Edutopia

School is a gift. I struggled through much of high school to actually appreciate my education. I knew I had a zest for learning throughout, but it wasn’t always obvious to me whether or not I was going about doing it in the right way. Certainly by junior year I was committed to being a student, but partly because I was also taking on more leadership in the high school. Since I first became involved with the organization Free The Children in seventh grade, the issue of education for all has been at the top of my list in terms of the priorities I believe our society should set. I believe that many of the world’s problems can be traced to lack of education, which then affects leadership and communication among other things. I believe in flexible educational models for different spheres. In Young Judaea I have focused on educating the next generation of Jewish leaders. In developing and running Global Citizenship Seminar workshops, I have carried my educational philosophy into addressing some of the major issues that I observed in my community in Acton regarding identity development and civic engagement. Regardless of whether or not I become a teacher in my life, I hope that I will be an educator.

I chose Kivunim largely for its educational program—including the learning that happens outside the classroom. Here, as Peter Geffen puts it, the line between formal and informal, between intellectual and experiential learning is blurred beyond recognition. To a greater extent than ever before, the classes I take are a part of all 24 hours of my life—and not because of the amount of homework, which is actually satisfyingly rigorous by the way. I find myself speaking Hebrew and Arabic outside of class. I find myself walking on the land of the Middle East studies course. This year I will be granted the dream of any student: to get to go to the place s/he studies. After a week of studying Greek history, I can only imagine how meaningful it’s going to be to go there in a month. (It’s not the first time in my life… I did have the privilege of living in the birthplace of the Revolutionary War, but t’s different.)

I am really inspired by what we’re doing here from a strictly curricular standpoint, but what’s also interesting to me is the organizational genius of the mission behind it, which actually might be at the root of educational goals in general. When I graduated from Young Judaea a few months ago, it was clear to me that what one does after s/he graduates is just as, if not more, important than what s/he does during the actual years of involvement during youth. An element of the change that YJ aims to espouse in the world comes from the leadership skills and Jewish identity that its members develop in the movement that they ultimately carry into their adult lives.

This appears to be part of the vision behind Kivunim. Peter and I have talked about the need for a “Teach For America for the Jewish People”. Teach For America is an organization that recruits a corp of college graduates to teach in inner city schools for a couple of years before getting another job. Again with the long-reaching personal growth goals, TFA hopes, more than that people finish their service with a commitment to become teachers, that they go into all fields of work as advocates for education. It is TFA’s vision that doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, and business-owners will have inter-sector interests in promoting institutional and structural change around education. Going back to what I said in the beginning about the need for flexible education models for different communities and cultures, it appears that a TFA-like organization wouldn’t be bad for most of the world.

So what is Kivunim hoping we will graduate with? World consciousness, Israel sensitivity, Jewish friends, language skills, coexistence advocacy—the list goes on. We’ll mull over this throughout the year, but for now I’d like to make a really dramatic segue: education is a form of public service, and public service is a form of education.

The public service component of our program started last night. The director of this part of the program is a very spiritual and interesting personality named Daniel Bush. He runs a workshop for us each week to get us thinking about, in the most general sense, how to integrate our experiences. It’s not always obvious what the goals of these workshops are, but the experience is always vivid.

Last night we began with an exercise in which one person would move and the other person would try to move in real time to mirror their partner. Daniel suggested that we try to forget who was leading and who was following. Next we did a really powerful exercise, which flowed flawlessly into a rousing session of Life Stories later in the night. Two people would get up in front of the group, look into each other’s eyes, and each one would say what they thought the other person saw when they looked at them. I had the good fortune of being in the third and final pair, looking into Adin’s eyes.

This was one of the most powerful experiences yet. Trying to imagine what Adin was seeing when he looked at me, trying to see myself through Adin’s eyes, made me shake. Our friends in the audience would tell us that we were swaying in unison up there. I remember not thinking about anything. I remember there being no conscious creative process. I would later describe it as the same feeling as thinking in a second language—the moment when you stop consciously translating, and you just speak. As such, when I spoke, I couldn’t tell whose eyes I was looking through. To many it would appear that we were just talking about ourselves, but there was truly something more than that to the exercise. When I looked at Adin, I saw myself. I said, “He sees someone who he thinks he knows pretty well. He sees someone who is taking this very seriously. He sees someone who is nervous. He sees someone who is in the moment, right now.” Adin and I have a lot in common, but I felt like we were one. (It’s a interesting meditation on relationships in general, and how much of it is just two separate individual experiences, versus something that might actually be shared.) He told me that when I said “right now” he was afraid that he would think about something else, but he didn’t. There was a real presence to it. How many of us have ever tried not to think about something and failed? I have never felt so free from everything else. At the same time, we were very much a part of the general scene in the room, and the community experience.

