RACHEL COWAN
RACHEL COWAN Away from Israel, I wonder how on earth these problems can be addressed. When I'm there, I know they can and I want to pitch in and help. I have many Jewish friends who have never...
...Many of them think that the only people entitled to disagree publicly with the Likud government are Israelis who live there...
...They feel no connection with it...
...Many Israelis argue that the government threatens this aliyah's future by investing money in West Bank settlements that should be allocated for creating jobs and housing...
...I spend hours listening to, arguing with, laughing with people who live and work on the frontlines...
...But the country is so small that they can't escape the important issues for long...
...They believe their actions will affect their country's future...
...Finding yourself in the midst of such people and participating in their debates, you'll feel prouder to be a Jew...
...They try to organize the Russians to advocate this position, but their job is hard...
...If you don't know how to begin, I'd suggest writing to the New Israel Fund in Jerusalem, Washington or New York.* They can put you in touch with all kinds of projects and with people of all political and cultural perspectives...
...They visit relatives, they take tours, they meet with government officials...
...They will go back to organize liberal Jewish communities in their own towns...
...Their rabbi, Levi Weiman-Kelman (the son of Wolfe Kelman of blessed memory, a treasured teacher of many) has helped this community grow...
...Some of them think that worrying about the human rights of Palestinian prisoners is irrelevant at best, and probably antisemitic...
...3* Rabbi Rachel Cowan is director of Jewish affairs for the Nathan Cummings Foundation...
...They would feel better when Tanya's husband would join them, when their grief would abate and when Tanya could speak more Hebrew...
...Most Israelis are secular and many experience friction with religious authorities when they come to be married, divorced, converted or buried...
...Many Israelis also look away from the problems around them, of course...
...two COWAN continued from page 14 weeks earlier...
...Strolling through a part of Jerusalem that is visually, ethnically and culturally a world apart from Jewish West Jerusalem, we met three relatives of young men who had been killed on the Temple Mount a year ago...
...As a rabbi, he conducted the funeral of a congregant who was stabbed in Baka, their neighborhood, by a Palestinian worker...
...One widow has no money for food...
...You'll better understand the complexities of many issues that look so black or so white from the U.S...
...My deepest spiritual connection was with a community of young, egalitarian, progressive Jews who belong to Congregation Kol Haneshama in Jerusalem...
...You'll make people who are doing valuable work feel less lonely, less abandoned by people who share their values...
...They see the impact of the environmental and water crises, they hear the fierce peace and security debates...
...They also think it's too dangerous...
...I also have friends who do go to Israel often...
...Out of the country, apart from the fray, I wonder how on earth these problems will be adequately addressed...
...The ambulance driver had told Tanya that he had seen this fairly often...
...In two weeks in Israel, you can meet activists, feminists, spiritual teachers and seekers, politicians, human rights lawyers, Russians, Ethiopians, Arabs...
...I am part of a country I love, the home of the prophetic call to pursue justice...
...Israel is fascinating when you become immersed in the issues that Israelis live with every day, to experience the warmth and the angst of the Israel that lies beyond the tourist sites...
...They argue vehementiy with each other, but they also feel part of a large family...
...The papers write of abuses of power by religious parties...
...They lived in an airy one bedroom apartment with Tanya's 10-year-old daughter Olga...
...Farid, an Israeli citizen who is the chairperson of the grants committee of the New Israel Fund, walks a tightrope across the political gulf between the Jewish and Arab communities...
...It is a letter in praise of the glorious, complicated, human middle...
...We feel helpless, confused, depressed, and we turn inward, seeking comfort, at least, for ourselves...
...They listen to the radio news every hour...
...I spent an afternoon with my friend Tanya, who had made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from the U.S.S.R...
...They, discussed their new curriculum and showed me the art center where they taught parents to make educational toys for their children...
...New Israel Fund, 111 W. 40th St, Suite 2300, NYC 10018, (212) 302-0066...
...This column is a letter to all of them...
...They end each Shabbat service with a beautiful niggun (wordless song) and a prayer for peace in Hebrew and Arabic...
...With her late husband, Paul, she wrote Mixed Blessings: Marriages between Jews and Christians (Doubleday, 1987...
...I spent a morning with him as he taught 20 Jews from the Soviet Union how to lead Shabbat services...
...I am immersed in a deeply spiritual environment...
...She and her mother Vera were still in shock, for Tanya's father had died of a heart attack two days after arriving...
...They don't like its politics, they don't share the Israeli values they read about and they find religion in Israel medieval if not primitive...
...You can put flesh on abstract arguments...
...Most of them do not meet poor Oriental Jews, discouraged Russian olim (immigrants), unemployed Arab youth...
...The intensity and passion of the Israelis I've met is stronger and more dynamic than the spirit of American Jews today...
...And you'll help strengthen in Israel the expression of the Jewish values that inspire your life in the United States...
...In the busy community center that Farid organized in the over-crowded, busding, poverty-stricken Muslim Quarter of the Old City, six teachers cut out cardboard kittens for name tags for the children who would soon begin nursery school...
...There was the beach, the ice cream, the challenge of learning Hebrew...
...When I'm there, I am persuaded that change is possible, and I want to pitch in and help...
...In July and August, I spent time with Israelis who work for social justice...
...All their absorption money went for the rent, so both had to work...
...It is a letter of love that I hope will spark their interest in coming and in challenging their myths...
...Tanya had been a doctor, her mother an English teacher...
...1101 15th St., ' N.W., Suite 304, Washington, D.C...
...I have many Jewish friends who have never been to Israel...
...She had felt at home immediately...
...I walked through East Jerusalem with Farid Abu Gosh, the director of an educational trust that runs early childhood centers in Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem and within the Green Line...
...A few days later, I was impressed by the creative programming in a temporary nursery school for Ethiopian immigrant children in the Diplomat Hotel in Jerusalem, but I was also struck by the fact that the furniture and toys in this makeshift school were much more expensive and sophisticated than those in the Arab nursery that had been in operation for years...
...Being in Israel reminds me of being in the civil rights movement...
...But they had no idea how they would afford an apartment after their absorption funds were exhausted...
...Tanya would come home from ulpan (Hebrew class), change into a leotard and go down to the tacky health club in her building to give massages...
...An energetic man of peace, he has made a difference in the lives of hundreds of Arab children and their parents...
...Vera and Tanya were glad they had left Russia—for Olga's sake...
...they feared that discussing this might jeopardize their jobs...
...Olga, Tanya's daughter, loved her new life in Bat Yam...
...That week Vera had found work washing dishes in a restaurant...
...They don't understand the Israeli political system and have no experience in advocating causes and no conviction that systems can be changed...
...20005, (202) 223-3333...
...Slowly I grow to understand a culture so different from my own...
...They are building a new synagogue that will serve their growing numbers...
...The Russians are new and preoccupied with survival...
...Too many of us, on the other hand, buffer ourselves against the pain, the poverty that flaw our system and destroy our neighbors...
...As a rabbi he also has visited families on the West Bank whose homes the Israeli army demolished in retaliation for alleged terrorist activity of a family member...
...When I asked what they would be paid, they told me not to ask...
...They may not want to admit it, but they can see the reality of the unequal distribution of resources for Arabs and dislocations caused by shortages of jobs for Russians, Sephardim, young Israelis, Ethiopians and Arabs...
...Italy, Greece and Turkey beckon— Israel doesn't...
Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6
