The Chagim are finally over, and the school year now begins in earnest, here in Israel. Since I didn't blog about it, I'll just mention that Sukkot ended uneventfully, and that the coming of Simchat Torah has motivated me to try to re-dedicate myself in Talmud Torah. Since then, I've picked up the Mishneh Torah where I last left it (I've finished the first three or four books of Philo of Alexandria, which feels like enough for now), and begun Issurei Mizbei'ach. Not the most practical or relevant part of the law, but, nevertheless, part of halakhah. Did I mention, by the way, that TZ's father studies Megillat Kohelet?!
Back to our present topic, though: my first day back to school. Yesterday, TZand I had an adventure (we were the only Ramla ITF people to have the day off, because of Moreh Moshe's schedule). I picked up fruits and vegetables from the shuk, and got passport photos from a store in the mall in order to renew my travel visa, and each of us got a rav-kal (rechargeable bus pass) from the bus station. Our Israeli friend Asher, who works for the HOT Mobile store in the mall, gave us a few pointers, and, thanks entirely to him, everything worked out entirely. In the shuk, I'm getting used to the concept of seasonal produce, just as I did when living in France. Two weeks ago, there was a glut of dates, and you could buy a kilo of the best, freshest, sweetest dates for ₪4. Now, there's only one vendor with any dates at all, and they aren't particularly appetizing. Figs, too, have nearly all vanished. In the meantime, though, persimmons (אפרסימונים) are in high supply, and going for just ₪5 or ₪6 per kilo. Guess what I purchased during my shopping trip, in addition to onions and bell peppers?
Following the shopping trip, the entire ITF group began Ulpan in the afternoon. It's been more than a month since they arrived in Israel, and none of my classmates have received absolutely any formal instruction in Hebrew. Alex and I have helped a little bit here and there, but very frequently when I visit the house on Havaradim in order to try to help out, and people are just too busy to be able to sit down for the extended period of time necessary to learn how to conjugate a pa'al verb in the present tense, or how to name all of the fruits and vegetables in the supermarket, or how to explain possession. There's just so much to learn, and some of my friends never had the benefit of the seven or so years of Hebrew school that I had, Shalom in college, all of my awesome Hebrew-reading/-speaking friends at the CJL, and my month at Drisha Institute. Yes, I am completely spoiled. But, unfortunately, I have a much harder time remembering the word for "shower" (מִקְלַחַת) than "altar" (מִזְבֵּחַ). Ironically, when I was trying to read אגרות משה with my favorite fluffy (former) Freshman, I kept on remarking how much more influenced by modern Israeli Hebrew my Hebrew was than was the Hebrew of Rav Moshe, who was much more influenced by Yiddish and Aramaic (my friend Eli, by the way, has the amazing ability to triangulate between Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic). Sometimes, I feel as awkward as a yeshiva bokher trying to use Aramaic pickup lines in a Tel Aviv discotheque. How was I supposed to know, for instance, that Israelis use the term "מַדְרֵגָה" for a staircase, rather than "מַּעֲלוֹת," which I know from singing שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת at so many Shabbat dinners? Or that, contrary to the common Mishnaic phraseology, nobody actually says "יודע לי אין" anymore? Some words haven't changed, thank goodness for me. It didn't matter at this particular Ulpan session, though, because it was entirely foundations. The instructor didn't even start with the alphabet, and just wrote transliterations on the board, which made no sense to me. When I studied Ancient Greek, by the second day of class, I was expected to know the entire Greek alphabet; during Drisha, Abbie taught me how to read Rashi script in about 10 minutes (although I admit that I can't read it as quickly as I can read ordinary Hebrew script). I don't know why there is so much hesitation to push beginners in Ulpan. I'm nevertheless going to defer to the instructor, who has infinitely more experience teaching Hebrew than I do. After class, Alex, Alex, Becky, Veta, and I approached our instructor, and asked, in varying tones of request/demand, for more advanced Ulpan. Afterwards, Carmel, with incredible sincerity, promised us. I was very amazed, given the fact that one of the first things that I learned upon arrival here was that Oranim refused to give my housemate Ben any further Ulpan classes. Alex was less surprised than I was, and expected to get a class with less of a struggle (which barely felt at all like a struggle to me), but, then again, he isn't housemates with Ben. Nevertheless, I'm pleasantly surprised, and very grateful to Carmel, for making this possible. Afterwards, we had Hebrew club, during which I'm not certain that I learned very much. I did not take a run that evening.