Something I wish would have been emphasized is how something like that is as much about the audience as it is about the two people in front. Everyone in that situation has an opportunity to try to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, even if it becomes increasingly convoluted (put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s trying to put themselves in the shoes of someone trying to put themselves in their shoes, trying to look at themselves…ETC!). This echoes the collective and personal dynamic of the Life Story exercise, so it was a natural activity for after the workshop.

However, given that this collective experience was not discussed explicitly, after the moment between me and Adin, the group offered their observations as they had done twice before with two earlier pairs. Their words ranged from cynical to appreciative, empathetic to detached. Our experience brought up different things for different people. After the feedback we moved into a poetry analysis exercise with “Jerusalem 1967” by Yehudah Amichai. In the same way that the pair exercise was picked apart by the group, now we analyzed the poem, another piece of raw humanity. We often wonder if artists intend to convey the depth that we can read into their work, or if it just comes out and then we draw patterns because that’s was humans do. It’s probably a little of both, but anyone, including artists, can be unaware of their humanity or the meaning behind their actions. Again, Kivunim showed us the importance of being able to process our experiences in order to get the most out of our lives (again, a session of Life Stories went late into the night…). No doubt this is important as we move into the world of community service…

This morning the actual work behind Daniel Bush’s curriculum started, and we went out into different parts of Jerusalem to do the various projects that we’ll continue all year, as part of a natural desire to actively give back to our host community. I always envisioned myself doing something with education or coexistence (go figure), but I would never have imagined the way that those terms would play out in the reality of what we call “Social Responsibility Projects”.

I will be spending the better part of every Thursday in a school called the Variety Center. The Variety Center is basically an early childhood development center, where mainstream and special needs children come together in fourteen different kindergartens (something to do with education). There are Jews and Arabs, autistic kids, mentally retarded kids, healthy kids, and babies (and multi-dimensional coexistence!). I couldn’t be happier with my placement. The group of six Kivunim volunteers get to play with these kids in what they call the “playground”. The playground is basically a room full of interactive learning stations. I’ll give a few examples. There are remote-controlled cars, and computer puzzles, and interactive music machines. There is a television monitor that shows the person standing in front of it in a world full of bubbles; that lucky person just swings his or here arms and watches the bubbles burst on the screen. There is a machine that essentially amounts to a giant blow-drier, which suspends a weighted balloon in the air as the conductor of the blower tries to guide the balloon through a hoop. The place is incredible. It’s a really rich environment, which would probably be good for anyone—special needs or not; there’s a room called “Snoozeland” that’s full of lights, colors and cushions, which is supposed to help kids who are either hyper- or hypo-sensitive. I’m going to get to practice a lot of Hebrew and Arabic (kids are great for my level of vocabulary).

I wonder if these kids appreciate their education in this special place, but if my interest in education has taught me anything, it is that education is as much about the so-called students as it is about the teachers. If it will be very rewarding, it will definitely be very difficult at times too. Such is the essence of a good education. The easy, the challenging, inside the classroom, and outside the classroom; we are the listeners and the speakers; we are in the audience and on center stage: such is the essence of a life of learning.

Jerusalem, If I Forget You...

After Kivunim left Kibbutz Ketura, we went to the southern-most Israeli city of Eilat for a day of transition.  We were supposed to go to Petra in Jordan, for the beginning of the day, but due to pre-election security precautions we stayed in Eilat for the remainder of our orientation, before heading up to our home base in Jerusalem.

Our day in Eilat was pretty un-programmed and relaxed.  We hung out on the beach and went out for a fantastic dinner, bracing ourselves for a new lifestyle.  Soon school would start, and the summer-program-esque portion of our program would be over.

