Hi blog readers, friends, framily and family. This is a pretty long post - turn around don't drown if you don't have a few minutes.
Blessed is the true judge.
I've honestly lost count of my Israel trips. At first it was easy: 1975 Israel Study Tour at age 14, post bar exam trip with Judy in the summer of 1986 (which included my first winery visits here), 1995 with my teacher Dr. Elliot Prager and the faculty of CES-JDS to study teaching Hebrew as a second language and the Joseph narrative of Genesis with Nechama Leibovitz. Then I started coming almost every year for one thing or another, occasionally twice a year. I don't know if I've been here 20 times or 25. I came on the first NACIE (later renamed MAKOM) Educators mission in 2001 or so and studied with the outstanding Rabbi Alan Odess from AMHSI. - Between 2006 and 2012 I think I spent 7 consecutive summers helping Danny Siegel with US groups and making distributions for our own small Mitzvah Heroes Fund that we ran from 2008-2012. We were here as a family for Pesach in 2006 and 2010. 2013 I was here with Judy, and Abby and Michelle tag teamed their time with us. I was here in 2017 to see friends and drink wine, research from history for CIE and do some advance work for the JEA conference in the winter of 2018, which Judy also shared with me. For a north american, I'm in Israel a lot. Every trip is unique. That being said, this is a very different time in Israel, and not the trip I was expecting.
This is a small tangent from where I was planning to go (my students know tangents are a specialty of mine). I don't think it's a secret that I always hoped to live here. Many Israeli friends have said to me, "Steve, if only you would move here, you wouldn't have to spend all your vacations here." I know that that is true. I think it's possible that the market for Jewish educators here is kind of saturated, so I have never been sure how I would make a living here. I have not sufficiently professionalized or monetized my wine knowledge to earn a living in the wine industry ( somehow loving and tasting wine isn't something you can make a living with). None of us knows the future. Judy and I have certainly talked about it, and I'm happy to say we've never fought about it. If you have heard or seen me teach in the last 20 years it's probably very clear how much I love Israel, with all its love and beauty, and with all its trash and faults. I'm not perfect, the US is not perfect and Israel is not perfect. I can see myself here, but I know my family feels its love for Israel differently than I do. I suppose I've become ok with that.
Back to my trip - my plans (my theology doesn't include the whole "man plans, God laughs" thread) to get here included joining a JNF Educators mission. I have enjoyed a very good relationship with JNF (and now that it also includes Alexander Muss High School in Israel of which I'm a big supporter) over the years, primarily through JEA and I'm hoping to create strong connections between JNF and my Israel Education work with the Center for Israel Education, which is why I chose to join this seminar. I was not their target audience, and I knew they were making an exception of sorts to take me. I expressed my gratitude to them then and now. It was an outstanding experience.
For me to come to Israel and do things I haven't done before - especially as a part of a group is pretty special, and yet that's exactly what happened. I spent time learning about Kibbutz Harduf and their holistic model (kind of a Waldorf model for you Education theory people) for including people of varying abilities, skills and challenges in their community. I got to know Acco, about the amuta (NGO) Lotem and Nahal HaShofet, I got reacquainted with Harel Stanton and he taught us to capture better images and stories with our phones. I took my first jeep ride through the Hula valley and saw a Jungle Cat at Hula Lake at sunset. I got to Katzrin for the first time in years and visited the Talmudic Park (for a comparable educational experience, think Williamsburg, Virginia but 1400 hundred years earlier). I learned about a new model for afterschool STEAM education in Nof HaGalil at the KKL Center for Excellence - I don't think there is anything like it, at least not in the Greater DC area - think about a Boys and Girls club for High School Students merged into a High Tech Start up and you can start to imagine it. I met Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon by happenstance in shul on Shabbat and heard his beautiful voice as he was ba'al maftir and led Musaf. I conducted a Shabbat afternoon wine tasting in the park at Yemin Moshe for 50 of my fellow travelers.
But that's not what wasn't expected - on the third day of the workshop, between the Jeep ride in the Hula Valley and the trip up the mountain ridge to Katzrin in the Golan Heights, I learned than my mother had died, peacefully, in her sleep sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning in Cincinnati. My mother and I had a relationship that can best be described as challenging; as I posted on facebook on Thursday, I’ve learned that being hard on each other is a fairly normal condition between mothers and sons, and while I’m certain I was rarely the son my mother wanted me to be, I’m equally certain that I was usually the best son I had the ability to be. I think that’s all any one of us can do.
