Mount Zion responds: What surprises you about the diversity of the land and people of Israel?

Sandy Weisberg

I like numbers, so here is a number I find interesting.  A recent international Gallup poll asked, in many countries:  Is religion an important part of your everyday life?  In Israel, only 51% replied in the affirmative, less than the 65% yes in the US.  By the numbers, Israel is a very secular country, much more secular than here.

For a country with a near-secular majority, here are some surprising things we experienced on our congregational trip last June:

• We visited an elementary school in Tiberius, our sister area in Partnership 2000.  We did crafts with the kids and then they sang for us and we all danced together.  But the boys danced with the boys, the girls danced with the girls, and the singing included only overtly religious songs.  This was an orthodox, public school, which sounds like an oxymoron to American ears.  There are many school systems, all of them supported by the government, all of them held to academic standards, except, of course, the ultra-orthodox who are exempt from the standards.
• The progressive, or reform, movement is alive and well with a few synagogues in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.  Their services felt comfortable and familiar.  These congregations appeared to be made up of immigrants from English-speaking countries.  There is no culture of “joining” a synagogue in Israel, so they pay for themselves by charging for b’nai mitzvahs, performing wedding ceremonies (not recognized by the state because of control of weddings by the ultra-orthodox), running schools, and I would guess philanthropy from abroad.
• On Shabbat, most everything stops.  Well, not quite.  Busses don’t run by taxis do run.  Most, but not all, stores and restaurants close.  The beaches in Tel Aviv and their parking lots are jammed.  Jerusalem is quieter.
• Secular Israelis who grew up in Jerusalem generally move elsewhere in Israel when they finish their army service.  Jerusalem belongs mostly to the Orthodox, and to the tourists.
• Israel is a vibrant, prosperous place.  It has absorbed about one million from the Former Soviet Union, and these immigrants and their children are the backbone of Israel’s high-tech boom.  I’ve read that Russian is often the first language in the local offices of Intel, Medtronics, and the other multi-nationals in Israel.
• Soldiers are evident everywhere.  The conflict with the Palestinians is obvious in principle when the separation fence is in view, but in practice it seems to have little effect on the day to day life of Israelis.
• We were told that in most secular schools, children were more likely to have travelled abroad than to have ever met a Palestinian.

Israel is messy, confusing, exasperating, and, most of all, the Jewish homeland.

Batya Spector

What surprises me is the complexity of meanings contained within the concept of diversity in Israel, as reflected in the articles on www.mzisrael.wordpress.com.  I encountered in the readings intra-diversity, as it were, among Jews, and inter-diversity among Jews and non-Jews;  diversity derived from the length of time people have called the land home;  diversity resulting from competing social, religious, and political values;  and diversity resulting from resources — land, political power, education, employment –that are shared unequally among the groups living there.

Reading aside, I also have experiential awareness of a facet of Israel’s diversity of people. Five months after the six day war in June, 1967, I arrived in Israel as a very young adult seeking adventure. I spent several months on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, near Ashkelon, where I enrolled in a Hebrew ulpan (language program) part-time and picked oranges, cleaned chicken houses, and worked in the communal kitchens the other part of the time. Sharing the ulpan experience with me were newly-arrived Jewish immigrants from many countries who intended to make Aliyah!  In the classroom and the fields with me were Jews from South Africa, Algeria, India, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. All had taken advantage of new opportunities provided by the outcome of the June war and were on the path to citizenship by studying Hebrew.   I wish I could reconnect with many of those fellow students, now 43 years later, and learn how each – who stayed in Israel – found his/her place; that would be a wonderful, but possibly biased case study in the marvel that is Israeli society today.

Again, reading aside, I have another experiential reservoir to consider the idea of diversity in Israel, for I grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range in the latter part of the last century.   I was imbued with the pride-filled dogma about this area of the country being a showcase of our country’s “melting pot” values. Diversity’s face was Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant, and within all three religious groups, variations based on ethnic origins.  Native Americans were also my classmates. The reality of life for immigrant and first generation mining families (non-Jews) and merchant families (Jews) was more a smorgasbord of variation than a melting pot.  There is much to savor in a smorgasbord, as long as all components receive equal care, attention and replenishment.  That would be my hope for Israel.

Sally and Mitch Rubinstein

Evidence of Israel’s diversity presented itself almost daily to our Mount Zion tour group. Upon arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport on that sun-drenched Monday afternoon, crowds speaking many languages and reflecting many religious and cultural backgrounds — bewildered but energized flight-weary passengers  — awaited their turn at passport control. It was a foretaste of what we would experience for the next thirteen days.

