To be(come) or not to be(come Israeli).

Joshua Pitkoff

November 2011

Behind Cultural Lines

Two weeks ago, my camper from last summer asked over Facebook chat, “So are you a part of Israeli culture yet?” This is my response.

    Eighty percent of my high school graduating class is in Israel right now participating in various and diverse programs throughout the country as a gap year before college. Most are in Jerusalem. Most are in American programs. Most have little, if not zero, contact with Israelis on a daily basis. Thank God, many Jewish students are electing to spend a year here, clearly necessitating attractive and comfortable options for us. But, is it possible to imagine such a place where Hebrew is spoken among Americans in the State of Israel? Can a place be envisioned where Americans participate in an Israeli program--living, learning, and experiencing the year truly different from their American life? Say, for example, signing up for an actual Israeli program instead of an American program in Israel.

    Since I am one of The Few, The Proud (trademark, US Marines; l’havdil) nine affectionately named chutznikim (hailing from chutz ha’aretz, outside of the land of Israel) at my Israeli yeshiva, I fall under this category. Let’s start at Ben Yehuda Street, the epicenter, the heart of American gap year social-life. Make a few short turns, continue on Sultan Sulieman, a right onto Yitzchak Hanadiv, through Derech Har Hatzofim tunnel which turns into Route 1, left onto Route 90 N, cruise for 80km and turn left onto Route 667 up the 11km winding mountain road. Your tremp will leave you at the gate of Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa, a two hour trip from the center of Jerusalem and the social center of American Jewish gap year students.

    So I choose to isolate myself from the American experience for the overwhelming majority of my time. This year, I enjoy a little timeout from tests and stress and homework and pressure of high school to recharge, as some would put it, before I drain my battery in college overdrive. A year to drink warm tea over Heschel between ceaseless years of caffeine abuse in the science library. Quite different, I must say, than the yeshiva experience of the Israelis. In the very near future, approaching steadily and surely, is their military draft. Meaning this year is one of preparation, testing, being profiled, pulling whatever strings possible to merit a spot in a more respected combat unit or a special intelligence program. They are nervous. They are scared. They will be bringing home their guns for weekends at home. We will be bringing laundry on weekends we go home. Yes, I chose the road less traveled by, but I dare not say it is the same as the Israeli way.

    Unsurprisingly, making the choice we did leads to certain assumptions. “Are you fluent yet? Have you dreamt in Hebrew yet?” “No, we’ve been here three weeks. You don’t get fluent in three weeks.” Some students feel pressure to impress their visiting friends and relatives with their newly improved Hebrew skills, as if to say, “Yeah, I made this hard decision and it’s paying off. Be jealous.” On the other side of the coin, I personally have found that students in American yeshivot, where the Hebrew they have to speak is to direct (psycho) cab drivers and order falafal, have entirely different standards of fluent. I have heard them award themselves the title of “fluent Hebrew speaker,” but I doubt they have tried to discuss Rav Kook’s philosophy or Rav Shagar’s post-modernism in Hebrew, an entirely different experience than “One pita with falafel, hummus, and salad.”

    My Israeli suite-mate, while bemoaning such tragedies of annoying Americans thinking they can just pop in for the year and blah blah blah, made sure to qualify, “But you guys are different.” In what way? “You are making an effort to learn hard Hebrew words, learn about the army, isolate yourselves with us.” In his eyes, we are different from those Americans. Yet, we enter a room and something about us--our clothes, our mannerisms, our less Mediterranean skin-tones--something gives us away and we are thrown right back into the melting pot of all Anglos.

Much like the American college application process (without any of the stress), the gap year yeshiva and seminary application process includes interviews, often as valuable for the students as for the institution. Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa, as the rabbi in charge of interviewing always clarifies, is not about coming to Israel for a year, it’s about being Israeli for a year. That is the pitch, but is it accurate? Certainly, we separate ourselves from the rest of our friends for a year, but does that mean that we have become Israeli? Where is the line one has to cross from being non-American to actual Israeli?

    Maybe we should start by examining the qualities, the dead giveaways, of our American roots. “How do I know you’re Americans? By the way you dress, obviously,” one of our rabbis told us. Clothing, check. We tend to wait on lines. Patience, check. We panic at least slightly as the passengers of an Israeli driver. A shiver also runs down my spine when army planes fly very low. General sense of nervousness, check.

    Certainly, there are smaller-scale tensions between our cultural tectonic plates. Milk is 3% and comes in bags. (From this was born the “shoko b’sakit,” chocolate [milk] in a bag, the greatest invention of Israel’s food industry.)  Americans tend to enjoy small breakfasts, moderate lunches, and heaping plates of dinner. Israelis favor large breakfasts, larger lunches, and, at least in yeshiva, practically no dinner whatsoever. Hitchhiking is part of everyday life for some, extremely common in the more remote, public-transportation-lacking, regions of the country. And naturally, who could forget the complete elimination of late wake-ups and delicious brunches on Sunday morning?

    I find the big kahuna of the American/Israeli divide, to be the language barrier. Not only fluency in Hebrew, but idiom-use as well as, probably the biggest hurdle to overcome, the Israeli accent. Even among the Americans in the yeshiva, there are several ways of attempting to bridge that gap. Some will make a careful effort to speak the language as they hear it. Meaning, Israelis, to our American ears, pronounce the lamed (L-sound) and the reish (R-sound) essentially the same, which Americans attempt to emulate, some more successful than others. Some saturate their sentences with Israeli idioms and slang, frequently using words such as k’eilu (like), achi (my brother), b’keif (with pleasure), gever (loosely, “a man,” usually endearing), and walla/why (wow). Perhaps they mumble a little, deepen their voices, anything to attempt to drown the voice screaming out, “Look at me, I’m American.”

    Others, including myself up until now at least, have kept their American accent purposefully. Probably a subconscious response to the failed attempts of others to “fake” the accent, I find no shame in others knowing my American roots. Unfortunately, my whole life there have always been classmates of mine who faked the accent in Ivrit (Hebrew) classes with a definite stigma attached. Maybe while amongst Israelis in a situation such as ours it is generally more accepted, but upon returning to America, it would likely be considered strange for me to have an Israeli Hebrew accent. People would certainly judge me, justifiably or not, for “faking” it because that is not really who I am.

