From Israel It's Getting Harder To Be Called a Jew

First and foremost I am a Jew. Not an America-Jew or a Jewish-American. Just a Jew.  

History, centuries and decades old, even into current times, has shown bigots and anti-Semites make no hyphenated distinction. So neither do I. I am just a Jew.

Not a particularly observant Jew, as regards devotional prayer, though I attend synagogue services most Saturdays and on most holidays. I fast on Yom Kippur and conduct family seders for Passover. 

It might appear I am observant, but I am not. Rather, I am a religious Jew based on values honed by my ancestors over 3,600 years, from the example of Abraham to be welcoming to strangers, to the promulgation of 10 basic commandments by which to live one’s life, to the precept of Hillel that the centrality of Judaism is, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

Judaism, of course, did not stop evolving from the time of Hillel (roughly the beginning of the Common Era, some 2,000 years ago). As with other religions, evolution meant division, whether it was the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes of Second Temple latter days, or the Reform, Conservative, Hasidic, Reconstruction and Haredi movements of the last hundreds of years that broke away from traditional Orthodoxy. 

Living as minorities in lands not their own, traditional Orthodox Jews could rail against what they considered unacceptable, even blasphemous, heretical alterations to their religion. But their anger and disapproval could not and did not result in physical persecutions, though spiritual punishments were meted out (google Baruch Spinoza to see how free thinkers could be treated by the Jewish establishment).  

No one, however, was burned at the stake. Unlike what transpired in Europe and the Middle East, no armies assembled and marched on heretics or infidels, no blood was shed among different sects in their ideological dispute about the ideal way to serve God, though, for the record, when Jews lived in what we now call Israel in the first century CE, fratricide did occur before the Second Temple fell. Indeed, some rabbis have taught that religious differences were the cause of the Temple’s destruction and Jerusalem’s defeat by the Romans.

Once Judaism evolved into a religion of rabbinic tradition, bloodletting was not part of its template.

Which brings us to contemporary times and a schism that threatens to do more harm to Jewish unity than any despot could have imagined. Israel’s multi-party political system has invested an ultra-Orthodox segment of the society (the Haredi) with power and influence that may well transform the country away from its pluralistic, multi-cultural, egalitarian roots into a repressive, religious regime that restricts freedoms and norms common to Western civilization. 

In addition, the schism has global ramifications as non Haredi Jews in the diaspora, despite their financial and political backing of Israel, feel marginalized by the Netanyahu government’s support for the Haredi chief rabbinate’s exclusionary dictums.  

The current fight is over two issues. The first is appropriate access to the Western Wall (the kotel), Judaism’s holiest site. The second is over recognition of religious conversions by non Haredi rabbis.

Assessing the merits or details of each dispute is not my intention here (you can research the issues on your own). Rather, my concern is the presumption of one sect to have the right to determine the religious validity of the remaining people who classify themselves as Jews along with their respective religious practices. (There’s no doubt they have the power to do so because of their leverage in keeping Bibi Netanyahu’s coalition government in office. But that power does not imbue moral authority.)

“The reason why Judaism is the only religion that survived throughout thousands of years and all the massacres and all the attempts to destroy it is that ours is the only religion that has always been the same, the way it was given to us on Mount Sinai,” Nachum Eisenstein, chief rabbi of eastern Jerusalem’s Haredi Maalot Dafna neighborhood, said in an interview with The Jewish Week. “Who gave you, the Conservative and the Reform, the authority to make up a new religion?” (http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/controversial-cabinet-moves-through-charedi-eyes/#.WWfrkaYWvOk.email)

On the other hand, as Morris Allen, rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation, Mendota Heights, MN, wrote in the Forward newspaper, “The secret of our longevity during the generations of our statelessness was the vibrancy of open and competing views for Jewish meaning. It is evident in our exegesis, in our rabbinic texts and in our philosophical works. The imposition of an official doctrine is now sowing the seeds of our own destruction.”

Let’s put some of Rabbi Eisenstein’s claims in context: Jews do not practice their religion as given to us on Mount Sinai. We don’t indulge in ritual sacrifices. Prayer was not authorized on Mount Sinai. It is an invention of rabbis, a substitute for ritual sacrifices. Indeed, the position of rabbi was not part of the revelation. It is a construct centuries in the making. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism evolved into a set of rules promulgated by rabbis in diverse regions, generally agreed to by a majority but not the totality of Jews. To this day there are rabbis who issue guidelines on what is acceptable Jewish practice given changes in society and technology. But they are not universally accepted as gospel by all denominations. 