The four-hour bus ride up to Jerusalem was another peak of our anticipation.  Kivunim would finally settle down (for a month at least!).  Once we were in the city limits, Naomi Shemer’s “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) and Matisyahu’s “Jerusalem” blasted in the bus’ stereo.  We all sat up straight in our seats, letting the city pour into us.  We descended into a tunnel, and the Matisyahu’s song came to its climax as we shot out onto the highway, overlooking the Old City with the Dome of the Rock blazing in the window.  The energy on the bus took on a life of its own as we all reacted in our own individual ways to our almost theatrical entrance into the heart of the city.

Soon the world outside, the streets, the signs, the restaurants and clubs, became potential pieces of home.  I looked freshly on everything, anticipating how familiar it would all be to me by the end of the year.  We arrived at our home at Beit Shmuel (an appendage of Hebrew Union College and the World Union for Progressive Judaism), explored our rooms, and the common areas.  We were reunited with our possessions, which had waited here while we were in the desert.  Soon we ventured out into the city.

We are about as close as anyone to the center of Jerusalem.  Our building overlooks the Old City and downtown.  The legendary Ben-Yehudah Street is less than ten minutes away by foot.  The other gap-year program students seem to be everywhere. In the first few days I met up with a number of friends from Young Judaea Year Course, and met many others on different programs through friends on Kivunim.  The life on foot is fantastic, after eighteen years of using vehicular transportation for nearly every activity.  I am really enjoying soaking in the new map of this city, exploring its many villages on morning jogs.  It’s no American grid city, but somehow its organization feels intuitively logical, based on its rolling hills and development as an outgrowth of the Old City.

On the first Shabbat we all made a pilgrimage (eh, more like fifteen minute walk) to the Kotel of Western Wall.  Again I looked on Israel in a new light.  Every time I have visited the Kotel in the past, I feel this incredible pressure to have a transformational experience.  I often feel compelled to recite prayers and observe certain rituals that aren’t central to my daily life.  This time was different. 

As I pressed my body against the familiar stones of the millennia of Jewish history, I pondered my connection to the People.  Not just to my ancestors and the Jews who prayed in the Temple here thousands of years ago, but also to the people around me.  This is a typical dynamic for me at the Western Wall: feeling very connected and utterly alone at the same time.  In silence, I lean against the wall, at the place where I always go when I get to visit.  I try to push it over, making my experience not just spiritual but physical.  I am exhausting myself, listening to the Kabbalat Shabbat prayers swirling around me in different tunes and voices.  I feel swallowed up by the Wall, and suddenly I feel the pressure of wanting to be able to pray fluently simply lift from my body.

I realize that I am having a very religious experience, through appreciating history and feeling the intergenerational quality of this place.  Feeling no sense of contrived melodrama, as I sometimes know myself to do at the Kotel, I walk away.  I join up with the rest of the group, which has found a nice place to pray, near the back, next to the mechitza (dividing wall between men and women) so we can all be together.  I join the prayer service and sing and dance with an adjacent group of religious soldiers, and then find a place to sit. 

As the service comes to a close, I am approached by my roommate and close friend Zach Nanus.  He asks me what I’m thinking.  I tell him about my experience, how for the first time at the Kotel I’ve been able to appreciate my own spiritual experience as a Jew with a deeply personal investment in the history, present and future of this place.  I explain my belief that it is more important to connect to the reasons why we are motivated to pray (connection to others, connection to ourselves, connection to history, mourning, goal-setting, processing, etc.), and to achieve the goals of prayer in our own ways, than to just go through the motions with no authentic motivation.  We launch into a deep discussion about religion that alleviates any residual fear about not having a profound and meaningful experience at the Wall.  Others joined our conversation throughout the evening, and by the end I felt very spiritually uplifted. 

The idea of having a personal experience at the Kotel is popular, but perhaps more importantly, there’s no one way to do it, we decided.  That’s an important idea to put into words at the Kotel of all places.

The popular Jewish-American reggae artist Matisyahu paraphrases the psalms when he sings “Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand forget what it’s supposed to do.”  The day before yesterday I gave somebody directions to the Central Bus Station in Hebrew for the first time.  Everyday I feel more connected to this city as my neighborhood.  When we first arrived I was struck by how stimulating the smell of it is, clear and cultured at the same time.  Jerusalem is an icon of Jewish history, in joy and peril.  It is a staple of our present reality, the seat of Israel’s government, and the home of countless year-programs.  It is a place that presents many questions, and countless opportunities to learn. 

