Bible, Anyone?
Appelbaum, Paul
BIBLE, ANYONE? THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF H.TELLER AS TOLD TO RAUL APPELBAUM "The number eight {shmonah in Hebrew), wrote the Maharal of Prague, is suprarational. Seven corresponds to the number...
...If there had been a popularity poll I would have beaten Yasir Arafat—barely...
...I believe that with some good will and reason we might have agreed on a compromise...
...even some female soldiers posted nearby had come to listen...
...If you speak at the same time, no one will attend her talk...
...One teacher told me that he had bibles, but he, to his regret, was unable to lend them to me, for he used them every morning in class...
...I requested that he wait fifteen minutes until we had finished, as the kitchen was empty and the next meal was five hours away...
...He told me that they had been sent to a kibbutz in the area...
...Blessed be His name, not just bibles, but bibles in English...
...I could see that my request touched a chord that brought the whole cauldron of simmering rage to the surface...
...Our talk was scheduled to last only forty-five minutes...
...I decided to take my appeal to the director of studies at the ulpan...
...eight lacks such conformance...
...But show them the essence, not the accretions of an immigrant culture gone riot, and I believe they will grasp it willingly...
...I asked the first three students I saw if they would be interested in a class on the basic elements of Judaism...
...Fifty American college graduates deposited in the midst of a town of illiterate Iraqis and Moroccans...
...And as far as Judaism to which an American college graduate can relate, Kiryat Shmonah is a vacuum...
...But at the end he came back to the theme that had almost become an obsession...
...With the Almighty's help the classes progressed nicely and their effects soon became manifest...
...After witnessing this program for over two years, I could not accuse the Jewish Agency of intelligence...
...If you speak first, they will all be too tired to attend another lecture...
...I pointed out to him that as he taught in the morning, an overlap was impossible, as I would never start teaching before mid-afternoon...
...When the closet was opened, we found twenty-five bibles stacked inside...
...Unfortunately their religious feelings, more cultural than transcendental to begin with, in most cases have long since evaporated...
...Those who showed an interest he referred to yeshivot in Jerusalem...
...She denied speaking with Rav Drury...
...I could picture Hanoch sitting in his small room at one of Jerusalem's more prominent yeshi-vot, his black hat, two sizes too small, as always, perched rakishly on his crown, in a manner that would have done Damon Runyon Paul S. Appelbaum, Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is a frequent contributor to Jewish publications on current affairs...
...Nonetheless influencing someone towards Jewishness is a difficult task and doing it against his perceived will, utilizing only cold intellectual techniques, makes the job even more formidable...
...They selected Tisha B'Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of our Temples, as the time to teach the names of food—and each class was equipped with the appropriate edibles to aid in the instruction...
...My joy, however, was short-lived...
...The Rabbi's wife, you'll remember how surprised we were to discover that she was from California, verified that her husband had spoken with the ulpan housemother concerning my housing...
...Nonchalantly I inquired if the ulpan had any Americans...
...The only literature in English in the whole ulpan save for aliyah propaganda were missionary bibles...
...I found a place in the town...
...He relayed, in the name of the madrichah, the opinion that, 'None of the Americans are interested in Judaism.' The message and manner of delivering it were understood...
...I was, I am ashamed now to admit, convinced that the madrichah would be delighted with the idea of having a volunteer lecturer on Judaism at the disposal of the students...
...I started 'schmoozing' with this boy about the soccer standings and the like...
...We asked him if what he was doing needed to be done right then...
...I was stupefied...
...What could I do...
...I related the midrash of how Moses himself marvelled at Rabbi Akiva's achievements, and how his students and generations of Jews have been inspired by his martyrdom...
...The missionary bibles were out of the way, but the class still did not have texts...
...Terrific,' I said, though I rarely speak in His name...
...Finally the boy came down alone...
...Assimilation and intermarriage are raging epidemics...
...Rabbi who?' 'Isn't Rabbi Akiva the name of a street?' I promise you that is what they said...
...Only one person I knew would start a letter like that...
...There was no point of even looking at the return address...
...I had thought, at first, that I was being hypersensitive and over-reacting to the situation, but now I knew for sure...
...Haven't you realized that yet...
...You are not wanted here, the madrichah retorted...
...American Jewry is halving itself...
...One madrichah insisted that despite all that, she respected God very much...
