On the Richness of Complexity
Dear friends,
“I was lying there in the coffin with Ben Zakai,” Danny opens, “and they drove those swords through the coffin to make sure we were dead.” Danny, whose family built the first streets of Tel Aviv, tells me how after he was smuggled out of Jerusalem in the first century with Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai in a coffin, they came in front of the Roman ruler. “The governor offered him a wish. Ben Zakkai asked for Yavneh, a small town where the Jews could restart their lives after the Romans destroy Jerusalem. I just kept my mouth shut. That’s how the Jews survived.”
We’re in what’s left of the Palestinian village of Susya, which looks like what Abraham and Sarah’s dwelling must have looked like: a rocky enclave in the desert with sheep pens and hot, vast beauty all around. Five Israeli activists, my father, my son and me are having tea with Azam, who miraculously still lives in his hut with his family and his animals despite two decades of violence, home demolitions and harassment. Matan’s Bar Mitzvah is coming up, so his grandfather is showing him a piece of his life; the landscapes of the South Hebron Hills, the villagers he’s been helping for years, the incredible people who show up in these circles, the work that he says allows him to continue living in this country.
Between cups of sweet spiced black tea, in the shade of his sukkah, Azam agrees to recite one of his poems. In an Arabic thicker than earth he sings of a white goat with patches of black around her eyes. “I raised her like she was my daughter, fed her milk as if I were her mother.” He pauses to tell us that he improvised this poem while visiting his sick mother, and it’s long because she kept asking for more rhyming couplets. He recites how the goat walked behind him one day and butted her head into his back bringing him to his knees, a betrayal he couldn’t take. “You don’t forgive the betrayer,” his mother had insisted. But Azam is a gentle man, and you can tell that he can’t help but forgive this rebellious she-goat.
We thank Azam, and he us for the support, and move on to the next village, Rakiz, a few hills to the east. This is a harder story, which Matan heard during the car ride from Jerusalem. The army showed up at the request of the settlers early in the morning of January 1st. They entered the house of one of the impoverished families of Rakiz. After a series of humiliations, they set their eyes on the family’s generator, a prize possession in this part of the West Bank, where only Jewish settlements are connected to the electric grid. The family couldn’t take it, so they tried to stop them, and called the neighbors over to help. Twenty-year-old Haroun and his father came right away. In the ensuing struggle over the generator, he will get shot in the neck by a soldier. The family will have to bust through two military checkpoints to get him to the hospital in time to save his life. Now Haroun, paralyzed and with a tube in his throat, accompanied by his mother, Farsi are in a hospital in Tel Aviv.
We are in Rakiz for a solidarity visit with Haroun’s father and siblings. When explaining the purpose of the trip to Matan, my dad told him that often he goes out to help the people of South Hebron in more active ways, to protect them, harvest with them. Today we are just going to be with them, and that is incredibly important. “In just coming to be with them, to witness, you are giving them a lot.”
We are invited into a spacious and cool cave, with mattresses and rugs laid out. The family had moved into the cave after the army demolished their hut that stood above it. Haroun’s blue-eyed siblings serve us tea. His father, Abu Haroun tells Matan in Arabic that they have a horse outside. He offers him a ride. Matan is confused. “Tchaf,” he is asked. “Are you scared?” I translate and Matan accepts the offer.
The three of us exit the cave and go into the animal pens. Abu Haroun picks up my large child with his big arms and places him bare back on the horse. “Tchaf,” he asks again. Matan shakes his head and Abu Haroun lets out a laugh. After the ride the three of us gather in front of the farm-animals' cave. Goats, ducks and donkeys roam. Muhammad, the younger son is in there too, directing little tiny goats to their mother’s teets. “When were they born,” I manage to ask in some form of broken Arabic. “ Usbu’en,” Abu Haroun replies, “two weeks.” “Mabruk,” I wish him. “Hamdulilah,” he smiles. We stand there quietly. “Mut’asef,” I say. “I’m sorry, about your son.” “It’s hard,” he tells me, wiping away a tear. And he speaks of God and what is and what must be. “Ilhamdulilah,” he summarizes, “praise belongs to God.”
In the cave, a Facetime conversation with the hospital. Erela, the activist from a kibbutz in the Negev who organized the visit is speaking with Farsi. They speak daily, often several times a day. When she isn’t in Palestine Erela helps people through crisis situations. As more tea and pita is passed around Erela and I talk religion. She is not what people around here call religious. But she is far more religious than most of them in her attitude toward life.
“When a person approaches me for help,” she says, “I tell them that they’ve lost the key to the Aron Kodesh, the ark. Now I’m the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue. I don’t know where their key is, and I tell them that. But I know where to look, down in the basement, or under the chairs.”
This land is rich, like Azam’s Arabic. The soil and the air have a similar abundant consistency, as do the experiences you have.
The other night Matan and me went out to watch the final of the Euro Cup soccer tournament. Several hundred people were gathered outdoors in what during Ottoman times was the central Jerusalem train station to cheer England and Italy on the big screen. We found ourselves standing in a little enclave smushed between England fans with red markings on their faces and Italy fans with loud horns. They looked just like one another these two crowds. But quickly we understood that the Italy fans were Palestinian, and the England fans were Jews. Just a month ago there were violent clashes in the streets. Now here we all were laughing and cheering, nobody hiding their language, their accent, their identity. When Italy finally won in a dramatic penalty shootout, the young Palestinians pulled out their dumbek, stood up on the tables and danced with their horns, as the Jewish café owner blasted the Italian classic “Volare,” and we all sang along.
Co-existence is happening. In the doctor’s office I went to a few days ago the entire medical staff were Arabs. There is a real culture of living together in this country, even amidst the fanaticism and the fighting. It’s a simple thing, really, an anti-political mode that has emerged out of a place that drives political consciousness deep into every child’s experience before they reach kindergarten. It’s not politics, it’s reality.
Or one piece of it. When I met some Palestinian friends in East Jerusalem this week, a generation older than the dancing Italy fans, they were not in the co-existence mode. “It’s more complicated now,” they explained, “we are fighting normalization.” They have been abandoned yet again by the Arab world with the Abraham Accords. They’ve been left to their fate during Covid, with their occupier having vaccinated more of its people than any other country but given them almost no vaccines (only Palestinian citizens of Israel have been vaccinated). They are angry with good cause. So to many Palestinians co-existence means accepting an unacceptable reality.
Abu Haroun walks us up the hill to our cars. He shows us the hut on the opposite side of the mountain where the incident took place. We pass by a small pen where his rabbit lives. Her eyes are shining. I come closer and see that they are blue. “Everyone here has blue eyes,” I say. Abu Haroun smiles.
As we walk, Danny shares one more story. “The Kotzker Rebbe once told his disciples he’s going to search for the truth. He closed himself in his study and didn’t come out. The disciples would put a plate of food under the door and he’d return it empty. This went on for twenty years. When he finally came out the few disciples that were still waiting for him eagerly asked him what he found. ‘Nothing,’ said the Rebbe, ‘only lies.’ Danny looks at me. “Now that’s a rabbi who could maybe lure me back into a synagogue. Maybe.”
In the car driving back to Jerusalem through the gorgeous desert landscape my father says to his grandson: “Matani, these mountains, what color are they?” “Brown, yellow,” answers the young man. “You know, in the late afternoon something unusual happens to them. They turn purple. Real purple.” We pick up some purple plums from a farmer on the side of the road, and eat them as we drive home to Jerusalem.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha