Thursday, rather than teaching at Rambam as I ordinarily do, I visited the mountainous region around Jerusalem with the rest of the Oranim participants in Ramla. This was actually not an Oranim-scheduled tour, but, rather, organized by the city of Ramla, and offered to Oranim for free. For this reason, half of the people on the tour were Israelis from Ramla. They were in their 50s and 60s, and I'm not exactly certain whether they constituted some sort of organized group, or whether they had individually signed up to participate in the tour. The bus showed up around thirty minutes late, due to a general shortage of buses in Israel today, caused by the Hajj, I believe. Anyway, the tour guide, Noam, switched between Hebrew and English when he spoke, doing his best to please both audiences. I did my best, throughout the day, to understand what he said in Hebrew, although I'll admit that it wasn't always easy. I thought back to France, again, where I could understand all of my lectures at the Sorbonne upon arrival -- it just isn't as easy, this time. The two Alexes and I are all at about the same level of Hebrew proficiency, and we have all been grouped into a single Ulpan class. The three of us worked on our homework together at the short rest stop.
Our hike was only about five kilometers long, but we stopped very frequently, so it felt as if we were walking for longer than we really were. The sun was hot (this is a desert, remember), and I was glad that I had my hat, sunscreen, and water bottle. The memories of a sunburn on a certain Lake George outing are, of course, still fresh in my mind, and I have no intention of repeating that affair. Rabin Park, the location where we hiked, is an area controlled by the Jewish National Fund. Throughout the day, we heard a fair amount about Rabin's past and legacy. For better or for worse, I was already quasi-familiar with most of the story. Rabin is a very polarized figure. In historical memory, there is a certain category of historic leaders who are almost universally regarded as heroes (at least within a particular country): Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sukarno, Gandhi, Kemal Ataturk, and Sun Yatsen are all examples of people with this legacy. There is virtually no figure in Israel (or, for that matter, Russia), except maybe Chaim Weizmann, who has this kind of legacy. Yitzchak Rabin belongs to a different class of leaders -- the kind that many remember fondly, but whose legacies are simply too controversial to transcend existing political boundaries. Although I can't think of as many good examples of leaders who fall into this category, I'd say that maybe Winston Churchill and JFK fall into this category (sorry for my lack of females among these lists -- I'm doing my best, really). Yitzchak Rabin falls into the latter category -- there is a political bumper sticker in Israel that reads פושעי אוסלו לדין, literally "[Bring the] Oslo criminals to justice," a reference to the Oslo Accords of 1994 that made peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and established Palestinian governing authority. Then-Prime-Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yassar Arafat signed the agreement (you may recognize a certain famous photograph of the signing), and the next year, 1995, Rabin was assassinated while leaving a pro-peace political rally. The assassin was an ultra-Orthodox Jew who, like many other religious Zionists, opposed surrendering any territory in the Holy Land in return for peace with the Palestinians. It's still only 18 years after the assassination, and there are enough people who still consider Oslo to have been not just a mistake but a great sin and crime for Rabin to be universally loved and accepted by Israelis (not even taking Palestinians or foreigners into account).
The other part of Yirzchak Rabin's career for which he is remembered, his role as the Israel Defense Force's Chief of Staff in Israel's lightning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War is somewhat less controversial among Israelis, but the territorial gains that Israel made in that war are too divisive on the world stage for that to completely uphold his legacy. (The fact that Rabin was Ambassador to the U.S. in 1973 when Israel was hit so hard in the Yom Kippur War, and therefore had nothing to do with the greatest military loss Israel has ever suffered, protected his reputation as a first-rate general.) Also, in an incident I didn't know about, Rabin got in big trouble with the ultra-Orthodox parties in his Knesset coalition, when a delivery of F-15 jets from the United States arrived during Shabbat. This, compounded with the discovery that his wife had a bank account open in the United States, illegal at the time for Israeli citizens, forced his resignation as Prime Minister in 1976. This might have been before I or any of my brothers were born, but it's still all recent history to my parents' generation.
One of the best parts of this trip was talking to Carmel along the hike. I had saved up a few questions for my Ask-The-Sabra session, some socio-political, others linguistic. I finally figured out, for instance, that I shouldn't say "מאשר" in my comparative sentences while talking on the street. More importantly, though, I think that I got a slightly better handle on the Israeli political center than I had in the past. When I was in 4th grade, and my (horrible) Hebrew School teacher had my class learn about the Israeli political parties. I remember that the centrist party at the time was called גֶּשֶׁר, Gesher, being literally the "bridge" party between Labor and the Likud. This party is since long gone, but there were a few more short-lived centrist parties, such as the Kadimah (קדימה) party of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, which won a plurality of Knesset seats in both the 2006 and 2009 Israeli elections. Thank you, Carmel, for being awesome, and for answering all of my questions!