    Several weekends ago, I spent Shabbat with my friend from home who has been buzz-cutting his own hair as well as several of my friends’, for a few months now. I needed a haircut and figured, “Why not? My hair is usually short anyway, it’s easier and cheaper than a barber.” His American, electric razor--plugged in though a converter that could have blown up on my head at any minute--trimmed down my thick hair to half an inch on top and the sides a mere ⅜ inch. “Oh, look at Josh all Israeli now.” And I reacted defensively because, well, I don’t want to be judged negatively for false reasons. I’m truly not trying to fake who I am and be someone I’m not.

    I am very unsure whether or not I envision my future as one of an Israeli citizen. Sometimes I visit communities and feel like I can definitely see myself raising a family with such a warm neighborhood and thriving B'nei Akiva (Israeli youth program); but sometimes I wander the area and feel a clear and unbridgeable divide between its residents and myself. I read Time magazine's descriptions of America's failing economy, education system, and government, considering Israel more and more as solid option; but then I attempt to switch Israeli phone companies and use customer service and realize nothing in this country works how it should and I have no desire to voluntarily deal with that. Or will it be an ideological decision based on my desire to build the Jewish State versus developing the American Jewish community? For me personally, this discussion of culture all depends heavily on how I view my future. If I plan on returning to America and spending the rest of my life striving to achieve the American Dream, then keeping an American accent poses no problems and I will certainly not be judged. However, if in time, I envision myself making aliyah, maybe this year is the time to incorporate those more Israeli aspects into my personality, including “developing” my accent. One free Shabbat which I spent in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot, we met a woman who made aliyah many years ago, but still had her American Hebrew accent. Do I want to still seem, like that woman, obviously American even after living here for many years? (And of course get ripped off accordingly at the shuk and in taxis.) On the other hand, I would be faking it, essentially trying to be Israeli. Would it be considered legitimate to get buzz-cuts and change my accent if I planned to eventually include myself as part of this culture?

    The question is where exactly is the line between faking and changing--being something you aren’t and this being who you now are? At a certain point, you are incorporating this aspect into a part of you. Not putting on a mask to disguise, but rather changing the face itself. In a more current example (by the Israeli entertainment media standards lagging roughly a decade behind American), Michael Jackson getting plastic surgery to make himself actually white instead of just pretending to be white. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but the general idea. To a large extent the issue is at its core, a discussion of intent. Do you trust another person is changing for himself and not to affect how others view him?

    Once we assume this individual’s change to be well-intentioned and to develop him or herself, congratulations we have just passed go, collected 200 NIS, and are right back at the beginning: at what point does that individual actually become Israeli, or is it even possible? Even if I make aliyah, can I ever truly be Israeli with such strong American roots?

I don’t have answers to these questions and I certainly won’t pretend to. I wanted to provide a small insight into tension most people take for granted when thinking about the yeshiva/seminary year and even making aliyah. For me at least, it is a remarkably complicated issue and is relevant day in and day out, whether we consciously recognize it or not.

Only at the end of the year will we know how we have been transformed by the experiences of our time in yeshiva. There is, however, one person I met who already knows. Our guide for a tour with a mission from my shul heard I am a student at Maale Gilboa and made sure to tell my dad, “That’s an amazing place. I hope you know you’re going to lose your son.”

Maybe when all is said and done, who cares about the differences?

Reflections on the Transition to Israel and Maale Gilboa by Kal Victor

It is hard to fathom that it was a little over two months ago that I arrived in Israel as a stranger, just barely proficient in Hebrew, not yet sick of falafel, not yet addicted to persimmons, not yet having experienced firsthand Gilad Shalit’s momentous return; the list could go on for ages. To be entirely honest, I had no idea what to expect when I got here, and no idea—beyond some illusive, vague combination of obligation and craving—why I had decided to come.  That is to say, I came here with no real idea what to do or where to begin.  I think I can say more certainly now that why I’m here is precisely to think about those questions, as they relate to my decision to take this gap year, my broader Jewish identity, and my own personal dogma.  I’ll try not to wax too sentimental in this post, though, don’t worry.  Maale Gilboamanages to simultaneously cultivate my already hardy New-York-Jew cynicism, as well as my romantic, idealistic side.  I think it takes a place that could, on the Day of Atonement, interrupt a somber six hour morning service with half-an-hour of impassioned dancing and shouting to do that.          

The months that have passed have been filled, just like all others, with peaks and troughs: excitement, learning, thinking, exploring, but also, of course, worrying, time-wasting, and goofing off.  I had some small challenges adjusting in the beginning—nothing too major, though.  Israelis are funny creatures.  Their being obsessed with Western culture (even though their tastes are always lagging about a year behind what’s vogue in the States), one can often forget that Israeli society has its own deep-rooted tradition and etiquette, which have to be addressed sensitively and conscientiously.  For example, just because it may not be customary for Israeli male youth to bathe or change their clothes more than a few times a week, doesn’t mean one can hold his nose and wave his hands in front of his face in dramatized disgust when they walk by.  So too, when one’s roommates blast Mizrachi love songs (this one is a favorite of mine:

or the Macarena, recommending them as great, innovative, fresh music, one can’t gag or even pantomime suicide with a finger-gun to the head. 

On a more serious note, though, I have noticed that my Israeli peers are approaching yeshiva from an entirely different mental context. Not only was their education different in the sense that they focused on Israeli rather than American literature and history, and that their schools were catered more to math and science (because it’s good for the army), but that this year is, for them, defined in ways I couldn’t ever really understand.  Yeshiva, for them, is defined in relation to their looming military service, defined in relation to a religious culture that exists in step with the national culture, defined by a strict secular-religious dichotomy (that I have begun to see dissipate at Maale Gilboa, at least, but that still thrives in Israeli religious life), defined in the shadow of the religious-Zionist dream.  While I have certainly formed my own beliefs about Israel—its politics, religious dynamics, people, and culture—I find that keeping an open mind to the opinions of those who experience life here firsthand is by all means a worthwhile endeavor.

