thing for the Jews, Aviv had already ushered them inside.

Now, we live in an upstairs apartment that has several inside levels; the sought-after terrace is actually three stories above ground level, giving anyone standing on it an unparalleled strategic advantage over enemies in the courtyard below. It truly is the high ground in the battle for Yom HaMayim supremacy.

Aviv and his friends surveyed the scene from the terrace, then headed downstairs to our kitchen where they raided our collection of plastic water bottles that were waiting for recycling. They filled up three then resumed their positions. When the first volley of water was launched, the hapless soldiers below didn’t know what hit them.

What are the origins for this uniquely Israeli holiday custom? No one I asked could give me a definitive answer and the Internet wasn’t much help either.

Perhaps it has something to do with the parting of the waters of the Red Sea as the Jews left Egypt in preparation for receiving the Torah, the main event which Shavuot commemorates.

Or maybe it’s more related to the symbolism surrounding Moses, who was rescued from the waters of the Nile and raised in Pharaoh’s palace.

My friend Yuval claims it’s originally a North African custom that was elevated in importance when the country’s secular founders were trying to emphasize the agricultural nature of the holiday.

Or maybe it’s because Shavuot usually falls at the beginning of the summer and it’s just plain hot.

It wasn’t long before there was another knock on the door. This time it was Merav’s friends. More recruits for the Blum brigade. They too headed for the kitchen, but they were more interested in our supply of small plastic sandwich bags.

“Can you tie this for me?” asked Daniella, one of the youngsters, holding a filled bag. She and her friend Dara were building a not insignificant stockpile of water bombs. After the tenth bag, I told them to hold off, there might be other kids coming who’d want.

Which there were…in droves.

Over the course of the next half hour, no fewer than two dozen pre-teens, most part of a loose collection of friends of Merav and Aviv but others complete strangers, entered our kitchen, refilled their bottles and guns or built their own bombs, and headed for the terrace.

At one point, I don’t think there was anyone even left in the courtyard.

Naturally, all of this created no small amount of mess. Puddles of water formed around the kitchen sink and the water tap in the entry-level guest bathroom. A small river of mud and twigs snaked from the front door to the terrace.

My wife Jody pulled me aside. “I think that’s enough,” she said.

But the kid inside of me had other ideas. “Why don’t we just let them have fun?” I asked Jody. ‘Yom HaMayim is only once a year.”

Jody’s eyes surveyed the accumulating devastation that was taking over our living room.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be responsible for cleaning up. Just sit back and enjoy.”

“I think I’ll enjoy it more if I don’t look,” Jody said with a smile and promptly closed herself off in a secure room while the Yom HaMayim battle continued unabated outside.

For the next hour, I helped the combatants keep the supply lines open. I made sure no one slipped or got hurt. We provided drinks and cut up watermelon.

Eventually the battle wore down. The plastic bag supply ran out. Several girls were wrapped in towels as they shivered. I actually managed to get a few kids – led by Aviv, Merav, Dara and Daniella – to help clean up the garbage below.

As I squeegee-d the water towards the terrace drain, one of the kids asked me, her eyes glazed with drops of water and appreciation, “Is your house open like this every year?”

“It is now,” I replied.

As Jody emerged from her room, I said “next year, we have to be better prepared. We need to stock up on plastic bags and save up the recycling for several weeks.

“Or maybe,” Jody said, as she surveyed the damage, “We’ll just lock the doors and pretend to not be home.”

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From the entire Blum family, we wish you a joyous - and dry - Shavuot.

A new documentary titled Eyes Wide Open premiered last week at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. Directed by veteran filmmaker and Jerusalemite Paula Weiman-Kelman, the film explores the complex relationship of North American Jews with Israel by following several groups from the US as they visit Israel, many for the first time.

From the spiritual excitement of visiting the Old City of Safed, to participating in a Palestinian demonstration against the West Bank security barrier, Eyes Wide Open documents a wide variety of experiences.

The interviewees express their confusion at the complexities of life in Israel, where daily reality ping-pongs between extremes. At one point, a participant sighs, "I would love to be non-conflicted."

During the panel discussion that followed the screening, the film's screenwriter, Stuart Schoffman, addressed the issue of feeling conflicted.

"Israelis live with selective denial," he said. "In order to live with so many contradictions, some things get pushed to the background while other things get moved to the foreground. People who live here do that all the time. They learn how to juggle the contradictions."

That's not so easy for the casual or brief visitor to Israel, Schoffman went on. "These are people who went to Sunday school and learned all about the Jews wandering for 2,000 years and then they get here and suddenly realize there are complications," he said. "For some, even thinking about this is so overwhelming, they don't come at all. They change the channel."

The problem is that Israel exists on an adrenalin rush of conflicting narratives: We have a peace-loving narrative and a narrative that says we must be strong and protect ourselves at all costs; we have the people who brought about the flowering of the desert, who danced the hora every night while picking watermelons in the kibbutz field by day coexisting with fundamental questions of human rights and civil inequality.

What does Israel do, for example, with the some 7,000 illegal immigrants from Africa who have crossed the border in the last two years? Deport them? Give them shelter and citizenship? What about the trafficking of women? Pornography and sex crimes? How can the Zionist dream narrative and the one where Israel is portrayed as a blemished nation both be true?

Another panel member, Eliezer Yaari, executive director of the Israel office of the New Israel Fund, put it this way: "I feel a strong sense that there's no way for Israel to succeed in the eyes of America. For many US Jews, we're too leftist. For others we're too Right. We're too socialist and not socialist enough. Too religious or not Jewish enough. We can't win."

MK Colette Avital, a former ambassador to the US, repeated the oft-cited statistic that only 20 percent of American Jews have ever visited Israel.

Even if that number might be up in recent years with the tens of thousands who have taken part in birthright trips, Avital lamented that "after 60 years, Israel and the Diaspora haven't grown any closer. Americans don't understand Israelis, but Israelis don't understand America either."

What will help bridge the gap between the two largest Jewish communities in the world? The traditional Israeli hasbara pitch of "just make aliya" has clearly worn out its welcome. Instead, Israel has to export its culture, panel members agreed.

"We need to share what we're about through literature, movies and music," exhorted Avital. We have no choice but to move beyond the headlines and TV sound bytes that constitute the average American Jew's Israel experience.

Israelis need to pay more than lip service to the issues that engage Americans, added Yossi Klein Halevi, another panelist and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center. "That means more respect for minority rights, for Arabs, for women and Ethiopians. We need to show sensitivity to religious pluralism. We can't alienate liberal American Jews."

That may not be so easy. At one point in the film, a synagogue mission begins to pray at the Haas Promenade in Talpiot. The camera pans to two Israelis.

"They can't do that," says one. "They don't have 10 men."

"They count women too," the other explains.

"That's not right. It's not allowed," the first counters.

The scene elicited nervous laughter from the audience as they caught a glimpse of just how big the gap in understanding truly is.

Ultimately, Israel needs to be spun not just as a physical place but as the "ultimate Jewish text," explained Schoffman. "The real argument today is not over a page of Talmud, but over Israel the nation. This is the new beit midrash [Jewish study hall]."

Like the rabbinical arguments over nuances in the pages of a Jewish text, we need to "celebrate the conflicts, to make them a virtue," Schoffman said. "The complexities themselves are the source of engagement."

Eyes Wide Open is just over an hour long, but it can serve as a trigger point for salient, honest and open discussion in both Israeli and American Jewish communities. Watch for it at a theater near you.

