Tag Archives: Judaism

“Song of Songs” Revisited: Orthodox Women Struggle with the Ancient Text

by Yvonne Juris
June 10, 2014

JERUSALEM – The Song of Songs, the Biblical text attributed to King Solomon, has long been a source of controversy. Because of its sexual nature and sensual imagery, the ancient rabbis debated whether or not it should be included in the Bible altogether.

The debate gets re-engaged in every generation, but perhaps never more so than now that the book is being taught to young Orthodox Jewish women, who bring both their faith and their modern sensibilities to the task.

For the students’ in Debbie Zimmerman’s class in a woman’s school near Jerusalem called Nishmat, the sexualized content of the book seemed at odds with the righteous lifestyle they have been taught to live.  At a recent session, the young women in the class were strikingly candid in the way which they explored the controversial book. They were educated, learned in the Torah and opinionated. Eager to approach the meaning of the book as well as reconcile it with preconceived notions, there was an egalitarian aspect to the class.

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Students engage in discussion in Debbie Zimmerman’s class. (The Land/Yvonne Juris)

The class became a forum for discussion on what values were more conducive to a healthy marriage, whether it was a sin to have sexual relations before marriage and the libidinous nature of romantic secular poetry.

“Let’s put it this way,” Zimmerman said quoting Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summers’ day?”  She added: “How often do love poems talk about your great sense of humor and how often do they talk about how beautiful you are and how your skin looks?”

“What about ‘let me not to the marriage of true minds,’” said a student. “It’s all about how love is timeless and even if your look changes.” Her statement, a defense made on behalf of the virtues of secular poetry and its potential to extol enduring love, was interrupted midway by another student who approved of her peer’s comment. She took the sentiment a step further and dismissed the Song of Songs as “candy bacon,” a designation she said she gave to the book because of its inclusion in the Torah, even though it was suggestive of promiscuity.
The teacher allowed, or rather resigned herself, to letting the students express their discomfort with the text, which some rabbis prefer to interpret as a metaphorical comparison between a love for God and a romantic love for another person.

“The question is, is Shir Hashirim supposed to disturb us?” a student asked using the Hebrew name for the Song of Songs.

“I think it’s supposed to move us emotionally,” Zimmerman said. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be titillating. I think there’s a difference between being sensuous and titillating and I think it’s supposed to be sensual.”

The questions raised in Nishmat classroom have been a subject of discussion and imagination among scholars. Shir Hashirim or Song of Songs has undergone myriad changes in perception and interpretation, everything from the literal to the allegorical. The literal interpretation confronts the reader with a perplexing question of why such a romantic poem would be placed in the Jewish scriptures, known as the Tanakh.

“Song of Songs has been understood throughout Jewish tradition as an allegory but what the allegory is has many different approaches throughout the ages,” Zimmerman explained after class.

While the concerns regarding the book have more or less been settled, the curriculum surrounding the book varies widely depending on if you are a young Orthodox woman or a young Orthodox man.  The book is not as commonly studied in depth at men’s yeshivas where the study of Talmud takes precedence.

An excerpt from the first part of the Song of Songs, reads as follows:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.
3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.

Some scholars have argued that the romantic poeticism is an extended metaphor, representative of the highest expression of love between God and a person, or God and the temple. It is included in the Christian bible and was adored by St. Bernard of Clairevaux, who interpreted it as a poetic homage to Christ.  But while it is undoubtedly part of the Jewish canon, some scholars were uncomfortable with its sensual and sexualized language that describes the angst and passion of two lovers.

So it comes as no shock that in the quaint school of Nishmat, the book should once again be re-examined and interpreted through the lens of the young women. The rate at which the questions and interjections were raised by the five students during the Bible Studies class, was incessant-creating a cacophony of concerns, objections and opinions that Zimmerman patiently addressed. Many of these opinions circled around the discomfort of reading a book that so openly expressed the sensuality of two lovers.

The roadblocks in this lesson for the women who were in their late teens to early twenties, were par for the learning process, which is aided by thorough debate and engagement, Zimmerman later explained.  It is part of a growing trend for Modern Orthodox education for women who want to further their religious study with detailed examination of the text.

“I encourage my students not to censor their concerns – as long as they’re approaching the topics respectively and if they can’t approach the topic respectfully then they should still approach that,” Zimmerman said.

Students at Nishmat said that it took a different approach to Jewish learning than other schools.

Elizabeth Liberman, 23, grew up in a Jewish household that she described as being moderately observant and “egalitarian.”  Liberman and her husband decided to take some time off to enrich their knowledge of Jewish law after they got married. She has been studying at Nishmat for six months.

“I would say that when I grew up thinking that if women are doing exact thing as men, then that’s a form of sexism, and here it’s a much more realistic look,” said Liberman, 23, who came from Brooklyn to study at Nishmat. “I guess what makes it unique is how high the level of learning is for women.”

The ability for women to study the Torah and Talmud in-depth at this post-high school yeshiva, Nishmat, is part of a growing trend in Modern Orthodox seminaries.  This is a stark contrast to the education afforded to many Haredi or ultra-orthodox women who are supporting their household while the husband studies. According to an article by Orthodox Jewish education reformer Bezalel Cohen, in many Haredi Israeli households in Israel “it is the woman who carries most of the financial burden.”  This is reflected in the classes available to women in orthodox seminaries, which are often geared toward training women for vocational work, such as teaching and jobs in computer science.

