Maccabee t-shirt on sale from Australian website

Hanukah is probably the most confounding holiday on the Jewish calendar. If we move beyond the toys and the gelt of 20^th century Christmas catch-up, the story itself has been interpreted in so many ways that it’s difficult to get a lock on the pshat (the simplest understanding).

For what is Hanukah? Is it the tale of a miraculous jug of oil that lasted for eight days, which today is commemorated in our lighting the candles on the hanukiah (the Hanukah menorah)? Or is it an historical account of a great military victory reestablishing, however briefly, Jewish sovereignty in our ancient land?

The answer is both…and neither.

It was “parent’s night” at the mechina (the pre-army seminary) where our daughter is spending a year before being drafted; a year of studying, volunteering and learning to get along with a group of forty other 18-year-olds (I wrote about it here). Part of the evening included a parent-child activity where we read selections from the first and second books of Maccabees, the two primary Biblical-era texts that refer to Hanukah (but which did not make it into the Hebrew canon).

The books present very different messages from the holiday. In First Maccabees, written about 40 years after the event itself by someone who presumably participated in one way or another, there is no mention of that universally known jug of oil at all; it’s all about the rebellion against the idolatrous Greeks and their assimilated Hellenistic Jewish wannabes. The second book, written 100 years after the first, downplays the military success and introduces the oil with an emphasis on God and miracles.

Historically, the attempt by the rabbis of the Talmud to sideline the fighting narrative makes sense, explained the head of our daughter’s mechina. There was at the time both a struggle between the rabbinic and priestly leaders for ascendency (the Maccabees were priests), and a desire to caution against military hubris (while the Maccabean revolt was successful, the next Jewish rebellions led to both the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from most of the land of Israel, definitely not events to emulate).

Seemingly ignoring the historical post-rebellion fall out, modern Zionists have eagerly adopted the holiday as emblematic of the brave fighters who liberated the land in our days. Whether that represents a miracle depends on one’s political and religious orientation. But there is no lack of Maccabean symbolism: many of our sport teams are named Maccabi and, in a striking irony, so is the Israeli version of that greatest representation of Greek culture the Olympics (dubbed the Maccabiah Games).

But there’s a darker side to the Hasmonean era military victory that tends to be whitewashed. The Maccabees were religious extremists; their goal was to rid the country of not only its Greek overloads but to compel the overwhelmingly secular Jewish population to adopt more stringent religious practices. Anshel Pfeffer, in this weekend’s Haaretz cites the late Christopher Hitchens as referring to the Maccabees as “bloodthirsty religious fundamentalists.”

Clearly over the top, but that interpretation seems chillingly appropriate this Hanukah as modern day extremists are once again bent on imposing their rigid agenda on the wider population. Open any Israeli newspaper in the last two weeks and it’s all over the front page:  – from coerced separation between men and women on buses and sidewalks, to the removal of women’s images on outdoor advertising in Jerusalem, to the truly horrendous verbal and spitting attacks on an eight-year-old girl for “lack of modesty” revealed during a weekend TV news show. And don’t even get me started about what’s going on with the “price tag” burning of mosques, unprovoked uprooting of Palestinian olive trees, and now even Jewish attacks on Israeli army bases.

Is this what the pioneers intended when they adopted the symbol of the Maccabees as their own?

Perhaps what we need today is to look at the story truthfully and learn from it with eyes wide open. To quote from Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Religious power without accountability, without compassion and tolerance, necessarily leads to corruption (as happened, by the way, to the original Maccabees once they assumed the throne in ancient Judea).

The time has come to meld the two books of the Maccabees. Let us focus on light – the key symbol from the second book – as a metaphor for clarity; for the kind of clear thinking that can temper the violence of the first book. It’s as critical today as it was then. That would be a true Hanukah miracle for our times.

I ranted yesterday about Hanukah on Israelity.

Segways at the tayelet

The holiday of Tisha B’av has befallen us (yes, pun intended) and Jews all over the world are spending the day reflecting, fasting or otherwise using the holiday’s restrictions to avoid shaving and bathing for a day.

On the evening of Tisha B’av, it is traditional to hear the book of Lamentations (Eicha) being read in a communal setting. In Jerusalem, there is no lack of options. One of the most moving is outdoors at the Haas Promenade (the tayelet in Hebrew), which overlooks the Old City. If one isn’t sure why we still bother to mourn the destruction of the Temples so many centuries ago on this day (especially when we have regained sovereignty over the land), you can just gaze from this lookout point and imagine what if the Jewish state no longer existed and access to what Judaism calls its most holy places was cut off (as it was between 1948-1967). Rabbi Stewart Weiss’s essay in the Jerusalem Post drives the point home.

