Wonderful people working together

Last night, together with other local women and girls, I attended an awards ceremony for a fund in memory of Yaffa London-Yeari, as a representative of the Beit Shemesh Womens' Council.  The award was presented to Miri Shalem as the founder and chairwoman of the Women's Council.

Miri and the BSWC received the award for the work in promoting dialogue between different "tribes" of Jews in the city of Beit Shemesh.  The Council is composed of women from different backgrounds, different countries of birth, different religious views, different educational backgrounds, coming together to support each other as women - with shared needs for health, safety, parnassa, etc. We also each have unique needs, and part of the Council is to support others even when our needs are different.   

The camaraderie of the Council is a model to Jews everywhere, that we can talk, argue, laugh, share, agree, disagree, support other Women - we can find the common ground and develop it.  

The Yeari family is a model of caring, a desire to assist women of all streams and stripes, to encourage women to volunteer in their communities and improve life in Israel.

It was a wonderful experience to feel the appreciation of the Yeari family for Miri's intiative.

  

Added to that was the experience of having the opportunity to learn about others, to hear from the 3 other women who were recipients this year, as well as recipients of pervious years' awards.  Last night was a chance to learn more about the wonderful people who make this country beautiful.

The other recipeints of this year's awards are: 

Galit Abu-Aharon, age 40ish, mother of 4, lives in Kiriat menahem in Yerushalaim, an "underpriviliged neighbourhood".  She spearheads a group of 30 women from her neighbourhood who never had academic training. The group are learning in David Yellin college, in a program put together specifically for them ("הזדמנות שנייה", Second Chance).  They are now finishing their 3rd year of a 4 year B.Ed., learning one day a week.  As they are neighbours, they support each other and keep each other going strong.  Despite the warnings of doomsdayer's that half to two-thirds wouldn't make it through the first year, all 30 finished their first year, and most are more than half-way to their degree already.

Tal Ohana, deputy mayor of Yeruham.  She has started programs, including צעירים בירוחם (a play on the Hebrew expression "young at heart"), in order to help residents reach their dreams, including higher education.  She recruits Jewish youth from Morocco, so that they make aliya rather than move to Canada or NY.  

and

Galit Deshe, of the Women's Lobby (שדולת נשים), dedicated to helping women, especially mothers, be able to work.

One of the women who had received the Yaffa London-Yeari award in a previous year is a metapelet, a babysitter, who organized a group of metaplot, and now has made contact with almost 3,000 metaplot all around the country.  As metaplot, these women work with no social benefits.  By organizing all metaplot in the country, regardless of their religious affiliation, she is working to give them status that allows them to also have pensions, sick days, perhaps even continuing education and professional guidance.

All in all, I cannot say that I agree with all the goals of everyone who receives this award.  In the same way, the family that gives these awards do not appear to be Orthodox Jews, and yet they gave 50% of this year's awards to Orthodox women representing, among other needs, the needs of Orthodox women.   They might not agree with everyone on a personal level, but in priciple, they are supporting women who are improving their communities.  The emphasis is on working together, supporting each other.   This cooperation strengthens all of us.   When wonderful people work together, we can be much, much more than the sum of our parts.

45 Years Ago Today

It was before I was born, but  my son's teacher told me that he remembers in the month of Iyar 5767, all the parks in Yerushalaim were dug to be mass graves.  Nasser was announcing his plans to "throw the Jews into the sea".   Jews world over were worried.  Without a Jewish State, even the most anti-Zionist galuti Jew knew that another Holocaust would not be long in coming.

And then, 45 years ago today, The Israeli Air Force wiped out the Egyptian air force.  In one short attack.   HaShem set things up so perfectly, as only He can, so that the Egyptians thought that it was a Jordanian entourage flying over Sinai.

The Six Day War, that broke out on the 26th of Iyar , 45 years ago today, was a Nes Galui that one has to work hard to be ignorant enough to ignore.  The Messirut Nefesh of the fighters cannot be taken for granted either

And yet, ignore it, people do.  Take it for granted, people do.

There is the famous joke about the man who is trying to find parking in town.   He closes his eyes and offers Hashem a deal - if You give me a parking space, I will start keeping Shabbat.   When he opens his eyes, our driver sees an open parking spot to his right.  Without missing a beat, our driver turns his head upward and says, "Never mind, I found one myself."

This week, in a neighbourhood in Yerushalaim, in an area which was our border with Jordanian snipers before the Six Day War, we saw a traffic circle in which the municipality had placed a large clock, under which there was the symbol of Yerushalaim.  The symbol is a wall of Har HaBayit and a lion to symbolize Malchut Beit David, surrounded by the Olive Branches of Zecharia’s nevua.   This holy symbol was defaced.   "Never mind," silently state the vandals,  "we don't need HaShem or His Chosen Messengers.  We found this spot ourselves.  We protected it from the Jordanians on our own.  We paved the streets, laid stone on the sidewalks, installed the infrastructure and built the neighbourhoods by ourselves.  We don't owe anyone any thanks."

