My Grandpa's Tallis

Friday night at Shira Hadosha, we sit with the women on this side of the lace mechitzah. We sing Yedid Nefesh, Beloved of the Soul, as loudly as our voices can. The women wear kippot, the women lead prayer, but still I look down at the tallis in my lap. I hesitate. I wait for the confidence that will hold this fabric on my shoulders. We keep singing Psalms. My friend leans over. "Did you buy that tallis in Jerusalem?"

"No," I tell her. "It was my grandpa's."

I've worn this tallis once before. Last Yom Kippur I left my community at Ohio University Hillel, crossed the Ohio River, and drove south to Danville, VA where I was born, where my father was born before me, where my grandfather was born before him.

We nearly missed morning services. My grandma had had a shaky morning. Sometimes the Parkinson's wakes up and tugs on her muscles, and they move, but not in the ways she asked them to. That morning she sat trembling. "Let's stay home," said my grandpa, said my dad, said my step-mom, said my uncle. But my grandma wouldn't hear of it: "All Jews go to temple on Yom Kippur."

So our feet walked, and her wheelchair rolled, and the car drove east down Main Street, and when we finally got to temple, even the late-comers had come, and the only place left to sit was the very front pew. Everyone watched us, and we rolled my grandma down the center aisle, all the way to the bema were the rabbi stood already reading Torah. We helped her into a pew, and there we were, the Koplen family, a whole hour late, taking up the whole front row.

For two reasons, reading Torah was my grandpa's favorite part of Yom Kippur. The first reason is that it's a good story, and my grandpa, of all people, loved a good story. The second reason is that on Yom Kippur, he was always given an alliyah. He would walk up to the Torah, say a few words of Hebrew blessing, and stand there looking happy. At 94, my grandpa was the oldest member of our community, and as the oldest member he had the special honor of seventh alliyah. My grandpa has done a lot for the Danville Jewish community. He gave time; he gave money; he gave council to everyone who asked. He smiled at everyone who walked through the door. When people said thank you, Pop-Pop never said you're welcome. He would say it was nothing, or there's no need to thank me. He would defer gratitude to someone else. But on Yom Kippur when the community called him to Torah, when they helped him climb the stairs to the bema so for one moment the written Torah and the living Torah could touch, he accepted. He followed the hands that pulled his 94 years up two little steps. He touched the scroll with his talis, and kissed the tzitzit he has wrapped around his finger.

This Yom Kippur, we make it to temple just in time for his favorite part. He smiles and holds my grandma's hand as the alliyot are called one at a time. And then the gabbai says: "Yaamod, la’aliyah haSh’viit Albert Koplen." We have all been expecting this. We look to my grandpa with pride, waiting to see how we can pull him up, how we can bring the living Torah to the words in the book. But Pop-Pop is shaking his head.

"No," he says to the gabbai. The Gabbai looks at him. "No," my grandpa says. "Today I stay down here with my wife." His left hand squeezes my grandma's fingers. His right hand lifts and points down the pew. His finger is pointing at me. "My granddaughter goes up today." For a moment our Gabbai looks at my grandpa. I wait, looking between them, expecting someone to say no, expecting my dad to get up saying "I'll do it!" expecting my uncle to say, "I'll do it!"

Nobody moves.

Then this:

 "Taamod la’aliyah haSh’viit Mary Brett Koplen, 

bat Barry Koplen,

bar Albert Koplen."

I look at my grandpa. He smiles. He reaches his hand to the other side of my grandma where I am sitting,  and pats my knee. In his fist he holds a folded white cloth. He winks at me. "You're going to need a tallis."

At the schuel in Jerusalem the tallis sits in my lap. But tallit are not made for laps, and it slips on and off as I sit up and down. Somehow I always catch it. It's something close to fear that keeps this tallis clutched to my stomach. It's been almost a year since I've held it here. Almost a year since my grandpa winked and said, you'll need this; said stand up; said thank you for doing this for me. In Jerusalem we stand one last time for Aleinu, but somehow there is water in my eyes. The water clutters, and makes the words I look at blur into an unknown grey. In that blur I'm not sure what they are telling me. The courage isn't coming, but still I unfold the edges, hold the cloth before me, and wrap myself in my grandpa's tallis. The tzitzit fall by my hands, and I wrap the strings around my fingers. I'll do anything to not forget.