...This time I found the office attended by a boy—apparently local talent...
...They incongruously skipped the Jerusalem stop-over that every tourist makes...
...Why on earth get rid of them...
...There is so much more I could write to you, Paul, concerning that ulpan in Kiryat Shmonah...
...Do they really believe that a state can be maintained by de-Judaized Jews...
...The afternoons and evenings were free, save for weekly Israeli dancing and sporadic lectures...
...He replied that he was repairing something necessary for eating and it could not be delayed...
...They had already been in the ulpan for one month and so far had not heard or experienced anything about their religion...
...My pupils were enthusiastic...
...So Hanoch had gone back, after all, to that dusty development town tucked away, and usually forgotten, in Israel's northeast corner...
...I then inquired whether the ulpan was stocked with bibles which could serve as my text...
...In one instance when the noise was particularly disturbing some investigation revealed a madrich pounding on a scrap of metal to be the responsible party...
...Just as the talk was about to begin, a madrichah informed us that the lecture was cancelled due to the arrival of a guest lecturer from Beit Shean, a development town one-and-a half hours south of Kiryat Shmonah, who apparently had been scheduled to speak well before the Rosh Hashanah lecture had been booked...
...What will it take to make them see the light...
...These confused kids, most of whom think they came because they had no job, no marriage prospects, in short no reason for staying at home, in actuality came to find that reason for being a Jew...
...That evening I returned to the ulpan to determine my status...
...proud...
...I therefore asked to speak with the lecturer from Beit Shean to see what could be worked out...
...I don't believe that I ever had a less productive conversation in my life...
...At supper one of my students announced the lecture, inviting everyone, including the madrichot...
...I deduced that after office hours the Jewish Agency staff returned to their homes outside of Kiryat Shmonah...
...It was clear that in their minds I was a spiritual malaise who had already succeeded in delivering one mildly poisoning lecture and who must be curtailed...
...T don't believe it, but it's a lovely story.' And so Torah was introduced to the Kiryat Shmonah ulpan...
...I spent Shab-bat in Jerusalem and arrived early Sunday evening to make sure that everyone was aware of the talk...
...The students were instructed to verify the suggested date with a madrichah and to publicize the event...
...I think there was a part of him and a part of me which would have enjoyed swapping black hat and stethoscope, like prince and pauper, and stealing a taste of the other's life...
...It was a natural for them...
...Since I was not allowed past the office, he offered to go up the stairs and inquire for me...
...Already more than ninety percent of American olim return home to the States, beaten and frustrated after a few years in Israel...
...While admitting the justice of my argument, he expressed the fear that his bibles would get scattered and that some might disappear...
...True, I had advertised Judaism, but they still expected to hear about Zionism, politics or development towns...
...An unlikely pair, to be sure, but something of the other attracted each of us...
...What can I say to a woman who came all the way from Beit Shean...
...On more than one occasion the noise emanating from there forced us to switch rooms...
...They had only three hours of classes in the morning...
...The first student answered, 'Sure,' the second one affirmed that more enthusiastically, and the third one even more so...
...Why, I asked, for the past four days had no one been notified of the conflict...
...As I recounted the stories I witnessed the resurgence of a genuine feeling for Jewishness that I knew they must have had...
...perhaps she had been asked to forget...
...the standard of crime and violence correspondingly exceeds the norm...
...Still, although it was difficult for them to sit for three consecutive hours, thank God their thirst for Torah won out...
...As with your group the previous year, the Sherut La'am volunteers who were housed in the town's ul-pan building had been bussed here almost directly from the airport at Lod...
...By seven forty-five the lounge was full...
...Rav Drury, he explained, did not and could not commit anything in the Sherut La'am program...
...That evening I taught the story of Rabbi Akiva: how a forty year-old base shepherd molded himself into the greatest scholar of his time...
...The opportunity dazzled him...
...We had met there the year before, I the freshly turned out Harvard doctor, he the committed exponent of a life of Torah study...
...I inspected them and I was stunned...
...How could we let Kiryat Shmonah happen...
...The standard of living and level of education and culture is far below the Israeli average...
...The deed was quickly done...
...The housemother had collected the remaining bibles in a box and assured me that she would 'take care of them.' On the day I left Kiryat Shmonah, I pleaded with the head of the ulpan to make sure that such literature would never enter again...