So who’s to say Judaic law has to be rigidly set in stone, so to speak? 

Apparently, the Haredi, under the auspices of the chief rabbinate of Israel, do. Their followers have even gone so far as to assert Reform, Reconstruction and Conservative Jews are not really Jewish. Sounds like the Sunni-Shia battle without the bombings.

It is ironic to note that even as Israel is fighting a political battle around the world against forces that want to delegitimize its existence, its Haredi rabbinate, with a complicit Netanyahu government, is engaged in a process to delegitimize the authenticity and practices of a majority of Jews the world over. 

Regrettably, in Israel too many Jews, the vast majority of whom are secular, do not really care about egalitarian access to the Western Wall or control over conversion policies unless they are personally affected when a marriage inside Israel is proposed. But diaspora Jews do care and claim skin in the game because of their previously unflinching support for the state of Israel. 

I agree with Rabbi Allen: “The unhealthy and unwise intertwined relationship between a state and a particular stream of Judaism is destroying the contours of the Jewish people. There can be no possibility of restoring the glitter and joy of being Jewish when an official state religion dices and slices our people apart.” (http://forward.com/opinion/israel/376654/i-was-blacklisted-by-israels-chief-rabbinate/)

Here’s an example of that slicing and dicing. According to the Associated Press, “Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has compiled a blacklist of overseas rabbis whose authority they refuse to recognize when it comes to certifying the Jewishness of someone who wants to get married in Israel.” The list includes 160 rabbis from 24 countries.

Israel’s Jewish future, of course, involves more than just prayer at the kotel and conversion laws. How Israel deals with the Palestinians within the land captured in the Six Day War 50 years ago is a stress point separate and apart from the religious issues. 

I don’t have a solution for any of these trouble spots. But as a Jew I am conflicted by any attempt to minimize my Jewishness, regardless of its originator. 

So I read. Here are a few recent articles worth considering.: 

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israelis-dont-care-that-youre-insulted-an-open-letter-to-american-jews/

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Is-Jewish-unity-an-Israeli-national-security-issue-499315

https://nyti.ms/2u7Etwl

In Poland Trump Snubs Jewish Memorial to Warsaw Ghetto

So here’s what Donald Trump said, and didn’t say or do, in Warsaw Thursday:

According to the transcript of his remarks in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument in Krasinski Square, Trump’s speech included the following: 

“In 1920, in the Miracle of Vistula, Poland stopped the Soviet army bent on European conquest. Then, 19 years later in 1939, you were invaded yet again, this time by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. That’s trouble. That’s tough. 

“Under a double occupation the Polish people endured evils beyond description: the Katyn forest massacre, the occupations, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the destruction of this beautiful capital city, and the deaths of nearly one in five Polish people. A vibrant Jewish population—the largest in Europe—was reduced to almost nothing after the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Poland’s Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation.”

Later in his speech he recalled the heroism of the Polish resistance during the Warsaw Uprising.

“In August of 1944, Jerusalem Avenue was one of the main roads running east and west through this city, just as it is today. Control of that road was crucially important to both sides in the battle for Warsaw. The German military wanted it as their most direct route to move troops and to form a very strong front. And for the Polish home army, the ability to pass north and south across that street was critical to keep the center of the city and the uprising itself from being split apart and destroyed.

“Every night the Poles put up sandbags amid machine-gun fire -- and it was horrendous fire -- to protect a narrow passage across Jerusalem Avenue. Every day, the enemy forces knocked them down, again and again and again.

Then the Poles dug a trench. Finally, they built a barricade.

“And the brave Polish fighters began to flow across Jerusalem Avenue.

“That narrow passageway, just a few feet wide, was the fragile link that kept the uprising alive. Between its walls, a constant stream of citizens and freedom fighters made their perilous—just perilous—sprints. They ran across that street, they ran through that street, they ran under that street, all to defend the city.

“The far side was several yards away, recalled one young Polish woman ... That mortality and that life was so important to her. In fact, she said the mortally dangerous sector of the street was soaked in blood.