Only a few of us are left standing once the time has come for Kaddish. 11 months of Kaddish is an obligation after the death of a mother, a father, a sibling, a child, or a spouse. It's something I say for my grandfather. "Yitgaddal veyitqaddash shmeh rabba." "May His great name be exalted and sanctified is God's great name." In the whole Kaddish, the quintessential mourner's prayer there is no mention of death, rather it is an affirmation of faith. The mourner says this prayer alone, but the community chimes in for the line: "Yehe shmeh rabba mevarakh leʻalam ulʻalme ʻalmaya." "May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity!" For this prayer the mourner speaks alone, but right in the middle when faith becomes most scarce the voice of the community swells into one sound to say: You may be falling, but we have hands to catch you, we have arms to hug you, we have shoulders that can carry the things that crush you. We can hold you for 11 months, and then we can place you gently down, and point your feet in the right direction."

There are moments I still feel crushed by the weight of my grandpa's disappearance. There are moments when I lie awake trying to remember everything. But as I stand here in my grandpa's tallis, wrapped in his fabric and his smell, I feel held. It's a different experience saying Kaddish for someone you can feel.

Happy Pop-Pop

Breaking the Silence

"Get back to your side!" The boy in the soldier's uniform is yelling this, but he isn't yelling at us. The little boy who had been standing by my elbow retreated quickly, jumping the concrete barrier to his side of the street. "He wasn't bothering us," our guide yells to the soldier in Hebrew, and the soldier yells back: "Doesn't matter." We are silent.

We are in Hevron.

Riki and I decided to skip our Thursday classes in favor of further exploring the political climate in Israel. Today we have chosen to explore Hevron with Breaking the Silence, an organization of ex-IDF who served in Hevron and whose mission is to circulate their personal experiences, many of which include violent run-ins with settlers. Jewish settlers claiming to be religious.

The situation in Hevron is sticky. There has long-existed a Jewish presence, often in history a vibrant Jewish community in Hevron. It is one of the four Holy Cities: our Patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-- and our Matriarchs with the exception of Rachel (Sarah, Rebekkah, and Leah) were buried here. It is where David was crowned King of Israel.

In the 1800s, the Jewish community of Hevron purchased a great deal of land from the Ottoman Empire, and Hevron became an Jewish village. Then in 1929, riots that started in Jerusalem spread to Hevron. 60 Jews were killed and the remaining community was evacuated. After that Hevron became a sion for extreme ideals in religious zionism. After the 6 Day War, Hevron was taken by Israel from Jordan. The state had no plans to settle the land, but allowed the Jewish community of Hevron to return briefly for Passover of 1967. They never left. In the years after the war, Hevron was divided into H1 and H2, one under Palestinian control, the other controlled by Israel. H2, the land controlled by Israel, is considered an illegal settlement by the UN and is a majority Palestinian population. Hevron has been a place of tension ever sense the Jewish community reclaimed it.

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli doctor, entered the tomb of the Patriarchs (then a Mosque) and opened fire. It was in the middle of afternoon prayers. He killed 29 worshipers and wounded more than 125 before he was overtaken by survivors.The first thing we see when we enter Hevron is a park dedicated to the memory of Baruch Goldstein. "There used to be a shrine there," our guide tells us this. "Then the Israeli government tore it down."

On the road to the city center we see a sign that says: "THESE BUILDINGS WERE CONSTRUCTED ON LAND PURCHASED BY THE HEBRON JEWISH COMMUNITY IN 1807. THIS LAND WAS STOLEN BY ARABS FOLLOWING THE MURDER OF 67 HEBRON JEWS IN 1929. WE DEMAND JUSTICE! RETURN OUR PROPERTY TO US!" A man approaches us as we attempt to make sense of the sign. "Do you understand this?" He said to us. "We left because we feared for our lives, and when we came back the Arabs had taken over. Look at the houses. You can still see mezuzah marks on the doors. Jews died defending this place. We must continue the struggle." When he left we look at each other. For a moment we are silent. Then a friend asked: "Do you think he knows that's exactly what the Arab communities in Yafo say? I wonder how he feels about giving back Tel Aviv?

I wonder how far we can take ideology before it loses all regard for human.

