Using our names

"Many Irish Jews," said the Jewish Museum curator to me, "came here by mistake.  They came from Poland and Lithuania, and when the ship captain called out 'Cork,' they thought he said 'New York.'
So they stayed."

I'm not sure about the historic truth of the statement, but it makes a nice story. I've spent the last few days in Ireland and it's been a fascinating experience.  There are countries where we say to American Jewish tourists "don't identify as Americans." There are others where we say, "don't identify publicly as Jews." There are even some countries that love us, and we jokingly tell Canadians and Australians to pretend to be Americans.

Ireland is different.  Warm, kind, friendly. Tolerant and beautiful.

But in Ulster, Northern Ireland, there was something else too. Decades of the "Troubles" have carved a deep chasm in society.  The murals are everywhere, the memorials, the weight of history. I went to the second-most bombed hotel in the world, the Europa (#1 is the Mumbai Hilton).  And I toured the worst areas of sectarian divide, the "Peace Wall," the Orange marching areas, and more.

There are a lot of Palestinian flags draped from windows in the Republican areas. A lot of notices and slogans calling for Palestine to overthrow Israeli rule.

At the Republican museum, amidst Soviet-made weaponry and pro-Palestinian notices. I met with Sean, a big, strong middle-aged Irish Catholic man with a massive tattoo of Che Guevera on his forearm. "Can I take a photo of your tattoo?" I ask him,  "Sure," he said. I was waiting for him to ask me where I'm from - since I was ready to proudly wear my Union Jack/Magen David/Stars and Stripes on my sleeve. Or on a kippah.*

But he didn't.  So I asked him why he had a tattoo of Che on his arm. "Because it's a symbol. It's a symbol of what we stand for in the fight against imperialism, oppression and American colonialism. Because we have to stand up against the British and everything they've done to us. And we have to support the oppressed peoples against tyranny, like the Palestinians standing against the Israelis."

On the one hand, there's a lot there that I would have loved to debate and discuss. On the other hand, five minutes in the middle of a tour group probably won't do it. There was a series of discussions in foreign-policy circles a few years ago about why Irish Republicans support the Palestinians, and why many of the Irish Protestants support Israel. The bottom line was that in the end, you're going to project a lot of your own identity onto anything you read or watch anyway.

On the western hills surrounding Belfast is a huge "Viva Palestina" sign made out of painted white rocks. As we drove back to Dublin that evening our (Irish Catholic) guide pointed the sign to me. "It's not really about the Palestinians at all. Nor about the Israelis," he said. "It's about us. It's our story. We're just using your names."


*someone should totally make these.

The destination

My drash - Torah sermon - at Temple Beth El-Mekor Chayim, this Shabbat. 
The Parasha (Portion) is "Masei," Numbers 33:1-36:13

TBEMC Dvar 7/26/14 Parashat Masei

Numbers 33:1 - 36:13

Shabbat shalom

I have been clearing out my office and packing up my things.

As some of you may know, I am leaving my job at "the Joint", the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Next week is my last week.

Leaving the Joint was a very difficult decision. I’m proud to be the next CEO of our Jewish Federation. Proud and honored. We do amazing things, with amazing professionals and volunteers.

But leaving the Joint was a very difficult decision.

And one of the things I've been doing these past few weeks is clearing out my office.

Some things I’m going to keep, some things I haven’t quite decided yet what to do with them. Some things - like a particularly strong bottle of horseradish vodka - are here today for our kiddush.

And some things went pretty quickly into the trash. For example, I don’t know why, I had a huge collection of itineraries and boarding passes from Continental Airlines.

Long-forgotten journeys from a long-forgotten airline. Although to be honest, I do miss Continental.

I’m not entirely sure why I kept all these boarding passes and itineraries. Maybe it was to reassure myself that I’d been somewhere.

Believe me, I've been to lots of places these past few years. More than most people would ever want to go anywhere. And I have no complaints. None whatsoever.

I've seen amazing things, met with incredible leaders, and have felt at every step of the way that I was serving the Jewish people and doing something good.

But … at the end … here I am.

Right back where I started.

Normally, on itineraries and boarding passes, you’d see that the journey is marked by the destination. Not the point of origin. Normally, when we talk about our journeys, we talk about where we’re going. Not where we’re coming from.

So it says, at the beginning of this week’s parasha, that these are the journeys of the Children of Israel who went to the Land of Israel,” right?

Nope. It says “these are the journeys of the Children of Israel who went out of the Land of Egypt.”