Nishmat is creating a conduit for women who want to further their religious studies with advanced classes. According to Sharon Flatto, an associate professor and deputy director of the Graduate Program of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, in-depth learning is a major step forward for women’s religious study and empowerment in the Orthodox Jewish community.

“Even allowing women to study Torah is a revolution. That was a huge concession — even Orthodox giving women the opportunity to learn,” she said.   “Women have kids and that’s a huge pressure and I think that is the unspoken fear.”

For Debbie Zimmerman,  one of the foundational elements to her classroom is the acknowledgement that there are many layers present within the Torah, which also opens up more possibilities for interpretation, and the elusive but ever present concept in Torah study: debate.

The student in Zimmerman’s class who made the candy-bacon comment, added:  “I think its hugely problematic that we are coming to understand Hashem in terms of illicit affairs-and that’s uncomfortable because there are two sides to this –there is the assumption that you can identify with this on some level-but it shouldn’t be if we are being good frum girls-and it’s totally inaccessible if you can’t.”

For this student, the conflict lay in the fact that many of the behaviors she had been told to abstain from in order to live a frum or devout lifestyle that the Jews believe Hashem, or God, decreed in the Book of Moses, were flagrantly rejected in the Song of Songs.

The teacher soothed the students by reminding them that there was a literal and metaphorical connation and cautioned them not to forget the duality of the text. She broke down the book into five parts and delivered a brief lecture.

“This is what the Jewish people do,” Zimmerman said. “They’re scared to get close to love. They’re scared to get closed to God. And then when they do finally do get close to God, there freaking out and they make an egel-hazahav (golden calf).”

Zimmerman wrapped up the lesson, giving an outline on the stages of textual analysis and gave the disclaimer that the book is both “incredibly external and physical,” an aspect of love that people feel for God and for one another.

 

A Tale of Two Gay Cities

by Shayna Freisleben
May 14, 2014
A reveler at Tel Aviv's gay pride parade dances on a municipal bus stop. (Courtesy of Madeline Renov.)

A reveler at Tel Aviv’s gay pride parade dances on a municipal bus stop. (Courtesy of Madeline Renov.)

TEL AVIV — Under the relentless Mediterranean sun, a collection of rainbow flags thrash in the ocean breeze along a strip of oceanfront in Tel Aviv known as Hilton Beach. In fact, the rainbow flags hang on pillars of the beachfront bar, are pinned between the beach’s public restrooms and wave persistently and proudly on the wall dividing sand and the boardwalk.

Hilton Beach, according to Trip Advisor and just about any in-the-know Tel Avivian, is the gay mecca – the unrivaled, most popular destination during Tel Aviv Gay Pride week – in an already open and increasingly gay-friendly city. The array of rainbow flags is likely the most fabric one will see there; Haaretz wrote in February 2014 that Hilton Beach attracts the “fittest, hottest guys in the tightest bathing suits,” a relatively tame description in light of the beach’s unabashed liberalness.

Sixty-three kilometers away, in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, the rainbow flags are much harder to spot. At the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, the city’s largest LGBT community center, the small rainbow flag that hangs in the window is easy to miss. It functions merely as an identifier, not as a rebuke of Jerusalem’s more traditional and religious environment.

The rainbow flags vividly illustrate the two starkly different cultures that have taken shape in Israel’s largest cities. While Israel’s LGBT policies are among the most tolerant in the Middle East, Jerusalem has exhibited slower progress than Tel Aviv in its overall friendliness towards, and acceptance of, gay Israelis. For many LGBT residents and activists in Jerusalem, the city – and public sentiment within the city – still has large strides to make before gays and lesbians achieve full equality.

In the past five years, the Ministry of Tourism in Israel has actively plugged the nation as a popular destination for gay Jews and non-Jews alike. The efforts have been remarkably successful in Tel Aviv – over 100,000 people, tourists included, participated in last year’s gay pride festivities, according to city data. But the tourism ministry’s promotion seemingly bypassed Jerusalem.

The demographic disparities between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in large part, explain the contrasting receptions to LGBT culture. According to 2013 research from the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, a policy think tank in Jerusalem, 30 percent of Jerusalem’s Jewish population consists of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim. Conversely, only 2 percent of Tel Aviv’s Jewish population identifies as ultra-Orthodox, while 61 percent classify themselves as secular.

“In Israel, to be Jewish is to be Orthodox,” said Elinor Sidi, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House, or JOH. “When I came out of the closet 12 years ago, I was taught to believe that if I wanted to live as a complete person, I had to leave religion – there was no place for me in shul.”

Sidi is among the leaders of Jerusalem’s small, but growing LGBT community. She oversees a staff of four at JOH and a dedicated army of volunteers, running initiatives from a free HIV clinic to a bullying support group. A large component of her work at JOH rests in challenging and correcting traditional perceptions of the gay community. The biggest undertaking on Sidi’s plate, however, is the funding and planning of Jerusalem Gay Pride. The raucous gay pride parade in Tel Aviv is a municipal event, Sidi said. In Jerusalem, the event is entirely organized by JOH.

“Tel Aviv Pride is more of a celebration of the rights that we have, a celebration of what we have achieved,” Sidi said. “Jerusalem is smaller – 5,000 people – and it’s a protest and demonstration for the rights that we don’t have yet.”

The solemnity and political nature of gay pride in Jerusalem is appropriate, given the surroundings, Sidi said. According to a 2013 Haaretz poll, only eight percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews believe gays should be afforded equal rights, including the right to marry. Sidi leads demonstrators in a march to the Knesset, Israel’s house of parliament, and uses gay pride each year as an opportunity to “say something.”

