Rabbi Jesse Paikin

“When the situation gets shitty, take a shit!”

On a winding alleyway in the streets of Jerusalem, that’s the slogan that was emblazoned in blue spray-paint on a wall, just steps from a Orthodox synagogue.

This evening, I went on a Graffiti Tour of Jerusalem, run by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. T’ruah is an organization of rabbis from all streams of Judaism that advocates for human rights in Israel and North America. You can learn more about them on their site.

The walking tour this evening brought me face-to-face with much of the graffiti that I’ve often ignored while walking to Burgers Bar or Aroma during my previous stays in Israel. As T’ruah puts it, graffiti culture in Israel “combines humor, politics, poetry, current events, Jewish tradition and more in multiple languages.”

While on previous walks through Jerusalem’s streets, I probably would have just laughed at the iconography of the man squatting to relieve himself, today I gleaned a fascinating new message. The Hebrew word for situation – “matzav” is the word often used to describe the current political state of affairs vis a vis the Occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

UPDATE (6.4.2013): An Israeli friend has just informed me that this slogan and the icon of the man pooping are from a Shalom Achshav/Peace Now campaign in support of the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza. See the original graphic here.

We saw a lot of street art on the tour – there will most definitely be a second blog post with more shots. For now, here are some of my favorite pieces of graffiti from our tour:

The image is of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. In English, the Hebrew text accompanying the image should read: “Those who believe aren’t afraid” – a lyric from an Israeli song by Eyal Golan. But in the word for “aren’t,” one of the letters has been swapped, giving the phrase a new meaning: “Those who believe in him are afraid.” As our tour guide put it, Israeli graffiti is most-often associated with the political left, as the right-wing political establishment is considerably more well funded. So it’s no surprise to see this cheeky poke at the current (right-wing) government showing up in graffiti form.

The red graffiti on the left reads: “Firing Zone 918,” referring to a military firing zone in the southern West Bank. This is a fairly new piece of graffiti that has appeared in Jerusalem; it is a direct response to the Israeli army imposing a test-firing zone on an area where some 1,000 Palestinians live in the South Hebron Hills. This is a very current situation here, with developments taking place as recently as last week. You can read some more about the situation at The Daily Beast. The graffiti – in it’s harsh, militaristic typography – is attempting to draw attention to an aspect of Israeli society that very few Jerusalemites ever consider, let alone see with their own eyes.

In an almost Talmudic-style commentary on the red graffiti, the black writing to its right reads: “War Crimes.” While these were likely left by two separate artists, the relationship between the two is fascinating and creates its own meta-statement on the situation.

While this looks like an artistic variation of an Israeli flag, it’s a deeply provocative piece of art that is itself a “dialogue” between two seemingly oppositional parties. The diagonal white stripes have been painted over the first piece, attempting to cover up the original artist’s intended message. The Jewish Stars beneath the white-washing originally included Hindu “Om” icons, Christian crosses, and Muslim Stars & Crescents. Ostensibly, the original artist intended to present a message of coexistence, which was seemingly anathema to whoever came along and painted over them.

Luckily, as we rounded the corner, we came across an unaltered version of the same piece:

To round things off, it is worth stating that while Israel at large and Jerusalem in particular remain highly charged political environments, not all graffiti is so heavy-handed. Sometimes, someone just comes along and shares a simple, yet easily understandable message; one that may or may not have already been shared by some pretty powerful religious figures 46 years ago:

More photos from the tour coming soon… Thanks to T’ruah, and our incredible guide, Marisa, for taking us on a literally eye-opening tour.

Wonderbras, Caulking Guns & Apologizing for Everything

Since the year 2000, I’ve celebrated all but two Canada Days from outside of Canada – either in New York or in Israel. Funny thing is, I actually feel a stronger connection to Canadian patriotism when I’m outside of Canada than when I’m at home.

Today was a pretty quiet Canada Day here in Jerusalem. While I did hear fireworks at one point, Israelis love to blow stuff up when they celebrate, so it was probably just the opening of a new mall or something.