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To book the film, contact Ruth Diskin the distributor. Her website is www.ruthfilms.com

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This article originally appeared in the In Jerusalem section of The Jerusalem Post.

Despite the controversial subtitle “A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy,” Reva Mann’s new autobiography “The Rabbi’s Daughter” is neither as shocking or inflammatory as its name would suggest. Rather, Mann’s powerful memoir will seem familiar to many Jews who grew up in secular homes, crossed over to a more extreme practice of religion and ended up in a relatively moderate middle ground.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” reads like a good blog – personal, confessional and addictive. When the book opens, Mann is studying at a religious girls seminary for the newly repentant in Jerusalem, striving to live the life of a good Jew while frequently flashing back to a more tawdry past.

That past includes doing lines of coke in her hometown of London, losing her virginity on the bima of her father (the Rabbi’s) synagogue, anonymous sex in a public restroom, getting busted for trafficking 10 kilos of hashish in Jerusalem, and becoming hospitalized after contracting hepatitis B from a junkie who shot wine into his veins. “I wasn’t addicted to a particular drug,” Mann writes. “I was addicted to the false sense of intimacy that I reached when I was stoned out of my mind.”

But worst of all, in her parent’s opinion at least, was her relationship with a non-Jewish man, a photographer who worked for a rock music magazine, that got her kicked out of her observant household as a teenager and led to even further debauchery.

Mann describes her tumultuous formative years with candor and honesty, all the while framing it from her new lifestyle as an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student. Indeed, the opening half of “The Rabbi’s Daughter” seems almost like an apologetic for her youth, presenting religious life as lovingly bathed in the warm light of enlightenment.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” is written for a broad audience. Mann carefully explains the details of keeping kosher or her monthly immersion in the mikveh prior to having sex with her husband. But it is insiders who will ultimately get the most out of the book.

That’s because Mann’s journey mirrors the religious evolution of many modern observantly struggling Jews (albeit without the extreme use of drugs and promiscuity). My own history is telling: I grew up in a devoutly non-religious home where I nevertheless (and some will say miraculously) decided, during a spontaneous trip to Israel in 1984, to pursue a more religious lifestyle.

At first that meant taking on as much of Jewish law as I thought I understood, though never to the extent of Mann who describes in great detail a loveless haredi marriage to a husband whose true lover, Mann writes, was always God and never his attention starved wife. He was “horny only for heaven,” says Mann, adding that she ignored an early warning sign: when he asked her to marry him, he gave her a prayer book instead of an engagement ring.

3 children and a divorce later, Mann abandons her faith, slaps on a pair of skin tight jeans and returns to wanton ways, taking up first with the local handyman and eventually settling into a destructive relationship with a vulgar yet passionate man she meets in a bar. Mann’s fall from grace is as rapid as the writing is breathless.

My own subsequent descent from more stringent spiritual seeking to a place of relative moderation was certainly less flamboyant than Mann’s, but I can still relate. I know what it’s like to go to an extreme and come back down.

Mann never lets us forget that hers is a true tale, even if the names have been changed. Mann’s father was Rabbi Morris Unterman, the late spiritual leader of London’s posh modern Orthodox West End Marble Arch synagogue. Her grandfather was Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, who served for 26 years as the second Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.

As I was reading “The Rabbi’s Daughter,” I at times wondered whether it would be easier to take in if it were fiction, like Naomi Ragen’s novel “Jephte’s Daughter” with which it must be compared. In Ragen’s book, as in “The Rabbi’s Daughter,” an ultra-Orthodox woman finds herself in a loveless marriage in Israel, flees, takes up with a non-observant (or non-Jewish) man and eventually returns to a more moderate path.

But the voyeuristic quality of Mann’s book is part of what provides the story its power, even more so because Mann is a neighbor (she lives in Jerusalem’s German Colony) and, though we’ve never met, I fully expect to bump into her one day sipping a Chai Latte at Aroma Café or buying bagels around the corner. At which point I’ll be privy to more intimate details than most people ever know about strangers. Will that make the meeting uncomfortable or titillating?

The Rabbi’s Daughter received a flattering six page spread in The London Sunday Times which called it “hard to put down” and a “publisher’s dream, a gripping tale of a woman searching in all the wrong places and ultimately finding herself.”

Comments on the London Times’ website were more mixed. One poster wrote “Great book, but I can’t believe it’s true.” Another commented “What an obscenity! What some people will do for a dollar!”

Mann, now 50, is more introspective. She began penning the book while recovering from breast cancer. “Writing everything down was about my beginning to be a new person. I wasn’t just getting it off my chest,” she explained in an interview with Haaretz.

Mann closes her book, surprisingly, away from Israel on a trip to India with her now teenage children where she reflects back on her life. She is no longer the outcast; her rebellious nature has been tempered. She broke off her abusive relationship with Sam six years ago, and now laments that she lives “the life of a nun and worry I am once again going to an extreme, this time of sexual abstention.” She knows that “Jewish souls can only find true closeness to God through the Torah” even while she admits having difficulties keeping the laws herself.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” is a riveting drama of sex, drugs and Orthodoxy to be sure, but also one of acceptance and healing. For those of us who have been on Mann’s path, it’s even an affirmation. I’m happy with the middle way I’ve chosen. I’m not entirely sure by the end of Mann’s book that she is. Still, “The Rabbi’s Daughter” is a sort of comfort; a reminder that the road many of us take is not quite so lonely.

"The Rabbi’s Daughter: A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy," by Reva Mann, is published by Hodder & Stoughton in the U.K. and The Dial Press in the U.S. It’s available at local bookstores and online at Amazon.com. Her website is www.revamann.com.

“Lunch was very nice, but I was hoping we could sing a few zemirot,” commented one of our guests this past Shabbat. He didn’t mean it in a critical way; he was just expressing his hope that would sing a bit around the table before tidying up the dessert and heading for a Shabbat afternoon nap.

The thing is, I’ve been down on zemirot for a while now. That’s is a real change from how our family used to be. When Jody and I were studying in Israel in the mid-1980s, singing songs around the Shabbat table was an integral part of our communal experience. We learned zemirot from our teachers at Pardes, we introduced new tunes to our friends, we even took to occasionally penning a melody ourselves.

But after years of the same tunes, I got tired of our repertoire. All the traditional songs had become intolerable dirges or sounded like British marching ditties. “Yom ze meCHUbad, mikol YAmim ki vo SHAbat TZUR olaMIM (toot toot)” we’d belt out, swinging our arms like we were in an Irish pub carousing after a football match.

When we started going to a Shlomo Carlebach minyan several years ago, we tried applying some of the melodies we heard there to the words of the zemirot, but it never quite fit right. My friend Eliezer succeeded in updating some of Birkat HaMazon, the grace after meals, but that’s about as far as it went. We hummed a few wordless nigunim with the incumbent lalas and yayas, but it wasn’t the same.

We always have a great time at the Shabbat table. Lots of yummy food, good conversation and laughs. But zemirot had dropped off the radar.

That was until Saturday night when we went to hear the New York ethno-Hassidic world beat rock band Pharaoh’s Daughter making its first appearance in Jerusalem. Led by the charismatic Brooklyn-born Basya Schechter, the seven-piece band, which is among the darlings of the new Jewish music scene in New York, is hard to categorize. With Schechter on lead vocals, oud and guitar, and featuring Daphna Mor on back up vocals and woodwinds, Pharaoh’s Daughter performs in four languages – Hebrew, Arabic, Ladino and Yiddish and have a play list that ranges from neo-Klezmer to Egyptian-tinged Middle Eastern rhythms.