Now that I’m here, I’m sure I’ll never forget Jerusalem; I just hope I never take it for granted.

Another Sliver

The last entry was just a sliver, but I suppose this one will be too.  We arrived at Kibbutz Ketura and had a couple of hours of really slow internet access.  I decided not to revise/revisit the last post before publishing it to the internet, because the innocence about what I now know followed it is bottled forever in those paragraphs.

Kibbutz Ketura was much more than the short history I provided in the last post.  We had the privilege of being there for Simchat Torah, the festival which celebrates the final verses of the Torah before launching into B’reishit (Creation) the following week.  It’s basically a lot of dancing and singing—typical, one might say, of many Jewish festivals.  However, the intrigue of dancing with the Torah makes for an entirely different mood.  The rabbis clutch the scroll like a baby, not merely strolling through the congregation as on High Holidays and Shabbat, but literally dancing through the aisles with it.

There are so many ways that the Jews have programmed times of reflection into their culture—daily prayer, the weekly day of rest, the yearly day of atonement, etc.)—and Simchat Torah is the epitome of such reflection.  The Torah is a document that contains history.  Hearing the Torah read on Simchat Torah is to be unable to take it for granted.  The words and melodies are familiar, but the atmosphere is wholly different.  It is a very concrete way of experiencing the passage of time, to recognize that the entire Torah has been finished.  Needless to say, this experience—especially being on a Kibbutz—added amply to the already ubiquitous themes of appreciating history, looking towards the future, and experiencing tradition and life itself in new ways on Kivunim.

Following the festival and dinner, Kivunim retreated to its housing complex.  Before I launch into describing what was one of the most powerful experiences on the trip so far, allow me to set the stage…  Samara, a new close friend of mine, loooves asking questions.  To meet Samara is to be challenged by revealing yourself in ways you’ve never imagined.  “If you could host any gameshow, what would it be?”  “What’s your ideal breakfast?”  “What intimidates you?”  Et cetera, et cetera.  She once gave me flack for opening with “What music do you listen to?”  In any event, on the way to the Bedouin village, she zoomed out from the specifics, and simply asked me to recite the story of my life.  This request perplexed me, but the bus ride was over and we agreed to delve into that later.  (This reminded me of a man in a nursing home that I volunteered at in sixth grade who used to ask our chaperones, “Got a second?  Tell me the story of your life.”  We would laugh.)

On the bus ride back to Sde Boker, from the Bedouin Village, I sat with another new friend of mine, Elie.  With or without knowing its current relevance, she too asked me to tell the story of my life.  The bus ride would only be fifteen minutes long.  I went for it.  I went through parents, places, deaths, influential teachers, music, karate, Young Judaea, and then the bus ride was over.  I immediately promised to hear her life story next time.  But the seed of what my “life story” had become in that short iteration began to sprout.  I wondered to myself why I had chosen the narrative that I had followed.  Why had I mentioned X and not Y?  Did I really portray myself?  The stream of consciousness-style telling had had a natural flow to it, but it was also impromptu, so the outline and thesis were shaky, and left me ultimately with a hunger to expose more.

I sat with Elie at dinner that night.  “That conversation we had earlier really got me thinking,” I said.  She concurred.  She was thinking too.  We both had the same instincts and interests in the selective nature of telling one’s “life story”.  The idea that telling one’s “life story” was an exercise in appreciating it as just a sliver of greater reality resonated very deeply with me, tapping into much of the core of the story that I tell myself.  Elie and I, along with others at our table were excited by the idea that a life story would be different every time.  Like in journalism, historical narratives of entire cultures, or simply the imperfections of human perception and memory, the bias is inevitable, but not necessarily bad.  Bias doesn’t have to be propaganda; the selectivity of our individual iterations can rather be viewed as the natural product of human perspective and a contribution to the aggregate report of reality, if we compile many different perspectives and tell our stories many times.  I felt the philosophy and themes of my life story converging on the idea of making this a group activity.  I made plans to hear other people’s life stories after dinner…

Which brings us back to Ketura.  After the Simchat Torah service, a few days after the initial conversation at Sde Boker, Adin, one of my closest friends on the trip, said he was ready to tell life stories.  We found a nice piece of ground in Ketura’s Arava Valley dust, and began to reflect.  He went first.  His life story focused less on events than on particular people and philosophies that he holds dear—or at least profoundly influential.  Others joined us and listened in, curious to find out what we were doing.  What was this monologue?  Why were we listening?  Throughout the night people would be encouraged to come and go as they pleased, in the hopes that we could maintain an authentic atmosphere, a sense that people were there because it made sense for them.

