A Doubt With Every Dance: Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut in Jerusalem

A note before you yell at me in the comments: I believe in the right of Israel to exist, and it is because I love Israel so much that I criticize it. I love spending time here, but I don't claim to know everything, and I'm happy to have a discussion with anyone who would like to have a civil conversation. Also, I don't support BDS. 

"Am Yisrael Chai, Am Yisrael Chai, Am Yisrael, Am Yisrael, Am Yisrael Chai"

As we walked down Yafo street, one of the main roads in Jerusalem at around 10:30 pm last Wednesday night, dodging crowds of drunk people covered in blue and white face paint, we heard this song, "the people of Israel live." As we stood next to City Hall, listening to live music coming from two different stages, I felt someone grab my hand and pull me into a circle dance to whatever song was playing. We were all strangers to one another, and considering the fact that my Hebrew is not excellent, I don't know if we would have been able to communicate through words, but we were dancing together, all on the same stone in the same city. 

The unity of the Jewish people of Israel during Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Memorial Day and Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day is truly an incredible thing to witness and be a part of. Standing together, frozen in time during the sirens sounded to commemorate the fallen soldiers, singing Hatikvah with thousands of people, watching Jerusalem switch from mourning to celebrating in the span of an hour were all very powerful experiences. Hundreds of people barbecuing on a sunny Independence Day in the park is lovely. I felt proud to be here, proud of Israel's accomplishments and proud to be a Jew who supports Israel. 

When one experiences these days from the perspective of a Jew, it truly feels like the country stands as one people, united. But then, you start to think more deeply about it, or at least I did. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there are currently about the same number of Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians are not included in the vision of a Jewish homeland, but they are people, living in this land. Last weekend, I spent Shabbat in the West Bank, and on our way home, we stopped at Shorashim, an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue center, where we heard from a Palestinian man about his experience living in the occupied West Bank. This opened my eyes to the fact that there really are two sides to the story of Yom Haatzmaut which Palestinians call the Nakhba, the disaster. Palestinians identify the creation of a Jewish state, partly on land that was formerly Palestinian, as a disaster. This brought up a lot of questions. What price is being paid for a Jewish state? Are our actions consistent with our Jewish values? And what about the refugees that are being deported or about to be deported from Israel? I don't have answers to these questions, but they need to be talked about. I hope that we look at these issues more complexly and question the media we consume. 

Talmudic Heroines: How I Fell in Love with Aggada

Gemara. Shiur. Halakha. Mishmar.

These were not words I understood or even heard before I got to college. I grew up with what I still think was an amazing Jewish education, but this education did not include learning what these words mean (I'm still not entirely clear on what Gemara is so if someone could clear that up for me, that would be great, thanks). Instead we learned about Judaism's relationship with social justice and how to live practically as Jews in the world. We explored big philosophical questions, and I got the best relationship/sex education that I've ever had. But those things didn't help me when I couldn't understand the announcements at Hillel dinner or what my friends were talking about going to on Thursday nights (by the way, that one is Mishmar, a celebration to get ready for shabbat often involving singing and cholent, a sort of stew).

Talmud especially, even though I didn't include it on that list, was a scary entity with too many words in Hebrew or Aramaic on a page for me to even begin to understand. I felt like Talmud was for "real Jewish scholars," and that I was not one of them, despite the fact that I am a Judaic Studies major who wants to be a rabbi. Bible was comfortable. Bible I could read in English and no-one would judge me. Even Mishnah was made accessible by our former Jewish Chaplain through reading of "Strange Stories in the Mishnah." But I never touched Talmud. I didn't dare register for a Talmud class or God-forbid show up to a Talmud shiur (class).

But that all changed when I got to Israel. Through my program, we had to option to choose between four different classes to take on Tuesday afternoons. The options were an advanced Talmud class, a class based on the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible), a class about Jewish philosophical questions, and a class about Talmudic heroines. Each of the teachers stood up for about a minute to talk about their classes so that we could choose, and I listened to each of them, sort of passively, exhausted from the five hours of Hebrew that preceded our trip to our Beit Midrash program. But then Gila Fine, the editor-in-chief of Koren Publishers stood up to introduce her class, Talmudic Heroines. Now at this point, I had decided that I was going to take the Tanakh class. I don't remember what Gila said, but I remember how it made me feel. It made me feel like I was capable of understanding this text that I had put aside for so long. I told myself I would try it for one day, and if I didn't like it, I could switch.

 The Talmud had always been presented to me as one thing, an authoritative text that was filled with laws and rabbis disagreeing with each other. And it is that. But then I learned about Aggada. According to Shmuel Hanagid, "Aggada is every interpretation that appears in the Talmud about any matter that is not a commandment," that is to say, it's all of the stories that come between the pieces of Jewish law. Aggada is substantially more accessible to the inexperienced reader than the maze of halakha, Jewish Law, especially when you get to learn about it through the lens of different female archetypes. I knew I wanted to stay in the class the first time Classical texts (which I am ironically more familiar with) were introduced to learn about the female archetypes: Circe as the femme fatale, Medea as the shrew. We learned about Yalta, who seems to be a shrew when you first look at the story, but when you examine the story more deeply, you can see the complexities of her character and she can be redeemed. I continued to show up to Beit Midrash each Tuesday, enjoying learning about these women and the fact that they were engrossing enough to distract me from my chronic pain, but I didn't think much of it. I did, however, sign up for a Talmud class at Hebrew University.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when we returned to Beit Midrash after Passover break and I still remembered all of the steps that one is supposed to take to successfully look at a piece of aggada: close reading, context, hypotheses (with subcategories under each of those that I'm happy to share if you're interested). During my Talmud class on the same day, I felt like I could actually compare two texts that we had read. And I realized that Aggada, and to some extent Talmud in general were no longer so out of reach. I have a lot more to learn, but the hardest part was taking the first step.

I owe so much to both Gila Fine and Jason Rogoff for putting up with my ridiculous number of questions and for making Talmud accessible and exciting.