National Geographic described the band on its World Music Podcast as fusing “Middle Eastern and Jewish sounds with a dark, indie pop sensibility, making music that has traditional roots, and a hip, modern edge."

NewYorkCool.com referred to the band this way: “Have you ever wondered what would happen if Pink Floyd and PJ Harvey crossed paths in a cafe in Israel and subsequently took a road trip to South Africa? What if they met up with Radiohead in Morocco along the way?”

Pharaoh’s Daughter’s sold out Motzei Shabbat show was held in Jerusalem’s Beit Avichai’s new auditorium which sports some of the best acoustics I’ve heard at any concert here or abroad. The audience was a classic Jerusalem mix of religious and secular, young and old, proving the band has legs that extend beyond the trendy twentysomething Jewcy and Heeb scene in New York.

But the highlight of the show for me was Pharaoh’s Daughter’s re-conceptualization of the traditional zemirot. I’d be hard pressed to repeat them at the Shabbat table – the instrumentation and harmonies were too complex for the average Shabbat meal – but it was a treat to hear how far a field a multi-talented musician like Shechter can take the classic lyrics of these Talmudic and Kabbalistic songs. From the lilting guitars of the show opener Lev Tahor through an audience participation sing along version of Yona Matzah and into the closing number HaShomer, Pharaoh’s Daughter returned a sense of swirling spirituality that has gotten lost in our own Shabbats.

Pharaoh’s Daughter is about much more than new fangled zemirot of course. A highlight of the show was a guitar duet between Schechter and Avi Fox-Rosen setting the early Yiddish poetry of Jewish philosopher A.J. Heschel to music. Another high point was a “performance art piece,” as Schechter called it, recreating a traditional Yeshiva “taitch” (from the band’s 2000 release “Out of the Reeds”) where Hebrew is translated into Yiddish in a chanting sing-song. It helps that Shechter grew up speaking Yiddish as well as English.

Pharaoh’s Daughter’s fourth CD is Haran and is available here on Amazon.com. The band, described on its own website as “blending a psychedelic sensibility and a pan-Mediterranean sensuality with Doors-like improvisations, liturgical chants with Middle Eastern, and spiritual stylings” has toured the Middle East, Africa, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Kurdistan and Greece. Pharaoh’s Daughter has played the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and debuted at New York Central Park’s Summer Stage series in 2004.

Schechter grew up in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of New York’s Boro Park and, in an interview on PRI’s "The World" radio program, explains that until the age of 15 she went to all girls schools and was only exposed to boys and music when she participated in a teen trip to Israel where she “had a boyfriend who played me Led Zeppelin and introduced me to all this music I had never heard before. I would learn the melodies note by note,” Schechter says.

Schechter later left New York and her religious community to hitchhike around Turkey and Africa.  She learned to play the oud in Morocco and the saz in Turkey. Today, she and Pharaoh’s Daughter flautist Daphna Mor both play in the musical ensemble that accompanies Friday night services at Manhattan’s conservative B’nei Jeshrun synagogue.

The band’s performance in Jerusalem was a delight – pushing the boundaries of Jewish music while inspiring our Shabbat table beyond the dirges of yesteryear. Go for the music, go for inspiration on new age zemirot, just go. Don’t miss Pharaoh’s Daughter if they come to a town near you.

My brother Dave and Jen got married two weeks ago and it was a very puzzling wedding. You see, Dave runs Dr. Clue, the world’s largest corporate training organization focused exclusively on using treasure hunts as a team building activity. Jen, who has a doctorate from Stanford in economic sociology, has worked with Dave at Dr. Clue and wrote her first hunt when she was 16. It was a match made in heaven. So it’s not surprising that their wedding revolved around working through clues to solve a variety of challenging puzzles.

The fun started long before the wedding. Dave and Jen didn’t send out printed invitations. Instead, they emailed a series of puzzles – one a month for 7 months – giving some details of the wedding. One gave the date, another specified the time, a third revealed the place, and so on. For the less clued-in, a week after each puzzle went out, the answer was revealed.

Among the emails was a pictorial rebuses (where you translate pictures into text then add and subtract letters to spell out the clue –see an example here), a color coded poem, an all-text cryptogram, a stumper featuring car brands, another with movie titles, and a perplexing puzzle with a series of clocks displaying different times. Our whole family had a grand time working through the clues and 16-year-old Amir even used one puzzle as a team building activity of his own, bringing together members of his bunk at camp this past summer.

At the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, some of the guests received a bottle of wine as a token of Dave and Jen’s appreciation. But not just any bottle of wine – this one was encased in a contraption made of wood and string that proved to be a puzzle waiting to be cracked before the cork could be popped.

Dave and Jen’s relationship was born and evolved around the business of writing clues. The two met at a post-hunt social hour and took off when Dave was heading out to create a hunt in Dallas and playfully suggested Jen could come along. She did, and after sneaking off to write a personal hunt for Dave, she knew that “this is the guy.” Dave says in pure puzzle-making spirit, that “as challenging as relationships are, I realized that with Jen I would gladly take up all challenges. That’s when I knew we should get married.”
 
When the big day itself finally arrived, the puzzle merriment continued unabated. The ceremony program listed not only who the groomsmen and maids of honor were, but included another rebus which Amir and his 14-year-old sister Merav solved in short order. The clue contained the phone number of Dave and Jen’s answering machine which in turn played a message instructing callers to look behind a bust of Shakespeare – the ceremony was held in the Shakespeare Garden of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – where a basket of Hershey’s Kisses was waiting for daring problem solvers.

The ceremony itself was similarly unconventional. The wedding was officiated by a Buddhist priest and the vows were inspired by Dave and Jen’s Buddhist practice. In addition to taking each other as husband and wife, they vowed to “support and cherish all life,” “live together with generous and open hearts,” let go of any anger or impatience and strive for equanimity,” and “keep our minds open and fresh.”

Following the ceremony it was back to puzzle solving. Dave and Jen had put together an afternoon’s simulation of a full Dr. Clue treasure hunt – three hours of clues comprising 11 separate puzzles leading us to locations around Golden Gate Park. One of the clues involved deciphering Morse code; another employed a Dave and Jen-branded secret decoder ring which paired numbers with letters. There was a puzzle with shapes and numbers, another where we had to identify pictures of different flowers, a classical music composer match up and one with misspelled world capitals. In the park, we searched for benches with inscriptions and plaques with names of fallen war heroes. We managed to solve all 11 puzzles on paper but only had time to complete 7 of the puzzles on foot – all in all, not bad I’d say.

If we thought we’d get a chance to relax a little at the reception, we were playfully mistaken. Upon entering the Bocce Café in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, guests were presented with a “bingo card” with squares reading “A relative of the groom,” “has gone skydiving or bungee jumping,” “has a PhD,” and “speaks three languages,” among others. The game was to run around finding the person matching the description and get them to sign the bingo card. First ones to get five in a row won a prize (more candy Kisses).

Now, Dr. Clue is all about prodding individuals to get to know each other better, so our name tags read “ask me about…” (Jody’s read “financial planning”; we had a long conversation with a guest whose tag encouraged us to ask him about “love”). Hidden inside our name tags were colorful clues to yet another rebus which could only be solved by tables working together to swap information. The puzzle answer asked guests to take to the open microphone to offer words of advice to the newly married couple. (Dave had built a similar game for Merav’s bat mitzvah two years ago to equal aplomb.)