This isn't your usual kind of masa, your usual journey. This is a journey defined by the point of origin. Not the destination.

I was thinking a lot about this concept of journeys this last few weeks.

Now, for all intents and purposes, I am an American Jew. True, an American-Israeli-British Jew with an accent that isn't precisely ‘New Jersey.’ 

But I’m here, and this is my home. I love New Jersey. 

Fortunately, I love diners and I don’t see the need to pump my own gas. So that’s worked out quite nicely for me.

And like a quarter of Jews alive in the world today, I now live in a country other than the one in which I was born. My journey was – and is – defined by my origins.

Not by my destination.

My identity is mixed, and complicated, and somewhat messy. Which is why this concept of the origins of journeys in the parasha means so much to me.

There was a PBS show on recently about American-Jewish identity and the journeys we make. And in the episode that I watched was a fascinating quote by Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Los Angeles.

His grandfather, he said, came to synagogue because he was Jewish. His grandchildren go to synagogue because they want to become Jewish.

We've become about the journey. About becoming.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I traveled around the world for the Joint I would frequently meet young people who were just now discovering their Jewish identity. Just now discovering what it means to be Jewish.

Once, in a far-off post-Soviet country, I was watching a young woman participate in an educational shabbat service. It was a teaching seminar, and there were hundreds of 'new' Jews. All halachic. All "Jewish" by any definition. But they didn't know what it meant to be Jewish and they wanted to learn. They wanted to 'become’ Jewish.

So … on the stage there were several educators from the local community. And one was doing the kiddush, one was doing the motzi. And this young woman was lighting the candles and explaining what she knew about them. And she was wearing a crucifix. The whole crucifix - not just the cross itself.

I was sitting in the front row looking at the big gleaming crucifix. And I leaned over to my colleague who was the netzig, the JDC Country Representative. "Nu?" I said.

"Give her time," he said. "She doesn't yet fully understand what it means to be Jewish."

He was right. It's a journey. We're all on this journey.

We’re all on a journey, like the masa of this week’s parasha, that’s defined by the starting-point.

We're all becoming Jewish.

Shabbat shalom.

Life and Death

I’m spending the next few days in Israel for JDC’s 100-Year Board meetings, and to run some site visits and briefings. I’m also going to have a chance to see some of my favorite programs in JDC-Israel.

But first – a great lunch with old and new friends here in Jerusalem. And one of the fascinating topics that came up was the subject of graves and burials.

There were Jews in Eastern Europe (and many other places too) who instructed that they should be buried wrapped in the red flag to show their support for socialist ideals. Some of the stories are quite well-known.

But what always fascinated me, and what we discussed today – is that even those who were at the vanguard of the Revolution never gave up on their Jewish identity. Even founders of the Polish Socialists, like Felix Perl, buried in a red flag, grappled with their Jewish identity throughout their lives. And were buried in Jewish cemeteries. Sometimes in separate ‘socialist’ Jewish cemeteries!

It’s a fascinating reminder of how Jewish identity evolved and took on different shapes and formats around the world.
Even in the darkest days of the Soviet empire, of seventy years of religious oppression and the dearth of community life … sparks remained.

You can still see the sparks in the cemeteries. It's a good reminder of the amazing persistence, pluralism and vibrancy in Jewish life. And death.

Land of the widening bases

Kazakhstan is one of my favorite places. I’ve been there several times, and I find the culture and people fascinating. If you get the chance to come with us on a mission, you’ll see an incredible warm, inviting culture, with a vibrant Jewish community. It’s the largest landlocked country in the world*, with some 130 different ethnic groups living there.

It’s not a long Jewish history – most Jews (or their parents/grandparents) were brought here in the 1930s and 40s in expulsions, migrations and resettlements. So they create their own history on the ground. When Hesed - our welfare distribution center - was set up 15 years ago in what’s now the capital city, Astana, there was a tiny Jewish community. JDC went from door to door and asked if anyone was Jewish. Sometimes they referred us, sometimes we figured it out from last names. We widened the bases.

So it was with particular interest that I’ve been reading about recent suggestions by the Kazakh president Nazarbayev to change the country’s name. His main suggestion is “Kazakh Yeli” (Land of the Kazakhs) – the current name “stan” means “place of” in Persian and “settlement” in Russian.

It’s not, let’s be honest, the most important issue facing the country right now. Or the Jewish community. But it’s another example of the shifting and changing relationships of identity politics of the former Soviet Union.

