Sister Farms, Worker's Blood, Fences, and MASA

I write to you today at the beginning of our 10-day countdown until the conclusion of Workshop. Though I say this, I don't really believe it, because nothing's slowing down around here. If anything, the last three weeks things have actually picked up. From rallies to sikkum peulot to meeting the kids from our sister movement, I've barely had a second to sit down (let alone blog). So, as always, I apologize for how long it's been since my last post, but I'm here to make it up to you now.

Beginning with our sister movement. As I've mentioned before, Ha'Naor Ha'Oved V'Halomed is Habonim Dror's sister movement in Israel. The name translates to "The Working and Learning Youth," and Hanoar Haoved holds many of the same values as Habonim. The one major difference is that Hanoar Haoved is an Israeli movement, as opposed to a Jewish one, and has very large Arab, Druze, and Bedouin sectors. As I've also mentioned, our messima is done through Hanoar Haoved (they organize and supervise us), and they also have a program similar to Workshop, called Chava (which directly translates to Farm... I'll explain the significane in a bit). The program is structured pretty similarly to Workshop, and Habonim actually looked to Chava when restructering Workshop (in responding to the ideological crisis of the 90's, blah blah blah refer to the post about Habonim history). Members of Hanoar Haoved who have just graduated from high school can chose to defer enlisting in the army for a year and live a communal life while also doing things like messima and seminars, sort of similar to the ones we do. Chava also serves as a transition point between the youth movement and the graduate movement of Hanoar Haoved (the tnuat bogrim) and members can chose to enlist in the army with their garin (literally means seed, refers to the group of people living together in a commune. It's sort of like our definition of kvutzah). After the army, they can chose to become a member of the tnuat bogrim and continue living in a communal structure and doing movement messimot. But I'm not going to be able to explain all of Hanoar Haoved right now so let's get back to Chava.

The term Chava is a shortened version of Chavat Hachshara, meaning training farm, which comes from the training farms which existed in Europe in the first half of the 20th Century which prepared people making aliyah for kibbutz life. Back then, it really was a farm. Now, as the youth movements are in the industry of education rather than agriculture, Chava prepares its participants for a life of service and communalism, not farming, but it has kept the name for historical reasons.

As Hanoar Haoved is our sister movement, it's only natural that we should meet the kids from the movement who are our age and doing virtually the same thing. There are several garinim (again, means groups) doing Chava all around the country, and we met with the ones from Migdal HaEmek. Our first meeting was filled with hanging out and playing icebreaker type games, and we got a chance to talk and compare movements on a basic level. They were super cool, and it was also cool to hang out with people who had an understanding of what we were going through, but also there were enough differences between our movements that we had a lot to talk about. To be honest, it felt a little bit like a first date between our two kvutsot, and we all went home with some butterflies in our stomachs (shoutout to Lauren Tikva Newman).

On our second meeting, they came to our house for lunch and we had a peula together which wasn meant to start a dialogue between us about the differences between being a Jew in the Diaspora and being a Jew in Israel. The night before they came, we cleaned our house from top to bottom and even did a little decorating (our means are limited, but we managed to do a nice job with pages from magazines and weird pieces of art we had lying around). Tamar and Tamir showed up a little while before the Chava came, and observed that when they, our madrichim, came every week for Yom Kvutsah, we were always running late and the house was in dire need of cleaning, so we must have hit it off with them. The second meeting went really well, and they even expressed that they wanted to celebrate Lag BaOmer with us (which was just a few days away). That didn't end up happening because of financial issues, but the gesture meant a lot.

Onto Lag BaOmer, a holiday with somewhat archaic roots but essentially is a break in the Omer, a sort of mourning period. To be honest, I don't know much about it, but you can Wikipedia it if you want more information. Israelis celebrate Lag BaOmer by building huge bonfires, like 15-20 feet high, and having a big party in the street. We built a slightly smaller fire and sat outside our house, jamming on the guitar, smoking hookah, and playing sheish beish, as hundreds of our neighbors built their gigantic bonfires and danced, sang, and ran up and down the street, distrubuting food and holiday wishes. We sat out from about 9 til midnght, until the bonfires were just big piles of coals. Then we had a quick asepha about the design of our chultzot (big mistake to try to have it outside, and pretend that it would be quick) and settled on Broseidon as part of our main motif.

