Second Shabbat in Jerusalem

When I got back to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, I really had to scramble. From the central bus station, I had to catch a bus out to Ora, where AS and SC live. The bus stops at the bottom of the hill that Ora sits on, so then I had the now familiar hike up the hill to A & S's. Carrying my big pack and listening to Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams on the iPod, I fancied myself an extreme sportsman. All the time, I watched the sun sink slowly west, knowing that at some point before it set the busses would stop running and I would be without transportation.

A quick shower and shave at A&S's, and then back down the hill with my big bag, headed to the bus stop. Mercifully, I was in time to get a bus back to the city, and when I dropped my big bag off at MA's, and began rehydrating from a long, dry day, I said to him, "I think now I can transition into a shabbat consciousness." We talked for a bit about the relative merits and possible unfairnesses of a public transportation system that observes the Jewish sabbath. I like it because it sets a tone for the city. Even a completely secular person can understand the benefits to wellness of taking a break from hurrying and worrying. Having a day of the week when economic activity stops publicly expresses a value that everyone can believe in: we are not just producers and consumers, we are people. Put another way, it expresses a value often obscured in modern life: convenience is not our highest value, nor is it an end in itself, but rather it should lead to a fuller and more enjoyable life. If the religious overtones of a "SABBATH" are too hard to look past, think of the French, who take relaxation and leisure seriously for utterly secular reasons. The average American worker is far more productive than the average French worker, and he is rightly proud of the contribution he makes every day to an ever more efficient marketplace, but he is dumbfounded when a Frenchman asks him, "What do Americans do with all the time they save?"

Shabbat consciousness, for me, is the idea of taking one day a week just to be, rather than to do. A day to stop worrying so much, stop trying to change everything, and just appreciate the people in your life and the blessing of rest and relaxation. Ideally, in that mad Friday rush one gets all the food ready for shabbat, gets the house reasonably clean, and gets the table set, so that during shabbat everyone can just relax comfortably. On shabbat, there isn't supposed to be any rush to go anywhere, the idea is to enjoy where you are.

Like most ideals, shabbat often plays out imperfectly in reality. From MA's, I walked to the apartment where Kol Zimrah was meeting. I brought along two cartons of a lentil dish I had prepared on Wednesday for the vegetarian potluck following the service. The service itself consisted of lots of spirited singing, with branching, improvized harmonies, led by someone with a drum, and lots of clapping. There was some dancing, but mostly in place, since the apartment was crowded. In attendance were probably 40 people, mostly between the ages of 20 and 35, but with one family with young children, and a small contingent of high school students. After dinner, the singing picked up again and lasted long into the night.

In Israel, the familiar text of the prayers comes alive in a way that is both rapturous and scary. Speaking first of the non verbal parts of the ritual, at all the points in the service where we "rise and turn toward Jerusalem," we are already in Jerusalem, so we turn toward the Kotel, the Western Wall. The physical act is the same (it's still turning west), but the act of picturing the Kotel, and the knowledge of how close it is, really changes the experience. It's much more immediate, less abstract. As for the text, all the references to Jerusalem feel very different when you are physically in the actual city of Jerusalem. From outside Israel, the word "Jerusalem" connotes far away, mystical place, but in Jerusalem, "Jerusalem" means here. (Imagine praying, "May Orangevale be rebuilt speedily and in our days.") It's so obvious and yet so jarring. In fact, the psychic dissonance that attends on the juxtoposition of the idealized Jerusalem of one's imaginings with the reality of the city of Jerusalem, is one explanation for why people who visit here sometimes become convinced they are the messiah.

Going beyond this, the text starts to sound political, and can even echo a rather bald and obnoxious nationalism. When the text speaks of "rebuilding Jerusalem," instead of hearing a rosy metaphor for creating a more just and compassionate society, I think of all the factions of society here, with all their different visions of how Jerusalem should be "rebuilt". I think of the construction that hampers my navigation through the city, the new train line that would be so helpful if only it were complete, and the new shopping mall that feels like it could be anywhere, offering the Jerusalemite a taste of Sacramento. I think of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is falling apart because the various denominations cannot agree on how to renovate it, and the ramp Israel is building up to the Temple Mount, a ramp that makes the Arabs nervous because it will be wide enough for a vehicle to drive on. I'm nervous too, if only because the second Intifada started when Ariel Sharon went up the the Mount with some troops. All sides are struck with the irony that Palestinian labor is building much of Jewish Jerusalem, including that ramp.

When the psalmist praises God for leading us upon the heights of our enemies, I can't help but think of Lebanon, where we did walk on the heights of our enemies last summer, and where Hezbollah is even now amassing weapons to attack us again. When the text urges my soul to be silent to those who curse me, I think of my classmates who refused to mourn the victims of the Holocaust and the Sephardi chief rabbi who this week blamed Reform Jews for the Holocaust. When the grace after meals thanks God for giving us a good land, I can't just think about arable land in general, because it's talking about this Land of Israel, which the Jewish nation reacquired only recently in our long history, and which we hold onto through our soldiers' continual sacrifice. When Deuteronomy talks about how we need to follow the commandments or else we will be driven from the land, I think about all the unfriendly neighbors who stand ready to do just that.

As for the bald nationalism in Scripture, it is not hard to find. The bible is a very nationalist document. The use of scripture by Religious Zionists is thus not hard to understand. What's interesting is when secular Zionists use it. For example, I can remember a certain secular Zionist, who never attended synagogue, didn't keep the ritual commandments, and had a demonstrated lack of knowledge of the rudiments of Jewish worship tell me that the Temple Mount is the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. She didn't say it was the place the tradition ascribes to that legend. Proudly and unreflectively irrational, she said it was the place where it happened. I wondered if in her heart of hearts she liked to imagine that we would discover the Tablets of the Covenant, Indiana Jones style, hidden under the Temple Mount and enshrine them in a brand new, multi billion dollar recreation of the Second Temple. In the same vein, my Muslim classmate T (who is not entirely secular but definitely does not pray five times a day) proudly told me that the Noble Sanctuary was the place where the Koran fell on Mohammed. Thus the religious establishments induce societies at large to fight and die over a hill.

The text turned dark during mincha when we prayed for the Temple to be rebuilt. From far away, it is easier to reason this prayer away as a metaphor, but the fact is that the rabbis wrote it with the idea that God would destroy the temple of Jupitor that the Romans had built and reestablish the Jews on the Temple Mount. In our day, how can I pray the the Temple be rebuilt? Isn't that just doing what the Muslims accuse us of doing, i.e. hoping someone will destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque so we can put our own real estate up there? I began to feel sympathy with the early Reformers, radical anti-Zionists so suspicious of the particularizing effects of Jewish nationalism that they declared Judaism to be no longer a nation, but only a religion, and struck passages about rebuilding the Temple from the prayer book. (The Reform movement has since changed its stance and embraced Zionism, but it still rejects a return to the days of priests and animal sacrifices.)

Back to shabbat, and how it fell short of the ideal, my lentil dish was bland and limp. Fortunately, there were also some really great dishes at the potluck. At last, after lots of eating, talking, and singing, I left and went to the home of my host for the night. It took 45 minutes to walk there, and when I got there her door was locked and repeated knocking yielded no response. There was a miscommunication, I assume. Feeling cold, alone, exhausted, and still somehow dehydrated, I hailed a cab back to A&S's in the 'burbs. Lesson learned: when staying on someone's couch, borrow their extra key.

At least I finally got to do some sleeping. And really Ora is a good place to spend a contemplative afternoon. The wind blows in the pines, the views are great, the neighbor's kids are washing the car and spraying each other with the hose. I hope you are all having a peaceful sabbath, wherever you are.