Lamrot HaKol - Despite it all

and here you are living despite it all
-Rupi Kaur

 למרות הכל נשארנו פה, למרות כל מה שהם עשו כדי שניפול 

-נתן גושן
(Despite it all, we stayed here, depite all they did to make us fall
- Natan Goshen)

When I was young and in school back in the Old Country, about a week after Chanuka and until Tu B’Shvat, the teachers would hang a small JNF poster in the classroom. It was a bit bigger than a piece of A4 paper, and it had a picture of a tree with spaces on the branches to put stickers of leaves.

A sticker of a leaf cost five cents. There were 20 spots for leaves, so a whole tree cost one dollar (!!!). But 7-year-olds didn’t have dollars, so we would bring our nickels in whenever we had one. Sometimes, we had ten cents to spend, so we could buy two leaves. What excitment!! It was quite a ceremony giving the teacher the money, receiving the sticker and sticking it on the poster. Sometimes, but rarely, a parent would send in a whole dollar to buy a whole tree. Cheers of joy could be heard up and down the halls of the school!! There was a mini-contest between the classes to see which class would buy the most trees.

It was in this way that we learned, very effectively, about the Zionist enterprise, and understood the importance of buying lands and planting trees to hold down the ground. We learned the history of the Land, how it had been undeveloped for so many years, and how the Nation of Israel was coming back to repair the damage done by centuries of neglect. We were so proud that, even in this small way, with our nickels and dimes, we could contribute to the building of the Land, even from so far away.

 We kids joked that one day, when we went to visit Israel, we would go to visit our trees.

Yesterday, my department at work went on a trip to the hills surrounding Jerusalem. For personal reasons (aka laziness), I did not go on the walk down to the Sorek River with the group. Instead, I stayed, with a few others, near the top of a mountain, next to a comforting source of coffee. However, I did take a walk around the area (making sure I first had a good supply of coffee). The view was lovely, and I sat, half in shade, for quite a while staring out at the mountains and valleys. The air was very hot, but it was very quiet, just me and the butterflies. 

And the view from that spot was exactly what I needed. 

It had been a long time since I have visited any of my trees.

Despite the fact that when I came back from my walk into nature and beauty, all my co-workers who had stayed at the coffee shop were on their phones,

And despite the fact that the coffee shop didn’t serve lemon meringue pie,

And despite the fact that when we met up with the rest of the group, they too were all on their phones,

And despite the cinnamon (!!) in the kebbabs we ate at the restaurant where we had lunch,

And despite the endless, oppressive heat, 

And despite the air conditioning  not working,

And despite the occasional rockets, and the awful brown envelopes I keep receiving at home, and the flies and mosquitoes who have set up permanent residence in my bedroom, 

And despite all the tensions, and the bad publicity, and the heartbreak,

Despite it all, למרות הכל*

I was reminded how much I love this country, 

The end.

*Sometimes, Hebrew sounds better than English. למרות הכל (Lamrot HaKol) means despite, or in spite of, but has a more melancholy connotation than the English. 

Kapara Aleinu!

Kapara Aleichem!
-Netta Barzilai - upon winning the Eurovision Song Contest
Kapara Aleich!
-Binyamin Netanyahu to Netta Barzilai

According to Jewish law, Judaism is a matriarchal religion/nationality/ethnicity/whatevertheheckitis. If the mother is Jewish, the child is Jewish; if the mother is not Jewish, her children are not Jewish. Observance, belief, and emotion play no part in passing down being Jewish.

That said, the customs of Judaism are passed down through the father. It doesn't matter how much better the mother's customs are, the kids do what their father and his father before him have done.

Let me explain.

Judaism and Jews have been around for a long time. Jews have lived, and Judaism has been practiced, in just about every country and a great many cities around the world. Jews have moved from place to place also; when they were thrown out of one place, they went to another.