So in honour of the Confederation of my home and native land, here’s a rundown of fifteen of Canada’s and/or Canadians’ lesser-known, yet most fascinating contributions to the wider world:

Standard Time: messing up my internal clock since last Wednesday
Basketball: in which we shamefully have only one professional level “team”
Garbage Bags: in which we shamefully pollute the planet, all while making it ever so convenient to get rid of undesirables (can you fit Canadian politicians in garbage bags?)
Peanut Butter: yeah, that was us
The telephone: which – much like international Canadian diplomacy – nobody uses anymore, anyways
Blackberry: which – much like the telephone – nobody uses anymore, anyways
Insulin
Electric wheelchairs
Wheelchair accessible buses
Pacemakers
Wonderbras: you’re welcome
Butter Tarts: you’re welcome
Caulking guns: you’re welcome
Egg Cartons: can you imagine what life would be like without these?
Apologizing for everything: (When I went to the CBC’s website for the 50 Greatest Canadian inventions, it apologized that the webpage could not be found)

Happy Birthday Canada! I miss ya!

Late night thoughts from Jerusalem

Clearly, my body does not respond well to time zone changes. I’m still falling asleep around 3 in the afternoon, and staying up until the early hours of the morning. Need to find a way to make myself more productive during this transition. Solution for tonight: finally finish unpacking. Solution for tomorrow night: try to take over the world.
The way-cool new cultural center of Jerusalem – the rejuvenated Ottoman-era Train Station – is a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. En-route, the new promenade (built along the old train rails, with new running and bike trails) is exactly 3 kilometers. Very convenient for timing my runs!
Stumbled upon this house today, while walking through Baka (the next neighborhood across the street from me). Check out the cool art adorning the sides:
Walking through the streets of my neighborhood, I’ve heard more English and French than Hebrew. I’ve actually heard more English on the streets here than when I lived in Queens. It’s familiar and comforting, but still feels a little bit off… like the city is having an identity crisis. Or is that just me?
Thanks to the “availability” of Netflix in Israel, I just finished Season 4 of Breaking Bad. WOW. No spoilers here, but it was certainly explosive.

Didn’t I already make aliyah?

I moved to Jerusalem three days ago. In many ways, I feel as though this wasn’t as huge and monumental as one might assume. For one, I’ve been to Israel more than a dozen times and have spent more days in Jerusalem than I can count.

I’m also only living here for a year. I still have an apartment in New York, and will be returning home next May, where I will spend the next five years in school. Jerusalem is a city I’m intimately familiar with, and it’s not as though I completely uprooted my life and moved to an entirely foreign city or country.

In many respects, the biggest move in my life was when I left Montreal for a job in New York and actually uprooted my entire life to live in a different country. That required navigating the complexities of US Homeland Security, getting legal permission to work in a foreign country, and driving a U-Haul 500 kilometers down the I-87.

And yet… this is huge. The significance of this year in my life will be unmatched, and the ability to live at the nexus of the Jewish universe certainly is monumental.

And yet… in many respects, I feel a greater spiritual attachment to New York City. From my shoebox apartment, I lived in a concrete jungle. My dreams were made there. Screw cliches, it’s true that New York makes you feel like there’s nothing you can’t do, and the streets certainly do make you feel brand new. (Thanks, Jay-Z).

So while I’m incredibly excited to be here in Jerusalem, there’s an odd sense of something missing, because I feel as though I actually already made aliyah – to New York City. My hagshamah (personal fulfillment) – came from the crowded, paved streets of New York, not the cobblestones of the Old City.

And yet… I love Israel. Deeply. While I have a strong, nuanced and vibrant relationship with this country, I love it in the way that I love the Toronto Maple Leafs; in addition to the incredible highs and great joy, it involves lots of furious screaming and yelling “COME ON!”

My love for New York is like my love for a person – as a friend recently told me, New York isn’t a city that exists in the background of your life; she is a city that plays an active role in your life.