Soon it was my turn.  By now there was a critical mass.  I launched into it.  I introduced myself.  I came to call what transpired the rest of the evening “like dropping an iceberg into a Jacuzzi.”  After I told my story, the group moved to a circle of chairs to hear more.  A few more people revealed their first version, and Adin, Elie and I explained the philosophy behind the activity several more times, refining it each time. The idea felt like it was literally hatched that night, in a spontaneous and meaningful way, by several emotionally rich and trusting people.  There were lots of laughs, tears shed and shared, and ultimately a feeling of release and resolve to greet more of life.

It is the ultimate icebreaker to be sure, but telling life stories is an exercise in personal reflection.  In a safe environment of intently listening peers, one is able to simply draw out his or her life without rules—glossing over certain things, explaining certain ideas nearly completely, and leaving other things out altogether—thinking out loud, completely uncensored.  The process continues after one speaks, as the speaker mulls over why s/he mentioned the things s/he did and what patterns emerged from this organic purge.  It is just as much about the speaker as the listeners though.  It is an exercise in listening, learning to reflect individually on what things in the speaker’s story triggers thoughts, without actually interjecting.  Above all, it is an exercise for the health of the group.  It is an opportunity to go to very deep places together.  That night there was a therapeutic energy in the air, an excitement that we were actually entering a time in life when developing a life story was beginning to be feasible, and a rich sense of balancing the specificity and uniqueness of each person’s words with the ways in which everyone found commonality in the stories.

I hope it becomes a regular exercise with this group (we’ve already done it once again since arriving in Jerusalem).  The challenge will be—as it often is with activities that become traditions—maintaining the inspired and spontaneous energy that kicked off the idea in that first session at Ketura.  As long as we can be sure that people are ripe for sharing, listening, and only doing so if it feels right, I won’t worry.

To me it feels entirely necessary, during an experience such as Kivunim, when life often progresses faster than our ability to process it, that we give ourselves time to get to know each other and ourselves as best we can.  Like a blog on steroids, it is an opportunity to stay up to date.  Telling life stories brings the individual to new self-clarity, endears one to his or her peers, and builds a healthy group identity—something that I think will be increasing important as we begin to grapple with the world.  In order to get the most out of our experiences in the following year and years to follow, we must be able to equally apply ourselves to understanding the worlds that exist within ourselves…

Midbar Midaber/Desert Dessert: Part 1

The following was written on October 20^th, 2008.

I’m sitting in the coffeeshop/reception area at Kibbutz Ketura.  Just for a little background: Ketura was founded in 1973 when a group of students fresh off of Young Judaea Year Course (another gap-year program, with which I have a special relationship that I will no doubt explain in the future) decided that they wouldn’t go home at the end of their year, but instead stay in Israel and try to establish a kibbutz.  A kibbutz is essentially a socialist commune.  The kibbutz was one of the early models for Jewish settlement in Israel at the beginning of the century, stressing values of community, like pooled resources and common goals.  The image of the desert-grown, hardworking, “kibbutznik” or “sabra” (named after the desert cactus) is a cornerstone of Israeli society—like Shalmi from my last entry mentioned when he spoke to us in the first week—as the symbol of the reinvented Jewish archetype. 

Most current kibbutzim have privatized, but Ketura is one of the remaining few (if not the last one) that has remained entirely socialist.  The community makes about $5 million a year and provides its members with “free” food, healthcare, education, shelter, and lots of hard work.  About 45 minutes north of Eilat, nestled right next to Jordan in the Arava Valley, Kibbutz Ketura is mostly known for its delicious dates and its algae, which produce pigments that can be found in all kinds of skincare products (see Estee Lauder…).  However, the most exciting thing happening at this Kibbutz in my opinion is the Arava Insitute for Environmental Studies.