Over the centuries and millennia, while Jewish Law (aka Halacha) has remained the same, many interpretations and customs surrounding those laws have evolved in different ways in different places at different times.
In some areas, customs have taken on the seriousness of actual law, and followers are required to keep the custom in the same manner as keeping the Law itself. How one keeps these serious customs is patriarchal-it goes by how the father and his father and his father kept the customs. (Examples are eating kitniyot on Pesach, and the wording of prayers.)

But in other areas, the customs are rather happy-go-lucky, and one can pick and choose whatever one wants to do!!

I have been aware of many of the differences in customs stemming from different  Old Counties. While Eastern Europeans Jews eat more boiled vegetables and lots of potatoes, North African Jews eat foods fried in honey.
The Ashkenazi Torah scroll is covered in cloth, and read by lying it on a table, while the Sephardic Torah Scroll is housed in a large box-like container made of wood or metal, and read by standing it up on a table. The words, however, are identical.

Ashkenazi Torah scroll

Sephardic Torah Scrolls.

Even our speech is different. Non-European Jews never say 'shmata' or 'gevalt' (though I have heard them say 'oy'), and I, personally, have never used the expression "kapara" (made famous by our Israeli Eurovision winner this week).

There were some customs that I knew were customs - and not laws - but had assumed that they were across the board customs, not limited to a particular ancestry.
For example, I thought everyone used salt water at the Passover Seder, but, no. Apparently, some communities use lemon juice or vinegar.

All this came to light when a close family member married someone whose family was originally from a very very different Old Country than my own family. (Spoiler - it was my son.)

The first time I was taken aback was when my then daughter-in-law-to-be came for Shabbat for the first time. "Why do you light so many candles?" she asked, looking at my seven lit candles.
Now, I'm not stupid or naive, and I knew that lighting a candle for each child was a relatively newly made-up custom, but I thought people did it because it was cute and cool, not because we came from a certain place.  But apparently, I was wrong.

I was completely unable to hide my surprise when I was asked "I suppose you're going to want the bride to walk around the groom seven times," by the bride's mother.
I'm sorry, what? Doesn't everybody do this? But again, no, not everybody.
(For the record, I answered that the couple could decide to do whatever they want, it wasn't up to me. [and they decided she would circle seven times.])

And I was utterly dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and flummoxed when my new daughter-in-law's mother actually lit the Sabbath candles completely differently than I did. I first light the candles, then say the blessing with my eyes covered. She first said the blessing with her eyes opened, then lit the candles. I had to bite my lips to prevent myself from exclaiming "BUT THAT'S WRONG!

It wasn't wrong. It was just different.

So many of us are separated by differences in opinions, in language, in food, in sense of humour, in appearance, in education, in ambitions, in age, in beliefs, in customs, in driving skills. It's so easy to separate, so hard to unite, most especially when they take up two parking spots in a crowded lot.

The Holy State of Israel is made up of a great many different kinds of people.

We recently attended a wedding of a member of our new extended family (my son's in-laws). We sat at a table with the other in-laws, i.e., the parents-in-law of the bride's married sisters. 

Did you know that Hebrew is the only language that has a word for the relationship between the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom ? Mechutanim (or machatunim in Yiddish - same word, different accent) comes from the same root as chatuna (wedding), chatan (groom) and le'hitchaten (to wed), and are the parents of the spouse(s) of your child(ren). It's a very serious relationship - a lifetime commitment. Because there is no such thing as too much family.

Jews, at the end of the day, no matter where they come from, no matter what language they speak, and no matter what foods they eat on Rosh HaShana or Passover, or whether or not they eat chicken soup on Friday night (did you know there are Jews who do not!! Imagine!) are one family, with a shared history and a shared destiny.

We sat at this table with people we had only met a few short weeks before, at our son's wedding. We had no common background, no common friends, our food preferences were very very different. What we did have in common - as we hugged and kissed in true Israeli fashion, one kiss on each cheek, and then a third for good luck - was that we were all mechutanim.

And all our future grandchildren are going to be first cousins.

Kapara Aleihem.