So can I challenge myself this year to renew my love for Jerusalem and Israel? Can this place move from the background to the foreground of my life? Aside from the superficial struggles – like figuring out where to buy tofu – I hope to struggle with my sense of spiritual attachment to this place in the coming year.

Perhaps there’s a reason that the word for place in Hebrew – makom – is also one of the words for God – tough to think about and grasp, but an inextricable and vital part of life.

In the end, we are all animals

As part of my application to Rabbinical School at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, I wrote a d’var torah on parashat Balak (my favorite in the Torah). Just in time for this Shabbat, here it is:

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his text On the Genealogy of Morals, presents an existentialist question for humanity to wrestle with: “We have never sought ourselves – how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?” In this almost Zen Koan-like charge, Nietzsche challenges us to acknowledge and realize the importance of active self-reflection. But for the non-existentialist, it might be asked why we should even want to find ourselves? And what should we do once we have found ourselves? Parashat Balak provides us with answers to these questions.

At first glance, Balak presents much that is challenging to the modern reader: a dramatic encounter between the Israelites and a hostile ruler at the edges of the Promised Land, a pagan attempt to curse the Israelites, prophecies on the future of the Jewish people, and a talking donkey to boot. What are we to make of this tale? In his reading of the parasha, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner posits that “taken literally, the whole story is obviously silly.” Theologians and biblical historians have read the story contextually as a case against false prophets and in support of the omniscience of God; Robert Alter teaches in his Five Books of Moses that the entire story is a polemic against paganism.

Yet we do not have to search far to find other stories that appear to be “silly” at face value (consider Jonah’s being devoured by a fish), and the Tanakh is replete with warnings against false prophecy and paganism; why should we need yet another narrative, particularly one so peculiar in content? Parashat Balak must hold greater significance than simply another admonishment of false prophets. To be sure, the Talmud calls this parasha “the Book of Balaam” (Yerushalmi Sota 5), singling out the character of Balaam and indicating that this particular story has an elevated level of importance.

Given that the phenomenon of a talking animal occurs in only one other instance in the entire Tanakh, many focus on the talking donkey as an example of the atypical narrative. But we must ask ourselves: what is ultimately more important – that the donkey spoke, or that the donkey saw? Consider Nietzsche’s imperative on the importance of active searching for something in order to find it. Whether taken as literally true or as allegory, Balaam’s donkey was able to see what humans could not. The donkey sees an angel of God, while Balaam merely stumbles upon it. What can we glean from this?

First and foremost, that Balaam’s donkey was able to see the angel before Balaam himself could has powerful didactic value. This teaches us about the importance of actively searching for God’s presence in our lives and of being open to God making God’s self known at times and in ways in which we least expect it. That Balaam is reproached by the angel for abusing his donkey communicates Judaism’s concern for the wellbeing of animals – a value that Talmud mandates through its teachings on tza’ar ba’alei chayim (Bava Metzia 32b). That Balaam was not able to see the angel itself, nor that his animal was trying to save his life, contains perhaps the greatest teaching of all. It presents a challenge to us to think about how to expand our vision when limited, and to find ways to see what we can’t. To be sure, the story challenges us in an existential way to think about how our own humanity may be limiting.

The notion of animals teaching humans is not foreign to Jewish thought, and the importance of animals in Jewish life is also not to be underestimated. The Midrash teaches that “the wisdom of animals often puts human beings to shame… hence God arranged them to be mute” (Bamidbar Rabbah 20:19). Kushner moves beyond his initial sarcastic reading of Balak to suggest that “even though it makes us uncomfortable, animals can and do know things hidden from human perception and people do routinely communicate with them.” Janine Benyus, an animal sciences and human innovation author, writes about the many things humanity can learn from animals, a concept known as biomimicry. Benyus teaches that too often we think about how to use animals as tools for human productivity and enjoyment, rather than as beings we can learn from. Rabbi Avi Orlow, picking up on the concept of biomimicry, argues that in Judaism, there is a precedent that animals are to be learned from and not just used. Orlow teaches that “we need to mimic the best of animal behavior… in the end we are all animals.”