Over vacation, I was all over the land: Chaifa, Yehudiya, Rechovot, Yerushalayim, Tel Aviv, and Eilat with the Americans from Maale Gilboa (literally almost a full circle around the entire country).  And it really occurred to me—most clearly when I was on the move, hiking, hitchhiking, seeing the sights—that Israel can be an alien place, even though it is meant to seem, and certainly can feel like, my home.  Luckily, the hospitality of relatives and friends from the yeshiva has been nearly overwhelming, in the best sense, reminding me that people can transcend superficial barriers and relate to each other on an essential level.  It helps to have a joint system of beliefs, of course, but even though Judaism is lived and dealt with very differently in the Jewish State than in the Melting Pot, openness and welcoming have bridged the gap, and I’ve noticed the presence of international students in yeshivot is a very important beacon, on both sides, that Judaism is interconnected and alive throughout the world.

The gaps and difficulties on the macro scale have seemed to narrow with time and kindness, but my personal acclimation has been centered more on my emotional response to a new environment: my being away from New York and its vibrancy and diversity, being away from friends with whom I’ve experienced many of my fondest memories, not being in the direct comfort and care of my family, and most importantly, not knowing exactly what it is I hope to gain from this experience.  I think my dad explained it best in brief pep-talk before I left, although it didn’t really sink in until recently.   He explained to me that this year is not about turning my life around on a dime, and that I shouldn’t expect that I will undergo some sort of precipitous religious metamorphosis, necessarily.  He told me it was about experiencing the year for what it is as it it’s happening in real time, and I realized that the experience of learning and living in an environment centered around Torah and its dynamism, my own choices and ideas, and the land of the Jewish people, has extreme intrinsic value.  My biggest hurdle was dealing with the reflexive need to compare my own story to those of friends in college and other gap year programs.  Once I realized that my purposes here were unique and my own, incomparable with what others were doing and seeking elsewhere, my dad’s advice for taking this year in stride and letting time work out its meanings and implications has become a much more relatable bit of parental wisdom.  I’ve had the desire, before working out the ins and outs of my Jewish observance, to see what tradition has being saying the past millennium about the issues I’m dealing with.  And believe me there’s a treasure trove of opinions and insights out there that I have only just begun to examine in my time here.

What have I been learning?  Well, there’s been Talmud, specifically the tractate of Baba Metzia; there’s been Halakhic theory; there’ve been Chassidic and Kabalistic parables; there’s been Levinas and Kierkegaard; Prophets and Pslams; Maimonides; Israeli politics; and the list goes on. A lot of what’s amazing about the learning here is precisely how diverse and unpredictable it is.  In discussions, rabbis will shout at rabbis, students at rabbis, rabbis at students, and students at students, because so many people, especially (thankfully) among the faculty, are genuine and unique thinkers who approach Judaism in radically different ways.  Albeit sometimes chaotic, sometimes reminiscent of epically intense Pokémon battles (at least in my mind), I really feel like this is the Judaism that is meant to be: the kind that is intellectual, thoughtful, individualistic, but still open, inclusive, and anchored in community and tradition.  Of course, I couldn’t really convey effectively what it is I’ve been doing without some recent examples, though.

The other day in a Bible lesson on the Book of Exodus, our teacher, Chezi, guided us through Moses’s personal growth and development, which culminated, of course, in his Divine appointment to leader of the Israelites.  Chezi’s approach is fascinating and a personal favorite of mine: a modern and exciting literary lens held up to the Bible, its characters, structure, and meaning.  He argued that Moses’s development was a personally guided trajectory, one impelled by his need to seek justice in the world, that eventually created a man worthy to lead the Jewish people outside of Egypt and experience God “panim el panim,” face to face.  It was Moses who earned his position, and in no way was he born a leader.  He spoke about how Moses’s need to chase righteousness and justice straddled all levels of his existence and interaction with the world.  First, Moses leaves Pharaoh’s palace and sees and Egyptian taskmaster oppressing a Hebrew slave.  His moral instinct, in its least refined early stage here, immediately kicks in and he kills the taskmaster.  The next incident reported in the narrative is when Moses sees two Hebrew slaves fighting amongst themselves, and he immediately rebukes them for it.  Next, he encounters the daughters of Re’uel, also known as Jethro, according to commentators, who are hassled (the text is vague about exactly what occurred) at a well by shepherds who Moses fends off valiantly.  It is after this chain of events that Moses settles down in Midian, marrying one of Re’uel’s daughters, and becoming a shepherd, which one day leads to his discovery of the Burning Bush.  Moses’s entire journey is marked by the initial words “va’yetzei el echav,” and he went out to his brothers, denoting that Moses actively decided to leave the comfort and wealth of an Egyptian home in order to fight for the oppressed, his Hebrew brothers.  After he fights for the rights and safety of a slave, he is then dealt an even harder task, rebuking his fellow Hebrews for infighting, shifting his idealized notions of good and evil to a much more complex, troubling place.  After that, Moses still has the incredible inner strength to turn outward and fight for the weak at the well, even though they are not his kin and even though he knows now that things aren’t as black and white as a zealous Moses immediately thought when he left the palace. 

A big part of Maale Gilboa’s ethos is the emphasis on being worldly, absorbing wisdom not only from Jewish sources, but from secular ones, incorporating crucial insights and wisdom into your Jewish observance and overall worldview, independent of their origins.  Just like Moses’s penchant for seeking right was not limited to his Jewish brethren, so too do we believe that our quest for truth and right is not confined to Jewish tradition alone.  An oft quoted adage here is “Chochma ba’goyim ta’amin, Torah ba’goyim al ta’amin,” you shall believe the wisdom of the nations, but not their “Torah” (Eicha Rabbah 2:13).  While it is mostly only the first half of this verse that makes it into a quote, I think there is something to be said in the second clause, as well.  But I’ll get there in am moment.  To demonstrate the first half of the verse, I wanted to share a thought I came across in an extremely interesting, albeit in my mind somewhat flawed, book called All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Dorrance Kelly, which cites a commencement speech given to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace.  In it he said, “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about ‘teaching you how to think’ is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: ‘Learning how to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience” (the whole speech, amazing and much food for thought: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html). 