The Institute grants BA and MA degrees in pursuit of technologies and programs to solve environmental problems on the regional and global level.  But it doesn’t stop there.  What really makes this place unique is how it uses environmental study as a vehicle for coexistence.  The students come from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and America.  They are Jewish, Arab and Christian.  In fact, we met a really interesting student today, named Katie, who is a Christian from Cleveland.  She is converting to Judaism and moving permanently to Israel over the course of the next year or so.

We’ll be here for the next couple of days, celebrating the festival of Simchat Torah tonight, unraveling the Torah and dancing as we prepare to restart the reading this week.  Unfortunately our trip to Jordan, which was supposed to be on Wednesday, actually got postponed due to precautions around the impending American Presidential Election (!!!)—one exclamation point for the trip getting postponed, one for the election, and one for what exclamation points are generally for.  So I suppose I’ll be writing about the Jordan trip later than I expected, but in any event we’ll finally be settling in our home in Jerusalem on Thursday night after Ketura and a short stint in Eilat. 

But let me get back to what got us here.  After we left Ein Gedi on Friday, we stayed at Sde Boker—the desert home and gravesite of Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula—until arriving at Ketura today.  Needless to say, our first Shabbat together was sensational.  We did our prayer service on the precipice of an absolutely astounding vista of the Negev Desert.  On Sunday we did all things Bedouin, visiting a school and village (not one of those tourist tents!), and hearing lectures from the world’s expert on Bedouin culture Clinton Bailey, who is literally the only person to put the Bedouin culture, which is entirely oral, comprehensively on paper.  This was a really special experience, which Peter reminded us would never be recreated.  When we got to the school, a few of us taught the rest of us the very rudimentary Arabic that we might have picked up before then.  The Bedouin children saw us as aliens I think, but we shook hands and smiled a lot.  Indeed, as if this program didn’t already have us flying on high, the laughter of children entered into the mix...

Exodus 2

The following was written on Thursday, October 16^th, 2008.

Last night sleeping in one’s own bed: 4 hours.  Driving to JFK with parents and belongings: 4 hours.  Getting delayed at the airport: 2 hours.  Flying to Israel: 10 hours.  The first week in Israel: timeless.

It’s honestly hard to know where to start, mostly because I feel like it’s still starting…  Days are no longer really a sufficient way to express the way that time passes.  The familiarity of the flight attendants’ accents—not to mention the utterly bilingual experience of flying to Israel, when it’s not totally clear whether you’re flying to or from home (“Ma rotze lishtot?  What would you like to drink?  English or Hebrew?  Mayim?  Ok.”)—, the way that the scene on the plane doesn’t quite translate into the reality once you leave the airport, but is reminiscent enough to make everyone clap upon touch-down. 

My parents and I were the first “Kivunim family” to get to the El-Al check-in.  It was immediately apparent who my fellow students were as they began to arrive.  Among the droves of Orthodox families and middle-aged Israeli travelers, this congregation of smiling 18-year-olds soon became a critical mass, pulsing with the energy of two months at home with our parents, and nearly a year of mental preparation combined with an element of disbelief in our current situation—a feeling that would remain indefinitely. 

It’s difficult to describe the feeling of watching a reality that has only been a dream for so long slowly materialize before your eyes.  In an hour 51 people, who had merely been names on Facebook for months, became the Kivunim community.  The flight got delayed for some connecting passengers from Miami, which opened up a fantastic opportunity for further bonding in the Kivunim party at Gate B31, before we would ascend into the pressure-induced stupor of intercontinental air travel. 

Arriving in Israel, we set off from Tel Aviv to Ein Gedi, an oasis of wildlife in the Negev Desert, on the shore of the Dead Sea.  We began with a special Sukkot t’fila (prayer service), and continued celebrating the holiday with dinner in our sukka.  Of course icebreakers and other get-to-know-the-group activities commenced, and we settled into our beds at the Ein Gedi Youth Hostel for our first night in Israel with the Dead Sea and the mountains of Jordan looming under the near-full moon.