But there’s a “lighter side” to Tisha B’av, as my experience last night at the tayelet proved. The scene is quite remarkable: tens of different minyans, small and large, bumping up against each other on the paved upper part of the promenade, on the grass below, and even further down in the direction of the Peace Forest. Unlike at the Western Wall, many are co-ed. The participants range from overseas yeshiva students to egalitarian vegetarians (each with their own group and leader).

I chose to attend a mixed modern Orthodox reading. I arrived late and sat near the edge of the congregation while a man chanted the 5 chapters of Eicha in a soulful yet dirge-like voice. About halfway through, another minyan set up camp directly above me and began their own reading of Eicha. The two were out of sync, the interplay playing out like an impromptu and not entirely welcome duet.

The effect didn’t make for easy listening; I eventually closed my book and stared into Silwan, the Arab village surrounding the City of David, adjacent to the Old City. Then, inexplicably, I heard a rumble from not too far away. It got louder and closer until about 15 men and women on Segways came barreling through our Eicha encampment. The Segways  stayed to the pavement, but it was still an amusing juxtaposition – the tall, sleek, two-wheeled vehicles with their helmeted riders bobbing back and forth, zipping past hundreds of modern day mourners seated on the ground in the dark with flashlight illuminating their prayer books.

The Segways made a second pass before leaving us in peace, but I couldn’t help thinking: if the goal is to remember the bad things that have befallen the Jewish people, some in this very spot, and in my case by soaking in the visual environment rather than following the text word-by-word, couldn’t you do it just as well from a Segway as from a 2000-year-old scroll?

With the Segways gone, it was back to the dueling Eicha’s. Remarkably, the two readings ended at the same point – kudos to the conductor (or as some would say the Conductor with a capital C).

This post appeared earlier in the day on Israelity.

The date of the next bonfire is no vanity

The Jewish “bonfire” holiday of L’ag b’Omer is this Saturday night. Or maybe not.

L’ag b’Omer commemorates the day some 2,000 years ago that a plague killing 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva ended. “L’ag” stands for lamed-gimel – in Hebrew the number 33. The Omer refers to a period of 49 days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot. So L’ag b’Omer is the 33^rd day of the Omer.

There’s a bunch more symbolism – check out this Wikipedia entry – but in modern times, the holiday has been celebrated by building bonfires, toasting marshmallows and barbequing steaks (what Israeli holiday doesn’t involve the ubiquitous mangal?)

This year, the 33^rd day of the Omer falls on Saturday night. But since kids tend to get started early, hauling their cache of wood to an open space and getting the fire going before sunset, there is a not unlikely chance of “Sabbath desecration” where prohibited activities might take place before Shabbat has officially ended.

Which led last week to Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef along with Israel’s chief rabbis issuing a ruling that the holiday should be put off until Sunday night.

All well and good. It’s a religious holiday after all and the rabbis know best. But the general population might not have gotten the message.

You see, L’ag b’Omer is school holiday too. Sunday is an official day off. Sunday night, it’s back to the books as the matriculation exam season races towards an unholy conclusion. Are all those kids – especially the ones who don’t give much of a hoot what the chief rabbis say – going to push off the fun for a day? Will there be two L’ag b’Omer’s this year?

Another “burning” question lingers: what took them so long? The ruling about the delay of the holiday was only issued last week. Didn’t the rabbis know about this holiday, well, like a hundred years ago? The calendar is fixed these days – we no longer mark the start of the new month by burning torches on the tops of hilltops.

Delaying the holiday would be just fine for our family. We’ll be away this weekend at the Jacob’s Ladder music festival and won’t get back home until late Saturday night. But I have a feeling that we’ll be smelling a few roasted  marshmallows on the way home.

This article appeared in the Israelity blog early this week.

It’s been an incredible few weeks around Aviv’s bar mitzvah. Family came in from overseas, we had a slew of great activities (from a lovely walk in the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens to a treasure hunt in the Old City – more on that in an upcoming post) all leading up to the big day. The bar mitzvah itself was held on Shushan Purim, March 20, 2011, with the Nava Tehila Jewish Renewal congregation in which we are active. Over 250 people came out to celebrate with us in the event hall at the AACI in Jerusalem.