Sidi and her colleagues believe that the tide in Jerusalem is beginning to shift, and that members of the Orthodox community are beginning to find that “gay” and “religious” are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sidi cites handfuls of members of JOH’s support groups, who feared being marginalized upon coming out, but were instead met with tacit recognition by their religious leaders.

Today, an evolving Israeli society confronts a confluence of progressive movements – beyond LGBT rights, including gender equality and religious freedom. Some scholars believe that vocal, and seemingly omnipresent, demands for social justice in Israel, such as installation of a pluralist prayer area at the Western Wall or inclusion of Reform and Conservative rabbis within Israel’s chief rabbinate, will only benefit the LGBT cause.

“Gay Israelis have forced the local variance of Orthodoxy to at least acknowledge that LGBTs exist,” said Lee Walzer, an American attorney and author of “Between Sodom and Eden: A Gay Journey Through Today’s Changing Israel.” “What they’re struggling with, though, is how to acknowledge it.”

The politicization of Judaism in Israel further complicates the issue of legalizing gay marriage, according to Walzer. Under Israeli law, Orthodoxy maintains a “religious monopoly over marriage and divorce,” and civil marriages are illegal. Walzer is skeptical of significant progress for Israel’s gay rights movement without overhauling the state’s religious establishment.

“I would not say never,” Walzer said. “But it’s not going to happen any time soon.”

The current climate for gay life in Israel, religious gay life included, has shifted considerably since the initial publication of Walzer’s book, in 2000. At that time, gay rights were seldom discussed in the United States. LGBT matters were, however, a part of Israel’s public discourse, albeit in concentrated pockets of the country – like Tel Aviv.

“The stereotype was that Tel Aviv is just this hedonistic, Mediterranean city that parties non-stop, and in Jerusalem, they learn Torah all day long,” Walzer said. “Jerusalem today is very schizophrenic – there are secular areas and gay communities – but it doesn’t reflect Israeli trends, and to me, it doesn’t feel part of the Israeli experience.”

Even so, manifold outlets for gay, religious Israelis have emerged in Jerusalem within the past decade. The Jerusalem Open House, in fact, helped spawn and cultivate gay religious support groups that ultimately developed into non-governmental organizations, including Havruta, for gay religious men, Bat Kol, for gay religious women and al-Qaws, for gay Palestinians. The groups function as a viable middle ground for religious members of the LGBT community, and are becoming increasingly present and influential in gay Israeli society.

“We represent something else,” Daniel Jonas, a chairman of Havruta, told the Daily Beast last year. “More moderate, more communal.”

Sidi, of the Jerusalem Open House, considers the ingratiation of religious gay groups into mainstream Israeli society as beneficial and necessary. It is, she said, perhaps the best way for the Orthodox establishment in Israel to gain exposure to members of the gay community, and ultimately accept gay congregants and followers.

“The Reform and Conservative movements were really leading the change, and Orthodox rabbis saw that gay reform rabbis were being ordained,” Sidi said. “When a person comes out today, they are not necessarily forced to leave the community. There is still a place in front of God for them. It’s going to take [the Orthodox] a lot of time, but they’re getting there.”

Don Goor is among the gay reform rabbis who have potentially impacted the shifting Orthodox approach to homosexuality. Goor, 56, made aliyah, or immigrated to Israel, in June 2013 with his husband, a Reform cantor. He had previously been a pioneering figure in Reform Judaism in Los Angeles, Calif., where he was among the first gay rabbis to be appointed senior clergy of a synagogue.

When Goor was named senior rabbi of Temple Judea, it was “the country’s largest mainstream synagogue to have an openly gay man as its spiritual leader,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in 1997.

“I’m a rabbi who happens to be gay,” Goor said to the Times then. “I’m comfortable discussing homosexuality. There’s nothing that’s hidden.”

Today, as an “oleh hadash,” or new immigrant, to Jerusalem, Goor’s “Jewishness” is not necessarily impeded by the overwhelming presence of Orthodoxy in the city, he said, but his approach to daily life is decidedly more secular. He elects not to wear a yarmulke on a daily basis, and his new job no longer places him in a pulpit, yet in a traditional office environment, coordinating educational trips to Israel for American Jewish youth groups.

“I try to my best to stay unaffected by Haredi impositions,” Goor said. “It’s not the judgment or the lack of acceptance that I care about – it’s when Haredi rabbis cause an uproar over the new cinema being open on Saturdays.”

A ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2006 mandated that Israel’s government recognize all foreign same-sex marriages. It was touted as a landmark achievement for gay rights in Israel. As a result, Goor and his husband, Evan, maintain the same rights as heterosexual spouses in Israel. Their respective Israeli identity cards read “MARRIED.”

But there are instances, Goor concedes, in which he and his husband wonder if they would be better off living in Tel Aviv, where the gay community is more lively and where the distinction between those who are religious and those who are not feels less severe.

“Something about Jerusalem just feels right,” Goor said.

 

A long distance Hindu-Jewish love story

by Indrani Basu
May 12, 2014
A "HinJew" wedding ceremony. (Photo by Aneta Mak, via smashingtheglass.com)

A “HinJew” wedding ceremony. (Photo by Aneta Mak, via smashingtheglass.com)

NEW YORK – Last April, Josh, 37 at the time, watched his wife Priya, 34, convert to Judaism at a Reform synagogue in midtown Manhattan. He was in Israel, watching the proceedings over FaceTime on an iPad that Priya that had propped up on a high table under the domed arc of the synagogue. He lived in Jerusalem, she in New York. He was Jewish, she was Hindu. They had been married for two months.