The second day was full of hour-long sessions about the content and mission of Kivunim.  Peter Geffen, our esteemed and insightful Director and Founder, led us on a tour through the mission statement.  From “world-consciousness” to “Zionism for the 21^st century,” it became real to us that Kivunim is not going to pull any punches in challenging our identity development, nor will it apologize for not allowing us the luxury of settling for simplification.  Shalmi Barmore, the resident expert of our World Jewish Civilizations course, introduced us to his story.  He elaborated on the challenge of having to reconcile the narrative of his childhood and his parents’ generation—that Israel was a “clean break” with the humiliation and victimization of Jewish history—with the discoveries of his adult life—that Israel is in fact a very natural next step in the same story of the Jews, deeply rooted in and derived from the story of the thousands-year history of the Diaspora. 

The real value of these sessions in my eyes is how they clarified that we have an absolute powerhouse of people in this program.  I can’t say that I’ve ever been in a group of young people like this.  First of all, it’s just awesome to join a new community.  No matter what brings you together, it’s always refreshing.  However, I’ll have to admit that, given how central to my life the ideas, issues and values are that drew all these people together, Kivunim as a group of people feels that much more meaningful--and they are SMART!  Everyone has insight to share and stories to tell.  Beyond the power of the content and educational vision of this program, it is in large part the people we meet and share it with that give it its true value.

Allow me to shift gears a bit as I move into describing the next part of the week.  Here’s the deal: if the month before Kivunim started was all about finding a way to make use and meaning of un-programmed time, without a concrete schedule and responsibilities, then the first five days of Kivunim have been all about living life and programming it in utter disregard of traditional schedules and universally accepted institutions such as time and space.  Besides the obvious model that international travel and jetlag offer for this liberating lifestyle, Kivunim has really institutionalized it.  It’s becoming a joke among the group that in an effort to achieve “world consciousness” we must release ourselves from any preferences that we may have to one time zone or another.  In this way, Kivunim truly is a globally sensitive program!  But don’t get me wrong—we haven’t begun traveling abroad yet; it’s really not necessarily necessary yet.  First we must gain appreciation for the power of living with the world in mind on the local level. 

I’m only being half-sarcastic.  The truth is that after hiking and indulging at the Ein Gedi Dead Sea Spa all day yesterday, we returned to the hostel and were allowed about three hours of “nap time” after dinner, even though we know that anyone trying to adjust to a time zone should really strive to conform to the local time as strictly as possible in the first few days.  We woke up at 9:30pm and drove to the bowels of the Negev.  We were greeted by a mystical and biblical-looking man named Yisrael Hevroni.  We hiked in relative silence all night, with brief stops for Yisrael to read poems about the desert’s sanctity to the Jews (in Hebrew, translated into English by our counselor Gabi).  Bruchim habayim lamidbar (“welcome to the desert”) he would remind us at every turn.  This experience really epitomized the symbolism of beginning our journey together in the desert.  We wandered.  In the desert one finds the peace of mind to feel the raw and pure quality of existence, the long-term transformative processes of the earth, and the foundations of civilization and culture.  Above all, this is where the Jewish People was conceived, and where current and future generations can feel most connected to each other, their place and time.

It wasn’t all deep canyons and profound conversations/personal reflections though.  We laughed…a lot.  We found unity in delirium.  At 7am this morning we returned from the desert and slept until lunch.  We visited an ancient synagogue and botanical garden kibbutz, and then the sun went down.  A short day?  A long day?  The consensus seems to be that days just simply aren’t effective ways to measure time anymore. 

We live in continuity and take naps when we need them to appreciate what we have.  There is no routine or gridlock.  Maybe living such a privileged existence—a lifestyle that rules out most steady jobs (indeed, who gets to work for Kivunim anyway?!) and would strain responsibilities to people in organized society (don’t worry, Mom.)—could alienate us from the world, but frankly we have never felt more connected to the big picture and the people in it.  My peers and I have found ourselves feeling more lucky to be alive more frequently during these days than ever before in our lives—and, perhaps most significantly, not in the wake of tragedy that reminds us of how fragile our lives are, but in the utter wonder of company, growth, belief, building memories, and working for a better future. 

This is a program that transcends generations.  Next year Kivunim will be even better than it is today, but decades from now the work that Kivunim and other like-minded organizations are doing will be what makes the world better.  We just got back from an introduction to our coexistence education for the year.  The work is waiting to get done, and we have the privilege not to have to wait to do it.  The second exodus is a call to action, a delivery from lack of leadership, communication and education…and it is not a clean break.  It has begun—like the original migration of hominids and the journey of the Israelites—in the desert.

