The weather in Jerusalem today started out clear and cool, with no cloud in the sky and a light breeze blowing through. We had a later start today – we were on the bus at 8:30 – and drove to the Israeli High Court of Justice, or the Israeli supreme court. The building was designed by Mosheh Safdi, architect of many an Israeli and American project. Each area or passageway has some biblical verse associated with it that concerns the concept of “justice”, thereby keeping nearby at all times the demand for finding justice in every aspect of the work of the law.
Our morning experience was heightened by our speaker Anat Hoffman, former Jerusalem city councilwoman and, now, the director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), sponsored by the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism. IRAC has been struggling for equal rights for women, Arabs, secular Israelis and others who encounter difficulties with the separation of religion and government, an area in which there is less justice, perhaps, than there should be.
Anat Hoffman spoke especially passionately about the Women of the Wall, a group of women from all religious movements who simply want to pray at the Western Wall in ways equal to the men who also pray there. Each month, at the New Moon, the Women of the Wall gather to worship and to read Torah, but they are denied the ability to do so because of those in the religious parties who promote inequality in Jewish worship in Israel. According to the Rabbi of the Wall, women are not supposed to be heard, wear kippah or tallit, handle the Torah scroll, or read from it, and the Women of the Wall have been fighting for more than 20 years to win the right to do so. For more information about the Women of the Wall, you can go to www.womenofthewall.com.
From the supreme court, we traveled to the Israeli Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. “Yad Vashem” is a Hebrew expression from the bible that relates to a monument of memory. “Yad” literally means “hand”, and “Vashem” literally means “and a name”. This citation relates, in the bible, to monuments of lasting memory, and this is why this institution bears this name. This monument of Janus Korjak memorializes him as a savior of children.
This is more than a museum: It is an archive, and a spiritual experience to relate the individual and collective histories of Holocaust victims and survivors. There are also monuments to the memory of the Righteous Gentiles, to the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust, and to the communities that disappeared from the map before and during World War II.
art of our experience there was participating in a service of memorial in the “Tent of Memory”, a large covered pavilion that serves as the central ceremonial assembly place for Yad Vashem. Led by Rabbi Biatch, each participant/traveler said memorial prayers – the Eil Malei Rachamim – and the Mourner’s Kaddish. But the prayers did not stop there. We also prayed for a better and brighter future.
Directly next door to Yad Vashem is the Mount Herzl and National Cemetery of Israel’s past leaders. Theodore Herzl’s body was interred here after being taken from Austria, and he is venerated as a founding visionary of the Zionist movement. Also buried here are Itzhak and Leah Rabin, Golda Meir, other past Prime Ministers and cabinet ministers, and soldiers from the seven wars that Israel has suffered through. Although perhaps not buried here, we also found a memorial to Hannah Senesh who, along with six other parachutists, returned to their native lands during World War II to try to infiltrate the Nazi regime and find information that would be helpful to the Allies.
We then traveled back to the hotel via the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, a complex that borders on the Arab town of Beit Jala. About ten years ago, residents of Gilo suffered through armed snipers from Beit Jala, and a wall was erected to protect the town’s residents. Only in the last few weeks have the walls begun to come down, a sign that the tension is eased and the hope for the end of violence was being fulfilled.
We also saw the affects of the separation wall on the landscape of Jerusalem. The wall snakes around Arab towns and protects Jerusalem’s residents. But the affects of the Wall’s presence have been to cut off natural neighborhoods from one another, and Arab land owners from their arable land. The route of the Wall is constantly changing in certain places, to accommodate the changing needs of the Jews and Arabs who naturally live so close to one another.
Our last stop was back at our hotel, where we heard from Rabbi Rich Kirschen, the new director of the Reform movement’s National Federation of Temple Youth’s Israel program division. He spoke about the experiences of a young American Rabbi immigrant to Israel – and his family – while becoming absorbed into Israeli society. He also spoke of the need for building many more bridges between Israeli and North American Jewry, a hope we heard expressed from a number of speakers. Many of us share that hope!
The day ended at 6 PM, and folks had a very relaxed supper.
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