Wednesday was my first day back at Rambam. I boarded Bus 13, and successfully communicated to the driver my desire to charge my card for all of October. Unfortunately, TZ hadn't managed to explain this to the driver, as I learned on our drive back. I felt somewhat guilty; I feel a very great responsibility for our continued success as a team. TZ has all of the brains, and all of the sweetness, and all of the teaching expertise and general life experience; the least I can do is pitch in my meager Hebrew skills to help her buy a one-month pass. TZ and I stepped off the bus with Perrin and Natalie, and, once past the security guard ("אנחנו המתנדבים החדשים"), I headed for the little synagogue building behind the school, and TZ walked straight on to class. The building is meant, I think, to double as some sort of a shelter; I can't think of any other reason for it to be built as it is, like a bunker. Some of the students were excited to see me back. After we had finished, the Rabbi began to explain the importance of tefillin, and of having a clean body (גוף נקי) when placing on one's tefillin. It seems to me so strange at times like this that this is a school, and that the importance of tefillin is being taught to these boys in the same way that such values as compassion and respect were taught to me. I guess I'm still a very far way away from the Orthodox mindset. Can I see myself ever explaining to any son or daughter of mine the importance of tefillin in the same stern, earnest, passionate tone that the Rabbi used? Probably not, should I ever be lucky enough to be in such a situation.
Our first class of the day was the 8th graders. As I've mentioned before, the 8th graders are struggling very hard. Although there are several bright pupils, and several others who have the patience to complete an exercise, there are several other students who not only don't want to learn, but don't want the others to learn, either, and actually hit them and throw things at them in order to distract them. Although I would never dream of using corporal punishment, even if it were legal, I can easily see how teachers with short fuses came up with the idea of striking students in order to discipline them. I know, almost for a fact, that there is one student who, no matter what I say, will not listen to me. Discipline is not my responsibility, much to my relief, but this leaves me with absolutely no way to get her to learn anything; for the record, this is the same girl whom I mentioned last time, who continually tells me to shut up, accuses me of being a liar, a homosexual (negative connotations in a religious school, another upsetting fact), etc. Anything to get a rise out of me. I know bullies, and I know that, ultimately, this is just what they want. Although I can ignore her, jabs, I cannot get the entire class to ignore her; as I've said before, she physically attacks other students. I wonder how the other teachers handle her? As I've mentioned before, I don't have the authority to discipline, but I have no idea what Israeli teachers typically do with such a student.
Between classes, I had a twenty-minute break. I found the Rabbi in the teachers' lounge, and I took a moment to introduce myself, as the new American English teacher. His name is Yosef. I'm not certain how much of my speech he understood; my anglophone accent is still very strong, and he looked rather puzzled. Nevertheless, he understood and agreed with me assertion that I should attend communal tefillat hashachar each morning, so that the boys will see me, an American Ashkenazi Jew, tie on my tefillin and pray with them. I not only want them to know that I am a fully participating member of their community, but also want to demonstrate that there are observant Jews who live outside of the Land of Israel. (Speaking of American Jews, thank you, Harry and Marissa, for sharing this quite funny article with me.) He was also quite glad that I had attended that morning; without me, we would not have had a minyan, a prayer quorum of ten adult (male -- the school is orthodox) Jews. Maybe, at some point, I could teach a shiur on American Judaism, maybe talking about some famous American rabbis? Or explain that such American Jewish traditions as adding extra paragraph of assorted pesukim to the end of שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת when they recite the ברכת המזון (the French Jews I met don't do this). I wonder how orthodox I would need to remain in a religious school like this, if I were ever to teach such a lesson. Oh, well, that's thought for another time. Also, my peach was excellent, I'd like to say, much better, as far as I can tell, than Peninah's most recent apple, even though it was a disco apple.
Next, we taught the 6th-graders. These kids were adorable, and Moreh Mosheh has very high confidence in this cohort, even though some of them suffer from the same sort of familial misfortune that is so common among the 8th graders. Still, their level of motivation and attention was very high. I had a group of four boys, and together, we learned some new vocabulary words ("baker," "fire," "stones," "build"), and then used those words in reading a story (told in a paneled comic) about the London Fire of 1666. With these younger students, I am happy to let on that I know some Hebrew, to help them with some of the things with which they struggle. I do my best to teach the entirely in English most of the time, but when we come to part about about rats making people sick, for instance, difficult to understand without some translation, I switched to Hebrew for a few sentences, to make absolutely certain that they understood (they did).