There is so much graffiti in Hevron. Tags that say "FREE ISRAEL," "FREE palestine from ISRAEL." There are paintings of Abraham buying the tomb, of the Kingdom of David. But these are painted over the doors of Palestinian homes that have been welded shut because they exit on a Jewish street. At the entrance to the Palestinian street we see another tag: "Death to the Arabs."

We sit on the curb for a moment to process these things we see. A car drives by, the driver sticks his head out the window. He is wearing a big white kippah. His payot fly into his face. "Nazis!" He screams. "Go home!" We are silent.

Later I tell my sister, "In Hevron today I got called a Nazi by a religious settler." I tell her the story of us sitting down. She says to me, "That guy was NOT religious. That was chillul Hashem. Desecrating the Name of God." While I agree with her totally that cruelty and stone-throwing and name calling and murder are not celebrations of any god worth celebrating, there are active extremests who feel justified in these actions, all in the name of God.

"There are two laws here," our guide tells us. "The police make laws for the settlers; the army makes law for the Palestinians." But this duality causes chaos. The soldiers are not allowed to arrest settlers, they are not allowed to fire at them-- not even warning shots, not even if they're armed, not even if they fire first. There are about three times as many soldiers as Hevron Police. Our tells us stories of settler girls walking into the Palestinian market, and destroying the stands, throwing fruit to the ground, and the only thing the soldiers could do until the police arrived was to arrest the Palestinian shopkeepers, lest the violence against property escalate to violence against people. The police arrived two hours later.

We finish our tour of Hevron at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the whole reason we are all here in the first place. I can hardly bring myself to go in. But I do go in. The first thing I notice is the Arabic on the walls. It's beautiful script, winding around the walls from one room to the next, around the ark where the Torahs sleep, around the shelves of siddurim. There is no forgetting this was once a mosque. We've arrived just in time for mincha. I squeeze behind the mechitza, pick up a siddur. I think of davining mincha, but I can't. I flip to the Mourner's Kaddish, hoping I can pray quietly for my grandpa in this minyon I don't count in. I stare at the words, look around, stare at the words again. Even for this I have no kavanah. I am silent.

I leave the Tomb of the Patriarchs unmoved, walk onto the Jewish side of the street. There is soldier sitting at the entrance that separates the holy place from the street. A family of doves crosses in front of us. He points at them with the downward facing point of his rifle. "See," he says. "We have doves in Hevron too."

I smile at him and say thank you as we walk onto the Jewish side of the street. I have never been able to tell the difference between a pigeon and a dove.

An Early Anniversary

My sister lives in a basement. We walk down the stairs to her apartment. I notice there are no windows, that the room we walk into is the size of a large closet, and besides the bedroom that is it. My sister's apartment is a bit like camping indoors, but because I love camping, I don't mind. She cooks with a toaster oven and hot plate. Her suitcases are mounted on the bedroom wall.

"What will we have for dinner?" I ask her.

After a quick trip to the mocholet, I am standing by her camping stove grilling cheese sandwiches and warming frozen peas. My elbow keeps hitting the wall.

Sometimes when we were little I would imagine us big. We would be taller and know more things. We would stand in big houses, and eat fancy dinners, and have people over for tea. Standing over this camping stove with my sister and her covered hair seems silly. But it also seems so real. 

One of my favorite things to do as a child was to sit on y grandpa's lap and look through wedding photos. We would study my grandparents album, my Aunt Lisa's album, and my Uncle Don's. When I got older I was allowed to see the family wedding dress-- worn by my grandma, my Aunt Lisa, and two distant cousins. 

Now we sit on my sister bed, on her one month wedding anniversary, and look at her wedding pictures. We laugh at our father's silly faces, at Uncle Don dancing with the Chasids. From picture to picture to picture, we are mesmerized by how happy everyone looks, by how bright our eyes have become. It feels strange that we've become so old, that my grandpa isn't sitting here between us. There are nearly 1,000 wedding photos. I wonder which ones over grandchildren will ask over and over again to see.

1 July 2011, Chana Batya's Wedding

There's No Pride Like Jerusalem Pride!

We've been looking forward to this moment since we've been in Israel: the Jerusalem Pride Parade. Our chance to stand with the LBGTQ community in the holy city. We all come together-- gay men and lesbian women; Israeli and Palestinian; straight, bi, transgender; Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Secular-- all in the name of love.