Maale Gilboa seems to share a similar goal in their education: to teach you how to think.  They have no desire to brainwash or indoctrinate you by defining what’s right and wrong and how this and that are done correctly, their purpose, as it’s revealed itself to me, is to give each of their students the tools and inspiration to connect with their own needs and desires, to learn how to think and search for meaning in life and Judaism as they can in their own way at their own pace.  Implicit in this approach is the trust in students to make wise, carefully considered choices.  Although this is certainly not the easiest or prettiest way to preach religion, for me, and I think I speak for a lot of Maale Gilboa when I say this, its fruits are the sweetest. They become, instead of a store-bought, generic crop, those grown and toiled over in one’s own orchard. 

I think this is where the “Torah ba’goyim al ta’amin” comes in.  Learning Torah (literally meaning instruction or law), beyond the world of Halakha and faith, is about cultivating one’s ability to learn, analyze, think, and seek meaning, fostering what I have heard termed by a few students and faculty, “reading with yirah,” literally meaning “reading with fear,” loosely corresponding to a notion more commonly known as “reading with charity.” What I mean by this is that rather than read texts critically, using my individual, modern sensibilities to search for flaws or anachronisms, I need to try as best as I can to inhabit the world and mind of the author, to see the truth and wisdom in what he or she saying and get as much as I can from it in its context before I decide whether its insights will apply to me and my own ideologies.  Although this is a near Herculean task, the goal is to try, to try and gain wisdom by respecting that the author may actually know better than you, by opening your mind to possibilities of insight where a selfish, solipsistic mind would willfully exclude it.  Although the ultimate goal is to apply this method of studying and reading to all texts, it is a skill that, at least for me personally, is seldom absorbed from sources outside of Judaism. This is what has to be learned by reading holy texts, be they Talmud, Maimonides, Bible, what have you, because, for me, there is an element of awesomeness and wisdom in such texts that seems to both necessitate and enable reading them with yirah. 

Now the time has come to tie my ramblings together and relate this all to some of my own personal reflections and apotheoses. In some ways Maale Gilboa has come to be my own “va’yetzei,” my own journey into the world at large.  In attempting to read with yirah, in attempting to extract wisdom from all sources indiscriminately this year, I’m starting to venture into a world of ideas and opinions that can be overwhelming sometimes.  But like Moses, I think that an essential guiding force through this vast tumultuous sea of thought can be found in the yearning for morality and justice, in the most universal, but also the most particular sense it can be understood, applying both to those closest to you and to those who you may not be able to relate to at all.  Just as my challenges here, in Israel, a foreign place, have been greeted with an equal and opposite reaction by the kindness of others, so too do I hope to begin my quest to work out a Jewish identity that, among other things, exists in a way that it can achieve just that—a transcendent, all-inclusive kindness.  Rav Bigman once gave a short speech about a man who walked an old lady across the street.  Why did he do it?  Because he pitied her in her old age and frailty and felt she needed taking care of.  Rav Bigman proceeded to ask why we need a Divine commandment to love our neighbor as we would ourselves.  He answered that if we did not have God in the equation, a Being who can look down at all of humanity and recognize their equality, we would never be able to achieve a love of others that stems from a sense of equality, because humans dwell on differences and relate to other humans largely on what distinguishes them rather than what unites them.  The man who pitied the old woman was wrong—he should have helped her across the street because she was human and because God sees her as his equal, not because she was elderly. 

I know these might be some lofty goals, but this year I’ll certainly have time to think about them, at least a little.

Kal

Lamdanut and Cheshbon Hanefesh -- Avi Buckman

Reflections on Rabbi Bigman’ discussion: “Lamdanut and Cheshbon Nefesh”

Avi Buckman

Around two centuries ago, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter observed that yeshivot in Eastern Europe produced some of the highest caliber Talmudic thinkers, but not the most upstanding human beings. He believed that part of the yeshiva student’s education should be dedicated to improving character and moral fiber. This idea sparked a controversial movement at the time called Mussar. Traditional yeshivot in Eastern Europe were originally quite resistant to the Mussar movement. To them, yeshiva students improved their character through their connection to the Talmud and its logic, and dedicating  time to Mussar was merely a waste of time. Nowadays, Mussar has found its way into most yeshivot, and most have a Mashgiach Ruchani who conducts classes on Mussar and checks on students’ spiritual health. 

Cheshbon nefesh, introspection, is a main aspect of Mussar because reflecting upon one’s actions is of the first steps to improving character. Rabbi Bigman does not see mutual exclusivity between cheshbon nefesh and lamdanut, analytical Talmud skill, as generations had in the past. He argues that, in fact, lamdanut, lends itself to introspection. The following comparisons can be drawn between these two concepts:

1)     Objectivity- Though introspection is by nature a personal experience, it is important that one perceive his deeds objectively. For one, when people become too personally attached to their deeds, they begin to rationalize unacceptable actions or flatter themselves with an action’s good consequences (though most times the consequences are not so harmless.) In general, the best approach to meaningful introspection is to look at one’s deeds simply and objectively. There are clearly good deeds and bad deeds; once nuance is considered, people lose sight of what is proper and what is not.

2)     Perspective- Through the course of Talmud study, a person learns to be able to take on different opinions that often attack a specific issue from many angles. In order to appreciate Rav’s position you must understand Shmuel. In fact, a Talmudic concept is also not fully investigated until it is attacked by different conceptual angles. So too, cheshbon nefesh requires looking at every action from numerous angles and vantage points. One should ask “Who is affected by this act? What does this person feel about what I did? How does this action affect me?” This technique is especially important when reflecting on a conflict with another person. Someone stuck in his own perspective does not realize why an argument even exists because he does not recognize the other’s position. Without recognizing that other people have legitimate concerns people cannot meaningfully coexist.
 

3)     Continuity- The Talmud states that when a person goes to Heaven, God asks man what he has made of his life. One of His questions is “Have you set time for Torah?” Jews are obligated to make Torah study part of their routine. So too, introspection is a continual act; if a person only does cheshbon nefesh during the High Holidays, he has missed the point.   The other hand, Rabbi Bigman noted that there is such thing as too much cheshbon nefesh. Some people reflect too much on their actions’ ramifications that they cannot live life and thus cannot grow.