As Priya stood patiently, waiting for the Rabbi to finish blessing her, she felt the now-familiar bout of nervousness grip her. Her parents had no idea she was converting. “They would have my head in a platter in an instant,” she said in an interview earlier this year in February, almost a year since her conversion. “I probably will never tell them.”

Out of respect for her parents, Priya, not her real name, asked that pseudonyms be used in this article for both her and her husband.

While Priya may be part of the miniscule number of Asian-American Hindus who have switched their faith – a mere seven percent according to a 2012 Pew study – she is also part of the larger demographic of the same group (91 percent of Hindus) who “reject the notion that their religion is the one, true faith.” The study also indicates that 90 percent of Hindus say, “[T]here is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.”

Supporting this theory is the explosion of Indo-Judaic blogs and online discussions that have popped up over the last few years. Hindu-Jewish couples are trying to find ways to integrate both religions in their marriage, sometimes taking advice from couples that have gone before them. In fact, there is even a term coined for it – “HinJew” – and someone has already written a book on the phenomenon of Hindu-Jewish unions.

Priya goes to synagogue on weekends, and also celebrates all Hindu religious festivals. Her parents can never know of her Jewish life, and Josh respects that. “I’m totally with her,” he said. Likewise, her synagogue can’t know that she is still a practicing Hindu. The rabbi would never have completed her conversion had she known that Priya would maintain her old faith.

Though Josh is not religious, he made it clear to Priya from the very beginning that she would need to embrace Judaism if they were to hope to marry, he said. “It was difficult for me to bring up,” he said. “But we eventually got married and she has learnt more than me about Jewish faith.”

Priya, who works in a hospital, had been studying the Torah for the past year and a half. She would run to class once a week after her shift at work, barely catching the last half hour of each session.

She had taken the first half of the day off that particular Tuesday, telling her colleagues at the hospital that she had an “appointment.” At the synagogue a panel of three rabbis screened her one last time to decide if she was ready for the conversion. Half an hour later, she was led to a neighboring building where an attendant helped prepare her for immersion in the mikvah pool. Priya had to take off all her clothes, even her wedding ring, before she plunged into the pool that recalls the “watery state” that each of us was born from. She emerged ritually cleansed, ready to embrace a new stage of life. The final stage of her conversion came in front of the Torah, where she was given a blessing and accepted by the congregation as a Jew.

Priya and Josh had met in Israel in 2007, through a mutual friend. When the friend was suddenly unavailable to travel with Priya, Josh volunteered to show her his country.

Priya still remembers great dinners, whirlwind shopping trips, and a beautiful day at the Dead Sea. As they watched the sound and light show on their last day in Beit Jann, Priya decided to extend their trip by three more days. Three weeks later, Josh came to New York.

“She took my hand and then we became friends,” said Josh, of his first visit. Since then, Josh would visit New York twice every year, many times spending a month with Priya before going back. The flexibility of his job as a software engineer allowed it to be part vacation, part work. Priya, who had fewer vacation days, would visit him in Israel for one week twice a year, celebrating all Hindu and Jewish holidays with him and their friends.

What about the rest of the nine and a half months? “There would be lots of Skype dates,” Priya laughed. “We would need to wake up really early, and sleep really late.”

Sometimes they would stay up all night.

Google Talk, Whatsapp, FaceTime were all their co-conspirators. Weekends would be spent lounging at home, watching television shows together, yet apart. Their favorites included “Homeland”, “NCIS” – all with Hebrew subtitles for Josh.  Saturday afternoon was “date night,” where they would, each a glass of wine in hand, watch movies streamed online at the same time, sharing jokes on Skype.

In the August of 2011, three years since their first meeting, they planned a trip to the Grand Canyon. Josh had bigger plans in mind. As their helicopter landed near the mile-deep canyon, he bent one knee. Priya wasn’t expecting it. “I was surprised that she was surprised,” Josh later said, during an interview last month. Priya told Josh that he would have to ask her father’s permission before she could agree to marry him. Though her family had lived in the U.S. for generations, they had strong Hindu values, and convincing them to agree to an inter-religious alliance wouldn’t be easy.

Priya’s father wasn’t an exception – the Pew survey also shows that Hindus have the lowest intermarriage rate among all Asian Americans. “Nine-in-ten married Hindus (94 percent) have a spouse who is also Hindu,” according to the study. Only about a third of Hindu parents said they would be “very comfortable” if their child married someone with different religious beliefs, according to the survey.

It wasn’t until almost a year later that Priya’s father approved. He had visited Josh’s family while on an overseas trip, making a stop in Israel just to meet them. Convinced that his daughter was marrying into a good family, finally gave the green light. How did they wait so many months? “We just kept the faith,” Priya said, with Josh nodding in agreement.

Their wedding – in February last year – was an extravagant affair. Priya’s mother, who had been planning her eldest daughter’s wedding since Priya turned 25, had everything in place. Their big fat Hindu wedding had three celebrations over the course of two days. Josh wore the traditional Hindu kurta, a long, flowing shirt to his knees and a regal golden turban. His three sisters wore sequined saris, long pieces of intricately designed cloth, pinned and pleated around their tall Jewish frames. “It was like a fairytale,” said Priya. “I felt like a princess.”