We paused the puzzle mongering while we ate our meal but there was one last activity saved for dessert. Instead of a single towering wedding cake, Dave and Jen had prepared 11 smaller cakes – one for each table – and then supplied guests with decorating supplies – icing, chewy cookies, and various flourishes – with which to personalize this sweetest of clues. The cake was pretty good too.

We finished the day exhausted but delighted. It was a wedding like none we’ve experienced before – and probably not like any we’ll ever attend again. It took 10 months to plan – for good reason.

Dave and Jen spent their wedding night at an undisclosed location – there were no clues to solve this time. After 12 hours of intense team building, the happy couple undoubtedly needed some alone time.

Options for modern religious education for girls in Jerusalem just got a whole lot more interesting with the recent openings of two new schools this fall, both backed by immigrants from North America.

The modern Orthodox Shalom Hartman Institute, which trains rabbis, teachers and scholars from Israel and the Diaspora in a pluralistic environment and which has run a popular boys’ junior and senior high school since the mid-1990s, opened seventh, eighth and ninth grade classes in September.

Beverly Gribetz, an innovative educator who served as the popular principal of the Evelina de Rothschild girls school, also opened a new school this month, in this case for grades nine and ten.

The two announcements have put pressure on the existing girls high schools catering to modern Orthodox students in Jerusalem. Both Hartman and Tehilla, the name for Gribetz’s school, are decidedly liberal, offering girls opportunities to both study Talmud and lead prayer services. Other girls schools catering to a non-ultra Orthodox crowd in Jerusalem include the prestigious Pelech School, the Omaniyot Torah and Arts High School, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s Ohr Torah, and Gribetz’s former alma mater Evelina de Rothschild.

The Shalom Hartman Institute was founded by former Montreal pulpit Rabbi Professor David Hartman in 1976, and the new Hartman girls school is headed by his son Rabbi Professor Donniel Hartman, co-director of the Hartman Institute, and Dr. Chana Kehat, who founded the feminist religious organization Kolech (in Hebrew: “her voice”). The school will be based on the proven track record of the boys school with which it shares some facilities.

Kehat says the new school will be “Orthodox but open-minded,” and will employ a critical approach to the study of Jewish texts, along with the inclusion of volunteer work in the daily schedule, all elements that have made the boys school a top choice for modern religious families. A new program will bring a revolutionary sex education curriculum –one of the first ever for religious schools in Israel – to both the boys and girls.

Hartman is being careful not to call its new offering a “school,” but rather a “track.” The Israeli Education Ministry has a longstanding history of hostility towards new schools in Jerusalem. Donniel Hartman explained during an open house earlier this year that the educational authorities initially saw no need for new schools in the city, claiming there are enough seats in religious classrooms to accommodate all students. That seemed disproved by the turn out at the Hartman introductory evening: 120 chairs were set up; over 400 students and parents packed the house.

Ultimately, Hartman has been designated a savior of sorts for the Evelina school which has absorbed the biggest blow in enrollment following the opening of the new girls options in the city. Hartman has taken over some of Evelina’s facilities and faculty with the intention to eventually phase out the 148-year-old Jerusalem institution entirely within a few years.

Tehilla’s new principal, the American-born Gribetz, who headed up the junior high at Ramaz, a modern Orthodox high school in New York City, and who has taught at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Pelech since immigrating to Israel in 1977, has seen her share of opposition from the Education Ministry as well. In September 2005 she opened a first incarnation of her Tehilla school...without formal approval from the Education Ministry.

“Opening a school without a license is not unusual,” one Tehilla parent commented and, generally, the Ministry turns a blind eye. Not in Gribetz’s case: Tehilla lasted less than two months before being shut down.

The closure order seemed less motivated by protocol and more by the Education Ministry’s apprehension towards Gribetz’s vocal attempts to shake up the religious girls education system and import what the Ministry feared would be “foreign” concepts to education in Israel. At Evelina, for example, Gribetz introduced a wide range of subjects into the curriculum including Arabic, drama and sport, raised a not insignificant amount of money overseas, and transformed the school’s declining reputation. The Education Ministry said in a statement that “Ms. Gribetz's views and ideas were not included in our considerations for rejecting her request.” Gribetz has since received a court ruling allowing the opening of her new school.

Tehilla will emphasize a creative approach to learning and Gribetz has talked about bringing in well-known rabbis and professors to teach the girls Talmud as well as professional musicians and artists to run those respective programs. Admission to Tehilla is not based on grades. That’s in part because Gribetz also wants an “integrated” school with students from a wide spectrum of religious and socio-economic backgrounds, an antidote to the avowedly elitist Pelech.

Tehilla’s integrationist approach, ironically, may lead to the school becoming less pluralistic than Gribetz herself might prefer. When asked whether the school will have girls Torah readings, Gribetz equivocated, saying it will be up to the community to decide and that the school will be sensitive to families from more traditional backgrounds.

That’s not the case at Hartman which has committed itself to prayer opportunities for girls and even accepted a girl who puts on tefillin – in strictly Orthodox circles a practice reserved only for bar mitzvah and older boys – and whose mother is a well-known Jerusalem-based Jewish Renewal Rabbi.

Any way you look at it, education for religious girls in Jerusalem may never be the same.

Hosting a dinner party is an art. It takes careful planning and balancing. You’ve got to have the right number of men vs. women, singles vs. families, little kids, big kids, shy adults, dominant Type A’s and not too many teenagers obsessed with Battlestar Galactica.

Now, try hosting a dinner party every single week. Well, that’s what it’s like for us when it comes to the traditional Jewish custom of inviting guests for Shabbat and the Jewish holidays.

Fortunately, there are 52 weeks in a year and two main meals per Shabbat. So if every once in a while the guests don’t gel, it’s not the end of the world.

The holidays are different. They only come around once a year. And Rosh Hashana night is one of the most important holidays of them all…guest-wise at least.

Everyone gets dressed up in their very best clothes. The evening synagogue service is longer and more spirited than during the rest of the year; the food prepared more lavish. Anticipation always runs high.

In our house, we have a tradition of inviting several singles we are close with for Rosh Hashana evening each year. The group knows each other, everyone gets along.

Last year, however, for some reason the guest list grew. In addition to our regulars, we invited four other guests who needed a place to eat. It sounded great on paper. But the mix didn’t work.

I can’t put my finger on what went wrong. Maybe because people didn’t know each other. Maybe because it was a change in our “tradition.” But it felt awkward. There were two many moments of silence.

I hate silence.

Now, there is a tradition on Rosh Hashana of bringing out several symbolic foods and saying a blessing and short wish for the New Year over each. Jody thought it would be fun to try this and had prepared everything in advance.

I figured anything that might break the ice could help.

Jody started with the traditional apple in the honey. We said the blessing for fruit – borei pri ha’etz, then added “May God renew us for a good and sweet new year.”

The guests smiled politely, a couple of quiet comments were even made. But still, there it was, that sticky but not sweet silence. Even our 15-year-old son Amir, who’s usually quite garrulous, seemed to have lost his voice.

Next up were the pomegranates. I’ve always found pomegranates to be the oddest fruit. It takes forever to carve out the good stuff and then what do you get – these hard tiny seeds that never fail to fall on your nice white shirt, resulting in an irrevocable permanent stain on your record.

But I was willing to play along. I carefully raised the pomegranate and added the saying “May our merits increase as the seeds of a pomegranate.”

There were a few smiles, but still no measurable increase in conversation. What the heck was wrong with this group!