For those of you who couldn’t make it – as well as those who wish to remember it – I put together all the material from the event and posted it to Aviv’s bar mitzvah blog, which also includes a summary of every one of the 12 tiyulim we hiked in Israel over the last year. To view it all – Jody’s speech, Aviv’s drash, the video I put together with Aviv’s friends and family, and a special song composed by our friends in honor of the occasion – visit the blog and enjoy!

Here’s a 4-minute “highlights” reel of the evening:

In the video, you’ll see some of the folks who were there (in great costumes); Aviv, Merav and Amir reading from the megilla; and the special Nava Tehila “band” leading a musical rock and roll Maariv service set to tunes from the Beatles and beyond.

Rabbi Sivan Maas

The Jerusalem Post reported this weekend about a rabbinic ordination ceremony of a very different kind. I was there at the event too, which took place in December. What made it all so unique was that the new rabbis were all entirely secular. And they don’t believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense of a personal deity that intervenes in one’s daily activities.

Secular rabbis? Isn’t that an oxymoron? No, says Tmura, the Israeli arm of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, the rabbinic and leadership school of a small Jewish movement of about 30,000 members worldwide that’s mostly flown under the radar.

Tmura’s 12 freshly minted rabbis have set for themselves a formidable task: to bring Jewish content and ritual based on (but not obligated by) tradition to the 67% of Israelis who define themselves as either secular or “not very religious.”

Formidable because non mainstream Jewish denominations haven’t exactly been welcomed with outstretched arms in Israel, where Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and even Jewish Renewal congregations are vastly outnumbered by their Orthodox brethren, and where the average secular Israeli holds by the old saw that the shul he or she doesn’t go to has to be frum by the standards of the increasingly strict Orthodox Rabbinate.

To wit: in an interview on Israel Channel 10’s Miktzoanim (“Professionals”) morning program, host Shira Flicks launched immediately into a friendly (but certainly serious) banter on what to call Tmura dean Rabbi Sivan Maas – Rabah, or maybe Rabanit (both feminine versions of the Hebrew “Rav”). Maas playfully responded to the latter, “That would be my husband.”

Imagine, then, Flicks’ response to the concept of a “secular rabbi,” who believes in “God as a literary character.”

Tmura is trying hard to play catch up. The organization has graduated some 23 rabbis in the last three years and has a sister organization called Tkasim (“ceremonies”) that helps non-religious Israelis created humanistic life cycle events – weddings, funerals and bar and bat mitzvah’s – along with Shabbat and holiday celebrations.

In conjunction with its ordination ceremony in December, Tmura sponsored a full day conference featuring biblical-themed lectures on topics such as “human rights issues during the biblical era,” “the bible as inspiration for contemporary art,” and “comparing lifecycle events, ceremonies and celebrations during biblical times with contemporary Judaism.”

The organization is also trying to arrange a monthly humanistic Kabbalat Shabbat service at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. Such gatherings already exist on a number of secular kibbutzim where Tmura-trained rabbis live, Rabbi Maas told me.

“The kibbutzim are going through a fascinating process of ‘re-comunitizing’ themselves in the post-privatization stage, realizing they want a community but they also need capable professional leaders to do the job,” Maas said.

The time for Tmura may be ripe. With recent polls showing that a majority of Jewish Israelis favor the recognition of non-Orthodox conversions, and with the creation of some 30 new mixed secular-religious congregations in the last few years, Tmura’s alternative agenda could gain traction,

It may not be the “revolution” that many of the organization’s new secular rabbis called for at the ordination, but it certainly won’t be for lack of trying.

This article on Tmura appeared yesterday on Israelity.

Hodaya, the most famous "datlashit" from the TV show "Srugim"

In the U.S. and most western countries, Jews tend to identify their religious affiliation through one of the major Jewish movements, be it Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Jewish Renewal, and even Secular Humanistic Judaism. Not so in Israel, where one’s religious standing is far more nuanced. In a country that loves army-influenced acronyms, a whole school of literary shortcuts and word play have sprung up.

The two simplest and most frequent appellations are “dati” and “hiloni” – “religious” and “secular” respectively. Within the religious category, however, there is “haredi” (“ultra-Orthodox”); “dati leumi” (“national religious” also known as “modern Orthodox” and the basis for the main characters in the hit Israeli TV drama “Srugim”); “dati lite” (religious but not too stringent, as in “I’ll kiss you and still put on tefilin in the morning”); “masorti” (“conservative” but with a lower case “c” – as in, “we keep kosher but watch a movie after Shabbat dinner”); and a pejorative label used by haredim to describe anyone less frum than them: “reformim” (no translation required).