While the traditional ceremony itself was a small, private family affair at Priya’s east coast home, the festivities two weeks later included a raucous music event, a six-hour long wedding the next morning, and a reception party that went on late into the night.

As Josh walked into the wedding venue, his baraat (wedding entourage) included only his siblings and a couple of friends from Israel. Priya’s friends and family, charmed by Josh, rushed to join him as he entered the venue, propping him up on their shoulders as he arrived to a deafening welcome. What followed was a day-long whirlwind of Hindu rituals – exchanging garlands, reading out vows in front of the holy pyre, getting blessings from elders and exchanging rings – all under a makeshift canopy, much like the Jewish chuppah.

“It was at once unique, strange and new,” said Josh. “All the colors, the length of each ceremony – it was all very different from a Jewish wedding, which is short and not as interesting.” His parents and the rest of his family watched it on livestream from Jerusalem.

Josh stayed in the U.S. a few extra weeks before returning to Israel, this time as one half in a long distance marriage. Now that Priya is Jewish, the couple is scheduled to have a Jewish ceremony in Israel later this year, for Josh’s family and friends.

Their eventual children will be raised with both faiths, the couple has decided. “We’ll let them decide when they are ready,” said Josh. “We won’t impose either of our beliefs,” said Priya.

For now, the couple celebrates Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in Israel, along with the Israeli New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which is usually around the same time. Holi, which is a Hindu spring festival, is usually celebrated in New York along with Purim, the fourteenth day of the month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar.

But how much longer do they plan to remain living across continents? What of children, and a family home? Not too long now, if things work out.

Josh is in New York, filling his immigration papers. Initially, the couple had planned on moving to Israel. But Priya, who plans to go back to college this fall, will have limited career prospects in the Holy Land, so they’re hoping to make New York their home, at least for now.

 

The couple is eagerly awaiting news from the immigration services. “Unless I’m very miserable, we’ll be staying in New York,” said Josh, in an interview last month after Friday services at the synagogue. The couple was meeting the same Rabbi who had helped Priya through her conversion process. As they walked out of what is now “their” synagogue in midtown Manhattan, Josh said, “I believe that the connection between us will make it, wherever we are.”

For some Ethiopian Jews, Zionism is a dream that failed

by Ernest Chi Cho
May 10, 2014
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Ethiopian Jews kissing the ground upon arrival at Ben-Gurion International Airport. (Photo via www.jta.org)

NEW YORK — From a native Ethiopian kid to an Israeli national and now a citizen of the United States, eejhy Baharny, 38, is clearly a woman of many nationalities, but one stands out most for her: “If you ask me where I am from, I’ll tell you I’m from Ethiopia.”

Her transition through these countries, she explains, was a complex journey of excitement and frustrations, at the center of which was religion. “Our people had dreamt of Jerusalem – the Promise Land – for thousands of years.  We just left everything behind and started going. It was like a dream come true when we finally arrived.”

But the dream was tarnished, Baharny said, by “ 30 years of discrimination and prejudices against Ethiopian Jewry in Israel.” She has found happiness in the United States where she met and married a Caribbean man and is raising her two children.

Baharny is one of about 1,000 Ethiopian Jews who live in the United States, 600 of them in the New York area. She has made her home in Harlem, where she runs an organization called Beta Israel of North America (BINA). BINA, says Baharny, was created with three goals in mind: (1) to foster the continuity of the Ethiopian Jewish (Beta Israel) cultural heritage and promote understanding of its traditions and history among Jews and non-Jews; (2) to empower Ethiopian Jews in the United States, Israel, and Ethiopia, and (3) to provide assistance to Ethiopian Jews who come to the U.S.

In sum, she added, “BINA is an initiative by us to empower us.”

The organization, which Baharny says is not membership-based and is open to people who want to enrich themselves about diversity within the Jewish world, is struggling financially.

“We’ve gone from a budget of about $100,000 to about $40,000 but that can’t discourage us from doing the work we set out to do,” she said.

According to BINA’s website, the organization regularly holds educational workshops with curriculum and lesson plans for children and teenagers about Ethiopian Jewish culture and tradition. It also has cultural events at the center of which are Ethiopian coffee ceremony and Ethiopian arts and crafts.

“We project educational movies and documentaries about Ethiopian Jews, meet on Jewish holidays to share a meal,” Baharny added. “Every March, for example, we have Ethiopian Shabbat weekend experience where we spend an entire weekend with the Ethiopian cultural organization in Connecticut.”

The organization, Baharny said, has been able to raise money with the help of a Harlem councilwoman, Inez E. Dickens, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York Jewish Community Relations Council,  Ethiopian Airlines and  individual donors have also been helpful, she said.

Baharny was only four years old in 1980 when her family, like many other Ethiopian Jews, decided to leave their native Ethiopia for Israel.

The State of Israel recognizes this form of immigration as a right for all Jews in the world to return to their Promise Land  – Israel – in fulfillment of the Bible’s promise to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The immigration is called Aliyah in Hebrew.

Aliyah is either done voluntarily for ideological, economic and spiritual reasons, or because of religious persecution, as was the case with most Holocaust survivors from Europe.  About three million Jews from more than 90 countries around the world are said to have immigrated to Israel since its establishment in 1948.

By 1964, some 240,000 African Jews had escaped the nationalist struggles in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Egypt, and come to Israel. But the first major wave of aliyah from Ethiopia happened in the mid 1970s. Later in November 1984, the Israeli government launched Operation Moses – a two months series of airlifts – during which more than 7,000 Jews were flown from refugee camps in Sudan to Israel.  A second series dubbed Operation Solomon happened on May 24th, 1991 when 34 aircrafts transported 14,325 Jews from Addis Ababa in one day. Since then, Ethiopian Jews have continued to immigrate to Israel.