Of the four students with whom I was working, only two (who, interestingly enough, had the same name) wanted to learn the vocabulary and read the story; one of the others lost interest in me once he had asked me the typical gamut of questions -- where was I from; did I know American celebrities X, Y, and Z; was TZ my sister or my girlfriend; did I have a girlfriend; was I gay; did I know that I had a crack in the lens of my glasses. These kids also had a few collectable soccer cards, and once it became apparent that I didn't know any players from the Barcelona or Qatar teams, there was nothing I could possibly have said or done to further reduce myself in their eyes. They simply stopped paying attention to me, and I allowed myself to commit what I'll call
the W.E.B. Mistake -- I allowed myself to concentrate only on the two pupils
who showed interest in learning. We had a fantastic time, and several times, I saw the lightbulbs go off over their heads, as they understood some word or phrase that had been entirely opaque to them just a moment before. As rewarding as this was, the other two students simply wandered off (literally), and I was unwilling to chase them down, and make them sit down for something that they didn't want to hear, probably to the detriment of the other two. Did I do the wrong thing? I really don't know.
School was out fairly early that day (shortly after noon), and, after class, Moshe, TZ, and I met to discuss more lesson ideas. I still don't really know my work schedule, which I'm hoping will soon stabilize. TZ and I took the bus back to Ramla, and met Harry and Hannah back on the way (Harry gave me an affectionate tap on the brim of my hat). I hopped off the bus, and scarfed down some pita, chumus, zchug, and vegetables, and also got to work studying some Hebrew. Carmel came by to speak with some of my housemates, and also collected my passport, in order to renew my visa for me. Devin and TZ, not at all to my surprise, acquired their long-term visas back in the states (I had all of the paperwork prepared a week or so before I left for Israel, but heard that the NYC consulate was on a visa backlog, and was hesitant to be stuck again in Visa Limbo, as I had been back in summer 2011 with the captious French consulate).
At 5:00 pm, Carmel's copine Tanya led the Ramla Oranim participants in an enrichment program about the aliyot. My roommate Ben and I had thought that we were going to be late, and jogged all the way to the apartment, laughing a fair amount along the way. I had assumed that Tanya was going to be explaining the various historical waves of settlers in the Land of Israel, beginning with the First and Second Aliyot, of the late 19th century. In fact, Tanya, who moved here when she was six, described the life of the million-strong wave of immigrants that arrived from former Soviet countries in the early 1990s. This was intensely interesting. The American phenomenon of each wave of immigrants laughing at the next wave, that I know so well, is faithfully reflected in this nation of immigrants. Tanya and Carmel emphasized the continuing lower socio-economic status of Mizrachim, which continues to surprise me. I had really thought that the fissures among Israeli Jews would be relatively small, given the fact that all Israeli Jews could look at Israeli Arabs, Druze, Samaritans, etc., as the Other. Tanya argued, rather, that the Arab-Zionist conflict acts to exacerbate and accentuate, rather than to smooth over, internecine Jewish Israeli conflict. As someone who's read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and is familiar with Marxist thinking, this argument seems rather familiar. According to a Marxist reading of conflict in American History, every social fissure (most notably the color line between white and black) is an artificial distraction invented by the ruling classes in order to prevent working-class people everywhere from uniting against them, etc., etc. (One of the best explanations of such a conflict appears at the beginning of Tony Morrison's novel A Mercy.) Tanya spun the argument differently, but it had the same effect: because oppression and prejudice exists on such a massive scale in the form of the Arab-Jewish division, it contaminates the rest of society, creating an Ashkenazi-Mizrachi division, etc. Mizrachim are severely under-represented in government and academics, although, in my own observations, they don't form the sort of squalid underclass that blacks and latinos do back in the United States. You remember those two 6th-grade boys I mentioned, who were such good students? One was Ethiopian, the other was Mizrachi. The fact that the children don't significantly self-segregate, as they do in the U.S., makes me continue to think that none of the internal Jewish divisions are as severe in Israel as the color line is in the United States. However, I'm not an economist, sociologist, or demographer, and you shouldn't take my word on anything.
Carmel shared his own story; his family has been here for more than a century. One side was originally from Kurdisan (in Iraq), and rode here on donkeys; the other side is Ashkenazi. Carmel was trying to say that he bridges the divide, to some extent; although he is a a sabra with an Ashkenazi name, he can look very Mizrachi. When he was younger, with shorter hair and more chains, he was the kind of person who would be barred from entering certain nightclubs in Tel Aviv. Also participating in our enrichment was an olah chadashah, who had just moved permanently to Israel on Monday. She described her choice (last year, she had worked with Oranim in Ramla), and mentioned, as a part of it, her first job in Israel, as a bouncer in Tel Aviv, whose job was to keep out Arabs. This whole situation is upsetting, and makes me feel slightly guilty for being Ashkenazi, a group of Jews which some Mizrachim in Israel grow up without ever encountering. I just really want to be a good teacher here.
Finally, congratulations to my exceptionally talented and awesome Becky, of the Gil'ad house, who was just accepted by the grad school of her choice! חברתי הכבוד כל! You will go on to do great things, cool person!
~JD
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