...I am sure you know what a thrill it was for me to see all those people, so removed from their Jewishness, gathered to learn about Rosh Hashanah...
...Why?' I asked...
...And if not now, when...
...The Almighty called us a stiff-necked people and who am I to diverge from our tradition...
...I told you in the beginning that you must confirm all your classes with me.' "I begged to correct her...
...Seven corresponds to the number of days in a week...
...Betach (of course),' he said, 'Fifty-two Americans!' God of the Universe...
...The next morning I spoke with the housemother about my accommodations...
...I was shocked and hurt...
...After a week of classes I asked when the most convenient time would be for a lecture on the upcoming Rosh Hashanah holiday...
...The rest of his letter spoke of happier things...
...If only we had such strong-willed people on our side...
...What on earth can the Jewish Agency have been thinking of...
...Hanoch Teller is a student at Yeshivat Mir in Jerusalem...
...He said that he was unacquainted with these matters and a madrichah (a female group leader) must be consulted...
...Can they not see beyond their ideological blinders that the way to attract disaffected American youth to Israel is not to offer them more of the sterile, atheistic universalism they have already rejected at home, but by giving them the spiritual ties they need and crave to the land and its people...
...Out of curiosity I asked what had been done with the bibles...
...Maybe the Americans want to read them?' I replied that if the Americans wanted to read missionary literature no one was stopping them, but what was the point of seducing them...
...Yet the Jews of America do not even deign to offer their children the barest outlines of a Jewish education, to provide them with the least substantial reason for wanting to remain a Jew...
...I later found out from his students that he had never used them in class...
...What do they think, these people from the Jewish Agency whose job it is to build a home for the Jewish people...
...Where is the sense...
...the girl who had brought her needlepoint stuffed it back into her bag...
...Here in the first truly Jewish environment many of these sadly archetypal American Jews had experienced, they saw religion scorned at every turn...
...What is more important,' I demanded, 'Beit Shean or Rosh Hashanah?' I know that you will think me naive for asking that, but there are truly times when I forget how far so many of us have drifted from the path of Torah...
...For the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the students were farmed out to non-religious kibbutzim where the holidays were all but ignored...
...It is related in the name of the Chofetz Chaim that in the world to come the non-observant Jews will point their fingers at their religious brethren and justly accuse them of neglecting their brothers and sisters...
...There was no room for Judaism in the ulpan, she concluded, no room for God...
...Seven is indicative of rationality, eight of irrationality...
...The building, he assured me, was almost entirely inhabited by Argentinians and female soldiers...
...I was told there weren't any...
...The manager informed me that there were no accommodations prearranged...
...I thanked him for his hospitality, took my suitcase and walked to the Drury house...
...Of course if you said that to most of them, they would laugh at you...
...So, by the time I arrived, the ulpan students had long since exhausted the amusement possibilities of the town's swimming pool and two movie theaters with their Turkish adventure epics...
...After the first week, two girls went to Jerusalem for Shabbat and returned enthused...
...What are we going to do to stop it...
...I questioned the feasibility of lecturing to them that very evening...
...One little Moroccan told me that if he ever sees a missionary he is going to poke his eyes out...
...But that's not to say that the harassment did not continue...
...Hanoch and I had spent many hours discussing the ineptitude of the Jewish Agency personnel who were responsible for Sherut La'am—the volunteer program that brought young college graduates for a year of work in one of Israel's impoverished development towns...
...I simply explained to the boys (none over thirteen, although they all had matches) how important it was to safeguard our Torah from outside infiltration...
...I am thus, you see, lacking a rational explanation for how I arrived at and for what transpired in Kiryat Shmonah ('the City of the Eight') last summer...
...I was informed that the only possible time to speak with him was during the coffee-break, when all the teachers and madrichot gathered in his office...
...He said that he had no choice and that we must understand...
...Somehow, why I don't know, I had more faith than that...
...His disposition towards me was distinctly less affable...
...And here in Israel, those who have the power to make such an effort, to begin the task, do not even care...
...I know the students are more interested in Rosh Hashanah than in Beit Shean...
...The lectures were held in a classroom adjacent to the maintenance room...
...Our bibles they didn't have, but these they did...
...Perhaps she had forgotten...
...Generally they are situated on the border or otherwise removed from the urban centers and are usually peopled by once religious Sephardi immigrants...