We take turns painting each other's faces. Lest anyone think we stumbled into this demonstration by accident, we wear rainbows on our cheeks. We stupport with kavanah.

And older man tells us: "There is nothing that brings the three religions together like a Pride Parade." He points to a sign that hangs above us protesting our parade. We all shrug, and the parade continues.

From their homes, the religious who oppose the gay community hang signs saying: "Man shall not lie with man as he lies with woman. It is an abomination." We walk under these signs, acknowledging them unbothered.

My friend says to me: "I'm not sure there is anything more holy than two men wearing tzit-tzit kissing." She points to them. They're so beautiful, I forget to take a picture.

Our Learning Isn't Over

Tomorrow we start school again. Conservative Yeshiva's summer program seems similar to Pardes's. We'll take Ulpan (modern Hebrew) in the mornings, and Rabbinics classes in the afternoons. We're excited to continue our learning, excited to have more time, but still it feels strange to start a new school, to make new friends, to engage in new pedagogy. There's a part of us that doesn't want to like Conservative Yeshiva. We are Pardes learners now, we don't learn elsewhere. But that's not a Pardes way to learn. And we want to be happy, we want to be wrong, we want to be Conservative Yeshiva people too... We shall see. Three more weeks of learning begins now.

Land: A Story of Beduin Building

Introduction:
"Want to go to a protest?" My roommate asks me.
I think for a moment.
"What are we protesting?"

"There's a Beduin village near Beer Sheva that the Israeli government keeps demolishing."
"Why?" I ask.
Riki shrugs. "Let's go find out."

We do enough research to learn that we (probably) won't be arrested. We wake up early, and meet representatives of Rabbi's for Human Rights in a park near our home. We board the bus, and wait to arrive.

Once there, we are told the the "protest" will be learning the narrative of this particular Beduin community and helping them rebuild homes they lost in the last demolition of their city. It's the most productive protest I can imagine.

Children Playing

Politics:
The Beduin began settling villages in the early 20th century. They settled down all over the Middle East: Egypt, Syria, Israel. They built houses and planted olive groves. At the same time European Jews were
emigrating to British Mandate Palestine. El Arakib, the city we find ourselves in today, dates back to before World War One and before the State of Israel.

The State does not recognize El Arakib as a legal city. While the Beduin here are in possession of Ottoman papers that date their establishment, Israel does not think the papers are sufficient. I am usure why this land is so important to the State, what their plans for it are, so I do some research. The most convincing shred of evidence I find as to why the small piece of land that El Arakib sits on is so important to the State of Israel is because the land's legality cannot be proven to Israel's standard, and they don't want to set a president (although, some think it's where the next JNF forrest will go, but I can't confirm).

I have a dear friend who is decidedly right-wing when it comes to Israel politics. A few days after this experience, I see him, and we talk."Why is Israel doing this?" I ask him. I'm not trying to challenge him. I want to understand it. I want to think Israel is in the right. He tells me: "If they give into one (Beduin) village's demands, then they'll have to give in to all of them, and then the Negev will be a country of Beduin." He pauses then adds: "It's a decision that protects our future, and in a few years no one's going to be talking about it anymore."

His belief that this will all blow over doesn't convince me. 235 years after United States independence we are still talking about the atrocities we committed against Native Americans. Whether you believe Israeli's actions are inhuman or are for some necessary greater good, I feel certain that this is an important conversation my grandchildren will have with their children, and their children, and their children, and so on.

Back at the Beduin village we are sitting down to water and to process all the things we're hearing. "I hope everyone understands why it's so important to boycott the State of Israel." A man near the canteen is yelling this. He tells us that it isn't enough to boycott what the Israeli government exports, we must boycott Israeli owned businesses in our home towns, we must refuse to learn with Israeli professors. A friend that I'm with gets angry. "That accomplishes nothing," he tells the boycott man. "That says nothing to Israel, it's only hurting individuals." The boycott man doesn't see it that way. It's all part of some greater good. I suppose no of us want to admit we're hurting people. I suppose all of us want to believe we're part of some greater good.

Destruction Results

Narrative
Back to the Negev. After we learn that this village was first established under Ottoman rule, that it has been demolished by the State 16 times, that the villagers live as close to the graveyard as possible because by Israeli law it is illegal to destroy a graveyard, and the people hope the closer they are to the dead, the farther they are from the bulldosers. After we hear the story, we walk to the building sight.