“It was the blood of messengers, liaison girls and couriers. Nazi snipers shot at anybody who crossed; anybody who crossed, they were being shot at. Their soldiers burned every building on the street and they used the Poles as human shields for their tanks in their effort to capture Jerusalem Avenue.

“The enemy never ceased its relentless assault on that small outpost of civilization. And the Poles never ceased its defense. The Jerusalem Avenue passage required constant protection, repair and reinforcement.

But the will of its defenders did not waver even in the face of death.

“And to the last days of the uprising, the fragile crossing never, ever failed.

“It was never, ever forgotten. It was kept open by the Polish people.

“The memories of those who perished in the Warsaw Uprising cry out across the decades. And few are clearer than the memories of those who died to build and defend the Jerusalem Avenue crossing.”

All very appropriate. But as the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, “Poland’s Jewish community is expressing deep ‘regret’ that President Donald Trump has not scheduled a visit to a memorial honoring those who fought and died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during his short visit to Warsaw.

“The community issued a statement late Wednesday noting that all U.S. presidents and vice-presidents visiting Warsaw since 1989 had visited the monument, a tribute to the Jews who took up arms against all odds against the Nazi Germans in the Warsaw ghetto.

“The statement said that, to the Jews of Poland, ‘this gesture meant recognition, solidarity and hope.’

“It added: ‘We deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition, alongside so many other ones.’”

It seems that even when Trump tries to act presidential and respectful he winds up dissing Jews. (Here’s a wacky notion: Could Trump have thought that Jerusalem Avenue provided Jewish cover for his failure to visit the Warsaw Ghetto memorial? Given his penchant for crazy ideas, I could be right.) 

Too many times he or his minions disrespect anything of Jewish heritage or symbolism. Compared to previous presidents, when he visited Israel he made a short, perfunctory pilgrimage to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. The note he left there was short and perfunctory compared to previous presidents. Prior to his visit to Jerusalem an aide tangled with Israeli representatives saying the Western Wall was not Israel’s. Barack Obama hosted Passover seder meals at the White House. Trump did not. Trump leaked Israeli intelligence information to Russia. During a press conference he was disrespectful of an Israeli reporter and an obviously Jewish reporter who wanted to know how his administration would counter rising anti-Semitism. 

Trump extolled the 150,000 Poles who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 but didn’t mention by number the near 400,000 victims of the Warsaw ghetto or their heroic struggle against Nazi SS troops from mid-April to mid-May 1943 when some 7,000 perished and another 50,000 were sent to extermination camps. 

For Trump, everything and anything Jewish seems to be an afterthought. Yes, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner visited the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, but they are not the leader of the free world (who seems to be trying to transfer that honor to Angela Merkel of Germany or Emmanuel Macron of France or Justin Trudeau of Canada or anybody with a sense of history and sound judgment). 

Perhaps I’m being too tough on The Donald? Some might think I’m making too much of these slights. But when you’re a member of a minority, no matter how high a profile that minority enjoys, I believe you have a right to be sensitive. Here’s a headline (and article link) from an analysis by Ofer Aderet in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, of Trump’s Warsaw visit: “By Sidestepping Jewish Victims of Holocaust, Trump Helps Polish Government Rewrite History” (http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.800025). 

That history recalls how the Polish Underground during World War II did not support the Warsaw ghetto uprising. That history recalls virulent anti-Semitism in Poland before and after the war, including pogroms against the survivors of Nazi genocide after the war ended.  

To quote an often-used Trump commentary, “Sad!

The Sad Movement Toward Theocracies

Two of the countries I most care about—The United States and Israel—are creeping toward becoming theocracies with conservative, repressive, anti-egalitarian laws more in concert with rigid Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

Depression hardly describes my mental response to this dual tragedy. I’ll repeat a statement I made February 16 in a previous blog: “A nation cannot claim democratic values while denying rights to those within its areas of jurisdiction.” That statement was written about Israel’s protracted Palestinian problem. (Read the previous posting for my earlier thoughts: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2017/02/two-state-solution-only-way-to-avoid.html). But it applies to the current crisis as well.