The strangest? “Hardal” (an acronym for “haredi leumi” – for those ultra-Orthodox who also serve in the army). The funny part is that the word in modern Hebrew also means “mustard.” Does that mean that they prefer spicy condiments on their glatt kosher army rations?

Where it gets really interesting is that there is a whole new emerging lexicon of terms for religion “in transition.” For the formerly religious, there’s “datlash” (“dati l’sheavar,” literally “religious in the past”) and its parallel “hozer b’shealah” (“return to questioning”). Going in the other direction and becoming religious, you can say “hozer b’tshuva” (“returning to repentance”) or “ba’al tshuva” (a true “master” of repentance).

A religious person who believes men and women should receive equal rights to be called up to the Torah would be a “datash” (for “dati l’shivyoni,” a religious egalitarianist), while someone who thinks he or she might become religious down the road (maybe after marrying a religious person – these kinds of “mixed marriages” are becoming increasingly common in Israel – would be a “datla” for “dati l’etid” (literally “religious in the future”).

My favorite of all is a new one I just heard from an Israeli friend: “Hashash” (for “hiloni shomer Shabbat” – apparently someone who is entirely secular but also keeps the Sabbath). The word in modern Hebrew also means “fear” or “apprehension” which led my friend to say to me “I have a hashash that you are really a hashash.” Perhaps she would prefer that I was a “hozer b’shealah l’sheavar” – a religious person who becomes non-religious and then becomes religious again.

Confused? Just invent one of your own!

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My first foray into Hebrew jargon was published on the Israelity blog.

Resting at the top of the mountain

In 1947, the U.N. partition plan designated the sleepy port of Eilat as the southernmost tip of the new Jewish state. It wasn’t until the final days of the War of Independence, however, when Israel took control of the town in an operation that surprised the small platoon of Jordanian troops stationed in mud huts in what was then called Umm Rashrash.

The Jordanians surrendered without a fight and, today, the Red Sea border town is a major international tourist destination, favored by Europeans escaping the cold winters of the continent.

The war for Eilat is not quite over, though. It’s now being fought in the airwaves for control of our cell phones.

We were on a week’s vacation in Eilat last week and went for a hike in an area called Amram’s Pillars, west of Highway 90, the main artery connecting the far north and southern poles of the country. We chose a barren trail that climbed steeply up Mount Amram for a stunning view of the entire Eilat area, before plunging down into the mysterious red limestone rock formations where the ancient Egyptians once mined copper some 3,000 years ago.

As we trekked up and down the hills, our cell phones all began to ring at once. Who wanted us so badly when we were communing with the infinite desert?

It was Jordan calling. Or more accurately, our Israeli cell phone provider Orange was warning us that we were no longer connected to Israel’s mobile network and that any call we made would be routed through Amman at a hefty premium.

A few seconds later, it was Orange again, welcoming us back to Israel. And then it was Jordan calling. And Israel. The virtual tussle for atmospheric supremacy went on for much of the day, each time resulting in a barrage of SMS’s.

The funny thing was, despite our cell phones’ warnings to the contrary, we had no usable reception. When our group got separated at one point, not even our friendly neighbor King Abdullah could intervene to get our phones to connect.

Two days later, we set out for another tiyul, this one along the Egyptian border, through the Red Canyon and up an equally spectacular lunar landscape. This time, though, there was no aerial tug of war.

Egypt, having received the Sinai back twice – after the 1956 and Yom Kippur wars – had apparently conceded the airwaves to Israel.

Our tiyul to Amram’s Pillars was Aviv’s ninth “bar mitzvah tiyul.” You can read his description about the trip and see lots of great pictures here on his bar mitzvah blog.

UPDATE: Aviv’s tenth bar mitzvah hike blog post is now live. Read it here.

This post appeared earlier this week on the Israelity blog.

We recently attended a brit mila in Jerusalem. Prior to the ceremony, the father of the newborn expressed some misgivings about the whole concept of circumcision.

Of course my friend was going to go through with the ceremony – this is Israel, after all, where for a Jewish boy not to be circumcised is rare (although not entirely unknown – see the Israeli anti-circumcision association Kahal). But my friend did share with me a link to the documentary “Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision” (you can see it on YouTube here).