Riki and I are of little use. Everything's wooden polls and plastic tarp roofs. There are no hammers, so taller people use rusted pip to pound nail into wood. We decide to look around a little more. On our wanding we come across the community kitchen, a roof erected over a rectangle of smooth concrete where a dozen women stir pots over open flame. With little bits of Arabic and Hebrew, and lots of hand language, we beg them to let us help. They refuse; we are their guests, we are the ones who will be served. A little girl in a red shirt pulls my arm until I am sitting in a circle with her and a dozen other children. She holds up nine fingers when I ask what her age is. She places my hand in her palm, then rests her other hand on the palm of her neighbor. I hold out my hand for the girl on my other side. Soon we are chanting a song, and with each syllable we slap our neighbor's hand, moving in a wave around the circle, until the chant ends, and the last hand slapped moves out.

Soon we are too loud, and the women ask us to take the children outside. The game gets more complex, more competitive. They are pulling hands away at the last minute, calling friends out when they see something unfair, and everyone is laughing the way only children can, how you let all the sound escape your lungs when you don't care what anyone thinks. At one point I am laughing so loud that I snort, and the little girl in the red shirt points at me and laughs, and then in true poetic justice she is snorting too. For minutes we are communicating with only these least appreciated of human sounds.

Soon we are called to lunch and the interfaith prayer service. We sit with Jews and Muslims and Christians. Arabs and Israels. If our work today has accomplished nothing else, we've accomplished this lunch. A man comes around with more bread and speaks to us in rapid Hebrew. I can only pick out one word. He says over and over: rodef. Pursue. He is smiling so big. A friend translates for us: "Some people pursue money, some pursue power, some pursue a lot of things. But we Beduin pursue company. We love company, and it makes us so happy to have you here." He went on to tell us how when he was a teenager he used to go clubbing with Palestinians, Jews, and Beduins. The group of them went out every weekend. "No one's clubbing anymore," he said. "That's how we fix this."

I'm not sure clubbing is the answer to this whole mess, but it seems like a good place to start: eating and dancing and laughing together. The little girl in the red shirt sits down next to me. She smiles, holds up to fingers, and says "Salaam."

"No to Uprooting! Yes to Recognition!"

Afterward
Less than a week after our work in El Arakib, the Israeli government filed papers to sue the Beduin for the cost of demolishing their homes. News sources speculate the cost is near $500,000, a price the residents of El Arakib will never be able to afford.

For more information on the lawsuit, please follow:
BBC
Imeu
Haaretz

For other prospectives on our day in the village, please see:
Rabbis for Human Rights

A volunteer building a home.

Alana Leaving Israel

At 6:30 in the morning, we pull Alana's red suitcase on bus 21. She has been in Israel for 5 weeks, and for the past few nights she has been sleeping on my sofa. Before my sofa she was in Tel Aviv with Ohio University's first group of students to study abroad in Israel. Before that she took classes with me in Athens, OH, and we became very good friends.

At home we write papers in coffee shops. We drink wine on my patio until the Court Street bars close, and everyone else in Athens goes to sleep. Alana is one of the few people I talk politics with. She listens before she disagrees, she empathizes. People are surprised when I tell them that one of my closest friends is one of the founders of OU's Students for Justice in Palestine. "How do you talk to her?" people want to know. "You're Jewish, she's not. You're pro-Israel, she's pro-Palestine. Your prospectives are so different."

People who say this don't know either of us very well. We aren't that different. We think this conflict is something that must be talked about, we believe in a two state solution, and we recognize that things here are really, really complicated. And we love the people. We have Israeli friends and Palestinian friends, and for them and us and the rest of the world we want things to be better. We believe they can be.

Last night at a sushi restaurant on Emek Refiam we talk about our experience in Bethlehem. About Hamdam and his family and how our lives are so much easier than theirs. We talk about our time here-- the end for her, the middle for me. We think it will be hard to go home. We think it will be important to come back.

On the bus at 6:30am, we say very little. It's too early for important thoughts. We get to the central station and find the airport bus. We load her red suitcase one last time. We hug, and then suddenly she's gone.

Mary Brett, Riki, Roxy, and Alana at a Palestinian restaurant in Bethlehem