Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  I ask the rabbi when was the last time that he visited the refugee camp known as Palestine, not including olive fields? Well, he doesn’t remember, but maybe it was about three years ago or so.

  This Palestine resident, it turns out, travels into Ramallah and Nablus at almost the same frequency that I travel to the sun and the moon. He knows Palestine as well as I do outer space.

  Why is it, I ask him, that all Do-Gooders have such touching hearts and souls, while the right-wingers are always so mean?

  He is offended by my question, because he thinks I make fun of him. But I tell him that I don’t; I’m just fascinated by his self-hate. I personally love the Palestinians, I tell him, because the Palestinians have pride in their identity, but I have no respect for self-haters, Jew or black. If I had a beloved daughter, I’d rather she married a proud Hamas activist than a self-hating Jew like him.

  Arik’s wife looks at me, surprised by this statement, and says just four words: “You can’t change them,” meaning her husband and his colleagues. I ask her to elaborate, and she does. Being a human rights activist in our time is to be a persona, not a philosophy; it’s a fad, it’s a fashion. A human rights activist does not look for facts or logic; it’s about a certain dress code, “cool” clothing, about language, diction, expressions, and certain manners. “We argue a lot, but I know I will never change him. No facts will persuade him. He is a human rights activist, it’s his persona, it’s who he is. That’s all there’s to it. You can’t ask a person not to be the person he is.”

  When it comes to complex issues, more often than not women understand much faster than men.

  Arik is deeply offended by his wife’s remarks. He is engaged in Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), he tells me. What the heck is Tikkun Olam? It has to do with Kabbalah ( Jewish mysticism), as taught by the mystic Ari of Tzfat, known as the Holy Ari.

  Would you like to learn more about it? Bear with me, actually it’s quite interesting.

  When God created the world He had a big, huge problem with it: He was too big to dwell in the world that by nature was too small for Him. Get it?

  God, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, is fat. Obese. Huge. So huge, in fact, that even just one eighth of His belly is much bigger that the whole planet. This means – keep bearing with me – that if God’s creation of the world were to survive, God would have to move away from the planet, in which case only Satan would stick around with us humans. A horrible thought, as you can surely imagine.

  To fix this problem, God came up with an ingenious solution: He made a contraction of Himself and put Holy Sparks of Himself into special containers. Got it? Brilliant, isn’t it?

  Only there was one more problem, that for some reason God neglected to think of, but the Ari did think of. What is that? Our friend, our old friend, Satan. Satan, being Satan, is constantly busy drilling little holes into the Holy Containers, which make the Holy Sparks disperse.

  Holy Arik and his team of 120 rabbis work endlessly and tirelessly to repair and fix the holes in the Holy Containers. How do they do it? Human rights for Palestinians.

  I ask the Holy Container Fixer to share with me his rabbinical history. Plainly put: where, when, which, and what congregations did he lead prior to his leading the world at large. And since his credentials, at least as he presents them to me, are in the rabbinate, I would also like to know what the size of his former congregation or congregations were.

  Rabbi Arik tries his best at manipulating me to let him off answering that question. But I don’t let go, until he gives in. Under his leadership in the rabbinate, which was in the US of A, he attracted “about ten” people, and “sometimes fifty,” of his own congregation to listen to his sermons.

  What will you do when you reach bottom as a local rabbi? You become an international rabbi. How do you become an international rabbi? You tell people that you, a rabbi, will speak the worst of Israel and of the Jews. Who will fund you? Easy: find other self-hating Jews, and don’t forget self-loving Europeans. The New Israel Fund, funded by just such Jews, Jews with an extraordinarily loving heart for the needy, gave (according to their latest available annual report of 2012) Rape Crisis Centers in Israel a total of $6,721 and it gave the Rabbis for Human Rights $328,927. The European Commission, which pays for special trips to the Holocaust Museum and teaches young Europeans about Israeli atrocities, is another donor to these rabbis, in addition to other European donors such as the Swedish, British, and German believers in human rights.

  I’m lost here. Is this what Israel has become? Is this what being “Jewish” means?

  ***

  I hear that at this very moment, on the hills of Judea and Samaria, foreign people are harvesting grapes at a Jewish settlement. Not all foreigners hate the Jews. There are Christians who love them, and I go to meet those Christians.

  Caleb and Candra, a couple, ‘“Christian Zionists” from the USA, tell me that they are here to fulfill God’s prophecies. What prophecies?

  Candra reads to me, from the book of Jeremiah, as follows: “You shall yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant, and eat them as ordinary food. For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion to the Lord our God.”

  Caleb interjects: “We believe that in the latter days the mountains will come back to life.”

  They come to this vineyard and fields for ten weeks every year, Caleb tells me, and they are volunteering their time to help this settlement. They pay for their flights, they pay for their stay, they pay for their own food, and if they want a bottle of wine or two made here by their sweat they pay for them. In short: they get nothing for free and they spend quite a lot of time and money for the pleasure of working for other people.

  Today there are 150 young people here and in the nearby mountains, mostly from the USA, but also one person from Sweden, one person from Switzerland, and zero people from Germany.

