Little Minyans Everywhere

So we moved!  And one of the greatest unsung features of our building is a very regular minyan.

This is temporary, due to corona. Building minyans are nothing new in Israel, but usually they're "lobby minyans" held only for "quickie" davening, like maariv after Shabbos, not on a regular basis, with a Torah, for longer davening. And definitely not Shabbos morning, when everybody tends to go off in their own direction.

Until now.
And one of the joys of life in a Jewish country, I've decided, is waking up Shabbos morning surrounded by prayer.
Not just mumbling, but all-out singing, with gusto.

(This picture has been making the rounds of social media... best guesses seem to suggest it's somewhere in England.  It’s definitely not Israel, so I guess this phenomenon has spread out a little.)

Last Shabbos, our last in our old apartment, I went out for a walk with the kids after we lit candles (with masks on!).  We passed at least a dozen little minyanim, so we started

My vacation in Mecca, or why I’m saying bye bye to Airbnb

I’ve always loved Airbnb, a site that made it super-easy for anyone and everyone to rent out their place and make a little money on the side (or a lot – I know for lots of people it’s an actual business at this point). 

But I abruptly quite loving them today, following the announcement that they’ll be blocking listings from Jews in disputed areas of the West Bank.

Why?  According to NGO Human Rights Watch, who undoubtedly has advised Airbnb every step of the way, it’s mainly because “Palestinian ID holders are effectively barred from entering” these areas (just as they can’t enter many parts of Israel).  Because the Palestinian Authority have utterly failed, since the initial hope of Oslo, to reach any kind of peace agreement – not tried and failed, but simply failed due to power hunger on the part of their leadership.

When I read about all of this this morning, frankly, I was astonished that I had an opinion at all.

I didn’t used to.

You have to understand that I was a very bad prospective olah, in that I didn't really know anything about Israel before we came here.

I probably couldn't have found Haifa on a map.  Let alone Beer Sheva, Netanya, Ramat Gan and a whole bunch of other towns that I now know as well as the suburbs where I grew up.

Which also meant I couldn't tell the difference, politically, between Chevron and Rechovot, between Efrat and Eilat, between Kochav Yaakov and Kochav Yair (okay, to be fair, even born Israelis get those two mixed up!).

I always figured that if I lived in Israel, the "situation" here would make a lot more sense.  I would know what "settlements" people were talking about and understand whether they were right or wrong and which were the good bits of the country and which weren't.

I’m a lot less naive now. 

But even so, I certainly couldn't claim to know more about how to fix the situation than anyone else.  So the fact that Airbnb, like the EU, is announcing that they have the answer, and that the answer is to label different parts of the country in different ways to call attention to the political situation… well, that’s astonishing. 

• It’s astonishing that they

The other half of Israel: do religious Jews hate Arabs?

Last week, a friend who volunteers teaching English to kids in an Arab village near Karmiel mentioned an informal survey he’d done among the kids he teaches.  He asked them, hypothetically, who they wouldn’t want living in their village. 

He listed a whole bunch of different types of people:  Arab Christians, Americans, religious and non-religious Jews.

It turned out that the main group of people that the kids didn’t want coming to live in their village was religious Jews.

Why?

Because, according to the kids, religious Jews hate Arabs more.

In other words:  not because they hate us, but because they believe we hate them.

I was astonished, but actually this makes sense.  They probably figure that the people who are most passionate about the religion are also the most passionate Zionists.  And thus, the most passionate Arab-haters.

To me, being a religious Jew is totally about Israel.  But it is not at all about hatred. 

I always figured that when I made aliyah, I’d understand the situation here a lot more clearly.  You know, being actually present on the ground, as opposed to being way off in North America.

That’s about as accurate as a flea expecting to understand a dog’s life just because it lives on the dog’s back. 

Things that are cool in Israel #6: Jews of Diversity (where not every Jew looks just like you)

Did you grow up Ashkenaz in North America?  I did.

To be raised Ashkenazi in North America is to believe that every single Jew in the world looks pretty much… like you.

(this is NOT my Bat Mitzvah picture, but it might as well be.  The colour scheme was similar, but we didn’t make my father wear a tux.)

Coming to Israel has been the most wonderful kind of shock.

It turns out that shiny-white isn’t the only colour Jews come in after all.

It turns out that THESE are Jewish faces…

(even the white guy in the background)

And THESE are Jewish faces…

And THESE are Jewish faces, too…

(even the white guy in the background)

Of course, so are these…