Encounters with the diverse branches of Judaism became a hallmark of the tour. We saw Ultra-Orthodox Jews in many places, but especially in the Old City of Jerusalem, where their presence is emblematic of their dominant position in Jewish life.  In Efrat, a settlement in the Territories east of Jerusalem, we met with Rabbi Shlomo Rifkin, a prominent modern orthodox rabbi, who shared his perspectives regarding religious laws in the country.  In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, we attended Shabbat services with Progressive (Reform) congregations and heard firsthand of their growth, aspirations, and challenges. No doubt, too, we saw non-observant Jews going about their lives with seeming indifference to their religious background.

The ethnic diversity of Israeli Jews – Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and European – was evident in faces throughout the country. We saw this diversity in a detachment of soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces strolling through the Old City of Jerusalem. We saw it in the immigrants from Russia on vacation at the resort where we stopped to bathe in the Dead Sea. On a daily basis, we saw and heard it in our tour guide, Muki, who made Aliyah from South Africa, the country in which his Lithuanian-born parents found refuge from the Holocaust.

Diversity was evident in many other settings: in synagogues, mosques and churches; in tourists – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, from all continents – seeking out their respective heritages;  in members of Christian denominations asserting their right to oversee religious sites in Jerusalem;  in Israeli Arab shop owners in the Old City of Jerusalem; in Palestinians in the Territories, whose shops we visited and whose cities and villages we saw on our journey from the Kinneret to Jerusalem;  in the Bedouin settlements that dotted the landscape in the Territories and the Negev; and in individuals from southeast Asian countries working in farm fields and strolling along the beach in Tel Aviv.

Perhaps the most inspiring and poignant engagement with diversity occurred one evening in Jaffa at a play whose cast members were blind-deaf individuals. Each had a personal story that was told to the audience as they prepared bread under the guidance of the theatrical crew. At the end of the performance when the baking was done, everyone – audience, actors, and crew – broke bread together.                

David Wark and Mary Ann Barrows Wark

On the congregational trip to Israel in June, our group drove north from Kibbutz Lotan one day, through the mountains of the Negev, to see the Ramon Crater (Machtesh Ramon). The Negev between Lotan and the crater itself is very barren and sparsely populated with dramatic, wide open spaces. It receives very little rain, even by the standards of a desert. Sometimes the only precipitation it gets is from winter snow from the high Negev mountains.

We stopped to view the amazing natural crater with spectacular cliffs around the rim. Our tour guide, Muki, explained the theory of the geological formation of the crater over millions of years. Most craters are formed by meteors hitting the earth, or by volcanoes, glaciers or rivers.  Makhtesh Ramon came from a different process: horizontal layers of microscopic shell fish were deposited over millions of years. Eventually, the layers were compressed into flat limestone. The volcanic pressure from below pushed the layers up, forming sharp peaks. Rain falling on those tall peaks ran off, eroding the mountains with canyons.  Flash floods and sand slides occurred again and again, and the sides of the canyon eventually collapsed, leaving a huge crater. It is possible to view geologic layers on the sides of the cliff — a window into geologic time.
When we left that site, we saw a wild ibex standing on its hind legs, eating leaves on a carob tree. Our bus then drove farther north and we learned that we were passing through the wilderness of Zin, where our forefathers spent much of their 40 years of desert wandering.  Frequent road signs: Beware of camels near the road! 

We got back on our bus for the long drive to Tel Aviv, where we had started our trip. The vegetation increased the closer we got; Tel Aviv flora looks like Los Angeles!  The difference in flora and fauna on a single day’s trip brought home to us that Israel is a place of incredible geographical diversity.  It encompasses both deserts and wineries, densely populated cities and vast swaths of uninhabited land; snowy peaks and salty seas, and everything in between.  Like the people of Israel, the land is enormously diverse, with geologic extremes packed into small spaces, creating a broad palette of environments.

Yael Miriam

After filling myself with prayer, challah, apples and honey, and many new foods that bless us against hate and the destruction of our enemies (which felt very Israeli) I am back in secular Tel Aviv feeling the newness of the year and the adventures to come. I have 10 days to repent for my sins, reflect on the year past and create goals for the year to come. 10 short days and so much to do.
I will begin my first adventure of the New Year tomorrow by heading up north to Kfar Yassif, an Arab Muslim and Christian village where I will stay for the week. This powerful time between the holiest of Jewish holidays I will be in one of the few places in Israel where I am the only Jew. I will begin my coexistence work by coexisting. By sharing my own cultural and religious beliefs and simultaneously learning those of my neighbors, particularly celebrating the completion of Ramadan and learning from my host family about Palestinian women in the workplace, I am starting the New Year actively seeking understanding and peace. I also hear it’s the best hummus in the country.

(Yael Miriam is a recipient of the Dorot Fellowship, and is living in Israel from August 2010 through July 2011.  Dorot fellows have been tasked with sharpening the characteristics and skills, acquiring the experience, and broadening the networks required for Jewish leadership in the 21st century.  Through travel, study, and dialogue, the Dorot Learning Community seeks to develop a sophisticated understanding of Israeli society and to address both the breadth and depth of issues critical to the future of American Jewry.)

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