...The kids were so bored that a class on basket-weaving would have been well-attended...
...Jewish to them means gaudy bar mitzvahs, hot pastrami sandwiches and intrusive mothers whom they loathe...
...Accommodation at the ulpan had been kindly arranged for me by Rav Drury...
...The lecture was scheduled for eight o'clock Sunday evening and by Wednesday afternoon posters were already up...
...Furthermore, he said, a lecturer on Judaism was not needed because there were hardly any Americans in the ulpan...
...As I had learned the year before, however, the local reality and the ulpan schedule would work to my advantage...
...Despite the efforts of the local Rabbi, Zephaniah Drury, and the recent opening of a Hesder (paramilitary) Yeshiva, Kiryat Shmonah is almost devoid of religion...
...She quickly brought me back to reality, expressing bewilderment at my refusal to understand that I was not wanted...
...The boy who had brought a newspaper into the class folded it under his chair...
...I succeeded in smuggling twelve missionary bibles out of the ulpan and delivered them to the neighborhood kids...
...When they realized that this was something entirely different, for them unique, their eyes lit up and they moved their chairs closer...
...She had never told me to confirm my classes, but rather had sent a message that, 'None of the Americans are interested in Judaism.' I pointed out that I had come all the way from Jerusalem, three times further away than Beit Shean...
...I waited a long time for her to descend...
...Every opportunity to infuse some spiritual values into the three-month intensive Hebrew course was passed by in favor of propagandistic attempts to lure the participants into permanent immigration...
...In any event accommodations were out of the question...
...T am sure that He's pleased.' Yet, you know, I felt sorry for them...
...You know why I went back...
...I had the unparalleled joy of watching my students absorb Torah as a sponge might soak up water...
...I assured him that I was devoutly in favor of getting the maximum usage out of the bibles and that he could be genuinely confident that they were in good hands...
...For others he arranged for study partners in their permanent placements...
...Well, at last we began...
...In town for a few weeks to tutor underprivileged yeshiva students, Hanoch had stumbled on our ulpan and its eighty-odd inhabitants...
...I protested that there were funds for an Israeli dancing teacher, daily delivery of the Jerusalem Post, and a television, but received the inevitable excuse, 'lack of interest.' "Now Paul you know that stiff-necked I was and stiff-necked I am, and I insisted that the book-closet be unlocked and checked...
...The priorities were clear and Beit Shean had it all over Rosh Hashanah...
...At ten-fifteen that night a sermon was delivered on Rosh Hashanah...
...I think they were so incensed because they had said that no one was interested in Judaism, and sitting in front of them in that bleak lounge you know so well were fifty-two refutations...
...Kiryat Shmonah is indeed a typical 'development town.' The word 'development' is an ingenious example of Israeli optimism: 'underdeveloped' would be more accurate and would dispense with the false connotations of progress the former carries...
...Walking in, I politely inquired about the accessibility of bibles...
...Because there isn't any interest in them, came the reply, nor can the budget cover them...
...I was told that I might speak after she had finished, two-and-a-half hours hence...
...As I waited to enter I overheard their opinions of me and of what I represented...
...He finally acquiesced...
...So you see, I was in business...
...Upon my arrival in Kiryat Shmonah I went directly to .the ulpan and made my presence known...
...I wanted to explain to the madrichot the nature of the outrage, hoping that they would dispose of them on their own...
...twenty-five missionary bibles, 'old' testament and 'new.' I imagine that a more conventional yeshivah student than I would have taken them and incinerated them on the spot...
...His upcoming marriage, the child my wife and I were soon expecting...
...He was impressed, as I had been, a volunteer myself, by how little attention was given to bolstering the weak Jewish backgrounds of the majority of the young Americans recruited...
...The students had at first been skeptical, assuming that the administration of the ulpan had coordinated the lecture...
...Moving quickly, he set up a number of classes in Chumash (Bible) and Gemorah, and even after his vacation ended commuted via the grueling four-and-a-half hour bus from Jerusalem to teach another class, and still another...
...Even the cynics were friendly...
...That, in fact, is how Hanoch and I met...
...When they toured the Galilee, they stopped at every minor marker of a military victory, but for a brief stop at the oldest continuous Jewish settlement in the world at Peki'in there was 'no time.' There is more than apathy at work, there is unnecessary hostility...
Vol. 3 • March 1978 • No. 4