*but it has a naval force in the Caspian Sea. I love that fact. 

If you want to receive this blog on a regular basis by email, sign up in the top-right box where it says "follow" ...

The best question about Ukraine you’re going to see all month …

Is there a single Ukraine?

From the Economist

Is the modern Ukraine one nation?

The question is not meant to be provocative. But it is worth asking, since Ukraine is deeply divided on its international destiny: roughly speaking, does it belong more closely to the European Union or to Russia? Political divides cut Ukraine into eastern and western halves. The last two presidential elections have split neatly along these lines. In both of them, Viktor Yanukovych, the president, won the vast majority of votes in the eastern half of the country. He lost (after a re-vote when the first vote was considered rigged) in 2004, but won in 2010. The maps of the two elections by region look remarkably similar, so it stands to reason that the number of swing voters was relatively small.

It also so happens that the linguistic divisions of Ukraine run along nearly the exact same lines. The west and north are predominantly Ukrianian-speaking, the east and south predominantly Russian-speaking.

In 2012, a new law upgraded Russian to the status of a regional language in those regions where it is most widely spoken. Ukrainian remains the only national language, but Russian now plays a greater role at the local level. As we noted at the time, Ukraine is not simply divided into “Russians” who speak Russian and “Ukrainians” who speak Ukrainian. In the days of the Soviet Union, each Soviet citizen had an official “nationality” in their passport, alongside Soviet citizenship. There are former Russians by nationality who ended up in the borders of the independent Ukraine. But to mess up the picture somewhat, there are also ethnic “Ukrainians” who prefer Russian, whatever that means. (There are no other obvious outer markers of nationality—it’s not as though Russians and Ukrainians differ visibly.)  And complicating the picture further still, many people are happily bilingual: some people speak Ukrainian at home but Russian at work, or speak Ukrainian but mostly read and watch television in Russian (in which there are more options, given Russia’s presence next door).

Inevitably, politicians try to play with language to their own advantage. Mr Yanukovych is from the east, his political power base is there, and despite his efforts to please nationalists by speaking up for the language, he still makes mistakes in Ukrainian. Yulia Timoshenko, his defeated rival in that election (and now in jail), has spent years mastering Ukrainian, and she called the 2012 law upgrading Russian a “crime against the state”. Debate over it started a fistfight in Ukraine’s parliament. 

Language has become a proxy for other battles, not only over Europe versus Russia, but over history. Some Ukrainian nationalists, understandably resentful of Soviet-Russian domination, eagerly joined the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. So Ukrainian nationalism—including the linguistic kind—provokes nervousness and resentment among some Russian-speakers. One Russian-Ukrainian professor told me that his family celebrate New Year on Moscow time and feel like strangers in western Ukraine. He predicts either federalism (German- or American-style, with a weakened national government) or partition (hopefully peaceful, like Czechoslovakia’s). He says he can live with federalism—so long as he never has to watch parades honouring the old SS “Halichna” division made up mostly of Ukrainians.

Ukraine’s very name means “borderland”. Its de facto sovereignty has remained contested since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Your columnist will never forget finding himself in Lviv (a heart of nationalism, in western Ukraine) on August 24th 1998: it was Ukraine’s sixth-ever independence day, and locals solemnly gathered in front of the statue of Taras Shevchenko, the national poet. Grey-haired men and women held flags to their hearts and bowed their heads, eyes closed, as they stood in tightly formed groups and sang patriotic hymns. This was not a people who took independence for granted, the holiday an excuse to skip work and barbecue. Independence denied was very much a living memory.

Nonetheless, some Russian-speaking Ukrainians still feel that the symbols of Ukrainian nationalism were hastily contrived, and therefore artificial. The role of Ukrainian as sole national language—a role that it never enjoyed in any political unit until 1991—is Exhibit A in their case against nationalism as a manipulated, divisive force.

In a perfect world, everyone would live in the country they choose. Perhaps a partition would be better for many in the current Ukraine. But in practice, partition is far less often a “velvet divorce” of equals as in Czechoslovakia, and more often like the bloody division of Yugoslavia: mixed towns become battlefields and neighbouring powers intervene in their own interests. In this case, the enormous neighbouring power of Russia is unlikely to be able to avoid meddling in any peaceful Ukrainian split. Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has already speculated publicly that Russia might feel honour-bound to support Russian-speakers in a partition—fanning the flames.