4)     Practice- Though the study of Talmud b’iyun, in-depth, is not focused on Halachic practice, part of analyzing a sugya and differing opinions is considering the nafka minah, practical ramifications. Though we do not determine our halachic practice based on the dispute between Rav and Shmuel, focusing on practical differences heightens our conceptual understanding of their views. Ultimately, cheshbon nefesh is a process that needs to focus on practical ramifications. Introspection is not merely a theoretical exercise- it must lead to positive action, whether in the form of asking for forgiveness, or building up character. 

Though Talmud study at yeshiva focuses on training the mind to think critically, it is important to realize that the content itself is important beyond the cognitive realm. We are now learning the ninth chapter of Bava Metzia in the section that deals with the laws of taking collateral. This section of Talmud is nuanced and complex, but beyond its use as a tool to sharpen the mind, the Talmud offers serious moral lessons. The Rabbis in the Talmud are torn between two different forces. On the one hand, a loan, by nature, is a crucial part of a free capitalist economy. On the other hand, the Rabbis try to defend the dignity of the poor who cannot pay back a loan, and thus sacrifice the rights of the one lending money. At a certain point, the Rabbis assert that a loan is even a kind of charity! The Sages’ pity for the destitute on such a large economic scale certainly makes me consider how much sympathy I need to show people when the ramifications are small in comparison.

The truth is that there are many ways to sharpen the mind outside of Torah study. It is crucial that especially during the season of intense introspection we use all our intellectual power and creativity to reflect on our behavior and improve our character.

Making Torah Our Own -- Max Segall

       It’s been a little more than two weeks since I arrived here in Israel and made my way to the north of the country to begin the seemingly daunting task of spending a year here at Yeshivat Ma’aleh Gilboa in the pursuit of Torah knowledge. The matriculation process is at first a little overwhelming, as it was necessary for me to acquiesce to the fact that I would have a difficult time, initially, understanding and communicating with all the other yeshiva bachors here. Unless your native tongue is that of the Hebrew language, it is a veritable shock to the system. Coupled with that, the thought of engaging in the complex discipline that is Torah in a language that isn’t entirely your own sounds like a fool’s errand!

            However, almost immediately after arriving at the yeshiva, my fears were swiftly assuaged. The Israelis are beyond amiable and engaging. Luckily for me and all the other chutznikim they are great about forcing us to speak in Hebrew to help us improve upon the vernacular we came here to perfect. Nevertheless, it’s nice to know that if you’re frustrated and want to speak in English for a bit, you’ll have no dearth of people with whom to talk—some of the other Israelis have even picked up some English. Maybe television is good for something.

            Similarly, the Rabanim are very sensitive to the needs of the chutznikim---really, all the students, and you can always approach them with any concern and question you may have. While it may be difficult at first to attend only Hebrew shiurim the Rabanim are spectacularly eloquent and articulate when they speak which makes the transition easier.

            Now, you may be curious about the difficulty of the actual material we spend all day learning. I was really nervous at first. Again, this fear was quickly put to rest by one of the most succinct and beautiful insights into Torah I have ever heard.

            For his introductory class, Rav Yosef Slotnik told us that the Torah is the divine word of the Lord and is at times an ostensibly incomprehensible text. In response to any aversion you may have to it as a result, the Torah assures us that its vast troves of knowledge are absolutely not unattainable. The Torah tells us, “Surely this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us, and impart it to us that we may observe it?’ ” (Numbers 30: 11-12). This Holy Scripture can be ours but only if we truly desire it and endeavor to obtain it.

            Now, you may ask, “Who am I to even dabble in the word of the Lord?”. The Torah has an answer for that as well. True, the Torah is the God’s holy text, but it is just as much ours as it is his, as it says in Psalms, “Happy is the man… [For whom] the teaching of the Lord is his delight, and he studies that teaching day and night.” (Psalms 1: 1-2). The wording of the text here uses the possessive when it refers to the Torah of the Lord, citing that it is indeed His. However, once we engage in its study, the wording changes to reflect that now we possess it; we’ve made it ours through its study. Upon hearing this, I was ecstatic and incredibly excited to spend my year here at the yeshiva; my anticipation and expectations were incalculable. Although it has only been a mere two weeks, I have already seen the Rabanim and students live up to those expectations, as they help make me a better and more learned Jew. I look forward to spending the rest of the year here.

by Max Segall

Complex Conclusions

Complex Conclusions

Gavriel Brown

As spring turns to summer, and the once lush green mountains of Ma’ale Gilboa turn dry and golden, we chutznikim (i.e. foreign students) are officially closing an important chapter in our lives. This was a chapter filled with Talmudic Dialectics, Halachik disagreements, Emmanual Levinas essays and Franz Kafka stories. For the 12 of us who began this year in the sweltering heat of August, this unique phase can’t simply be summarized without running the risk of superficiality.

When we go back home, we will inevitably be asked, “How was your year?” expecting a succinct answer tied up in a bow. Can we simply boil down a year of ideas, confusions, growth, tribulations and learning into a terse, “My year was great”?

We will read the story of the spies this week in Parashat Shelach. Moses charges twelve leaders of Israel to: "Go up there into the Negeb and on into the hill country, and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not?"

The sin of the spies, according to the Bible, is two fold. They didn’t trust in the benevolent power of God to guide them to the Promised Land, and they spread libel against the land.

But perhaps this whole calamity could have been avoided had Moses commanded them differently. His instructions gave no room to convey the complexity that such a mission would entail. The form of his questions, a series of yes/no dialectics was inappropriate. Upon returning from their journey, the spies would surely need to convey more than simply “the people are strong, the land is bad, the cities are fortified and the soil is rich.” And they did.
The people of Israel expected a concise report and were devastated to hear complexity. They wanted answers that would affirm their beliefs and were shocked to hear something different.
The story of the spies shows the need for questions that are open to multiple nuanced answers. It illustrates the need for questions that give room for unexpected complexity.

Yeshiva has left us with a powerful and enduring message. Torah is complex. Israel is complicated. There is more to the Talmud than meets the eye.  Life is a series of exciting challenges that requires sensibility and awareness, flexibility and openness.  