I could have, and some will probably say should have decided to try to return to the US, and bury my mother. I trusted my brother and sister to fulfill that responsibility, and maybe it's wrong that I didn't come to help. But I chose to stay in Israel. I told a couple of people close to me what had happened, I called my rabbi, Mickey Safra and let him know how I was thinking of handling things, and I started navigating the rather murky Jewish tradition of mourning while all the time adapting the tradition to my personal needs and situation. While very aware of what halacha more or less required me to do, I gave myself the room to make some less than halachic decisions to try and match my situation to what I believe would both honor my mother and honor our tradition.
I remember my mother being surprised that I got up at 6:15 every weekday morning to go to minyan for a year (and longer) after my father died (cynically, I don't think he could have tolerated shul enough to do it for me - but then there isn't such a clear cut commandment about honoring children as there is about honoring parents). So I don't know what my mother would have wanted me to do, though she likely would have liked to think that I would drop everything for her, and then she would share with everyone her disappointment that I didn't. While my community here is different, I do have a community here, and I feel, in the spirit of Israel innovation, I have created the new permutation of Mobile Shiva.
I was traveling. With a group. The funeral would start in Cincinnati as I was preparing for Shabbat in Jerusalem. I delayed Kri'ah (tearing of my clothes as a symbol of grief and the person "torn" away from you) and went to shul for my first kaddish of the year. We started Kabbalat Shabbat with 7, by Lecha Dodi an 8th arrived, and the 9th not until the Ma'ariv amidah. I was very anxious that I would be denied my first kaddish of shiva. I am not exaggerating - someone, probably Elijah the prophet, walked into the synagogue at yigdal the closing hymn) and I was able to say Kaddish - you can't make this shit up.
Shabbat morning I got up early and went to the Turkish synagogue in Yemin Moshe (very close to the hotel - I wasn't in the mood for a lot of singing or crowds) and it turns out it was packed for a bar mitzvah, and the Mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, was a guest of the family. Apparently Mr. Leon trained as a Hazzan - he has a beautiful clear voice which I found very comforting (and I'm not a huge fan of hazzanut) and he chanted the maftir and led musaf. We finished at about 10:10 (Oh B'nai Israel, if only ...).
By Shabbat, more of our group of 80 knew of my situation. I got hugs and warm wishes, appropriate for a mourner you've only just met the previous Monday (even if the 5 days seemed like 2 weeks because KKL crammed 2 weeks of programming into 5 days). I said Maariv with the French participants and other Aidot HaMizrach (Jews from Arab countries) in the basement synagogue of the hotel and made havdalah with some of the participants. I skipped going to the sound and light show at David's Citadel and going out Saturday. It was the first time I truly felt like a mourner.
I did kri'ah Sunday morning, and at our first stop of the day, the JNF River Park, Anne Greenspoon (a long time friend but also my parents' rebbetzin in Pittsfield Mass 15 years ago) arranged with JNF USA Tour Director Shahar Heremelin for me to plant a tree in my mother's memory near the amphitheater in the park (for those of you with us at JEA 2018, on the opposite side of the theater where we planted trees for Larry Brandspeigel's father and Rabbi Barb Moscow, z"l). That physical act of burying something that will grow and live was very cathartic for me, and for those who know how weepy I can get at such moments, I kept it together and read the eulogy Abby wrote for my mother's funeral to our group.
My mobile shiva continued throughout the day as we went on to Sderot (a favorite destination of mine here) and then on the the Diaspora Museum (rebranded as the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv). From there I made my way by train to Binyamina where I will continue my (slightly less) mobile shiva with my dear friends Yossi and Dina David. I am davening shacharit at the small shul on Achuza St in Pardes Hanna that I have visited many times in the past. I have a few hours still to figure out Ma'ariv.
So that's the update of where things are. Next I will share some Bubbe stories. They will not all be appropriate, but then I'm not writing this for children. Since most of you are not here, you will have to imagine my voice as I tell theses stories. Or maybe I'll learn how to make a podcast. But telling stories about the person who died is one of the things we're supposed to do during Shiva, and we threatened my mother with these stories for the last 40 years. Payback can be hell.
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