Today was a great day! We started with a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. We had praise songs in Hebrew and English by a guy named Daniel Carmel. Daniel was born out of wedlock to an Orthodox Jewish woman. She gave him up for adoption, and he was adopted by "the greatest parents in the world." When he was an adult, he sought out his birth mother and found her, along with several other siblings. He moved to the town where they lived.
He describes himself as a "typical Israeli" -- school, army, etc. After the Army, and after moving to be near his birth family, he found himself in the nautical trades and since he was living near the Sea of Galilee, he became a skipper on the tourist boats. That's how he got saved -- being on the boats and feeling the Spirit.
So now he has a music ministry on the tour boats. It was pretty awesome, especially where he's translated some popular praise and worship songs into Hebrew. What a great way to start the day!
Then we moved on to the Mount of the Beatitudes, and to the Church of the Beatitudes. From there we went to Caperneum, and then we stopped by the Jordan River. Not only did I get a bottle of water from the River, but I got my foot in and got a picture of me squatting down beside it. I sorta "baptized" myself with water from both the Sea of Galilee and from the Jordan River. I believe in One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism, so the act was purely symbolic, and I did it myself, but one of the most awesome feelings during this whole trip has been seeing remainders of history from the time of Jesus and knowing that you've walked in the same places Jesus walked. With the old Roman and Greek remains, you know that your eyes have fallen on some of the same physical objects that Jesus' physical eyes fell on. That's pretty awesome for me.
After we stopped at the Jordan, we came on through Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Here we're staying at the Hotel Alexander, which is really a hostel. It's owned by a some Palestinian Christians. They have a couple of gift shops, and finally we were able to unleash our shopping beasts. Although I spent a good sum of money, much of it was on an 18K gold cross (my obligatory gold from every country I visit). It's not a Jerusalem Cross, but a simple, hand-crafted, solid 18K gold cross. I like it. I got gifts of anointing oil and holy water and earth for a lot of people, and will probably end up getting more. It's difficult to get stuff for everyone, though. Things are really expensive. But you're helping out Palestinian Christians.
Now, this Palestinan thing. I've blogged before about it. My concern is with the civil rights of the Palestinian people. I've gone through checkpoints, I've seen this humongous wall around Bethlehem, I've learned that there is legalized segregation in the school system, I've seen inequities in housing -- all things that remind me of the segregated US and of South African apartheid. And it's all propagated against people whose land was seized from them, by the people to whom that land was given through the authority, advice, and with the assent of former colonialist rulers .... it just stinks to me.
As I went through Nazareth and Galilee, and I saw the assembly-line way that tourists are pushed through the holy sites, I can't help but wonder how much of the division has economic motivations. After all, Jesus -- like the Palestinians -- is from the south of Israel. If that land were given back to the Palestinian people, what would be the economic impact on the State of Israel? What would be the economic impact on the People of Palestine?
It's just wrong, IMHO, that Jewish people from all around the world can come to Israel and have a right to live there and to discriminate against non-Jewish people who are born and bred there. How is that different from the atrocities of the second world war? With the current state of Israel, people are still being singled out and being afforded a certain status because they are Jewish. The only difference is that they are getting preferential treatment instead of subhuman treatment. But they're not being treated fairly nor impartially in either case. And if you say that they deserve special treatment because of the Holocaust, then I guess I'd wonder, as an African American, why the US spends money supporting the state of Israel rather than providing preferential treatment for African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and all other AMERICANS who've suffered through AMERICAN-made holocausts (6 million Jewish people perished between 1941 and 1944 in Europe. 26 million African Americans perished in the Middle Passage, and the vestiges of social and economic inequities in America still linger). Or if Jewish people deserve preferential treatment in Israel because of the Holocaust, then what do the Palestinans deserve as restitution for the treatment they're now receiving from the State of Israel?
I don't get how a people who have suffered the effects of oppression and discrimination can turn around and then consciously and systematically oppress and discriminate against others. I just don't get it. And I don't buy into the whole "Christian" view that these things have to happen in Israel so the end of the world can come. I don't get that from the Bible I read nor from the God I serve.
*****end rant*****
1 comment:
"How can this be?" you ask. It's an interesting situation - we haven't had our own land in two millennia, so there's been no opportunity to play the oppressor. We've had the role of victim/minority, incorporated it into scripture and folklore and celebration for so long, it has become (nearly) impossible to imagine it any other way.
As Jews, we've had the chance to be the Shadow side of the Christian/West for a long time. Things that other people didn't want to own of themselves got shoved on to us. And then, rather than own up to and acknowledge their own shadows, they tried to exile and exterminate their shadow side by trying to exile and exterminate us.
While we were willing to do this for a long time, even there was a lot of pain and heart ache associated with it, the problem became, well, you start to get too much ego invested in it. If you're ALWAYS the victim, and the other guy is ALWAYS the oppressor, you begin to think that maybe you're a little too special. You think, "there's no way I or mine could have been a monster like those cossacks/SS guards/whatever". But the sad reality is, we're all human. We're all capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil. Nazi or Jew, we are always faced with choice - what will I do with my life? What will I do this day? Will I choose life? Will I choose compassion? Or not?
So, I think God has some other plans for us now. We did almost too good of a job in our role in the last big project He had for us, popularly known as The Holocaust. So, He's mixing it up a little for us these days.
We now have our own land. We aren't the minority any more. Now we get to play the role of oppressor. And Lord knows, some people have really thrown themselves into it.
One of our problem is, so many are so vested in that victim role, the idea that you're no longer the victim? It's completely unrecognizable, much less that you are causing the sort of pain and heart ache that your ancestors used to endure.
Meanwhile, if you're a Jew who calls for justice in the State of Israel you're then condemned and silenced. Ask my Jewish friends who tried to participate in a support of Israel rally who feel that the best way to support the country is to support political change. They were arrested and hauled away.
The answer? I am not entirely sure. With my fellow Jews I can continue to go to little peace events here in our city with our friends of Palestinians. I sent my kids to Middle East Peace Camp. We give money to a Jewish/Palestinian village in Israel. We give money and support to J Street, a peace/justice political lobby in Washington DC.
Whether or not that brings any change? I don't know. It's a good question for this season of Elul. Here we are, in preparation for High Holy Days, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. What are the steps to reconciliation we can take today?
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