Sunday, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government reneged on an agreement to create an egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall. It capitulated to extremism from right wing, ultra Orthodox members of his coalition, thus challenging the Jewish legitimacy of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, secular and unaffiliated Jews throughout Israel and the Diaspora. Even Orthodox Jews not recognized by the Haredi ultra Orthodox would have their standing and actions questioned. (https://nyti.ms/2u4pG1Y)

Reaction has been swift and negative from the affected groups. It threatens to undermine support for Israel (http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/375582/jewish-agency-vows-no-business-as-usual-with-israel-after-western-wall-move/).

In Israel’s multi-party parliament, the Knesset, religious parties have long held power disproportionate to their size because they often are the linchpin of a majority government. When the continuation of his coalition has been threatened by the demands of religious parties, Netanyahu has been willing to forsake basic rights a majority of Israelis should possess. Even after Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the religious right, Netanyahu has supported overturning court decisions (yes, the Knesset can do that in Israel) to preserve his hold on the prime minister’s office.

The religious right’s outsized influence on Israeli life—control over officially recognized marriage, divorce, conversion, burial and transportation—originated at the start of the state in 1948. 

The secular leaning David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, ceded religious authority to the chief rabbinate. Today’s ultra Orthodox rabbinate is far different than its predecessors. It is now backed by religious political parties whose values are not shared by most Jews in Israel and around the world. 

Here in the United States, extremist views threaten to undercut equality and civil rights. The Supreme Court Monday agreed to hear a case from Colorado. A baker is appealing a decision that faulted him for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. He claimed providing the cake would violate his religious beliefs.

The danger of the baker’s winning a judgment from the Supreme Court is that it could open the door to more discrimination based on religious grounds. Could other businesses or organizations claim their religions prohibited them from serving non caucasians, or non Christians? Once one group is legally excluded from equal service or opportunity, it is a slippery slope toward permitting discrimination based on “religious values.”

Donald Trump is rewarding evangelicals for their support of his candidacy and now his presidency. He wants to do away with a rule that prohibits tax-exempt entities from engaging in political campaigns or endorsing candidates from the pulpit. It would make it easier for other religious groups, as well, to advance their chosen candidates. Hasidic sects, for example, often vote as one in cult-like fashion for the politician favored by their rebbes. 

As the debate over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare reaches a crescendo this week, it is noteworthy to recall that earlier this year Jerry Falwell Jr., the evangelical president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, praised Trump for trying to get rid of Obamacare. 

One wonders how Falwell could be considered a good man of faith for siding with regressive government over alleviating the suffering of the poor and afflicted? How could any religious person fail to support universal health care or the closest program we have to it? How can they reconcile what god or Jesus instructed about compassion for and aid to the needy (the ultimate objective of Obamacare) with their opposition to a government mandate? Are they willing to support legislation that would strip more than 20 million people of health care coverage thereby inevitably leading to unnecessary poverty and deaths? 

  

Building Community in Eshkol

So I asked the woman, what was the news back home? What were the people feeling about the latest incidents?

Silly me. I thought Batia would tell me about reaction to the air strikes by Israel in Syria and the rise in tensions along Israel's borders. Instead, the news of the day, she told me, on the lips of all, was the report that one of the unmarried news anchors of Channel 1 was pregnant. As if that wasn't enough of a blockbuster, an anchor of Channel 2 was involved in a traffic accident. No word on her condition.

Life goes on. Amid the bombs and rockets, life goes on.

Batia was one of eight women brought to the United States by Shalom Yisrael to enjoy two weeks of rest and relaxation  from the daily stress of living and working in the Eshkol Regional Council in Israel, the most frequently attacked district of their country. Situated along the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, hugging the border with Egypt, the Eshkol area is home to some 13,000 residents. It was a mostly peaceful 1,000 square miles when the women chose to live there, not out of any Zionistic fervor but because Eshkol was beautiful and away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

All that changed in 2005 after Israel withdrew from Gaza. After Hamas brutally ousted Fatah, mortar after mortar attack ensued. It was from the Eshkol region that the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and held for five years in the Gaza Strip until released in 2011. The incursion into Israel last year by terrorists who stole two armored Egyptian vehicles occurred in the Eshkol region. Last November, when 1,200 rockets landed in all of Israel, 463 fell in Eshkol.

Some of the communities in Eshkol are so close to the border there isn’t time for an alarm to sound. Only the percussion of an exploding rocket or mortar startles residents into defensive activity. It is then that Batia and her colleagues spring into action as first responder trauma care providers. That’s not their primary jobs. Normally, they are social workers and psychologists in schools and welfare agencies, administering to the needs of the area’s population. When explosions break the tranquility of the day—a rocket landed Wednesday—they are transformed into first responder trauma care providers. 