Prior to the well organized and widely publicized Operation Solomon and Operation Moses, aliyah was a herculean task for most Ethiopian Jews– including Baharny’s family.

Beejhy Baharny 001

Beejhy Baharny. (The Land/Ernest Chi Cho)

“It was tough,” Beejhy Baharny said. “Long distances on foot and on horseback, day and night. We rested in tents and with local villagers we came across who, fortunately, helped re-stock us with water and food as we trekked on.”

The difficult four-week journey to Sudan was even more challenging because Baharny’s mother had just given birth and the baby was barely two weeks old. Four-year old Baharny was the first of three children at the time.

They had received letters from family members who had arrived in Israel and were writing to encourage them to make the journey. They had also been informed that some benevolent individuals and non-governmental organizations in the United States were sending financial and human resources to help Ethiopian Jews migrate to Israel. However, due to the fragile diplomatic relations between Israel and Ethiopia at the time, they could not board planes from Addis Ababa. Instead, they had to travel, surreptitiously and without vehicles, to Sudan where they’ll be placed on a waiting list.

The waiting lasted three years.

“We had to start life anew, in a new place, in a new country,” Baharny said.

Meanwhile the 1983-1985 widespread famine that hit Ethiopia and Eritrea increased the number of Ethiopians in Sudan as many arrived as refugees. Baharny’s family, like many others had to conceal their identity as religious migrants en route to Israel, as that could drag Sudan into the not-so-good diplomatic ties between Ethiopia and Israel.

Help from the Israeli government and some North American non-governmental organizations that had pushed for the recognition of Ethiopian Jews by Israel finally got to Baharny’s family and community in Sudan. It was time to leave.

“They came at night,” she recalled, “took us in a Land Rover and drove through Sudan’s capital –Khartoum – then through Uganda, then to Kenya.”

The vehicle carried more than 15 people, including Baharny’s siblings, cousins, parents, grandmother, and other villagers. They had no identification documents with them. So the driver had to bribe their through the two weeks journey to Nairobi where they would board a plane to Israel.

“It was a Scottish driver and each time we got to a military check point, the white man would give the soldiers some money and we’d be allowed to go,” Baharny said.

They finally made it to Nairobi and boarded a plane to Israel. Baharny, who was now seven years old, knew what was going on but their eventual arrival in Israel did not mean the same for her as it meant to the older folks. “It was a very exciting emotional moment for the adults.”

Baharny explains that landing in Israel itself was the highpoint of the whole dream. Then, the process of integration began. As she looks back, the 38-year-old says certain things about the way they were initiated into their new country did not seem right.

“They just take you and give you a new name without your consent,” she said.

Her first name was changed to Yaffa, a Hebrew word for pretty or beautiful. But as she grew older, Baharny rebelled against the new name: “I just dismissed it completely out of my record.”

Baharrny says she also found it awkward that they were kept in absorption centers that isolated them from the rest of the world, sewing the seed for segregation.

“ I wish it was done differently so it wouldn’t create this gap where Israelis always refer to us –including those born in Israel – as Ethiopians, not Israelis, even though we grow there, we go to school and serve in the army.”

Ruthy Shenkol, a 28-year old Brooklyn-based Ethiopian Jew who was born and raised in Israel, said that her experience was different. “I never experienced any form of racism or discrimination in Israel. But I have a lot of friends that have experienced it.”

Shenkol who moved to the United States two months ago, explained that the “Ethiopian experience” in Israel might also depend on what part of the country you live in.

“I guess it was different for me because we lived in a small city of mainly Ethiopian Jews, where everyone knows everyone,” she said.

Another Ethiopian Jew, David Mihret, 49, came to Israel through Sudan at the age of 19. “The journey to Israel was awfully hard,” said Mihret in an email. “We lost many family members and relatives on the way. It was full of sorrow and pain but also full of courage. This journey had only shown the intensity of the Zionism in our life, the love of the Israeli land.”

Mihret who still lives in Israel said he doesn’t really feel discriminated against and that Ethiopian Jews are sometimes treated better than other immigrants, but that, “there are people in the Israeli society that aren’t willing to accept us just because of our culture, folkways and the color of our skin.”

Racial and cultural differences made it harder for them to integrate the Israeli society, Mihret added

One of Baharny’s worries was that their Judaism was questioned. “ They had this whole issue that we were not Jewish enough and that we had to convert. That was a big shock and disappointment. How can you say to people who have been practicing Judaism for thousands of years that it’s not good enough and should be done your way?”

Galia Sabar is a professor of African studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel. In a telephone interview, Sabar, who has been researching and has published many academic papers about Ethiopian Jews, explained that until the Ethiopian Jews moved to Israel, their Judaism was very different from what other (white) Jews practiced:

“Their Judaism is one that is more pre-Second Temple,” she said. “In other words, they were not up-to-date with the changes made after the destruction of the Second Temple.”

Sabar gave examples of how Ethiopian Jews celebrated holidays that other Jews did not celebrate and vice versa. She also noted that among other things, Ethiopian Jews had a different style of dress.

In 1973, the chief rabbi at the time recognized Ethiopians simply as Jews and once they got to Israel they were automatically granted citizenship, Sabar said.  However when they arrived in large numbers in the beginning of the 80s, they had to convert.

