Shir Harmony: July 2015

Saturday, July 25, 2015

TZEDAKA, JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM

Poverty exists everywhere. People extend their hands in Chicago for help. This is also true in Jerusalem. But it is different too. It's not simply charity, it's Tzedaka, Justice. People of all ages solicit for help: Support Victims of Terrorism, Children raising money for their neighborhoods,

Teenagers asking for support on Light Rail. And more. I keep my change handy!

SINGING & DANCING IN EAST TALPIOT, JERUSALEM

WE ARE SINGING AND DANCING IN EAST TALPIOT, JERUSALEM!

As I write from my Youth Hostel, Hayarkon 48, facing the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv, I want to reflect on my wonderful experiences with the lively women at the Pensioners Club in East Talpiot. We sang, they danced, laughed, and played rhythm instruments. We had a blast!

Gittit Cohen (center, black top) is the Director of this wonderful center. Each day offers rich diverse programming for this active, friendly group. Exercise, music, lectures, cooking, and special tiyulim (tours) are part of the schedule of this wonderful community center.

Each week, I crafted a different musical program: The History of Jewish Music through Song, Love for the Land and Each Other, and Israeli/Jewish Musical Hits from Past and Present.

Tears were shared when I received this beautiful tribute written by Matilda. I was very touched by the lovely gift, a Hamsa, they gave me. I am so grateful to have had shared this wonderful experience with them.

OSIM KHAYIM = HAVING FUN

חיים עושים O’SIM KHAYIM (literally, making life) = HAVING FUN

In addition to volunteering, July in Jerusalem consisted of visits to museums, opera, drum lessons, and seeing everything I can.

Nina (my hostess) wanted to go to her father (Dr. Zev Katz z’l)’s grave. We agreed on a simple ceremony for her and her mother, Doris. He is buried at Hebrew University’s gravesite, over looking Jerusalem. I sang. Nina video’d and sent it to her daughters and their families.

Nina and I toured the old city.

Sacred sites abound. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Western Wall of the Second Temple and Al Aksa Mosque share the landscape.

Inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, pilgrims from around the world worship at intimate holy spaces within the church. Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian, Anglicans, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, Oriental Orthodox as well as Roman Catholics have their own sacred corners in the church.

The cell phone finds its way everywhere, even in the cell of a priest. After a wonderful visit to the old city, I rode the Light Rail from one end of the city (Mount Hertzl) to the other. Here's a view from the Light Rail. Modern transportation meets the walls of the old city!

Friday, July 17, 2015

SKILLED VOLUNTEERS FOR ISRAEL

This morning, on the way to the Takhana Merkazit, תחנה מרכזית , the Central Bus Station, two Israelis asked me for directions to the Rakevet Kalah רכבת קלה, the Light Rail that runs through Jerusalem.

I answered them in Hebrew. “Go to the corner, turn right. It’s really close.” They thanked me and proceeded to their destination. I am not a stranger in a strange land.

I came to Israel for one month to have a taste of Israeli life: work, play, friendship, and new experiences. SKILLED VOLUNTEERS FOR ISRAEL created the framework for this experience.

My volunteer assignments include one week at the YMCA Day Camp. This unique English speaking day camp includes Palestinian, Israeli, and kids from all over the world. It’s fairly typical in its daily schedule: games, swimming, arts and crafts, drumming. You get the picture. However, most of the campers (aged 5-12 don’t speak English fluently. Special counselors speak Arabic, Hebrew, and English. All campers have instant translators for their language and their culture. I loved being with these adorable kids.

I was the camp song leader. I taught them YMCA, with appropriate camp lyrics:

YMCA

YOUNG MAN, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

(I said) YOUNG GIRL, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE?

(I said) YOUNG MAN, YOU CAN MAKE REAL YOUR DREAMS

D D

BUT, YOU’VE GOT TO KNOW THIS ONE THING! (2X)

(COUNT!)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

G Em

(CHORUS) YMCA CAMP IS FUN AT THE YMCA

WE HAVE EVERYTHING FOR YOU TO ENJOY

PLAY ALL DAY WITH THE GIRLS AND THE BOYS! (2X)

I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Architect, spine surgeon, football player (with a back up plan), teacher, principal, are a few of their dreams.

Last night, Nina (my hostess) and I had dinner with the new Director of the YMCA, Amos Gil. He and Nina are close friends. He’s been in this position for just over two month. I asked him what he hoped to achieve at the ‘Y’. First, he reflected on the ‘Y’s unique history. Since it’s inception, its goal was to serve three faiths. Cross-cultural concerts were presented in their fabulous theatre. Amos wants to reinvigorate the ‘Y’ as a multi-cultural center in Jerusalem. He hopes to bring speakers from all faiths and create opportunities for dialogue, not with the ‘enemy’ but with ‘partners’. He wants to change the language from opposition to collaboration. He is just the man for the job.

MELABEV is my second volunteer position. MELABEV is a Memory Center for individuals with Altzheimers. This is a unique social setting for people who gradually become more isolated as the disease progresses. I’m bringing them music.

I sing with three different groups: high, middle, and low. My repertoire includes songs from the American Songbook, American folk songs, Hebrew/Israeli, Yiddish, and Ladino favorites. (They’re my favorites, actually!)

I’m using similar repertoire for all three levels. This past week, I wanted to tell HISTORY OF JEWISH MUSIC. I shared this program with Marsha, the Director. She suggested some minor changes. I started with This Land Is Your Land. I said that G-d promised to bring Abraham to a new land. Eretz Zavat Khalav was next. This land would flow with milk and honey.

Music remains alive when current memory fails. For people who are no longer able to speak, sometimes they can sing.

My third volunteer opportunity is at East Talpiot Retirees Club, a (Hebrew speaking) Community . Many of them are my age. I asked Gittit, their Director, if they had a tof (Israeli drum). She said no, but showed me where their rhythm instruments resided. I sing primarily in Hebrew. This past week was really special. When I sang one song, a woman started to sing another song, I didn’t know. She continued to sing and I accompanied her on guitar. Then two other women began to sing another song. This is the kind of engagement I love. I taught them a few new songs. There was dancing, and rhythm and laughter. It was wonderful.

I’m not permitted to photograph the participants in these programs. These photographs were taken by Marla Gamoran, Executive Director of SKILLED VOLUNTEERS FOR ISRAEL. You will be paired with a project (English speaking) that matches your skills. Most volunteer opportunities are for one month or longer. These are some of the volunteer opportunities.

Opportunities by Project Type

I wanted to taste Israel outside of restaurants. I am meeting people who care for their communities and their neighbors. I’m riding buses with them. I’m singing with them and creating meaningful programs.

It’s a dream come true. Could it be yours?

Peace and love from Jerusalem,

Hasha

Thursday, July 16, 2015

WHAT IS HISTORY?

WHAT IS HISTORY?

“By the Rivers of Babylon, we wept.” On Tisha B’Av, the 9^th of Av (July 25, 2015) we will read Lamentations, Eicha. We will read about OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY, a day, through the eye of an historic needle, we stitch one day of successive tragedies throughout Jewish history. Sitting on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, and there they wept.

What happened afterwards, after the losses of 586 BCE, AFTER the destruction of the First Temple, the seat of religious and political governance in Eretz Yisrael?

The answer can be found in new exhibit I saw today at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum, “By the Rivers of Babylon”. I had no idea what happened to those exiled to Babylon. Unlike the Arch of Titus in Rome, depicting Jewish slaves in chains, pillaging the Temple, the Menorah, the Khatzotzrot (the golden trumpets that announced Shabbat) NOTHING was known of the First Temple exiles. NOW, WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!

Nebuchadnezzar, mentioned in the Prophets, and Writings, and sections of the T’N’Ch (Kings 2, Jeremiah, and Chronicles) in 586 BCE destroys the First Temple and brings Jewish exiles to Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzar has always been the prototype bad guy (i.e. may his name be blotted out, with a short list of other bad guys, you know who). But today, I learned that he set up numerous villages for these exiles in Babylonia. These villages were designed by Nebuchadnezzar’s architects to resemble the exiles’ home towns. They had canals (water was a must), date groves, and agricultural fields to promote independence. Wealth was determined by three commercial elements: dates, agricultural produce (barley) and silver (which they didn’t have). When Cyrus King of Persia, remember Esther in Shushan, i.e. Susa), overcame the Babylonians and invited the exiles back to Eretz Yisrael, many didn’t want to return. Life was good in Babylonia!