My roommate Ben's favorite part of the day was our visit to a small domed structure beside the cemetery in Rabin Park. It was built as a non-denominational prayer structure for people of different beliefs, and several of my peers began to meditate inside. Some of the Israelis from Ramla were Kohanim, and needed to skirt around the edge of the cemetery. This prompted Veta to begin asking me about Kohanim, as well as the notion of טֻמְאָה, "ritual impurity," which I did my best to answer. It's been a while since I first needed to wrap my head around this concept (what was it, Peninah, four years ago that you first explained that to me? Gets me nostalgic). How do you explain that there's no stigma to being טָמֵא, when you first begin by defining it as "impure?" It evokes all sorts of ideas of Hindu untouchables, etc., when, in fact, everybody went through periods of being טָמֵא, until they took the opportunity to immerse themselves (or be sprinkled), therefore becoming טָהוֹר again. Maimonides admits in his the introduction to his commentary to סֵדֶר טָהֳרוֹת that nobody really intuitively understood what טָמֵא and טָהוֹר meant, even in his time. According to Eli, who can read Judeo-Arabic, following this is the best explanation of these tricky concepts. As the ITF participant recognized as being observant, this is not the first time in which I have felt obligated to explain a difficult Jewish concept, that I myself don't know very well, to another, so as not to leave him or her wondering. Again, I think that I left more questions than I did answers. Shortly after this conversation, we arrived at a pavilion where a trio of Israel actors put on a very amusing 5-minute drama of Yitzchak Rabbin's life. I learned some Hebrew words and idioms (there was no translation available), and a little bit more about Rabbin's life. I also learned a little bit better about how Israelis think about (and recognize through his signature eyepatch) Moshe Dayan, another name in the Zionist canon.
Following this was a performance in honor of Rabin, put on by schoolchildren and IDF soldiers. It was kind of like the one at Rambam, but better-rehearsed, and with better AV equipment. We ended up waiting for maybe forty minutes for the setup, during which some of the ITF members and I discussed our opinions of our experiences so far. I think that I'm enjoying myself more than most of the others, even though I'm not leaving Ramla as frequently to visit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Rechovot, Chaifa, etc. One of the others hasn't really enjoyed the enrichments so far (liking, incidentally, the only one that has bored me), and feels that they're a waste of time. I feel again a little bit the way I felt when I was at EDUCO in Paris, where I suddenly realize that I have been obliviously enjoying myself, while many of the people around me are miserable or frustrated (later that day, another Oranim participant told me quite glibly "I hate Ramla"). I've always been into learning about hard-hitting politics, history, etc. I really regret missing Harry's guided tour of the Tel Aviv museum, but my visit to the Israel Museum with Eli, or Stav's explanation of the economics of the Dead Sea, are exactly the kind of things that I really enjoy. I slept through a portion of the performance, by the way, tired out by all the sun. I think that I bumped into Alex's shoulder a few times.
We again had to wait uncomfortably long in the heat for our return bus, long after most of the school children (for whom this presentation was really designed) had left. I was so buy helping Noah with Hebrew, that I didn't notice that Ben and Noach had gotten off of the bus at Yoseftal, and got off at the City Hall, instead. I walked to my apartment, then to the campus, to help Noah again through Ulpan. Then I had my own Ulpan class, with the two Alexes. I swear, Coco is going to be teaching me Hebrew within more six weeks, he's learning so quickly. Really, he has taken in the equivalent of at least a college semester's worth of Hebrew in just a scant six weeks. I walked back to Yoseftal, took a run, and then had my weekly chevruta with Rachel. I'm still thinking about the relation between אַבְנֵי קֶלַע and אַבְנֵי נֵזֶר, and about the versions of the Septuagint in which הָמוּ was apparently translated as if it were דָּם instead.
Also, since I know that several of my readers have a very deep interest in Iran-Israeli relations, I thought that I'd give quick summary on what I've read about the allegations that Turkey blew some Mosad agents' cover. More than a year ago, back in 2012, around 10 Iranians working in Iran for Mosad agents had their cover blown, according to a story was recently published in the Washington Post, which cited "knowledgeable" (but unmentioned sources). The Turkish foreign ministry initially made no comment, as did the Israeli government. However, former Mosad chief Danny Yatom told the press that, if this report were correct, it would be a "despicable act" on behalf of the Turks. Please note that, because the Turkish government has fairly good relations with both Israel and Iran, the Mosad runs many its Iranian activities from Turkey, which gives the Turkish government a greater capacity to monitor these espionage activities. Yesterday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denied that Turkey had ever committed such a breach of Israeli trust. Journalists who suspect that Turkey is not being honest cite the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, in which Israeli commandos boarding a blockade runner headed for Gaza became involved in a fight with passengers on board, killing nine, all of them Turkish citizens. So far, it isn't certain whether the allegations against the Turkish government are true; there has been, to my knowledge, no official Israeli voice on this issue. U.S.-Turkish relations, have been fairly cordial, and to my knowledge, the blockade runner incident didn't do any lasting harm to them; I can't say whether the same holds true for Turkish-Israeli relations. Let's wait and see for more facts to materialize.
Congratulations to my cousin Sara on her Bat Mitzvah, this week, reading Pareshat Vayeira! I wish I could be in Silver Spring with you, and help you celebrate!
Thank you, also, Raymond, for your sweet comment on my last post! I am a very big fan of yours <3.
Also, for those of you with the time to read it, recent news might completely change the story of human evolution, at least as I learned about it in school.
~JD
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