“They were forced to go through a symbolic dipping in a river as some Jewish women would do after her period or before her marriage, and the men were asked to go through a symbolic circumcision, although it was more of cutting and spilling out some blood as a symbol than actually circumcising since most of them were already circumcised in Ethiopia,” she said.

The modern Judaism forced on them was a religious and cultural shock to Ethiopian Jews. Many rejected it and were extremely annoyed and felt fundamentally insulted. There were huge demonstrations in 1985 and 1986 against these forced rules. Unfortunately they had to surrender because the Israeli Chief rabbi did not give up on that. This is part of a huge debate currently going on in Israel about different ways to practice Judaism, a debate that is not exclusive to Ethiopian modes of Judaism.

“This was not unique to them,” Sabar said. “The Yemenite Jews; Indian Jews etc also practiced a different kind of Judaism.“

Baharny remembers some of their Jewish practices that were strange to other Jews. “When a female gets her period, they build a special hut for her – and this is written in the Torah – to stay there until after seven days when she bathes in a river and comes back home.   So during that period you don’t cook, your mom and aunts will take care of you.”

This, Baharny explained, happened on a monthly basis.  It was a strong practice within the Jewish community in Ethiopia, which did not exist in Israel. “When we arrived Israel that did not exist. They never practiced it.  Women have their period and stay in the same house, cook, touch each other etc. It was kind of funny to see people who did that and turn around to say you’re not Jewish enough. Sabar acknowledged that there is racism in Israeli society. Ethiopians often face difficulties, for example, when they want to rent an apartment.

“So nobody would tell them if they’re not renting because they’re black. But they’ve done many tests on this like calling without identifying themselves by name and are told the apartment is vacant but once they go there in person the apartment is suddenly ‘occupied.’”

The Tel Aviv University professor noted that it would be an overstatement to say that discrimination in Israel is only targeting Ethiopian Jews. “It goes in all directions. It’s just sometimes a matter of this or that group not wanting the other in their school or wherever they believe to be their space.”

There have also been reports of Ethiopian Jews discriminating against fellow African immigrants in Israel. They draw a very clear line between them and other African migrants and asylum seekers. Sabar says this agonizes her because some of them are putting this line on people from their own country.

“They see themselves as Jews and Israeli citizens, mistreating other people that share the same culture as them,” she said. “ They treat other Africans on basis of nationality and legal status, and there’s hardly any pity or sympathy or caring.

It’s understandable but I think it’s very upsetting in many ways.”

Baharny evidences Sabar’s point in the following words.

“ A lot of Israelis mistake Ethiopian Jews for refugees from other African countries. There have been situations where Ethiopian Israeli citizens are beaten up because they look like Eritrean or other Africans…”

All the challenges notwithstanding, there have been some significant success stories among the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel, Sabar said. “There are only 100,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel out a population of about 7 million, yet look at the number members of parliament, lawyers, physicians, officers in the IDF and the beauty queens etc.”

Mindful of these success stories, Baharny clearly exhibits mixed feelings about Israel. “I grew up in Israel. Israel did contribute a lot to who I am. My family is there, everybody: my aunts, my cousins, my parents, my brothers etc. I still love Israel but Israel needs to change the way they treat Ethiopian Jewry.”

Baharny settled in New York  after spending three years in the army and then traveling in many countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. She created BINA in 2004, four years after she settled in the United States.

Mamadou Diouf, the director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University and a professor of African studies and history, said that  it is not unusual to find many Ethiopians whose reaction to the Israeli experience is similar with Baharny’s.

“They are building an identity based on their Ethiopian Legacy, in reaction to the realities of racism and difficult integration in Israel.”

Diouf says the journey to Israel and the challenges they face helped remind them of their cultural and color differences, and that no one but them can truly value their uniqueness.

Baharny says she is happy, however, that a lot of Ethiopian people in Israel often go back to Ethiopia because they’re proud of their Ethiopian heritage. “Many are returning to Ethiopian and starting businesses. Some have gone back to Ethiopia permanently. You cannot have dual citizenship within Ethiopia but you can have an ID card and are treated like any other Ethiopian. The only thing you cannot do is vote.”

Mihret said that he has gone back to Ethiopian three times and for three different reasons. The first time was just for tourism but the second time was to figure out ways of helping other young Ethiopian Jews to migrate to Israel at a suitable age for them to study in Israeli schools. As for the third trip, Mihret said:

“I took Ethiopian high school students to Ethiopia to teach them about the history and the culture of the Ethiopian Jewish people, believing visiting the country where their parents were born and raised will help them know and understand the rich history of the Jewish people in Ethiopia and Ethiopians in general.”

As for Shenkol, she has never been to Ethiopia but plans to do so in future. She says they have no family in Ethiopian but that Ethiopia dear to their hearts. “My father visited Ethiopia many years ago but my mom is plane-frightened. I will like to go in the future

Sabar is hopeful that Israel is going to change and become more conducive for people like Baharny or Baharny’s children:

“All in all, I think a vast majority of them; especially the young ones are finding their way within the Israeli society. It will take another generation or two. But I don’t think it can be compared, for example, to the situation of blacks in America or blacks in other western countries and you see more and more really very successful stories of Ethiopian Jews.”