  Do you have any romantic stories you can share with me that have happened right here on this mountain?

  “I got to know my wife here. We actually got married here.”

  His wife interjects: “We got married in Psagot!” Psagot is a neighboring settlement.

  At this point another Christian Zionist intervenes. He tells Caleb to find out my details, where I am from, who I am, and if I am a friend or a foe. “We want to make sure it’s all good,” the man says, adding a piece of advice to Caleb: “You have to be careful.”

  Caleb starts an interrogation: “Are you Jewish?”

  This is what they say.

  “Are you an atheist?”

  I am still trying to find out who I am.

  He likes my answers, don’t ask me why, and he continues from where he stopped, telling me his love story: “I went to bed one night and I had a dream that I was in a vineyard and I was having a picnic. I looked up and a gorgeous girl was sitting across from me. I extended my hands to her and she put her hands in mine. That’s how love first started for me.”

  You dreamt it right here?

  “Yes, in this area.”

  Was she on these mountains only in your dream or also for real?

  “She was here for real.”

  And she entered your dream?

  “Kind of, sort of.”

  He tells me he first came here when he was fourteen years old, and that it was his father who started the program of bringing people here from abroad.

  His wife-to-be came here for the first time when she was twenty. “I always had love for Israel when growing up. I inherited it from my parents,” the dream-slash-real wife says, adding that she is very happy here, “where the Bible took place, in Judea and Samaria.”

  In case I didn’t get it right, she goes for the details: “Eighty percent of our Bible took place here.”

  When you first came here, what made you feel more excited, being here or meeting Caleb?

  “I think that the restoration of the land is more
important than Caleb,” she tells me, giggling and serious at the same time.

  Caleb has met other Jews in Israel, such as those who live in Tel Aviv, but he gravitates toward the people here, the settlers. “I connect with them more. The people in these mountains, I believe, have a purpose in life and dedicate their lives to achieve a goal. I believe that they have a connection to something that’s bigger than what they have a grasp of.”

  For the record: Christian Candra knows her Bible better than Jewish Rabbi Arik. At least she knows how to quote it.

  Gate Twenty-Nine

  Will an educated, beautiful Arab lady fall in love with a Jew?

  NEARBY THESE AWESOME MOUNTAINS WHERE CANDRA IS TOILING HARD IS THE city of Nablus, a city that no Jew can enter. Judenfrei. Naturally, I’m attracted to the place and go there. If what I have heard from Israelis is right, Nablus is a poor city economically but rich in fundamentalists. I have visited some wonderfully designed and super attractive Palestinian cities; it’s time I visit a poor one.

  In minutes I’m there, and I can’t believe the sight that greets me. The Nablus that I expected is not the Nablus that I find. In short, and to avoid any drama, Nablus is a gorgeous city and one that I immediately fall in love with. With roads engulfed by huge developments shining from bottom to top of two parallel mountain ranges, Nablus welcomes its visitors with warmth, picturesque views of unparalleled beauty, and a constant beat of life that I never imagined to have existed here.

  The EU and the USA are building paradise on earth here. It’s an all-embracing city, a place where you can find heavenly food and clothes, and not a square meter boring or quiet.

  Next to a gorgeously designed new building complex someone has built for himself a stable with one horse in it. It’s strange, it’s bizarre, but it captures your eye and imagination as it offers you an immense feeling of greatness.

  I walk and walk and walk in Nablus, and my eyes dance with sheer pleasure.

  What a city!

  Only after feeling totally exhausted from walking, I go to the main station and take a taxi out.

  Sharing this taxi with me is a young lady with an angelic smile and sharply dressed, who goes by the name of Eternity. Yeah, that’s her name. From which part of Heaven has she just appeared to me?

  “I live in Ramallah,” she shares with me, “and I study in Jerusalem.”

  One day I’ll be able to call you Dr. Eternity?

  She laughs. Yes, this is what she hopes for.

  What do you study?

  “Literature and political science.”

  What university?

  “Hebrew University.”

  Oh, you study with the Jews –

  “Yes.”

  Could it happen that one day you will fall in love with a Jew?

  “Impossible!”

  You are a beautiful girl, and maybe one day a very handsome young man will come your way. A very sweet man, very charming, and he will fall in love with you. And he will be really nice, really good for you. A Jew. Couldn’t it happen?

  “Never!”

  Why not?

  “I’ll never marry a Jew.”

  Studying at Hebrew University, did you learn anything about the Jews that you didn’t know before?

  “Yes.”

  What did you learn about them?

  “That they change history.”

  What do they change?

  “They say that they came to Palestine in 1948 because they wanted to help the Palestinians. This is a total lie.”

  Is this what they teach you?

  “Yes.”

  I don’t get it: Why would they say such a thing?

  “Ask them.”

  But it makes no sense. Why would they come all the way here just to help you?

  “They say that they came here and that they helped. This is what they teach. They invent history.”

  So, they didn’t say that they came here to help the Palestinians, it just happened that they did . . . right?

  “Yes, this is what they teach.”

  But then why did they come here? What do they teach you at the university?

  “They came here because Ben-Gurion told them to come here.”

  In 1948?

  “Yes, after the British left.”