The next day we got up bright and early (well not that early) in order to head to the May Day rally in Tel Aviv, which is put on anually by Hanoar Haoved (the rally, not Tel Aviv). Though the May Day rally was actually held on May 2nd (May 1st being Shabbat), there was no shortage of enthusiasm for the workers of the world, which manifested itself in red banners, red paint, bullhorns, and lots of singing. I hear there were about 4500 people there, but I also heard 2000 and 10000, so think what you want. From a personal perspective, there were a lot of people. And besides, what we may have lacked in actual bodies we made up for in spirit.

The day started with a parade through Tel Aviv. Holding banners and painted in red, all the Workshoppers were glad to finally have an appropriate forum to sing the songs we'd learned at machaneh, such as "Solidarity Forever" and "Union Maid," and the Hanoar Haovednicks also had plenty of songs and cheers to share. Every sector of Hanoar Haoved was represented, and I, along with many others, spotted lots of our kids from messima, as well as some of the madrichim we worked with. Our sister chava was also there.

After the parade, there was a rally in front of the Histadrut, with music performances, skits, and speeches on the big stage as well as a few smaller ones, and booths set up representing different activites of the movement in relation to workers' rights. The big act, Lior Narkis (another mizrachi singer - very good, though he's no Kobi Peretz) didn't disappoint either. A lot of us remarked that we wished that Habonim Dror could do something like this in North America, because with blue shirts and red banners all around it really felt like a movement.

The next day (I told you we were busy) we got on a bus and headed to the West Bank in order to talk about the separation wall. We went to four different places, including a checkpoint and a village in the seam area (the seam area refers to the parts of the West Bank which are on the east side of the green line but the west side of the separation fence) in order to look at and discuss the effects of the wall on Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, Palestinians, and their governments, as well as the differing opinions about it.

Some facts about the wall:
It is 681 km long.
It does not go along the green line, and in some places cuts deep into the West Bank, usually in order to go around an urban area or to put Jewish settlements on the Israeli side of the wall.
It has decreased actual attacks in Israel by 70 percent.
The number of attempted attacks has stayed the same.
In most places it is a fence with electric sensors, with a strip of sand running along it for tracking and a road for patrol cars - all in all about the width of a four lane highway.
Where the wall goes through urban areas, it is a 7 meter high concrete wall with barbed wire on top, both to reduce shooting across the wall and so that it doesn't have to be the width of a four lane highway.
Where the green line runs through urban areas, Israeli authorities asked the city to decide whether it wanted to be on the Palestinian side of the wall, the Israeli side, or if the wall should just be built along the green line.

So that said, and that isn't all of it but it is a lot, the separation/security wall/fence is a very complicated thing. I'll give you my opinion: I think the most important piece of data is that while attacks are down 70 perent, the number of attempts has stayed the same. Which is to say that it's a bandaid on a battle wound, and the worst part of it is that the bandaid worked. I mean it's great that buses aren't exploding every week due to terrorist attacks, which was the reality before the wall was put up, but it has created a situation which is self-perpetuating. Now that the wall is up it can never be taken down. The wall has not served to heal the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but simply hush it, so that no one is looking for a more permanent fix. So my conclusion from the tour of the wall is that we should stop talking about the God damned wall and start talking about a real solution, which I believe lies in education, not arms. Now, having given you my thoughts on the issue, I encourage you to do some research of your own and create your own informed opinion.

The next day, we got on another bus and headed to our final MASA event, this one about being an effective advocate for Israel on our college campuses. So pretty much, getting us together with a bunch of other kids who spent the year in Israel and being told by lots of people - Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, one of them - that we should move to Israel because it is our country. Not our country to fix, just our country. So in other words, all day we listened to speakers overuse the phrase "Jewish identity" in order to get us to move to Israel to manipulate demographics so that Jews can maintain their majority population. I am building up the Jewish people simply by being in Israel, as I am, doing whatever I want to. Saving the country one marketing executive at a time (not a joke, a guy who spoke to us made aliyah and now does marketing).