 

A community that fears God but not the state

by Kali Kotoski
May 8, 2014

A Haredi man reads from the Torah at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. (The Land/Kali Kotoski)

JERUSALEM — The ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She’arim often seems walled off and fortified, almost like a city unto itself. Signs in Hebrew and English remind visitors that the neighborhood is not a tourist site; they ask that women dress modestly and that photography should be avoided. The streets are narrow. The entrances leading down into the inner courtyard where the majority of the residents live, are unmarked and easily hidden. When this community was first built in 1874, entrances were gated and locked to keep the outside world at bay while a community was left to tradition, religion and God. But even though the locks and gates are long gone, the sense of insularity remains.

However, with the recent “draft law” passed in early March by the Israeli Knesset by vote of 65-1, with opposition leaders in abstention, the ultra-Orthodox believe that their historic way of life is under attack. The bill will change the exemption the ultra-Orthodox men and women have customarily used since the founding of Israel in 1948 to circumvent service in the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF.

During a rally on Sunday, Mar. 1, a reported 300,000 ultra-Orthodox men protested the legislation calling it an abomination. They clogged the streets of Jerusalem in a show of defiance.

Although the law has since passed, the devotion towards rebellion is still brewing at the surface. The ultra-Orthodox are know as Haredim, Hebrew for those who fear God. They fear God but they do not fear the State, as the law would punish those who would be considered draft dodgers.

At Manny’s Bookstore in Mea She’arim, Marlene Samuel works behind the engraving counter where she delicately cuts sheets of gold and silver paper to stamp customers names into books. She is a short wiry 64-year-old French woman who looks down through her thick glasses as she arranges the copper letters on a press. Depending on what has been engraved into the leather book cover thus far, she chooses a precious metal to match. Her bracelets resonate as she makes swift concentrated movements.

A Haredi man looks on while immigrant workers fix electrical conduit in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Sha’rim. (The Land/Kali Kotoski)

“In a democracy a secular government can’t force young Yeshiva boys into the military,” she said as her husband looked on from the payment counter. Yeshiva is a Jewish school, or seminary, that focuses on the study of the Torah and Talmud. To the Haredi community, the study of the Torah is the highest station of worldly existence. The vast majority of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel devote their early adulthood and sometimes beyond that to learning the laws of God, which results in their reluctance, or downright refusal, to take part in military service. Haredi women also do not serve in the army, although they are more likely to find work outside of the home to support their families. Some Haredi men find employment in shops and businesses within the community to supplement their wives’ income.

Samuel echoed a popular Haredi position when she added: “The army should be a professional army. They should have better pay and the draft should be abolished.”

A female customer, who would not give her name, spoke up confrontationally, “But the Haredi don’t work and they make the woman do all work. What do the Haredi contribute to Israel?”

But Samuel came to their defense. “The Torah is the driving force that has kept Jews together over thousands of years. This law undermines what it means to be Jewish.”

Samuel went on to say how the rift that has been formed within Israeli and Jewish society is a polarization that has been coming from the far left. In her opinion this law will only further fragment the country by pushing the left and right further away from each other. “It will make unity impossible and these are dangerous times for Jews.”

One of primary schisms between mainstream Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews is over the identity of the Jewish state, how to propagate the state, and the welfare of the state.

Avi Shafran, a Haredi rabbi who is director of public affairs at Agudath Israeli of America, drew a distinction between nationalism and religion. “The Haredi community in Israel is dedicated above all to Judaism, and so other values like nationalism, which is not a religious one, holds no great importance,” he said.

When the Jewish state was founded on Zionist-secular-socialist principles, the Haredi population was exempt because it was believed that their culture and tradition would fade away through the impact of modernity. They were deemed to be an apolitical minority. Yet, the trends have changed.

Within Israel there is a reported population of 750,000 Haredi Jews out of a total population of 7.5 million. They have an annual growth rate of 6 percent. A projection by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics forecasts that the Haredi population of Israel could number 1.1 million in 2019. Haredi families have an average of 6.7 children, which is three times the national average, according to the Brookdale Institute.

“The argument for drafting Haredim is based on things like sharing the burden and normalizing Haredi society. It is an affront to their culture, or, better, an attempt at social engineering,” said Shafran. To him it is manipulation by the state that is a direct affront to God. The ideal of nationalism is something that the Haredi do not hold as an ideal. Haredim see the Jew’s purpose in life as keeping to the Torah’s laws, acts of kindness, giving charity, studying the Torah and creating Jewish families to further those religious ideals.

Two children at a Haredi day school in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Sha’rim. (The Land/Kali Kotoski)

According to Shafran the only way to bring about social change and integration, would be if the rabbis supported a grassroots legislation that did not break any rabbinical laws. However, he does not see this happening because the politics behind change has made the Haredim feel marginalized to the extent that they will resist the state, at all costs, even to the extent of widespread civil disobedience.

“The entire attempt to draft the Haredi is misguided,” he said.

Outside of Manny’s Bookstore school had just been released and young girls in long dresses walk with their backpacks over their shoulders. A Haredi man looked on as two foreign workers on a ladder cut the metal sheathing for electrical wires as the sparks fall to the ground and coolly disappear. There were clotheslines stretched loosely across above the street from balcony to balcony. A woman was hanging damp clothes in the sun. Droplets of water fell down to the street.

Moishon dov Freedlander had finished his studies and was walking along the street, stopping to read the posters that are plastered all over the corrugated sheet metal fencing. He is a 20-year-old yeshiva student who was born in New Jersey, but who moved to Jerusalem with the rest of his family when he was two. He has only known a life in Israel.

“If they try to draft me I will just move back to America. I will stay there until I am 26 or 27. They can’t make me serve in the army and break my Torah studies,” he said.