Eventually, Balaam does come to see things; he prophesizes a significant future for the Israelites and through his words we receive one of the most well known prophecies in Judaism. In Hebrew, he says to the Israelites “Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov…”– “How good are your tents, Jacob…” Interpreting this text, the 19th Century Russian rabbi, the Malbim, teaches that what Balaam came to see was not what the Israelites were living in (tents), but literally how they were living with each other through moral goodness. The Malbim suggests that with his new vision, Balaam saw moral, not aesthetic beauty.

Because Balaam’s prophecies are the words of God channeled through his mouth, what does this suggest that God seeks of us? That we should seek goodness in others; that we should treat others (including animals) with kindness; that we should not inflate our egos – as Balaam did – to assume we can divine God’s will; and that we should be open to listening and learning from others, even those we may consider inferior (including animals). We learn how to accomplish this through the model of the donkey – by looking for those things that others can’t see, and by actively searching for moral goodness.

A Chasidic proverb reflects on the importance of searching and reflection as a pathway to self-improvement in much the same way Nietzsche does:

I cannot find redemption until I see the flaws in my own soul, and try to correct them. Nor can a people be redeemed until it sees the flaws in its own soul, and tries to correct them. But whether it be an individual or a people, if we shut out the realization of our own flaws we are shutting out redemption. We can be redeemed only to the extent that we see ourselves.

Ultimately, in searching for ourselves and for God, we should consider: if Balaam can learn from a donkey where to look, can we?

Ich spreche nicht Wissenschaft

My mom shared this teaching with me, from a Torah Study she lead on Tu BiSh’vat:

In our society, we rush from one task to another with hardly a moment to pause and reflect in a long week of work. Our culture tells us to do more, work harder, and buy more – an endless cycle which undermines our peace of mind and causes tremendous impacts on our environment. By not being present in the moment, we lose sight of what truly matters. Our hectic pace leads to using our planet’s resources more rapidly than they can be renewed, and leaving too little for others and future generations.

Rabbi Yonatan Neril

It’s odd… there is no shortage of scientific data that can teach us about the consequences of our actions that are leading to the deterioration of the planet. Of course, this assumes that you are of sound mind and judgement to not conveniently ignore or dismiss this data.

And yet – if you’re like me – that scientific data is incredibly hard to decipher. I trust it; I know that most of those doing environmental research are smarter than I and are worthy of my trust in this area. But I’m not a scientist, and the most of data doesn’t speak to me; at least not in my language.

So… I can read something like what Rabbi Neril writes, and come to the same conclusion as the scientists: the way most humans in the Western world live is not sustainable. We are undermining our own future. That we can come to the same conclusion from vastly different approaches – in essence, from two incredibly different languages – I think is a beautiful.

New Birthright Staff Training Program Focuses on Centrality of North American Staff

Check out my new piece for eJewish Philanthropy! Originally posted here.

In the past year, the North American Jewish community became more aware of the critical role North American madrichim play in the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience.

Many in the Birthright community have observed the challenges associated with the North American staffing model, where there has been a less than tongue-in-cheek acceptance that the real substance of the trip “magically” happens at the hands of the Israeli tour guide, while the madrichim are viewed as little more than glorified babysitters. Thankfully, we’ve also heard responses from some (here and here) who are working to address these crucial challenges.

While Birthright participants do experience Israel with elements of surrealism and awe; and while we often speak of the “magic” of the Israel experience; Birthright is no magic trick. It involves great dedication, knowledge, skills, passion, and real work in both the months leading up to the trip, and in the months and years following the trip. Far from an elaborate illusion, Birthright is deeply rooted in reality.

So perhaps it is particularly poetic that a significant change within the Union for Reform Judaism’s birthright program – Kesher – took place just days before the start of Hanukkah, a holiday often associated with the magical story of oil lasting for eight days. We know that the reality of Hanukkah’s story is actually of a monumental change in the Jewish community that involved the real blood, sweat and tears of many Jews. To be sure, the name of the holiday itself teaches us of the inherent importance of dedication and rededication in shaping a lasting Jewish community.