The following article by Ilan Ben Zion appeared in the Times of Israel, Thursday, July 16, 2015 (today!).

“By the Rivers of Babylon” showcases a collection of about 100 rare clay tablets from 6th century Mesopotamia that detail the lives of exiled Judeans living in the heartland of the Babylonian Empire. Through these small Akkadian legal documents written in cuneiform (many the size of a bar of soap), scholars have breathed life back into generations of Judeans who lived in Babylon but whose names and traditions speak of a longing for Zion.

The Al-Yahudu tablets are part of a private collection that has never before gone on public display. No one knows the when these small documents surfaced, but they likely turned up somewhere in southern Iraq. After decades on the antiquities market they ended up in the hands of a private collector, David Sofer, who offered to loan them to the Bible Lands Museum.

“It puts a face on the real people who went through these fateful events,” Dr. Filip Vukosavović, curator of the exhibit, told The Times of Israel. The tablets preserve a wealth of Judean names — including the familiar Natanyahu — of the exilic community, and even include a handful of Aramaic inscriptions.

Before the Al-Yahudu texts were found and studied, scholars only had an outline of life for Judeans in Babylon, said Dr. Wayne Horowitz, Hebrew University’s professor of Assyriology, who helped prepare the exhibition and the corresponding academic literature. “We had before this an outline, a tradition, but as historians we couldn’t prove it. And now we’re actually seeing the community living its life, really fleshed out.”

He compared the experience of the exiled Judeans to that of new immigrants to Israel in the early years of the state. They were settled in a region of southern Babylon that had been ravaged by years of war and forced to rebuilt infrastructure and dig canals — the rivers by which they wept when they remembered Zion.

“Once they had built the infrastructure they were allowed to settle and build their lives,” Horowitz explained. Within a short while, the community became more prosperous and secure, a fact documented in the financial documents preserved in clay.

“It’s impossible to exaggerate when it comes to the importance and the amount” of information gleaned from the tablets, Vukosavović said. He called the Babylonian exile the “most important event in the history of the Jewish people.”

Each document catalogs when and where it was written and by whom, providing scholars with an unprecedented view into the day-to-day life of Judean exiles in Babylonia, as well as a geography of where the refugees were resettled. The earliest in the collection, from 572 BCE, mentions the town of Al-Yahudu — “Jerusalem” — a village of transplants from Judea.

“Finally through these tablets we get to meet these people, we get to know their names, where they lived and when they lived, what they did,” Vukosavović said.

The texts help dispel the misconception that the Judeans in Babylon were second-class citizens of the empire, living in ghettos and pressed into hard labor. While some toiled in base drudgery, others thrived, owned property, plantations and slaves, and became part of the Babylonian bureaucratic hierarchy.

“It teaches us that we weren’t slaves, like we were slaves to the Pharaoh,” Vukosavović said. “It teaches us that we were simply free people in Babylon, living not only in Al-Yahudu, but also in a dozen other cities where Jews either lived or did their business.”

WHAT IS HISTORY? It was discovered, uncovered, and revealed. This new exhibition in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem tells the story of a formerly unknown period of Jewish history and exile. It lends new insight into Nebuchadnezzar, the villain and the builder, and the Jewish exiles in Babylonia.

WOW with love and learning from Jerusalem.

Hasha

Sunday, July 12, 2015

KABBALAT SHABBAT AT KIBBUTZ HATZERIM

KABBALAT SHABBAT AT KIBBUTZ HATZERIM

I’ve visited Kibbutz Hatzerim twice in the past 40 years. Yesterday, was the 2^nd time. Saralee Kassel and I were roommates on Young Judea Year Course 1967-68. Saralee is a very special human being with a remarkable spirit. I am so glad we are friends.

Saralee stands by a Jacaranda Tree. Children swing from the roots above that eventually find their way into the earth, below.

Saralee and her husband Iri invited me to visit Kibbutz Hatzarim on Friday. Although the Kibbutz is near the capital of the Negev, Beer Sheva, it’s light years away from this busy, growing city.

Iri, Saralee and I visited Sde Boker, Ben Gurion's home Kibbutz.

Iri was the Director of the Reform Movement in Israel for many years. Although Iri is not a Rabbi, he was the central organizing force for Israel’s growing Reform Movement. He designed Kibbutz Hatzerim’s Kabbalat Shabbat. Iri and Saralee asked if I would play guitar and sing at the service. Of course! Saralee has been the nurse on the Kibbutz for many years. There was a guitar in the Mir’pa’ah, the clinic.