We continued on, downing a couple of bright purple beets (ditto on the aforementioned stain danger), several honey-glazed carrots, a crunchy bunch of celery (where’s my peanut butter?) and a plate of truly luscious fresh dates.

When we got to the green onions, Jody described a Moroccan tradition where participants gather up the stems “like you’re gathering up all your troubles” and then you toss them over your shoulders “to ward off the evil eye. We raised our onions and prepared to fling.

As I looked down the table, Amir made a mischievous gesture, as if instead of flicking the onion towards the wall behind him, he was aiming forward, straight at me. I returned his gaze and sent a stern nonverbal rejoinder that said in no uncertain terms “you wouldn’t dare.”

Boy was he shocked, then, when I let my onion loose and it landed dead center across his face!

Without missing a beet (so to speak), he flung a stalk back at me.

The guests looked at this father and son skirmish as if madness had taken root. And then…everyone joined in.

For the next five minutes, there were onions flying back and forth.

Plop, there went one into a water glass.

Splat, another on the floor. Thirteen-year-old Merav bent over to pick it up…whoops, now it’s in your hair, kiddo.

Eight-year-old Aviv tossed one straight up into the revolving fan that’s positioned directly above our table, resulting in a thunderstorm of finely chopped chives (OK, I made that one up, but it would have been fun if it happened).

Finally, the flinging and pelting petered out and the crowd settled down. But the ice had definitely been broken. The rest of the evening flowed like the honey on the apple that started us off in what seemed at this point like a different holiday altogether.

When the chicken soup came out, though, I saw Amir eyeing the matzo balls as a naughty smirk spread slowly across his face.

But I’ll save that story for next year…

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Splat! The food fight continues in this audio version.

“This is the longest Shabbat ever,” pouted thirteen-year-old Merav over the weekend. The reason for her distress was having to wait until Shabbat was over in order to claim her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from our local Steimatzky’s book store.

Religious Jews around the world were at a distinct disadvantage in the race to learn “who will live and who will die?” as advertisements for the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series have been teasing for months. The book went on sale at midnight Saturday morning, that is, on Shabbat. In Israel, that posed not only an economic, but a political problem.

According to the “Hours of Work and Rest Law,” stores in Israel are supposed to be closed on Shabbat; those that violate the law are to be fined. In practice, however, stores in many parts of the country other than Jerusalem and cities with a particularly religious character are regularly open. Harry Potter launching on Shabbat with all its incumbent publicity just brought the issue into Industry, Trade and Labor ministry officials’ faces, with minister Eli Yishai leading the anti-Harry Potter crusade. “Vendors should wait until after Shabbat,” Yishai of the religious Shas party said. “The law is that they can’t work on Shabbat.”

That didn’t stop Steimatzky from holding a gala party at the old Tel Aviv port early Saturday morning. Video screens broadcast an interview with Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling from London and many attendees came out in costume. Other branches of Steimatzky opened at 10:00 AM Saturday morning, while rival chain Tzomet HaSefarim began selling copies at 2:00 AM. Some 4,000 Israelis reportedly pre-ordered the English edition (the Hebrew translated version won’t be out until December). Three branches of the Tzomet HaSefarim chain were eventually fined NIS 5,000 each for opening on Shabbat.

In holy Jerusalem, the only way to get a copy of The Deathly Hallows before the end of Shabbat was a trip to the eastern part of the city, where the small Arab-run Educational Books store opened at 5:00 AM on Saturday morning. Owner Imad Muna had offered to take pre-orders for Jews from West Jerusalem who don’t handle money on Shabbat and would be willing to walk to his Salah a-Din Street store to pick up a copy.

Anxious readers ready to break the law could also download a copy of the book: someone had nabbed a pre-release copy and painstakingly scanned every single page and posted it as a grainy file on various Internet file sharing services. The New York Times confirmed last week that the web version was the real deal.

Back in the Blum household, there was no question of stealing and we weren’t about to hoof it over to East Jerusalem to gain a few extra hours of what would fast become essential Shabbat reading. We had to wait until our local Steimatzky opened at 9:30 PM an hour after the conclusion of Shabbat. Hence Merav’s increasing impatience.

“Only three hours and 25 minutes more,” she duly informed me as the dull Jerusalem afternoon heat began to wane.

Mind you, Merav wasn’t alone in her anticipation. I’ve been just as hotly awaiting the final book. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve read all the books twice already – once to myself and a second time aloud to nine-year-old Aviv before bed (a process that has taken several years).

Now, for Shabbat lunch, we had guests visiting from the States who had a teenage daughter the same age as Merav. Merav and Penina didn’t know each other, and their initial moments were awkward and tentative. As soon as they discovered their mutual Potter fandom, though, they became as thick as thieves, making a plan to get in line as soon as Shabbat was over to pick up the book. Penina wouldn’t be getting her own copy until she returned back to the U.S. in another two week’s time, giving Merav the definite home court advantage.

By 9:00 PM, the line outside the Emek Refaim branch of Steimatzky already stretched down the street past the new branch of Aroma. Merav and Penina were joined by a who’s who of English-speaking southern Jerusalem teenagers and adults, some in black capes, all moving excitedly towards the shop door where they were asked whether they wanted the British or U.S. version of the book (with the U.K. editions referring to the “Philosopher’s Stone” rather than the Sorcerer’s Stone as in the U.S.) The queue advanced quickly and by 9:45 PM the girls were home with the thick orange tome in hand.

“Let me see, I want to read the first page,” I implored but to deaf ears. Merav and Penina grabbed the book out of my eager hands, swept into Merav’s room and slammed the door.

An hour later, when I came to say good night, the two girls were hunched over their shared copy reading the book aloud in turns. Penina’s father eventually came, leaving Merav the onerous but exciting task of finishing all 700 pages before Thursday, when she was due to leave for two weeks of sleep-away camp, sadly sans Harry.

They say that the Harry Potter series has increased literacy among young people. It also apparently can turn complete strangers into friends. Maybe there is such a thing as magic after all.

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The audio (podcast) version of this post can be found here.

Fifteen-year-old Amir’s school held a graduation party last week. Parents were invited. The event epitomized everything I both love – and hate – about living in Israel.

First of all, the evening, which wasn’t limited to just the graduating class but included every year from 7th through 12th, was called to start at 7:00 PM. “But we don’t have to get there until 7:15 at the earliest,” Amir duly informed us. “Nothing ever starts on time in Israel.”

Which is of course true. Punctuality is not one of the Jewish State’s assets. Most of the time it’s mildly amusing – a bar mitzvah is scheduled to start at 8:00 PM but the guests don’t arrive until 9:30 PM – but sometimes I wonder what kind of message we’re giving our kids. If they had to catch a train in a place like Switzerland, they’d be left yodeling in the station half an hour late.

7:15 PM, it turned out, was being generous for Amir’s party. When we arrived, students, teachers and parents were milling around in the school courtyard. There didn’t appear to be any organization at all except for a table of boisterous 12th graders hawking “Persian Rice,” a concoction that was mixed with raisins, carrots, potatoes and appeared to have been deep fried – at NIS 5 (about $1.25) a plate, it was delicious!

The evening was supposed to be divided into two parts: presentations by the students and a festive concert. A printed schedule told us to go to the main study hall at 8:00 PM for the presentations. Foolish immigrants, we did as we were told, only to join just a half dozen other parents. After 20 minutes of waiting and wondering how the school was planning to cajole the growing crowd in the courtyard into the study hall, the students began their talks…to a mostly empty room.