There clearly is a genuine Ukrainian nationalism, and Russian attempts to portray it as “fake” are self-serving. But though there is a Ukrainian nation, it does not live cleanly within the borders of the modern state called Ukraine. This is a tragedy for all those whom the status quo does not satisfy, and that is looking like a lot of Ukrainians at the moment. Federalism, including linguistic federalism, is often a better solution. But as the punch-up in parliament over Russian in the eastern regions shows, when times gets tense, people’s thinking becomes zero sum: a gain for Russian must be a loss for Ukrainian. The country, as currently constituted, is probably fated for a lot of mutual misunderstanding yet.

Szarvas and Memory

I loved this piece ... so eloquent and so compelling ...

Finding the Alte Heim

Pessy Katz - Times of Israel 

January 19, 2014

I found the alte heim — the old home — in the Hungarian countryside, right along the Koros River, this past summer. I did not know that I was looking for the alte heim, I no longer even believed it had ever existed as it does in the romanticized collective memory of the Hassidic community in which I was raised. But then I found it, more complex and vibrant than a Hassidic girl could ever have dreamed it to be, at Camp Szarvas, an international Jewish camp in Hungary.

Growing up in the Satmar Hassidic community in Boro Park, my world was enclosed but I was lovingly provided with everything I needed to grow into a modest, poised young woman who would marry a good learned man and build an ultra-Orthodox home that in my young imagination was always filled with a gleaming chandelier, pious sons and daughters that would carry on the traditions, and sounds of Yiddish wafting through the air mixing with the delicious aroma of freshly made kokos (babka).

Indeed, I knew from a young age that the sign of a talented hassidic balabusta (housewife) is the stuffed cabbage she lovingly prepares twice every year, once for Simchat Torah and once for Purim. I would watch my aunt as, on every Friday in the winter time, she would roast gesztenye (chestnuts) to serve after Shabbat dinner when her husband and sons would sit around the table and sing beautiful Shabbat melodies. My paternal grandmother would prepare large pans of rakott krumpli (potato casserole) for my aunts, uncles and many little cousins as a special treat for the yearly Chanukah party she would host, and my maternal grandmother would remind us at every bris, engagement party or other special occasion to praise her for standing over the stove to prepare hundreds of beautifully thin palacsinta (crepes) which she served filled with cheese, cocoa or nuts.

Long before I knew how to prepare these foods, they created the pattern of Shabbat and Jewish holidays through which our year revolved around in Boro Park. To me they became the representation of love, warmth and special Judaism. I knew that these foods and rituals were tied to the alte heim, much as everything we did was encouraged to be. We were at turns inspired and admonished to emulate the actions, clothes and emunah p’shuta (simple faith) of our not-too-distant ancestors back in Europe. Thus, even in our modern-day Hassidic lives in America, the alte heim, with the images our teachers would invoke of women in head-scarves knotted under their chins and somber men bringing freshly slaughtered chickens home for their wives to salt and kosher was very distant but also very real. It lived in our collective memory and in our aspirations of the insular Orthodox utopia we sought valiantly to recreate right here in New York City.

But as I grew older, I came to understand that insularity does not make one more virtuous, that piety as a woman did not have to be measured by what I wear, and that a broad education may be full of spiritual pit-falls but is also filled with joy. Though surrounded with love and food, I learnt that I could expand my experience as a woman, and as a religious woman, beyond the Hassidic community in ways richer and more meaningful than I had previously been allowed.

My pursuit of intellectual independence and greater religious expression as a woman – whether it was receiving a college education, completing political internships, or becoming an active participant in progressive Orthodox institutions – was from the beginning coupled with the desire to maintain not just a loyalty to halakha but the purity of the joyous traditions with which I was raised. I knew early on that this challenge would by no means be a simple one, that of trying to mesh traditions so rooted in a specific and enclosed world with a reality that strives for open-ness and intellectual honesty. But then, this past summer, this challenge found reprieve in the most unexpected, yet beautiful, of places.

It was while completing a year-long fellowship in Israel that I first visited Budapest. In Budapest the stuffed cabbage of Simchat Torah was sumptuously displayed in the Christmas markets; the many foods of my childhood literally filled the streets. The language I had heard only through the mutterings of my elderly bacsi’s (uncles) andneni’s (aunts), which we all delighted in, was now all around me, spoken by young and old in bars and in museums, and the humor and the sensitivities of the people in this foreign European country were intimately familiar to me. I knew after that first visit that I had to return and indeed, when I did this past summer as a staff member at Camp Szarvas, in the south of Hungary, I understood why. Camp Szarvas was my past and future melded in one perfect place in the present.