With more than 40 Kesher Birthright trips per year, including over 1,700 participants and Israelis and upwards of 80 madrichim, it had become increasingly apparent that it was time to rededicate ourselves to the importance of our Birthright madrichim.

Empowering Madrichim as Experiential Educators

In early December, Kesher staff flew from all corners of North America to New York City for an intensive two-day in person staff training program. This rejuvenated, rededicated program was fully funded at no expense to the madrichim, who significantly volunteer their own time and energy with no financial remuneration. The training program was designed to bring the staff community together to learn from professionals in Jewish Experiential Education, share their own best practices, and meet and work with their co-staff in the months leading up to the trip (instead of at the airport just four hours prior to their trip).

Our goals were to empower the madrichim as Jewish experiential educators in their own right, to create an understanding of and dedication to our educational vision and mission, and to foster a strong staff community that would continually be a mutually supportive cohort. Through both a practical and theoretical paradigm, we examined the vision and mission of the URJ Birthright program, studied concepts of Jewish identity formation, explored the educational themes and goals of the sites we visit in Israel, and dedicated ourselves to the importance of fostering community before the trip itself begins. We also explored the importance of the 11th day of the program- what happens to participants upon their return to North America. Significantly, the madrichim also moved beyond the “babysitter” approach to staffing, and learned how to look after the participants through a model of “Caring for the Whole Person.”

Valuing Madrichim as Partners in Our Mission

This was an ambitiously designed program, and one that reveals its value over time. We immediately heard from our staff – both seasoned alumni as well as first-timers – that training together in an experiential environment has been rewarding and will contribute greatly to the excellence of the URJ’s Birthright program.

Joining the madrichim for a session was Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the URJ. He spoke passionately about his own first encounter with Israel, and about the centrality of the role that dedicated madrichim play as mentors in the Jewish journeys that Birthright participants undergo.

In the coming weeks and months, we look forward to learning more from our madrichim and participants about how this rededicated focus on our staff contributes to the excellence of the Israel experience for all those involved with the KESHER Taglit-Birthright Israel program.

Jesse Paikin is the Israel Programs Coordinator for the Union for Reform Judaism Camp & Israel Programs

After Birkenau

Walking out of Birkenau along the train rails, I was talking with Stephanie about our reactions to visiting the site for the first time. As we talked about emotions and education and history and the future, our discussion turned to Israel and Zionism. So fitting that as we stepped off of the rails and exited the death camp – something millions never did – we had the modern redemption of our people in our minds and on our tongues.

Driving to Auschwitz

The bus drive from Krakow to Auschwitz-Birkenau is silent, punctuated only by the faint sounds of Polish radio coming from the front of the bus.

I try to listen to some music – Radiohead – but can only bring myself to play Israeli music. After an hour of driving, even that somehow seems out of place. They didn’t have iPods on the cattle cars.

It occurs to me that there are very few things in life that can silence a group of 40 teenagers. Driving to Auschwitz is one of them.

Divinely Inspired Dwellings

Vanity Fair has a profile of and interview with Moshe Safdie. It’s pretty good, but the real genius comes right at the end, when Safdie drops a bomb of Jewish wisdom and compares a home to the mishkan. It’s a brilliant analogy:

I put it to him that, even so, he was a long, long way from one of the founding fathers of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, and his credo, “A house is a machine for living in.”

“A house is not a machine!” he (Safdie) exclaimed. “It’s something else for living—but not a machine.”

“What is it?”

“That’s a good question.”

He thought for a few moments. “You know, there’s a good Hebrew word for it, mishkan.”

He explained that in biblical terms it means a sacred place, a tabernacle, divinely inspired. (And there are rules laid down for building it.) But, for Moshe Safdie, the secular meaning of mishkan is a house—a sublime refuge midst the clamor of the world.