Surely you know, religion is the opiate of the masses. What place can the communal observance of Shabbat have at Kibbutz?

Iri designed a 30 minute Kabbalat Shabbat service. Singing is central. They begin singing the same beloved (well-known) settings for the introductory psalms (tehilim). The candles are lit and blessed. More singing. Iri offers an insight into the weekly Torah portion (parashat hashavu’a). This week’s Torah portion was Pinchas. He reflected on three aspects of the portion. His approach is concise and provocative. He concluded with a question about equality and justice.

As we sang Tzvika Pik (z’l)’s Adon Olam, wine was distributed to all. Two blessings were read. Iri read the traditional blessing for Kiddush. The second blessing is the Kibbutz Kiddush: blessing the fruit of the vine and the earth for its abundance. Both were good and meaningful.

Finally, pieces of challah were distributed by two children. The children placed their hands on the two complete challot (just like at CVS), and together we said the blessing. We sang Shalom Aleichem and concluded the service at 7:30 p.m. precisely.

I loved sharing this experience with them. We are all on a journey to discovery connections within ourselves, touching the Creative Source that links us together in holiness and hope.

On Shabbat, we set out for Sde Boker, Ben Gurion’s home.


This is Ben Gurion's tzrif, small home: two small bedrooms, a salon for guests. Five thousand books line the shelves. He read each book in the its original language. When given a copy of Don Quixote, he learned Spanish so he could read it in the language it was written!

Will write more soon.

Love from Jerusalem,

Hasha

Friday, July 10, 2015

THE TIYUL

I went north, tzafona, with my hostess Nina and her wonderful daughter Lilach. First we went to Zippori. Zippori is an incredible site that spans 1000 years from Roman/Jewish, Byzantine to the Crusaders. Often these three distinct cultures are features of one structure.

Everything that you need could be found here, a theatre, bathhouses (plumbing), a synagogue, churches, and of course a fortress from the Crusades. The walls of the fortress are six feet thick, with narrow windows facing north, south, east and west.

The Jewish history of Zippori is incredible. Why? Judah HaNasi compiled the Mishnah here. Sure, it didn't happen overnight. From around 200 BCE to 200 CE (Common Era), Torah commentaries and insights into Jewish law were discussed and written down. The Mishnah was 'completed' around 200 CE. Why here? Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans in 70 CE. Those that weren't forced into slavery and brought to Rome, escaped north. Rabbi Judah HaNasi moved to Zippori with the Sanhedrin (the highest institution of Jewish law). Rabbi Judah was asked how he could tolerate the baths (and implied immorality) He responded, that the sculptures (idols) are looking at him. He simply doesn't look at them!

We are familiar with the main players from this time. When Israel was conquered by Pompeii's army in 63 BCE, the governor of Syria declared Zippori the capital of the Galilee. When the first revolt against the Roman (66 CE) the Jews in Zippori made a treaty with the Roman army.

Zippori is mentioned frequently in the Talmud as a city with 18 synagogues, a little like California St., in Chicago (it once had 17 synagogues).

The mosaics in the synagogue and the Roman/Dionysus house are gorgeous. The synagogue mosaics are in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. They feature Jewish motifs and Bible stories.

Plus, this great mosaic of the Astrological/Jewish Calendar, illustrate each month with symbols we recognize today.

One of the most famous mosaics is "the Mona Lisa of Zippori". The marvelous chiaroscuro of her face is exceptional. Byzantine art stylized form and flattened surfaces.

Greek and Byzantine icons are great examples of transitioning social tastes and religious values.

The mosaic floor in the Dionysus House also features drinking competitions depicting the life of Dioysus, the god of wine and his worship.

The Roman amphitheater had 4,500 stone seats! Contrary to Jewish life and culture, the theater expressed a clear-cut Roman way of life--hedonist and pagan. The Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara 18b comments "Happy is the man who did not go to theaters, and to circuses of those who worship the stars." Ah oh! I love theater and the circus!

I'm en route to Kibbutz Hatzerim to visit my friends Saralee and Iri Kassel. Saralee and I were roommates during Year Course 1967-68. Shabbat Shalom!