Every summer, 1,500 campers from over 25 different countries participate in Camp Szarvas, sponsored by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  Under the clear Hungarian sky and searing sun, my days at Camp Szarvas with Jewish teenagers from all over the world, were filled with international sports competitions, art projects, peulot (educational activities), bonfires, talent shows and of course, as every Szarvas-er will tell you, the iconic wandering Jew, who led many educational and entertaining activities throughout each two-week long session. I was fascinated and delighted to see how in its unique, dynamic and joyous way Camp Szarvas allows each participant, whether Hungarian, American, or Latvian, to live and choose their own Jewish identity, while ensuring the possibility of finding community.

As a staff member for the Szarvas Fellowships, the American cohort at Camp Szarvas, it was a constant thrill to be able to facilitate these experiences for my campers. But one morning at camp I could not contain my enthusiasm and joy when we walked in from morning mifkad (line-up session) and I noticed the breakfast set on the tables. My campers looked on in confused amusement as I exclaimed excitedly over the bowls of steaming hot tejberizs. This special oatmeal broth, I explained, was the same breakfast that had previously been served to me only at the Hassidic girls’ camp I attended for eight consecutive summers in the Catskills, in New York. This food, to me, evoked warmth and Judaism and sincerity. It conveyed home.

At home now at Camp Szarvas, however, I sang and danced with people from all over the world, discussed ideas and thoughts, wore what I wanted, and explored Jewish identities, preferences, meanings and affiliations freely, as I once could have only imagined. And most thrilling of all, I could not only bond with them over our shared love of palacsinta (crepes), but I could share who I was, as a woman, as an American, as a Jew, as a Hungarian, and as a fellow human being, along with everyone else at the camp. And I knew this experience of open-ness, of sharing and of joy was shared every day by each of campers and the staff from all over the world there with me.

Somewhere along the way, between learning the camp cheers of Bulgarians and of Romanians, between facilitating discussions about the role of Israel in the lives of Jews worldwide and between dancing to Yaakov Shwekey’s v’hee sh’umdah and to Hava Nagila, my image of the alte heim began shifting. At Camp Szarvas, with the familiar foods and personalities around me, I knew that the alte heim was very real and in its own, even better way, continues to exist. It is filled not with black-hatted followers, but with Jews of all sorts who are vibrantly working to mesh their Hungarian lives with their dynamic Jewish identities and are creating their own niche in Jewish culture.

And as I was learning about my new-found Hungarian community, my Hassidic community was coming into focus too. On Friday night, a week into my Szarvas experience, we gathered our campers on an outside terrace. Campers and staff members of many different countries joined us as, swaying in unison, we sang Shabbat melodies together under the shooting-star filled Hungarian sky. Sitting at that circle I held a book of zmirot (Hebrew songs) that my mother had given me to take along on my trip. It was a special book because in addition to the traditionally found Hebrew zmirot, this one included old Yiddish songs too, and one Hungarian song. The song of szol a kakas, about a bird lost in the forest and longing to find its way out. This song, which also tells its metaphor of Jews in exile longing for the Land of Israel, is one that all the men and boys of my Hassidic community know.

My brother learnt to sing szol a kakas in both Hungarian and Yiddish when he was a bright eyed three-year old boy at cheder. During Jewish holiday meals he and my cousins would proudly sing the song in Hungarian along with my grandfather, who’s face behind his long beard would have a wistful look every time they sang this song. Was he truly yearning for the Land of Israel, as the bird in the song? As a child, I could never tell. But as I sang szol a kokos on Friday night at Camp Szarvas along with my many new Hungarian friends, I understood that my grandfather was longing too for the land of this song. A land that I too had come to love.

When moving beyond the Hassidic community in which I was raised, I understood that I was choosing to live a life of choices, of inter-weaving my Judaism with other facets of my identity.  When I came to Camp Szarvas with a community vastly different than the one in which I was raised, yet right near where it began, I found that it was a choice and challenge that many of my international Jewish peers share. But what I came to understand most deeply was that, like me and my peers at Camp Szarvas, my grandfather and the community he sings for has in their own way made those choices too.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/finding-the-alte-heim/

If you want to receive this blog on a regular basis by email (about twice a week, depending on what else I'm up to), sign up in the top-right box where it says "follow" ...