  Why didn’t they come before?

  “Because Ben-Gurion didn’t tell them to come before.”

  Was there any other reason why they came here in 1948?

  “No.”

  No other reason at all?

  “Not that I know of.”

  Why don’t you study in a Palestinian university? Why do you go to Hebrew University, a Jewish university?

  “Hebrew U is the best university, much better than Bir Zeit or Al-Quds.”

  Like Nadia, Eternity gets higher education for free. And like her, she studies with the Jews and she spits on them. These two women, I think, are smarter than the Jews who pay for their education.

  It is time to go to my cats, organisms far smarter than these ladies.

  Gate Thirty

  Heeding the advice of my stray cats, I go on a ride north to see how people prepare to greet the newest made-in-the-USA super-killer missiles.

  A UNITED STATES SENATE PANEL HAS APPROVED THE USE OF FORCE AGAINST Syria. The situation in Syria is horrible, and since Rabbi Arik doesn’t do anything about it, the American Senate has to get involved. As far as I know about the history of American and European involvement in the Middle East so far, their records show close to a 100 percent failure rate.

  The logic of the West is this: If two people of the East shoot each other with a rifle, why not join the party and drop a few super-killer missiles for extra sound effect? I chat with my cats and they suggest, at least as far as I can understand them, that I should drive up north in the direction of the Syrian border, to see if people are prepared for the possibility of missiles flying over their heads.

  ***

  First stop is Kibbutz Kfar Haruv, a secular kibbutz at the foot of the Golan Heights. The whole of the Golan used to be part of Syria, but was captured by Israel during the 1967 War. Immediately after the war, Israel offered to give the Golan back to Syria in exchange for peace, but the Syrians said no. Years later, in 1981, Israel annexed it, but the world at large does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty of it. Israel’s offer of citizenship to Druze residents of the Golan was rejected by almost all of them.

  The Golan Heights has nothing to do with the Palestinians. Zilch. The enemy here is quite a different one, a neighbor more ancient, and the chance for peace is as likely, about one big zero. But don’t tell this to the people living here.

  It is the Eve of the Jewish New Year and the Israeli seculars celebrate this holiday their way. In religious congregations the High Holy Days is a period of pondering and a time when the Chosen Children ask the Lord of Lords for health and success and beg Him to forgive them their transgressions. According to tradition, it is on this day that the Heavenly Court is in session and God sits in judgment to decide the fate of man, animal, and all of creation: who will live and who will die, who will be healthy and who will be sick, who wealthy and who poor, who will see success and who will fail.

  The Chosen Kibbutzniks of Kfar Haruv have this prayer to offer in song:

  May this coming year be a year of

  Peace and security,

  Peace and tranquility,

  Peace and happiness,

  Year of peace and not year of war.

  Singing done, they proceed with rituals.

  In synagogues all over Israel a shofar is blown on this day, to waken the sinners from their sleep. Not here. Here, a cage with many doves is brought in. Children and adults gather by the cage to look at the little creatures. “Fly, doves” is recited with pleasure and the doves are let out.

  This is a peace ritual, if I get it right, which is quite so much more colorful than the traditional shofar blowing.

  Apples with honey are served, as people wish each other �
�Happy New Year.” “The service is concluded,” comes an announcement. “You are invited. The tables are full with food!”

  In Orthodox communities, the songs of the Jewish New Year go like this: “Father in Heaven, forgive us for we have sinned.” Here, this is what they sing: “In the New Year, in the New Year, in my garden, a white dove.”

  Following these rituals we are treated to a speech. A man gets up and talks about values and finances. We have produced more milk this year, he says, 10 percent more, and tourism is great. We hope, he wishes all, that the coming year will be successful as well.

  The kibbutz people, in a nod to tradition, are now to pray. A member takes a Jewish prayer book and recites a prayer. Here it goes: “Today is Friday, when creation of the heaven and the earth was done . . .” There is one little problem with this: Today is not Friday. Few, if any, notice.

  We get to hear some figures as well: The kibbutz has 160 adult members, 300 including the children. Value in shekels of agriculture this year: forty million. The kibbutz also owns a company in Dortmund, Germany.

  No one mentions Syria, America, or any country in between them.

  Kibbutz Kfar Haruv, part of an ideological socialist experiment of the last generation, is now anything but socialist. What has remained from the glory days of the Kibbutz Movement, if one can judge by the service conducted here on this “Friday,” is the spectacular incapacity to properly comprehend ancient Jewish texts.

  I leave the kibbutz, sad to note how a great movement, one of the most endearing of human experiments I have known of, is no longer.

  I hit the road again.

  ***

  Majdal Shams (Tower of the Sun), in the north of the Golan Heights, is ahead of me, and I hope the British journalist is not there again. Maneuvering the roads to Majdal Shams takes time, and when I reach my destination and get out of the car, I step into winter.

  I’m freezing. Yet, even if the weather is cold the residents here are warm.

  Hamad Awidat, a Druze who produces segments for various European news agencies, welcomes me into his office and offers me delicious hot drinks. He is sure that President Obama is soon to drop shiny new missiles on neighboring Syria, and he’s getting ready for it.