-- Gavi Brown

Volunteering at the Save a Child's Heart Foundation in Tel Aviv

The Talmud’s recorded remedy for “palpitations of the heart” was to take three wheat cakes, streak them with honey, eat them and wash them down with strong wine (Gittin 69).  Whilst this solution was probably considered advanced in its time, we are glad to see as volunteers at ‘Save a Child’s Heart’ that medicine has progressed since then. However the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam (lit. Repairing the World) is alive and well at the children’s home in Israel.

Throughout this week, we have seen people from all walks of life join us here in Azor to volunteer: medical students, retirees, university students,youth workers, gap year programee etc. however we had not heard of Orthodox Yeshiva students attending, so we are glad to add this category to the ever-growing list.  As both full-time volunteers and observant Jews, we presented many new and unique learning opportunities for both the mothers and ourselves:

Keeping Kosher in a home where the savory foods of Kuku (a chicken stew) and M’kate (flat-bread) are always available is tough; and yet, with the help of Kadidya (the Zanzibarian nurse), we were able to learn how to make these dishes both for ourselves in the home and for our families back home. We attended Friday night prayer services at the local (Messianic) Chabad synagogue whilst the kids were playing with their mothers and also ate Shabbat dinner with the local rabbi; who was also impressed with the work we were doing at SACH. Everyone in the house was very respectful of our limitations over the Sabbath and we still managed to keep all the children entertained with the help of toy cars and the park slides! 

 

 

A variety of religious dress can be seen at the SACH house. Many Muslim mothers wear the Hidjab and some of the catholic women wear crosses. All of the children are fascinated by our addition of colorful Kippot (skullcaps). One of Ibrahim's (from Mali) favorite past-times is to take one of our kippot, put it on his head, waddle away, then scrunch the kippah into a ball and stuff it into his mouth when no-one is looking. Last week, one of us (Ben) had the pleasure of escorting Tudor and his mother to the airport for their return to Romania. Upon his leave, Tudor asked for Ben's knitted kippah as a memento of his time in Israel (along with a guitar pick so he can continue his jamming sessions in the future). We hadn't anticipated this aspect of the volunteer-work before and thus we're pleasantly surprised to see how religious expression plays such a positive role in each child's experience within the home.

Ben Winton & Gavi Brown

Japan, Itamar, and Amalek Meet at a Checkpoint

Howdy folks,

I would like to share with y’all a few thoughts and experiences regarding this past week’s shocking events.

The catastrophic tsunami that hit Japan claiming thousands of lives and the horrific murder of a family in Itamar were the topics causing sighs at many a Shabbat table this past week. Personally, I did not hear about either the tsunami or the attack until Motzei Shabbat and therefore had a completely different conversation at the Shabbat table.  

This past Thursday and Friday, Gideon (the author of last week’s blog post) and myself were taking part in a program called “Encounter” that serves to bring groups of current and future Jewish leaders to the West Bank, in order to listen to Palestinians and digest their personal narratives together, as a Jewish group.

It was difficult for me as a person who grew up with the Israeli Zionist narrative to hear the immense personal pain and suffering on the tails-side of the coin. Previously, I could justify articles dealing with the conflict, on grounds of security and protection but after encountering the people involved the issue takes on a different dimension for me. It isn’t so simple to waive them away. The individual and collective anguish permeated the accounts of each speaker whether they were university professors, businesspeople, UN workers or activists for non-violence. When I heard Hijazi Eid, a 50-year-old boisterous and flamboyant tour guide, furiously describe the humiliation of being stuck in his car at a checkpoint, stalled for hours, and then being forced by a soldier to smile as if nothing happened - I couldn’t help but picture my Israeli friends at Yeshiva, taking the place of that soldier. How do I deal with that? On the one hand my friends are going to serve our country, to protect our nation, yet on the other, this lovely individual is humiliated like no person should ever be. Does my security justify such deeds? What happens when in order to prevent my own pain, I cause so much pain to another? How much can another human suffer so that I don’t have to? Can I sympathize with such universal grief and still believe what I grew up with?

I returned, confused but optimistic, to [West] Jerusalem for a pleasant Shabbat. I took the time to recollect, think, pray and schmooze. I seized the opportunity to share the hopeful message that threaded through each of the Palestinian speakers, with little exception. Despite living under conditions of continuous daily misery, they kept the faith. The mere knowledge that Jewish people, who don’t share their particular angst (and may even stand in contradiction to it), could acknowledge and empathize with that same angst, drives them forward to keep fighting for a more tranquil future. I was surging with optimism; just a few more encounters like this, just the recognition of each-others’ wounds and fears, and there is bound to be progress! I was sure of it.  

And then, after Havdallah, I turned on the TV.

Devastated and even more confused than before, I returned to Yeshiva in time for Rav Shmuel Reiner’s parashat ha’shavua sicha. “Erev Shabbat, the land shook… thousands lost their lives, thousands more lost their homes. We all felt so small, so helpless… we all cringed from the unimaginable disaster, we all felt the terrible suffering; we all wanted to reach out our hand and help our human brothers and sisters… and this past Friday night, the grief hit a lot closer to home. The land was shocked… How can human beings, in the Image of God, be capable of such cruelty, such terrible and disgusting acts? How do we respond? What can we do other than avenge?”

Can I sympathize with their grief while grieving myself?

In Parashat Zachor God commands us to wipe out the memory of Amalek. The Rambam in his Mishneh Torah explains this commandment: “It is a positive commandment to destroy the memory of Amalek… [by] constantly remember[ing] their evil deeds and their ambush of Israel to arouse our hatred of them…” (Book 14, Ch. 5:5) Amalek refused to recognize our suffering; the hardships and slavery from which we had only just escaped. They saw us as a weak people, and instead of being compassionate they were vicious and inhumane. It is this lack of sympathy, this refusal to acknowledge and identify with universal human suffering that the Torah commands us to hate. This is what we must eradicate.   

“We cannot restrain our passion, we must avenge,” continued Rav Shmuel, “but how do we avenge? How do we fight back against inhumanity? By wiping out Amalek. By destroying evil and sowing good. By learning Mesilat Yesharim (Jewish moral teachings) instead of reading Mishnayot in the memory of those killed. By facilitating positive actions, becoming better people, doing good deeds. This is how we avenge. This is how we remember.”

We must not let our personal grief distort the collective pain we share with all humanity and any being. We must have compassion for the agony and distress of all, even a strange nation in the desert. We must weep for Tamar Fogel, we must despair for the Japanese farmer and we must ache for the Palestinian at the checkpoint. We must.
Only then we can fulfill the commandment in Dvarim: “…Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget.”

-- Eli Philip

These and Those are the Words of the Living God

  One of the highlights of my study in yeshiva was Rav Bigman’s shiur “Toshba al Toshba,” or  “Oral Torah on Oral Torah.” In this shiur we studied different approaches in rabbinic literature to various issues like the nature of Halakha and the Halakhic process, the relationship between Oral Law and Written Law, and the tension between Halakha and ethics.

Recently, I read Avi Sagi’s “The Open Canon” which was an excellent continuation of these themes. The book is framed as a survey of three approaches to the famous Talmudic saying in BT Eruvin 13b “אלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים הן, והלכה כבית הלל—these and these are the words of the living God, but the Halakha follows the rulings of Bet Hillel.” The book grapples with the question of multiplicity in Halakhic discourse and the nature of Halakhic “truth.” How can two contradictory opinions both be the words of God? Did God command one thing and its opposite? Does the fact that we consider many Halakhic opinions the word of God mean that there is no single, conclusive Halakhic truth?  If both opinions are the words of God, how is one accepted and the other rejected—how can the dictum continue to say “and the Halakha follows the rulings of Bet Hillel?” 

Sagi offers two basic approaches which he titles the “Monistic Outlook” and the “Pluralistic Outlook.” Both of these are represented in various post-talmudic interpretations of the BT Eruvin source and offer different answers to the kinds of question elucidated above.

The Monistic Outlook assumes that there is “one correct decision in normative dilemmas (Sagi 13).”  This means that Bet Hillel was really right and Bet Shammai was really wrong. What is the significance of Bet Shammai’s ruling then? In other words, for the Monistic Outlook, what is the significance of rejected opinions and why are they characterized as the word of God? This is a particularly thorny question because other sources characterize Bet Shammai as “closer to the truth (BT Yevamot 14a)” How can a more truthful ruling be rejected? 

Sagi offers two answers, one emphasizing the rejected opinion’s theoretical value and the other its practical value. For the former, multiple opinions are part of a dialectic Halakhic process that tries to determine a single Halakhic truth by narrowing down options. By rejecting one possible ruling, we sharpen the right one. In Sagi’s metaphor, white looks whiter when contrasted with black (ibid. 18). Thus rejected opinions have the character of “Hava Aminot”, which contribute to the life of study and clearer determination of the right Halakha.  And in this very dialectic, they are the words of God.

The practical view, explicated by Rashi, sees rejected opinions as potentially viable Halakhic options in future circumstances. This is close to the Mishna in Eduyot 1:5    “ולמה מזכירין דברי היחיד בין המרובין הואיל ואין הלכה אלא כדברי המרובין שאם יראה בית דין את דברי היחיד ויסמוך עליו–Why are the minority rulings recorded alongside the majority rulings when the Halakha follows the majority? So that a [future] Bet Din may rely on minority rulings.” Although there is only one right Halakhic opinion in any given circumstance, alternative rulings may be right for other circumstances and in that, they may be the words of God. This makes sense of the Yevamot source when we consider the Talmud’s notion of Bet Shammai’s applicability in Messianic times. The “more truthful” opinion will actually be followed when the circumstances call for it.   

Both views try to understand how rejected opinions can be the living words of God—for the former, God speaks through “limud”; for the latter, through the generations.

            The Pluralist approach fundamentally disagrees with the Monistic one and suggests that more than one option is possible in normative dilemmas. This means the Bet Hillel is not inherently more correct than Bet Shammai, even though supported by a “Bat-Kol” or a heavenly voice. Sagi argues that the basic problem of Halakhic pluralism is theological—what is the revelatory basis of Halakha in a pluralistic outlook (ibid. 71)? Does God reveal more than one truth? If so, can he reveal opposing truths? Is revelation indeterminate, offering contingent options that are not essentially right or wrong? Or is there another way to understand revelation which gives rise to multiple, mutually exclusive yet mutually legitimate options?

Sagi again offers a few models—The realistic, anthropological, and authoritative. Each tackles revelation a little differently. 

The realistic model, attributed by Sagi to the Ritba, defines revelation as the bestowal of Halakhic options rather than a defined corpus of laws. As the famous Talmudic saying suggests, for every object there are forty-nine ways to declare it tahor (ritually pure) and forty-nine ways to declare it tameh (ritually impure). This means that no generation’s ruling has precedence over another’s because contemporary rulings are implicit options in revelation itself. This also implies a sharp distinction between revelation and practical Halakha in that no Halakhic decisions were ever given, and thus explicit rulings and “makhlokot” are a product of a strictly human realm.

The anthropological model argues that humanity is an essential part of revelation. Therefore, in contrast to the realistic model for which revelation was a one-time event, revelation is continuous and an inherent part of the human exercise of Halakhic discourse itself. And if the realistic model understood revelation to be unitary and practical Halakha fragmentary, the anthropological model stresses the multiplicity of revelation itself due to the multi-faceted nature of humanity as a vessel of revelation. 

This leads to two trends of thought, one conservative and the other progressive. The conservative, represented by Meir Ibn Gabbai, forbids autonomous human discretion in the Halakhic process because everything it consists of is divine and beyond human reason. “Intellectual activity is the organon of revelation (ibid. 74)” and thus it is denied of any independent value in itself. The fact of Halakhic multiplicity is explained as the limited absorption of the revelation throughout different time periods. For Ibn Gabbai, the prophet and sage are one (74).

A more progressive way of understanding perennial revelation is evinced by Solomon Luria. For Luria, revelation does not deny human reason, but attests to its supreme value. If God is revealed in the human processes of Halakha, then those processes are of divine importance! In my opinion, Luria’s conception makes more sense of the BT text. We can decide to rule like Bet Hillel over Bet Shammai if he appeals to our reason, because human reason is valuable. And this is the very meaning of the Bat-kol or heavenly endorsement—the divine dictates of our reasoning! 