This was especially disappointing for us because Amir was one of the presenters. He had been working on a very important project all year interviewing two Holocaust survivors and writing up the results. He and his partner Shai answered questions and their proud teacher highlighted a copy of their transcript on the overhead projector.

Amir didn’t seem to mind. “I’m not much of a public speaker,” he had told us sheepishly beforehand.

“What a strong presence your son has,” our friend Maya told us after the presentation as we shepped unexpected nachas.

By this point, people had started to take seats for the main performance – Moshe Lahav was presenting his “Big Tisch” show – a non-stop medley of classic Israeli “standards” – folk and rock songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. We sat down and after another infuriating 20 minutes of waiting, the show got underway.

Now up to this point, the disorganization that is inherent in Israeli events had been mildly annoying. It would have been more so, but after 13 years here, you almost forget that things could be different. OK, maybe not forget, but forgive a bit.

The goings on at the performance, however, exacerbated my already fizzing frustration. Not the show itself – that was fine and fun. It was the audience. Rather than sit politely in their chairs enjoying the music, on which the party organizers had obviously spent a lot of time and money, the mass of teenage boy energy in the space (Amir goes to an all boy’s school) erupted into a near frenzy of circle dancing, whooping, waving, male bonding, chanting and singing along at the top of their lungs to the music (most of it written 20 years before these kids were even born but somehow they knew all the words to anyway).

Students, parents and teachers alike all took the stage to boldly croon a few lyrics or an out-of-tune melody, tuning the show into a chaotic karaoke party with the musky air of Israel bravado. Song leader Moshe Lahav took it all in stride – but then I suppose he knew what he was getting into when he agreed to perform at a high school graduation in the first place.

About half way through the show, as Lahav was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of merriment encircling him, my wife Jody turned to me and said “It would never be like this in the States.” I started to sigh in empathy when she added unexpectedly, “Isn’t it great!”

And that was the point, wasn’t it? Because, despite all the aggravation, it is Israel’s chronic spontaneity that gives culture here its verve and spunk, an in-your-face intensity that you may love or hate but you can never ignore. The kids dancing and singing and enjoying life to the fullest – not the least the graduating seniors many of whom would be heading to the army in just a few months time – were a joy to watch, and a reminder of why we put up with all the crap: for such moments of sheer abandonment that only a society steeped in disorganization as an organizing principle can generate.

Will Amir be part of the graduating class of chaos in another two years? We can only hope so!

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The audio for this article can be found here.

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Before going for advanced certifications like 70-292 and 70-293, one might find covering basic courses like 220-601 or even 640-801 quite helpful. In fact, once done with these basic certifications, even 70-282 and 70-551 dont seem that difficult or uncomprehendable any more.

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More and more people are finding that online colleges can be a way to save money, since by getting an online degree you don't have to move to a new location to attend college. As more and more people get their degrees online the concept of online education is becoming more acceptable to employers as well.

It’s traditional to learn Torah on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which began this past Tuesday night. Nine-year-old Aviv’s class had a pre-Shavuot student-parent study session at school earlier in the week and my wife Jody and I went. But by the time we walked out, I found myself drawing political rather than religious conclusions.

We assembled in the school library to review several texts from the Midrash that concerned the custom of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. According to tradition, Jews in Biblical times were commanded to ascend to Jerusalem three times a year – for the holidays of Sukkot in the fall, and Pesach and Shavuot in the spring. But wouldn’t all the Jews going on holiday at the same time cause their homes to be left empty and unguarded, open to burglary and pilferage, the ever practical Midrash wondered?

The Midrsah describes several potentially unfortunate cases. In one, the homeowner forgets to lock the door before leaving. In another, nasty non-Jewish neighbors can barely bide the time until the Jewish family’s departure in order to proceed with plans to rob the home.

In both cases, a miracle occurs and the homes are spared. In the first, a snake magically wraps itself around the doorknob preventing entry by those who don’t belong. In the second, God sends angels to Ashkelon who take on the guise of family members to give the home the appearance of being occupied while its owners are actually away.

The stories are simple, charming and on the surface unassuming, seeming to do nothing more than support the Midrash’s main theme: that those who are going out to do a mitzvah cannot be harmed.

Except that they don’t ring entirely true. That is to say if you leave your house unlocked for an extended period, you most likely are going to get robbed. And if you’ve got overtly thieving neighbors, leaving town without any precautions in place and hanging a sign up essentially saying “here are the keys, come on in,” might not be the smartest thing to do. Why is the Midrash, I wondered, teaching what seem to be outright falsehoods?

Don’t be such a grump, you might say. These are kid-friendly stories designed to teach a lesson with a nice pat moral even if the plot isn’t particularly plausible. If so, then why is it that when it comes to contemporary politics, our leaders seem to be struck by the same kind of magical thinking – and this time there are no miracle snakes or angels coming to protect us.

This was the week that rockets returned to Sderot and the western Negev communities that border the Gaza Strip (not far from where we went biking back in February). True, the Kassam attacks have been going on pretty much non-stop since last summer’s escalation which ran in parallel with the Second Lebanon War, but the level of the violence in the past week (140 rockets, one dead, many more injured) was enough to send Israeli troops and tanks back into Gaza in what looks to be a protracted operation.

What struck me as unforgivable, though, was not the inevitable return of the rockets but the utter lack of preparedness that our government showed all along the Gaza border. It’s almost as if the “kids” in our government have been waiting for the kind of magic and miracles the Midrash promised to the Jews making the Shavuot pilgrimage to Jerusalem rather than making concrete plans to take matters into our own hands.  

Since the disengagement from Gaza two years ago, we’ve turned a blind eye as terrorists in the Gaza Strip have smuggled in mortars and guns and Kassams and anti-tank weapons. We’ve watched as Hamas has built, armed and trained a not insignificant army of more than 10,000. That army hasn’t yet mobilized (against Israel at least), though the fighting between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza shows that it is certainly ready to roll in a Palestinian civil war. Nevertheless, over the past six years (including before the disengagement), the southern area round the Gaza border has absorbed some 4,500 rockets.

The most high profile destination for those rockets has been the beleaguered border town of Sderot which this week was proposed to be granted the emergency status of a “front line” community (which carries with it various tax breaks) for the first time ever. Along with that change came shocking revelations about the city’s readiness for the next major Kassam salvo.

Of the 58 public bomb shelters in Sderot, only 23 are considered actually usable. The rest lack electricity, ventilation, even running water. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews pledged $1.5 million to rehabilitate this poor state of affairs. Then along came Arcadi Gaydamak, the Russian billionaire who is the closest Sderot has seen to a contemporary angel.

Last week, Gaydamak poured millions into busing out traumatized residents to hotel rooms in safer places. He then pledged to refurbish the shelters and build the safe rooms that the government has waffled over for so long – critical because many residents, particularly the elderly, can’t make it to the public shelters in the 20 seconds warning they’re given before a missile lands. Last Friday afternoon, Gaydamak offered to fund the cost to the tune of about $50 million. Gaydamak says that there are some 3,500 apartments that need to be reinforced or need security rooms built in them.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, not wanting to be out trumped by an angel (who just so also happens to be planning a run for mayor of Jerusalem), on Sunday finally committed to building 200 safeguarded rooms a month with construction supposed to begin immediately. Other rules were proposed as well, including cutting the usual red tape involved for individuals wanting to reinforce rooms and approving requests when only 50 percent of the residents in a building agree (today, it’s three-fourths).