Same Path. New Directions.

The year I am spending in Israel begins tomorrow.  My life is about to change dramatically, with new opportunities to take and decisions to make.  However, it isn't so much that I've arrived at a crossroads as it is that I'm about to enter the Concord Rotary.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this iconic feature of Massachusetts driving (of course it's not the only one of its kind), let me explain myself...

As I leave my home in Acton, I turn left and head east down Route 2A/119.  As I pass the strip malls, martial arts studios, sports fields, Chinese restaurants, gas stations, and bookstores of my youth, I push the gas pedal gently.  The speed limit is 40mph because it's technically a state road--even though it's really got the traffic of a small suburb of Boston.  In some ways this is a metaphor for Acton itself: a small town that values "hustle."  Finally, as I pass the McDonalds that used to be the Burger King--where my dad and I ate dinner every Monday night, and where I hatched the idea of being a karate kid--I can feel that I'm on the edge of town.  In some ways my most vivid memories can be brought alive on the final quarter-mile stretch of this road: there's Ginger Court Restaurant, where my Grandpa Leo and I would share sweet-and-sour chicken and pineapple almost every Saturday until I was eight years old, and of course the gymnastics academy that I abandoned for the karate school behind it when I was five.

As the memories peak, the road ascends and suddenly the speed limit plummets as I approach the Rotary.  I am eighteen years old.  I have just graduated from high school.  I am approaching the Rotary.  I am slowed to a pedal-less roll, waiting in line to merge into it.  I watch as my peers go before me.  I watch them zoom around and exit on their own different trajectories.  I will have to wait.  It's rush hour.  It's August, it's September, it's October.  Most of my friends are taking mid-terms, or observing the High Holy Days in Israel.  I will prepare for my own departure, living at home for a month-and-a-half, studying Hebrew in preparation, reading books, and fulfilling an extreme degree of quality time with my parents that only fits in complementing the year I'm about to spend in Israel.   In some ways I feel I'm already on the Rotary, after all it's really just another part of the same road I'm on.  Any anxiety comes simply from being tired of looking forward to hitting the gas and merging on.  Finally I'm the fifth person in line, and then the third, and the second, and the next...

It's about 11:30pm on October 11th, 2008.  I'm all packed.  I've said some great good-byes.  I've marked a ballot.  I've had some great meals.  And I'm leaving at 7:30 tomorrow morning, bound for Tel Aviv, via JFK.  For the next eight months my home will be Jerusalem, one of the great nuclei of civilization, and the holiest place in the world for the Jewish people.  With fifty other fresh high school graduates, I will be studying Hebrew and Arabic.  I will be learning about the history of the Middle East, following both Jewish and Arab narratives, and the possibilities of peace in the region.  In an International Jewish Civilizations course, I will be exploring some of the lesser-known roots of the Jewish people, visiting Jewish communities in countries that don't usually fit into the American Jew's narrative of his or her people.  

The program is called Kivunim, or "Directions".  As with any rotary (I realize the correct term for many of you may actually be "round-about".), everyone drives in the same direction together, but there are many different possible directions to take after going around.  Built around a commitment to peace and social justice, embracing pluralism, and fostering Jewish identity that sees its global and particular responsibilities in tandem, Kivunim is not just the rarest of privileges and opportunities; it is an almost spookily fitting match, in terms of interests and origins, to the core of who I am and who I hope to be.  Again, tomorrow may not be best described as a crossroads, where one must choose a new path, but as a rotary, where one stays on the road he has been on as it opens up an array of different potential directions.  As I've told many of the people reading this, I never would have taken a year in Israel between high school and college just for the sake of doing so; I am only leaving tomorrow because it feels like a natural outgrowth of who I already am.  Year off?  Nay.  A year to be on like never before.

I want to welcome you all here.  I want to thank you all for reading.  I hope that over the next eight months Routes To Roots provides food for thought, some interesting stories and photos, and opportunities for everyone to reap some benefit and inspiration from experiences and adventures that are meant to be shared with others.  I realize that blogging is sort of a selfish way to communicate, and I look forward to more dynamic conversations and correspondence with you all.

Until then,

Ben