The authoritative model, understands revelation as the bestowal of authority in the hands of the sages to do what they please with Halakha. This is represented by Ramban, who states, “It was subject to their judgment that He gave them the Torah even if it [the judgment] appears to you to exchange the right for left (Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Deut. 17.11).” This is also paralleled in the famous story in BT Eruvin where R. Joshua exclaims in the face of a Bat-Kol, “It is not in Heaven!” Contradictory ruling, then, is the natural consequence of the entirely human fact of disagreement. On the face of it, the authoritative model seems similar to the realistic model. Again, revelation is unitary and Halakhic fragmentation is a product of the human realm. There are fundamental differences however. In the realistic model where halakhic considerations are revealed, all options are implicit in revelation and thus every ruling is in some sense the “word” of God. Further, Halakha can be determined only by the preexisting considerations revealed at Sinai. In the authoritative model, rulings are not implicit in revelation rather only our authority to rule autonomously: Halakhic opinion does not represent the word of so much as his will that we rule however we want. Further, there are no specific Halakhic considerations to follow and human discretion is supreme.  

These three models present varying answers to the theological questions presented by the “Pluralistic Outlook”

In general, Sagi’s book was compelling because of its philosophical virtuosity and clarity, and the intellectual erudition it displayed, both in traditional and modern sources. It was exciting to see the dynamism of Halakhic thought, and how there are completely different ways to account for Halakhic multiplicity representing widely divergent worldviews. One thing that particularly struck me was how every option raises its own questions and in fact no single direction is totally self-sufficient—rather, the sum of the opinions and the conversation itself is the most meaningful thing about Halakhic discourse. 

 -- Gideon Weiler

Maale Gilboa meets Bnei Brak!

On the Shabbat of parshat Truma, the yeshiva travelled down to the epicenter of Hareidi Judaism in the world, the lovely city of Bnai Brak. Entering the city expecting the familiar images of the narrow, rubbish filled streets so common in Mea Shearim, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself walking on clean streets lined with modest apartments. Despite being both the poorest  and most densely populated city in Israel, it does not seem to the passerby to be a city wallowing in its poverty.

Our host yeshiva was on the perimeter of Bnai Brak, close to Ramat Gan, yet it was a relatively short walk to all our destinations through the entire Shabbat. Although its students were not there (having occupied Maale Gilboa’s dorm rooms in an exchange of sorts for Shabbat) we found all remaining staff at the Yeshiva extremely warm and helpful. However, our activity within its facilities was (self) restricted to meals, Kabbalat Shabbat, and Shabbat afternoon rest. The remainder of the time, we were led by Zevik throughout the city to various yeshivot, synagogues, and rabbis’ houses.  Our first stop was at the World Wide Headquarters  for the Nadvorna Hasidim. We had a conversation with Rav Kovlski, founder of “Me’orot Hadaf Hayomi” (http://hadafhayomi.co.il/index.php?l=en) which engages millions of Jews everyday in the learning of a daf of Gemara daily. Through his guiding hand, stories, and wealth of knowledge, we delved into whether intentions truly matter or whether it is only the outcome that is the deciding factor in Jewish Law. Afterwards, we participated in a Tische with Chasidai Nadvorna. We entered a long room bracketed on the sides by rickety wooden bleachers with a long table in the middle. At the head of the table sat the Rebbe -- An elderly, fragile looking man dressed in beautiful silk blue robes with silver crescent moon designs.  On his head sat a large fur shtreimel. The other chasidim wore black robes with white knickers. The majority wore shtreimels as well but there was some variety of hats. This tische was a very communal affair with food and drink being distributed to everyone and everyone enjoying it immensely. We then left to visit Yeshivat Beit Aharon, a yeshiva for students with religious-Zionist backgrounds who want to enter the Haredi world. We had a talk with their Rosh Yeshiva, the dynamic Rabbi Took. He gave us a beautiful dvar torah and taught us a new niggun: “Amar Abaya,” now a favorite among both the rabbis and students of  Maale Gilboa. From here, the majority of the Yeshiva opted to continue our adventure at the Tische of Vizhnitz Hasidim. There is currently a power struggle between two brothers for control of the sect. We went to the more popular and dynamic (according to Zevik) brother’s tische. We walked in an impressive building and immediately were blown away by the site. In essence it was the same as the last tische just on steroids. The bleachers were both higher and longer, the large square table was perhaps the largest I’ve seen in my life fitting by my rough estimate at least 60 people (and that’s only on 3 sides of it, the fourth is for the Rebbe). Even the singing and grandeur seemed more than the last. Imagine a few hundred Chasidim on bleachers, dressed in their Shabbat best jumping and singing in unison. I’m still amazed that the bleachers didn’t collapse under the sheer volume of people stuffed on, let alone the pressure exerted on the seemingly unstable structure as they all jumped and swayed as one. Now imagine the same thing again but on the other side of the table. And again on the third side. And again in all areas surrounding the table. It was truly an amazing sight. Slowly, the stands started filling with some colorful shirts and kipot srugot as the students of Maale Gilboa climbed up. The rabbi once again sat at the head of the table, this time flanked by his son and son-in-law. When he spoke, somehow his voice carried throughout the entire room despite the fact that he spoke in a seemingly normal  tone. Unlike the past tische, the rabbi gave the food to specific people. Each plate of fruit, or challah, or grains went directly to the person he called out. “An apple for Yankele” and the apple was passed hand to hand until it reach it’s desired recipient. During his dvar torah, every person in the room stood at rapt attention as he carried on for at least 20 minutes. I’m told it was quite impressive but unfortunately didn’t understand a word seeing as it was in Yiddish. Eventually, around 2 a.m., fatigue overwhelmed me and I decided to return for some sleep. However, others stayed much later thoroughly enjoying it. 

The next morning we all woke up and scattered across the city to daven wherever the wind blew us. We also met with Zevik’s Uncle, a major rabbi in Bnei Brak. We also had a quick tour of the famed Ponevezh Yeshiva. We then returned to Mishkan Shimeon for lunch remained there the rest of the day until the we returned to Maale Gilboa that night. The shabbat was a true eye opener into the a world that most of the students had never experienced. While there are many points that Maale Gilboa and the Hareidi world will never agree on, we all left Bnei Brak impressed by their intense Ahavat Torah and Ahavat Yisrael. It was truly a Shabbat to remember.

-- Nacham Shapiro