Wishing all of us Six Days of true gratitude to HaShem and His Chosen Messengers for the miracles He bestows upon us, as individuals and as a Nation.

Feedback from a Good Parent

This week, I had the chance to speak to the parent we had observed retrieving his son last Friday night.  P and I approached him at a Bat Mitzva party to congratulate him on taking responsibility for his child, something we had not yet seen on our Sayeret Horim patrols.

The parent, we'll call him R, told us that there is more to the story than setting firm limits.  The limits must be there, and when his son wasn't home half an hour after the curfew time they set, R was making sure his son knew the limits, and also making sure his son wasn't up to "no good".   But that comes with Always Talking.   Talking about the situations that exist out there, and what one has to  be careful about.  But mainly, Talking About Feelings.  Talking about how hard it is to be a teenager, at a time that in the "very best yeshivot" there are drugs.  Talkign about how worried we are as parents.

Talking that includes listening.

We do a all this - create and develop the limits and the strong bond  - because our goal is to make sure that they get to the age in which they get brains (18-19 usually, according to R) with their minds, bodies and emotions intact.

Today's date

By some strange miracle, I happen to know today's date by the gregorian calendar.  That doesn't usually happen, but I was thinking on my drive today that May 14th must have passed, and then I discovered that today, actually, is May 14.   

Why does that matter? you ask.  Well, it doesn't, and that is another wonderful thing about Israel.  May 14th is the  gregorian date upon which David Ben Gurion read the Israeli Declaration of Independence, even as the british blankety-blanks were still claiming to be the mandatory rulers of Eretz Yisrael.  The ceremony was held before the brits left, because they were leaving on Shabbat, and obviously we weren't going to be mehalel Shabbat - who cares if the brits were stil here- it's OUR country, after all!!

The cool thing is, that in our secular state, not only will Hillul Shabbat be avoided in all sorts of interesting ways, but also, the only date that matters is the date on the Hebrew calendar.  No one cares that it is May 14th - Israelis, no matter what their idea of religious observance is, celebrate on the 5th of Iyar.  Unless that will cause Hillul Shabbat, in which case, we make adjustments to avoid Hillul Shabbat.   

Why dont; I need to know the gregorian date?  Because in Israel, I write the Jewish date on my cheques.  Letters from any government body have the Jewish date on them.   The cutoff birthdate for a schoolyear is the end of Kislev.  When the child development centre calls to book an appointment for my child, I can ask teh Hebrew date, and they wont; think I am crazy, they simply check their calendar - ANY Israeli calendar - adn tell me.   When we took the children to Beit Halomotai many aeons ago, the children's ages for admission prices went by the Hebrew date.

At 6:00 this morning, my "secular Israeli" radio played Shema Yisrael before the news.  Then they announced the date - but I didn't even hear them say the gregorian date.  I heard them say the important things, "Today is the 22nd of Iyar, 37 days which are 5 weeks and 2 days to the Omer."  

Parenting as a solution

I read a great line about parenting kids with issues: "You (the parents) aren't the problem, but you can be the solution."   I think that is very true.  It's probably not our fault that our kids have whatever special needs or problems they have, but with some guidance and lots of love, we can help them overcome most challenges.

Last night, P (dh) and I  did our monthly "Sayeret Horim" patrol.   Sayaret Horim is a something we REALLY LOVE about living in Israel.   In Canada, it is easy to think that the kids hanging out on the streets at night are not our problem.  But here in Eretz Yisrael, any kid in trouble is OUR kid, a Jewish neshama.  Of course a person should help whomever , wherever, whenever.  But when we do this type of work HERE, we are building the Jewish Nation.   

I want to start with some background.  Israel is not Canada.  Israel is a country which was very much built by youth, without parents.  Starting 130 years ago, Jewish teens and young adults moved to Eretz Yisrael to settle the land, to build  our nation.  They were followed by more youth - partly because it was too hard for families to come, the physical work required at the time was best handled by young idealists.  And partly, 80 to 60 years ago, because parents sent their children ahead of them when the nazis came to power, later, the youth had an easier time escaping than older people, and finally, after the Holocaust, again, it was the youth that were most able to rebuild their lives under the difficult conditions of hard physical work combined with british police assisting arab terror and preventing Jewish immigration.  The youngest registered "soldier" killed in the war of Independence in 5708 was 9 years old!!!

The kibbutzim also perpetuated the "non-parenting" by having Batei Yeladim and people taking turns minding the children.   Children also had to work hard and do their share, and prepare to be soldiers, doing insanely dangerous hikes and sport activities in order to be ready for the compulsory  draft at age 18.  Parenting, as we from North America know it, is truly a luxury that we were gifted with in our affluent countries of birth.

