March 15, 2011

Haifa

Greetings from Israel! Our family is well, and truly enjoying our stay in Haifa. During this week before Purim, I want to share with you my blessings from Israel, and share a few reflections from my sabbatical here, which continues to be a wonderful, relaxing and renewing experience.

I have just finished a 5-day bicycle journey as a fundraiser for the Reform movement in Israel. Over five days, about 30 bikers and I pedaled our mountain bikes about 140+ miles from the town of Modi’in to Masada, past kibbutzim and small moshavim, through orchards and vineyards, flowering almond trees, green, green wheat fields (who knew there was so much wheat growing in Israel?), past archaeological sites, and across the round, brown Judean hills, and finally, down rough, empty desert paths toward the Dead Sea. Nearly all of our ride was off-road, on bumpy tractor paths and rocky dirt or gravely roads, with little bits of highway biking here and there. The whole ride was wonderful, challenging, difficult, through sun, heat, cold and rain, and extremely beautiful at every turn.

In addition to allowing me to see up close how beautiful Israel is in a way that can't be seen when traveling by car or bus, the 5-day ride was a fundraiser for the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ; i.e., the Reform movement in Israel). We began the ride at the Reform day school in Modi'in, run by the Reform "Yozma" congregation there, meeting 250 children offering us blessings for a safe ride at their Sunday morning Havdallah ceremony. A day later, after a ride through the town of Sderot which borders the Gaza Strip, we met the regional coordinator for the Reform movement's activities in the south of Israel, who spoke passionately about how the IMPJ is introducing a joyous, pluralistic Judaism to more secular Jews in that part of the country. We had the opportunity to meet leading Israeli Reform rabbis at a festive dinner in Arad another night, which I enjoyed, and I became friendly with an impressive group of 18-year old 

Israelis (who participated in the bike ride) who are spending their "gap year" before their army service in the Reform Movement's "Mechinah" program, studying about progressive Jewish values and volunteering in Jaffa. And I was privileged to join a great group of riders of all ages and skills with whom some nice friendships developed. It was a great week. (If you’d like to contribute and sponsor me retroactively to support our Israeli Reform counterparts, you can do so by clicking to this link: http://www.riding4reform.org/Eng/2011/Pages/PaymentInstructions.asp#CreditCardDonations , or send in a check to: Riding4Reform, Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, 13 King David Street, Jerusalem 94101, Israel. Thank you to those who choose to contribute!)

“Israel is a country for the children,” one of our Israeli friends explained recently, and no holiday exemplifies this more than Purim, which begins this coming Saturday night. (I can only imagine the wonderful wackiness that must be enveloping Temple Sinai again this year, as it does every year when the Purim celebrations and much-loved shpiel holiday approach in Brookline.) In Israel, we have seen Purim madness take over the country; for nearly a month, stores everywhere have been jammed with parents buying Purim costumes for their children, and children have been wearing their costumes on the streets in preparation for the holiday. At school, our daughters and their classmates are asked to come to school wearing different silly-themed clothing for each day, and it seems that the entire country is busy preparing mishloach manot, gift packages of food for one another, and for the country’s poor via community centers and old age homes. Even many Arab Israeli children, who are not Jewish, choose to dress up and participate in the costume celebrations, a fascinating example of assimilation here in the Middle East.

But Purim’s festivities are of an uneasy kind (the silliness in the story of Esther barely succeeding to reveal Haman’s wicked plot is an anxious one, after all), and my joy was punctured this week, however, by the awful events of the weekend. Of deep concern is the horrifying earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the nuclear crisis that is developing, and of the unimaginable loss of life and destruction there. Closer to home, here, we were troubled by the brutal terrorist murder of a family of five in a West Bank ideological settlement over Shabbat; Israeli newspapers showed their portrait photos on the cover pages, and also debated the Netanyahu government’s pledge to build more settlement housing in response to the killings.

As we I pray that the cycle of violence and reprisals will one day come to an end, and that the calm that has characterized our sabbatical in Israel thus far will continue. Haifa, the city where are living, is a city of co-existence and “shared-existence” between Jews and Arabs, and between people of many faiths, and we are proud to be part of this city’s multi-cultural heritage. As I reflect on the meaning of Purim for myself this year, while I am in Israel, I’m moved by the bravery of Esther and Mordechai to stand up to hatred, as the Megillah scroll tells it, by their example of speaking out and not remaining silent, and by the reminder issued, or perhaps hinted at, in the speech of Mordechai to Esther, that all Jews are inter-connected and responsible for one another, and by Esther’s willingness to act on this idea and take risks to preserve life and human dignity. When we hear the Megillah read this Saturday evening in an Israeli Reform congregation here in Haifa, we will be affirming these universal values, even amidst all the silliness.

I hope you and your dear ones are well. From our sabbatical time in Israel, my family and I ask God’s blessings for you and your family, for life and health and a joyous Purim, filled with “light, joy, gladness and honor.”

- Rabbi Andy Vogel