In case you haven't picked up on my tone, we all went into it sort of looking for a fight. Clothed in chultzot tnuati, we wanted a dialogue, and instead spent the day getting lectured, which didn't go over too well. Some memorable moments for the day:

- Jonah, with some very ironic facial hair, standing at the mic in order to ask a [challenging] question to Natan Sharansky after his speech/interview, and Sharansky consistently deferring to people standing at the microphone stationed on the other side of the hall.

- Mobbing the AEπ table during the organization exhibition in order to ask the bros manning the station what exactly makes a Jewish home. The answer: "Like, everything dude. You can pray, like, anywhere."

- Lermie converting a religious girl to the side of Labor Zionism.

- Workshoppers, ironically yet wholeheartedly, doing Rikudai Am (Israel folk dancing) around the auditorium before the start of the HaDag Nachash concert (every MASA event inludes some sort of concert) and being photographed by MASA to be used as propaganda (MASA = happy kids getting in touch with their Jewish identity).

The entire day was not a waste though, and we actually had a few good speakers with some interesting things to say. Our favorite was a South African man by the name of Avraham Infeld, the former president of Hillel and, rumors say, he was once involved in Habonim,. He spoke about the distinction between Judaism as a religion, and the Jewish people as an ethnic group and a people. He told many stories about his upbringing. His parents made him go to a Jewish school even though they didn't believe in God, and when Israel was established, his father told him that he was a young Jew and he belonged in the Jewish state. The day he made aliyah was also the first time he had ever eaten pork.

He went on to talk about his experiences running a program in Israel connecting Jewish Israelis and Jews from America, and the encounter between then when it came to saying the Birkat HaMazon (the prayer after the meal). The Americans started singing the Birkat with enthusiasm, not knowing a word of what they were saying, while the Israelis, understanding the entire thing, had no idea what was going on. The moral of the story being the question What connects us as Jews? Clearly, it's not prayer. Infeld had five things which he considered the central tenants of Jewish peoplehood: Collective Jewish Memory, Family, Jewish law, Israel, and Hebrew. I haven't quite worked out where all these things fit into my identity as a Jew, but if you would like to read his speech for yourself you can click on this link.

After the MASA event we had a day of messima, and the day after that we had our third and final meeting with our sister chava. This time we talked about the connection between our two movements, as Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora, and what our responsibilities are to each other. We read a text by Eli Ben-Gal which talked about aliyah not as a geographical concept, as in not just physically moving yourself to Israel, but a spiritual pursuit as well. He said that even Israelis had to make aliyah, and constantly reevaluate their position in relation to Israeli society and think about their role in creating a just society in Israel and for all of mankind. He said that the aim of Zionism is not to create a Jewish state just to have a Jewish state. The state itself is not the ends and Jewish human resources the means. Ben-Gal argued that the state is the means and repairing the world is the ends. This raises a few questions.

If aliyah is a spiritual pursuit rather than a geographic one, do you need to move to Israel in order to build up the Jewish people and ultimately repair the world? We decided that yes, you do. Granted Portland has its issues, and if I want to repair the whole world then it shouldn't matter where I start, right? The only problem is that if I do messima in Portland, who am I serving? If I am a Jew who relates to the Jewish narrative and feels responsible for the Jewish people, then shouldn't I work at the center of the Jewish community, among a people with whom I identify, whose problems are my problems? Well, yes.

But what about Jewish communities in North America? What if I work within a Jewish community which I feel responsible for and identify with? This we were less certain about, but the answer lies somewhere in the conversation about creating identity and culture. Yes you should take responsibility for the places you live and grew up in, but what kind of Jewish identity do Diaspora Jews have? The reality is that our identity is largely based in the fact that we are a minority and have a history of oppression and persecution. This is problematic, as it means we don't really have any true identity that we have created ourselves. Where can we create this identity? Some would say Israel.

But what if Israel is not my chosen means to Tikun Olam? This is where I brought up the Humanism argument and Tamar threatened to throw a shoe at me. Too often, Humanism turns empty, and helping everyone really just means helping no one. Because the needs of South Asian immigrants are not the needs of the LGBTQ community, and if you're not a member of that community who holds a fundamental,spiritual connection rather than just an intellectual one, it's unlikely that you really know what those needs are. So maybe Jews and the State of Israel is not the community which you identify most strongly with, but wherever your backyard is, that's where you should start.