Israel has also always been a much more innocent country than Canada or the US.  In grade 13, we were taken on a tour of the University of Toronto and warned to never walk around certain parts of campus after dark alone, as even male students have been attacked.  Two years later, when I studied in Hebrew U, I did shemira (like everyone else) in the middle of the night with a male partner whom I had never met before in my life.  Now, I am sure that bad things did happen in Israel then too, but it was different.  In our night-time patrol of the campus, we didn't see so much as a bottle of beer, certainly no drugs or violence.

Yes, things here have changed in 24 years.  In the past few years, the scene in Israel (and in religious communities world-over) has become nasty.  BH, it doesn't compare to downtown TO, but there is a lot of work to do.  And I am grateful that P and I have the zechut to be part of this holy work.

Last night, we saw not just how much the teens appreciate the Parents' Patrol, which makes them feel safe, and they know they can talk to us about ANYTHING.  We also saw that firm, loving parenting itself is a solution.   Most of the kids  we see out at midnight+ are just hanging out innocently.  But there were a few kids with beer.  And at 12:10 am, a father (Israeli born and bred) went out , found his son and brought him back home stating very clearly, "You WILL NOT sit in a group in which some kids are drinking!"   This kid now knows his father's rules and knows that his father cares about him enough to get out of bed and bring him home rather than leave him in a potentially dangerous situation.  He knows that his parents have not "given up" on him.

This made me think: these kids who are out here who are drinking, or rolling up their long skirts to be miniskirts - if their parents came out after midnight and brought them home, wouldn't that help?  I realize that some of these parents probably need some professional guidance as to how to bring their kids home in a positive way.  We volunteers also had professional courses in order to know how to make the kids feel comfortable with us.  To my mind, and from what I hear from these kids, if their parents could learn how to relate to them in a constructive way, the kids really do want to be taken home, given a hug and some brownies/ cookies/ pretzels and told in no uncertain terms, "We WILL NOT allow you to slide down that slippery slope.  We will do everything it takes, get all the professional help we can, in order to keep you safe."

Ta'am HaMitzva

The Rambam says that one must be careful to not keep mitzvot just for the benefits we see, as in, we don't keep kosher just cuz pork is unhealthy.  

On the other hand, Sefer HaHinuch notes Ta'amei hamitzvot - the "flavours", i.e. benefits, that we enjoy from each mitzva.

So,we don't say that we came to live in Israel just because of the cherry tomatoes (invented in Rehovot), but we can certainly be grateful for their delicious existence - especially since the best ones are available RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!! 

If you come over really soon, I can share the last few in my basket.....

Today is 31 days La'Omer...

... and therefore it is perfectly logical that, on my drive to Yerushalaim this morning, I saw full-grown (balding) adults stopping their cars on the side of the road to collect sticks and cut down branches.

Lag Ba'Omer is a funny concept.   All we seem to know is that Rabbi Akiva's students didn't die that day - either the plague took a break for a day so no one died, or Bar Kochva's militia won a battle.  Either way, it's nice and all that, but is it unique?  As my father once pointed out, the Establishment of Jewish Sovereignty in Israel 64 years ago is certainly a larger-scale miracle AND has brought more long-term benefit to Am Yisrael than Rabbi Akiva's students' one day salvation.  

(And the bonfires are something entirely unrelated to Rabbi Akiva's'students.)

-->So WHY did this "minhag" of enriching the atmosphere's air pollution and  risking forest fires, why did this custom take off so well?

It would be an interesting study, which I am not doing right now. 

What I DO want to share is my feeling that Lag Ba'Omer has earned the right to be a day of no mourning because of the bonfires.  Lag Ba'Omer is the ONE DAY that EVERY JEW IN ISRAEL does the EXACT SAME THING!  Every Israeli Jewish child will be setting fire to something tomorrow night.   No one has gotten up and announced that, "if  THOSE kids do this, we won't."  For one long night, we are actually united in deed.

And the government supports this unity, by giving the children the next day off school.   (It is a big pain for working parents, but it is part of the reality of every Jewish student being up too late the night before.)  And with a little initiative from the Rabbanut Rashit, the Ministry of Education has made a policy decision that if Lag comes out on a Sunday, then Lamed-Dalet becomes the day off - so that kids don't prepare their bonfires on Shabbat for Motzaei Shabbat.

An exciting addition to the Lag BaOmer festivities this year (and in future years?) is Israel marking International Museum Day on teh day off from school - check out this link on the Education Monistry website http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/AgafA/Mozeon/ShuraRaza/museumday.htm for a list of 76 museums that will be open to the public free of charge this Lag Ba'Omer.   It is a chance to learn new things, strengthen our bond to our ancient and recent history and heritage AND see "other types of Jews" and discover that we really have more in common than differences.