But where has the government been for all this time? It’s been a year since a “ceasefire” went into place that stopped the bulk of the bombs from flying over the border. Why has Israel lifted nary a finger to protect the population in Sderot which this week was catapulted back into the front pages?

Perhaps the lesson my nine-year-old son learned this year for Shavuot needs to be recast in a modern context where the “thieving neighbors” were literally given the keys to our old homes (those evacuated during the Gaza disengagement) and, while not robbing us of our possessions per se, have stripped too many Israeli citizens of their freedom to live lives without fear.

Once upon a time maybe God sent snakes and angels. But today, we can’t wait for Russian billionaires with their own political agendas to swoop in and solve our problems. The lesson of modern day Israel is that we are in control of our own destiny despite the sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds and problems. We need to take the basic steps of locking the doors to the homes we have left using modern, practical and thoroughly non-magical means. Only then can we claim to have learned something useful from such a simple, charming and unassuming Midrash.

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The podcast (audio) version of this article can be found here.

Last Friday the Jerusalem Post, as part of a new arrangement to reprint articles from This Normal Life, published my piece “The Royal Mikve,” Jody and my adventure searching for a mikve while on vacation at the Dead Sea. The story, which chronicles a less than modest encounter with the staff in charge of the ritual bath at the Royal Hotel just south of Masada, was first printed on the This Normal Life blog in June 2006 and elicited strong responses at the time for its frank discussion of Jewish laws surrounding sex. But the Jerusalem Post “talkbackers” have taken the debate to a whole new level. In case you missed the piece last year, here’s the link to its page on the Jerusalem Post.

The discussion on the JPost.com website has been divided between folks who were offended by my broaching the subject matter entirely and those who thought me a loony for ascribing significance to the ritual of mikve in the first place.

Baruch summed up the first position succinctly. “So if the whole mikve experience is supposed to be discrete, why is the author sharing the experience with the entire world?” “You should read more Torah before you make your comments,” added Yosef. “I pray that HaShem (God) accepts the author’s t'shuva (repetentance) speeedlisly (sic) and that in the future he will be both more inspired and more discrete,” wrote Mookie. “Do you believe that, as an American, following the law is optional? Is filing taxes optional? The Jews have their own law, the Torah, that we are required to follow as well,” added Yoni.

Then there was Mo who threatened that I was in for a harsh response for not following the laws of mikve down to the letter. “Most of us are not refined enough to perceive how our actions affect our neshamah (our soul),” he wrote. “So the manufacturer (G-d) gave instructions on how to operate this precious equipment. Mikve is just one of the calibrating tools.  In the next world, you will see. Yes, G-d will fix the damage, but it is an unpleasant experience. This isn't a threat, just a fact of faith.”

David J was representative of the opposite tack. In his response, titled “That’s why there is Reform Judaism,” he wrote: “While I applaud the resourcefulness and religious fervor of the author and his wife, in my view it would have been a lot better to simply enjoy their love without feeling guilty. I am glad that my wife and I do not have to deal with those marital constraints while I still am able to feel comfortably Jewish. I hope G-d understands.”

Another talkbacker, Adam, supported David’s position: “You may have just as well dunked your wife in the hotel room tub and called it a day. Do you really think GOD knows the difference?” And a writer named Harris said that while he enjoyed the article “the entire trip was unnecessary. Any natural body of water, sea, pond or river is a natural mikve.” Yes, Harris, but have you ever tried to dunk in the Dead Sea? You can’t – you float!

The article elicited some helpful tips as well. Shalom wrote to share how he handled a similar situation at the Dead Sea. “Normally a woman who needs to go discretely asks another female guest to act as attendant. One does not use their husband for the job!” A writer named Shlomo concurred. “My wife went to the Royal. She found a religious woman in the foyer of the hotel and asked her to accompany her.” Maybe, but somehow the idea of asking a complete stranger to come witness you naked in a pool strikes me as more than a little uncomfortable!

Then there was Jonathan who berated me for expecting a lower price. “Mikve is a service like any other. If you get a service that is in low demand that involves complicated technical laws that must be adhered to, wouldn't you expect to pay for it? Has it never occurred to you that the 25 shekels you pay in Jerusalem are probably subsidized?” OK, but Israel already pays residents when they have a baby – new mothers walk out of the hospital with a check in hand. By that logic, shouldn't foreplay carry a discount too?

While I’m delighted my article elicited such strong response - both positive and negative -  one comment did disturb me. A woman named Eileen wrote: “All I can say about the article is that I was quite disgusted by it. For someone who has been buying the Post religiously every Friday for the past 27 years, articles like yours puts me off buying the Post forever.”

Eileen’s comment reminds me of an exchange from the Howard Stern movie “Private Parts.” When Stern’s antagonistic station manager asks how it can be that Stern fans listen for an average of an hour and 20 minutes, far above the average, he is told the most commonly given answer is “I want to see what he’ll say next.” What about the people who hate Stern, the manager asks? They listen for nearly twice as long, comes the reply. Why? The most common answer: “I want to see what he’ll say next.”

While I’m not in any way comparing myself with Howard Stern, I do hope that Eileen and all the other Jerusalem Post talkbackers who took issue with the piece will stick around and keep reading This Normal Life. Because you never do know what I’ll write about next!

Nothing upsets me quite as much as when someone deliberately goes out of their way to harm one of my friends. That’s apparently what happened with Hasidic reggae superstar Matisyahu who I wrote about previously in this blog. I recently had a chance to catch up with pal Aaron Bisman, Matisyahu’s longtime manager and the man who’s credited with discovering the Jewish rapper five years ago at New York University and molding his initial career

What happened is that a year ago, in March 2006, Matisyahu abruptly dumped Bisman, 27, in favor of big shot manager Gary Gersh, the former president of Capitol Records and the force behind Nirvana’s success. Gersh currently also manages the Foo Fighters. Matisyahu had another three years to go on his contract and the surprise switch has done a not insignificant amount of damage to Bisman’s management company, the not-for-profit JDub Records, which was counting on Matisyahu to provide a substantial chunk of its $1 million annual operating budget.

Now, switching managers and weaseling out of contracts is standard operating procedure in Hollywood and Matisyahu, whose first major label studio release on Sony, "Youth" (jointly produced with JDub) debuted on the Billboard 200 at number 4, selling nearly 120,000 copies in its first week, might have been expected to seek new management when his contract expired, or even to approach his former managers with an equitable deal. Matisyahu may even have had some legitimate concerns when he told his former management team, “I don't know if you guys are old enough or have enough experience" to take me to the next level.

But Matisyahu is not Paris Hilton (God forbid). He has built his fame on his religious convictions. When I wrote about Matisyahu last year, I questioned whether he was the “real deal.” Could the whole religious shtick be just that – a gimmick to help promote yet another beat-boxing white rapper who wouldn’t have seen nary a penny without donning a black hat and a bushy beard? Bisman assured me that Matisyahu was a true believer, as righteous a reggae rocker as they come.  

Now I’m not so sure. An article in Billboard Magazine quotes unnamed sources who say that JDub had lost Matisyahu “thousands” from bad deals. Bisman says he has no idea what Matisyahu is talking about, but he’s not surprised by the nasty turn: Matisyahu’s new manager Gersh is notorious for breaking contracts, Bisman said, and concocted an elaborate tale of misdeeds by Matisyahu’s former management.