It’s a tough video, at times visually graphic, but more than that, it raises questions that are not easy for a person striving to live a modern, ethical life to balance with an ancient commitment to Judaism that has spanned hundreds of generations.

“Cut” was produced by Eli Ungar-Sargon, who grew up Orthodox. The film includes interviews with a wide variety of Jewish personalities from all walks of the religious spectrum, as well as doctors, historians and part time philosophers.

In the end, my friend’s son’s brit went off without a stitch, so to speak. There was plenty of singing (and some dancing), a festival meal and much food for thought.

If you can find the time, watch the film (it’s an hour long) and leave your comments at the end of this post.

Seducing spies...a crowning Jewish achievement?

Sometimes, Jewish law can be taken to the most unlikely extremes. Witness the report in Ynet this week that it’s OK for an Israeli woman to seduce an enemy agent for the sake of national security. Indeed, it’s an important mitzvah.

The ruling was made by Rabbi Ari Shvat in a publication from the Zomet Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to merging halacha (Jewish law) with modern Israeli life.

Rabbi Shvat based his surprising conclusion on the story of the biblical Esther who sleeps with Persian King Ahasuerus to save the Jewish community. He also cites Yael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who seduces and kills the Canaanite general Sisera.

The ruling is not simply the result of an afternoon of Talmudic musing: according to some foreign media reports, what is known in intelligence circles as a “Valentine operative” or a “honey trap” may have been used to lure Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh to his death in Dubai earlier this year. Nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu may have also succumbed to such temptations on his way to Israeli incarceration.

Of course, there’s got to be a catch. And it’s a big one. If the Israeli operative is married, she must divorce prior to the mission and remarry afterward. If not, even if it’s sanctioned by the government, she’ll still be committing adultery. And, oh yes, she’ll never be able to marry a Cohen (a Jew from the Priestly caste).

But no matter, says Shvat. These kinds of missions “may naturally be tasked to women who are already promiscuous.”

That doesn’t sound very kosher to me.

This post appeared earlier this week on Israel21.

Alon Tavor Field School

What is it about Jews and buffets? We see one and we go hog-wild, pardon the expression. And buffets are big business in Israel.

Our most recent encounter with the ubiquitous Israeli buffet was during a Shabbaton earlier this year with our synagogue at the Alon Tavor Field School. Some explanations first.

Field schools are the cheapest (and therefore a very popular) way for a medium-sized group to get away for a weekend. Run by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the dozen or so field schools in Israel provide rooms, dining and educational hiking and walking tours.

Accommodations are extremely spartan: a room with bunk beds, a small fridge, and showers that invariably flood and need to be mopped up with a squeegee.

For our weekend away, we had three meals included: dinner, lunch and the traditional Shabbat “third meal.” Dinner and lunch consist of meat – chicken legs, breaded schnitzel (my favorite because the coating keeps the meat hot) and some kind of mystery concoction – while the third meal is always dairy with a cheese platter, salad, hard-boiled eggs and potato burekas.

The food is at best on a par with army fare. Greasy, fatty and over salted. And yet we lap it up. Indeed, I refused to leave the buffet without sampling everything in the heated bins. Judging from what I saw on the plates of many of my fellow congregants, I was not alone.

Why do we do it – pig out when the food is so awful? I recall while growing up there was an all-you-can-eat place near our house. We only ate there once, maybe twice, during my entire childhood. My parents knew that, no matter the quality of the dining, we wouldn’t be able to restrain ourselves – and then would complain about our bulging bellies the next day.

Maybe there’s some sort of Holocaust mentality going on here – eat now because you never know when your next meal will be? But I don’t have any direct connection with the Holocaust, nor do most of my friends.

Fortunately, not every buffet in Israel is bad. Hotel breakfasts in the country are renowned the world over for being delightful and usually healthy (although I have never figured out why anyone would want a green salad to start the morning – bring on the eggs and kosher bacon for me). And five-star hotels do a stellar job with the rest of the meals – one Shabbat dinner we had a choice between gefilte fish and sushi.

It goes without saying that I left our weekend at the field school satiated if not satisfied. I made sure to fit in an extra long exercise session Sunday morning. Now I’m back to normal weight…at least until the next time. Can you say boiled carrots and potatoes swimming in a languid pool of chicken fat? I’m already lining up at the buffet cart.

I originally over-ate at the Israelity blog.