By necessity, their discipline has been mostly self taught. As I wrote last year, when eight other first responders visited as part of the Shalom Yisrael program, the 32 communities of Eshkol (14 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim and five residential communities) are vulnerable in space and time. If their homes are within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border they have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. If they are lucky, they have, perhaps, 15 seconds to seek cover. 

Still, life goes on, as close to normal as the Israelis will permit. Tamar, a mother of three boys, 10, 5 and 3, and a 13 year old daughter, demonstrates her resiliency and determination by refusing to give in to fear. She purposely drives the road near the Gaza Strip rather than a route further away from danger. She will not allow the terrorists to alter her lifestyle. 

During their two week stay in New York and Washington, DC, which ended on Mother’s Day, the women visited many cultural and historic sites. And, of course, they shopped. But perhaps their most unique experience involved an aspect of Judaism they had never encountered. They are secular, for the most part, even to the edges of agnosticism because of the smothering influence the religious right has on the Israeli way of life. Their host families brought them to their respective synagogues on Saturdays, where they experienced prayer services far more inclusive and welcoming than any they knew of in Israel. Several received a joint aliyah, an honor of being called up to the Torah. And the Friday before they left they joined a demonstration in Madison Square in Manhattan in support of Women of the Wall, the Israeli group trying to gain equality for women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Again, they received recognition from the New York community.

Community. Even though Eshkol is bombarded more than any other region, it doesn’t get the foreign press Sderot generates from attacks at the northern edge of Gaza. At times, the residents of Eshkol can feel isolated, alone. But two weeks of sharing and nurturing from heretofore strangers, two weeks of freedom from terror, recharged their internal batteries and revealed to them that their values were shared by a community across the ocean. Life can go on, knowing they are not alone. 

Some Common Sense Thoughts

Fourteen years ago this week my father died. It was on December 27 by the Gregorian calendar, this past Saturday, the 9th of Tevet, by the Jewish calendar. I lit a 24-hour yahrzeit memorial candle Friday night. It lasted 30 hours. 

Saturday morning while reciting the kaddish memorial prayer, as I have done several times every year since his death, I found myself for the first time really visualizing different scenes of my father—working in his factory; sitting in his office; his back straight, left arm extended, dancing a waltz with my mother; driving his Buick; giving his first grandchild, Eric, a horsey ride on his back. I can’t explain why such memories had never been evoked before.  

Common Sense: Perhaps I’m not fully tuned into the value of this research, but a team from Tulane University, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined patterns of heat-related deaths between 1900 and 2004. Lo and behold, they discovered in the absence of air conditioning more people died from excessive heat. 

When temperatures rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, about 600 more premature deaths occurred annually between 1960 and 2004. Those deaths were just one-sixth as many as would have occurred under pre-1960 conditions, before air conditioning became prevalent throughout our country, they reasoned (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-home-air-conditioning-cut-premature-deaths-on-hot-days-80-percent-since-1960/2012/12/22/5b57f3ac-4abf-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html). Now, I ask you, did we really need to spend money to figure this out?

Sure, the researchers will tell you such a study could influence the adoption of air conditioning in tropical climates as in India or Southeast Asia, but again, I ask, wouldn’t common sense have suggested that? 

Today’s Hypocrisy Award goes to ... Senate Republicans. Eight years ago John Kerry was swift-boated by Republicans when he ran for president. Now, the GOP is seemingly forgiving his alleged anti-Americanism by declaring him suitable to be the top diplomat of the United States, succeeding Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Just another example of politics being one of the sleaziest and least trustworthy professions.

Giant Fall: As bad as the NY Jets have been this football season, the despair surrounding the NY Giants after a second consecutive humiliating defeat far exceeds that felt by any Gang Green fan. It’s difficult to repeat as Super Bowl champion, so realistically few Giants fans should have expected Big Blue to win again, even after a 6-2 start. But the team’s collapse over the last two months has far exceeded even the most level-headed fan’s expectations. Even if the Giants somehow make the playoffs they don’t really deserve to be considered an elite team. 