So after a week of May Day, the separation fence, MASA, and parting ways with our sister chava, it was time to go back to messima for one week (plus one day, our very last day of messima is tomorrow) and try to wrap up with our kids whatever educational process we managed to create. In the Junior High School in Sakhnin we played a quick game of Jeopardy which reviewed and made an attempt to tie together all the stuff we've done in the past five months, and then our classes gathered for a little parting ceremony. A few students read letters they had written about what our coming to teach them had meant to them (they were really cute, Emily almost cried) and then we were presented with candles that one of the kid's mother had made. It was really sad, and strange, to end something that we were sort of just getting the hang of. The teacher spoke also about how they appreciated our coming and she hopes that we will tell people about their kindness and hospitality, and especially their situation being Arab Israelis, since many people barely know they exist or have little idea of who they are.

In the ken that afternoon, about ten of our best students from the school came (all girls) and we played a few games before splitting into groups to eat snacks and talk about what they enjoyed about our time together, what they learned, and how they can share their experience. Another group of slightly older kids was also meeting at the ken that day and we talked to their madrichim (who are members of Hanoar Haoved's tnuat bogrim and who are working permanently in Sakhnin, both at the school and the ken) about taking on our chanichim so they can have some sort of continuation after we leave, so we don't just leave them hanging. The madrichim said that they're currently working with 9th graders but they would love to take on our chanichim and if necessary they would also work with 7th and 8th graders at the school. We gave them our kids' numbers and they said they'd contact them and tell them to come. When we told our girls this, they were very excited and, even though they were sad we wouldn't be there, they were definitely interested in continuing as a group in some way. This left we much more optimistic than I had been that we had done something.

Then came our closed weekend - as our last weekend in Akko, we decided that we would all stay in the house for the weekend. We kicked it off Thursday night with Rikudai Am (the Israeli folk dancing that we do at camp) on the basketball court near our house, and continued Friday morning with brunch (omelettes, courtesy of Tali and Leya) and an afternoon spent at Tamir's house in Carmiel eating apple crumble and asking questions about Hanoar Haoved. Then we came back and got dressed up for Shabbat, had a huge meal of grilled fish, salad, and baked potatoes, and my tzevet made knaffe for desert. Then we started Wish Night. Wish Night is exactly what it sounds like; everyone gets to write down three wishes, which someone else picks out of a hat and fulfills. But obviously we can't always fulfill the wish as it was literally intended, so you have to creative. For example, Leya wished for the whole kvutzah to go ice skating together, so Jon froze a tray of ice and skated a picture of the kvutzah across it. Ethan wished to be on MBI, so half the kvutzah did a skit recounting the memorable moments (Disco Boat, Machaneh Tnua Achot, and other very typical MBI encounters). Jon wished to be a famous author, so Nate took a bunch of books from our library, (read: bookshelf) covered up the authors name and wrote instead J.K. Kans, and we held a book signing. I wished for Xibit to come pimp our ride (the very broken down car in front of our house) so Tali made a Pimp My Ride video (the sound system was Lermie's iPod speakers, the GPS system was a map laid across the front seat, and the Xibit was a picture of Nate, our token black).

When we finished Wish Night at about two in the morning, we began our very last Workshop party. About half of us stayed up late enough (or early enough, if you prefer) to walk to Napoleon's Hill to watch the sunrise, and with the sun breaking over the Carmel and the mingling of yellow and grey light, we all agreed it felt like a time long gone (granted I was also wearing Lermie's bell bottoms). And in truth, it is. One day left of messima, four days left in Akko, and nine months of sheirut or hachshara or whatever you want to call it coming to an end. It was not, however, a gap year. I will not return home and think about this year as an exceptional one, a year I spent defying norms shortly before returning to them. So I have my next challenge cut out for me.

I'm not sure if this will be my last post, I'm hoping to get in at least one more, but if it is, it was a pleasure writing for you. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have, and above all, I hope I've given you something to think about.