To Bisman, it all seems not a little bit disingenuous. It was Bisman, for example, who convinced Matisyahu to play clubs and not synagogues and got talk show host Jimmy Kimmel to let Matisyahu perform, not just appear as a guest, on a 2005 TV slot that resulted in a highly successful viral marketing campaign. Matisyahu’s first CD, “Live at Stubb’s,” sold more than 500,000 copies and Matisyahu has opened for the likes of Sting (during a performance in Israel) and has been featured on a host of top live gigs such as the Lolapalooza festivals. If there were thousands lost, as the Billboard article claimed, there were also many more thousands made.

I’m not alone in my outrage. Blogger Mobius, who claims to have been the first to have written about Matisyahu and leaked his first MP3s, called Matisyahu a “false prophet of our own making, who traded in his most devout ‘true believers’ merely to maximize his cashflow potential.” Writing on the Jewschool blog, Mobius (who also designed and built Matisyahu’s website), says “there’s no chasid where there is no chesed, and to those of us who have been Matisyahu’s most committed supporters, this is a turn most unkind.

“His breach of contract is a clear violation of halacha” (Jewish law), Mobius continues. “I can only watch in horror and disappointment as he presses a knife firmly into the back of the man squarely responsible for his stardom – the man under whose chupah (wedding canopy) I once watched him sing.”

JDub issued a statement after Matisyahu informed his former management last year that its management services were no longer needed. "Matisyahu's sudden decision to sever ties with JDub came as a complete shock to our organization. From the beginning, our relationship was forged on the same ideals, beliefs and long-term vision: to promote proud, authentic Jewish voices in popular culture. Matisyahu preaches spirituality, unity, and honesty without letting ego or other desires interfere. We believe his rash termination of his relationship with JDub demonstrates that success has clouded his judgment and core ideals."

JDub promptly hired a legal team which added that "JDub will take whatever steps are necessary to recover its damages from Matisyahu and anyone else who may be liable to JDub in connection with his conduct."

Matisyahu’s behavior is, frankly, bad business and bad for the Jews to boot. Matisyahu traded on religion and Jewish identity in building a career. He convinced skeptics he was not just in it for a quick buck. He made people believe that a religious Jew could have a successful Hollywood career. Now that all looks like bad Hanukah gelt. I feel used. Matisyahu’s most recent release is, ironically, called “No Place to Be.” A prophetic title? It certainly has no place in our CD players at home anymore.

Bisman’s JDub and Matisyahu recently settled for an undisclosed amount out of court. "Although they have decided to terminate their business relationship, they wish each other well in the future," the parties said in the statement. For his part, Bisman told me he is pleased to be able to move on, though certainly not with the actions that prompted the drama. “Needless to say we aren’t speaking as there is nothing to say,” Bisman said.

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The audio version of this post can be found here.

Lately I’ve been using a new Web 2.0 Internet service called Geni. It’s deceptively simple and intensely addictive.

The Geni website basically makes building a family tree fast and easy (“Geni” is short for “genealogy”). When you first come to the site, Geni asks you to enter your name, your parents and any siblings. You can optionally enter additional data such as where you live, what you do, your hobbies and favorite activities. You can upload a picture too.

As your family tree grows you can zoom in and out, switch views to see a particular family member’s tree, and read text summaries like “Chaim is your first cousin’s sister-in-law’s half brother.” So far, lots of fun, though nothing that hasn’t existed before in the world of the web.

Where Geni gets interesting is how it promotes itself virally. Every time you add a name, you can include an email address. Geni then sends a message inviting that person to join your tree and start entering data of his or her own. In that way, your family tree grows as other people do the heavy lifting. Geni sends out an email summary of every week of who’s joined and allows you to enter missing addresses directly into the email.

To give you an example, I started by entering 21 names into Geni. I knew the email addresses of 15 of those people and they were automatically invited, a number of whom immediately began filling in their part of the tree. After about 3 weeks of using Geni, there are now 472 people in my tree dating as far back as the 1850s – to my great-great grandfather who lived in Berlad Romania – and as far a field as my aunt’s ex-husband’s sister’s family. That comes out to 115 blood relatives and 356 in-laws.

Ultimately, Geni intends to allow seemingly unconnected families to find each other. Geni’s motto is “everyone’s related” and, says CEO David Sachs, a former top PayPal exec, “When separate trees start to overlap, Geni will provide the option of merging them. Eventually, the goal is to get to one family tree of the whole world.” The largest Geni tree to date has 4,216 family members on it.

Now, you might be asking just about now what does Geni have to do with “normal life” in Israel and why am I writing about it on the This Normal Life blog? Well, I’ve long been fascinated by family trees and the surprising interconnections between people. We discovered a few years ago that we were distantly related by marriage to our next-door neighbors.

I was also thinking a lot about family during a recent visit to Israel by my in-laws. We don’t have much family living in Israel – beyond our neighbors, just a couple of cousins but no brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or grandparents. It would be great to discover via Geni a whole new set of relatives here in the Holy Land. The hardest part for us about making aliyah, without question, was leaving family behind. I not infrequently wonder what it would have been like to have lived closer to family, to be able to make casual visits rather than monumental trips where we try to jam in a year’s worth of memories into ten days.

And so, over the course of my in-laws recent trip, we ate out in no less than five restaurants, feasting on pineapple/coconut milk chicken, spinach ravioli and spicy polenta; trekked to the Dead Sea where we floated in the salt water pool at the Ein Gedi Spa and smeared therapeutic mud all over ourselves; and visited the brand new Herzl Museum in Jerusalem (well worth a visit!) The kids had loads of quality time with their Safta and Papa Mike, playing endless games of “Oh Heck” (it has a different “official” name but this is a family-oriented column) and shopping at the mall on no less than three occasions. It was by all accounts a very successful visit.

But is it “normal” to live like this – cramming as if for a school exam because family visits are so few and far between? Do people who don’t move 10,000 miles away from their birthplace necessarily see their family more often, or is that just one of the fantasies those of us in Israel hold about life in North America? Was it different in the old days before the advent of cheap transcontinental airplane tickets and Internet telecommuting? Did our great grandparents all live together in the shtetl like in Fiddler on the Roof, or were they just as geographically dispersed as today, if not by choice then by war, pogroms, and forced resettlement?

One of the goals of our moving to Israel, paradoxically, was to put an end to this wandering Jew phenomena, for our family at least. To bring our immediate family to a place where the urge to disperse is tempered by the power of peoplehood.

And yet, as Israel Independence Day approaches, emphasizing the importance of a single place of refuge for the Jewish people, I can’t help but ask: is it enough?

When we were at the Dead Sea on vacation, we bumped into a family who told us that they this was the first time they had all been together in many years. The parents made aliyah 30 years ago (our story in another 17 years, perhaps!) Today, however, one child lives in Miami, another in India and a third just returned to Israel from a long sojourn in France.

When we commented that it must be hard on the parents who left their own families back in the States so long ago to move here, only to see their children subsequently scatter, one of the kids commented, perhaps a bit too derisively: “well, they started it.”

That’s true. We can only set in motion what we hope is the best path for our kids with the most likely outcome. The rest is up to them.

What Jody and I have hopefully done by moving to Israel is to start a new Israel “line” of our family tree that now exists where once it was bare. And that’s where programs like Geni tie in to the whole emigration/immigration experience. Geni very effectively shows the power of how two people, a mother and a father, husband and wife, can generate tens and hundreds of descendants in just a few generations. We can see it already with our grandparents; in another 20 years, we’ll see it with our grandchildren.

Geni can't guarantee that families will stay together in the same location. But as our kids have kids and decide where they want to live, hopefully Geni, or its "Web 3.0" successor, will be there to document it.

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The audio version of this post can be found here.