The winner of their division will be either the Dallas Cowboys, a team I loathe, or the Washington Redskins, a team I can’t stand, and not just because it’s my brother’s team (sibling rivalry) but also because of the obnoxious song they play after each of their scores during home games. The Cowboys play the Redskins in Washington this Sunday. Push comes to shove, I’m rooting for the ‘Skins.

More on Tyranny: The other day I lambasted Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre for being unelected officials who have imposed a form of tyranny in our land by restraining elected officials from mustering enough votes to pass needed tax increases on the wealthy and gun control laws. 

Today’s focus is international, not the tyranny of dictators such as Assad, but rather the tyranny of close-minded religious leaders in Israel and spineless government officials who have ceded them far too much authority over everyday life in the country, in particular religious practice at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem, the outer portion of the Temple grounds destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Their hidebound ideas are turning the Western Wall back into a Wailing Wall.

For those not aware, given jurisdiction over the area, the ultra-Orthodox segregate women from men at the Wall plaza. They further deny them the right to wear prayer shawls and other religious garments there. Women of the Wall, and their sympathizers, have been fighting these restrictions for decades, with the hope that a new review ordered by the prime minister will make the zone more egalitarian (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/world/middleeast/israeli-law-curbing-womens-prayer-up-for-review.html?_r=0). 

When Gilda and I visited the Wall in 1976, she was not shunted off to one side. She stood and prayed next to me. It is troubling that successive governments have since courted religious party votes by granting them authority to impose restrictions at historical religious sites, especially when one considers that at different parts of the Wall, near Robinson’s Arch and in the tunnel beneath the Wall (the closest point to the Holy of Holies of the Temple), women are allowed to pray without restrictions. 

Westerners often decry the reactionary practices (at least in their minds) of Islam. Judaism has advanced past lopping the hands off robbers or stoning adulterers, but the treatment of women by the ultra-Orthodox is still stuck in the Middle Ages, or earlier. 

Reflections on Contradictions

Just back from a 10-day visit to Israel, some quick reflections...

I must be getting old.

Six times I’ve been to Masada. Six times I climbed the snake path to the summit where Herod built his palace and fortress retreat more than 2,000 years ago.

On the seventh time, I rested. I took the cable car to the top and back. Once on the plateau where 900 Jewish rebels martyred themselves rather than submit to Roman rule in 73 CE, I opted to sit in the shade after an hour while Gilda and our friend Gemma trekked on toward the southern flank of the desert promontory overlooking the Dead Sea.

On my first visit 45 summers ago, I slept overnight in a barely inhabitable hostel at the base of the mountain, rising pre-sunrise to climb the rocky trail before the desert heat would make the exercise incalculably difficult. Today, a modern visitor center—complete with a McDonald’s!!!!—greets all who come. I resisted the lure of a kosher quarter pounder and fries, instead choosing from the cafeteria fare three of Israel’s signature foods: hummus, falafel and schnitzel.


Ice Capades: Israelis have wised up, at least as far as ice is concerned.

In years’ past, I would be given a cube or two of ice with my soda. Now, they willingly filled a cup to the brim with ice.


Cinematique: Israelis love going to the movies, but they’re in no rush to get to their seats.

Seats are sold on an assigned basis so you know in advance where you’ll be. Moreover, commercials and previews last about 20 minutes before a feature film starts, so a 10 pm post time gives you plenty of leeway to settle in before 10:20.

If you’re watching a comedy, like Bridesmaids (in English with Hebrew subtitles), be prepared for two-stage laughter. The first stage starts when those reading the text get to the punch line before the words are actually spoken.


A Matter of Taste: Gilda loves salads, but Israeli salads were so enormous they almost got the better of her. They burst with flavor and freshness.

Though our nation can point with pride to the efficiency of our food distribution network, Israeli produce more than matches our output. Indeed, comparing the taste of Israeli cherry tomatoes to those sold in U.S. supermarkets leaves an American feeling decidedly inferior.


Who Knows: There must be an explanation, but I don’t know it.

At the Western Wall plaza, a holy site to all Jews because of its proximity to the Temple Mount, religious authorities, and some self-appointed vigilantes, do not permit men and women to stand together and pray. They don’t allow women to walk around with exposed shoulders.

Yet, along the tunnel tour that hugs the Western Wall along its northern path, at the point closest to where the Second Temple stood, the sexes freely co-mingle in prayer, with no one monitoring female attire.

Religion—go figure!