The First Aliyah of Ezra HaLevi

EzraHaLevi.com

2010-07-04T08:33:00.002+03:00

This blog is old. EzraHaLevi.com is where I migrated.

Unfortunately, most of the Israel National News links to my articles and photo essays are now dead. They moved to a new content management system and someone forgot to reconnect the tubes. One day I'll reconstitute the best of those somewhere.

Meanwhile, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, Namesake and Google.

My latest project is BusinessLeads.com

(Updated: 11.16.11)

Missiles and Miracles in Netivot

2009-01-04T20:01:00.002+02:00

Went to Netivot today. They have watched the neighboring town of Sderot be bombarded for years, while remaining just out of range of the Kassam rockets fired by the Muslims of Gaza.

The following is a short photo essay of a two-family home that was struck by a Grad-type Katyusha rocket. The house was blown apart, but one family was away and the other was spared - the husband was at synagogue and the wife stepped out for a moment and suffered only a light shrapnel wound to the foot.

Click here for the photo essay.

Headline: And Now: Be'er Sheva

2009-01-01T05:38:00.001+02:00

And now: Be'er Sheva

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

Features on A7

2008-05-30T00:23:00.002+03:00

Today was my last day at Arutz-7 doing regular news shift work. You can find my photo features and photo essays here. They will continue. Here are some of my favorite recent ones.

Many of the photos are by Joshua Shamsi, a good man and a great taker of pictures. Click here for his site and exhibit "Land, Love, Loss".

'Jerusalem Rebuilt' Viewpoint Magazine

2008-04-06T07:47:00.000+03:00

This article was a pleasure to write, a joy to shoot. Click on each page to view.

Where have I gone?

2007-11-01T22:03:00.000+02:00

Seem to have neglected this blog. I write regularly at IsraelNN.com and Kumah.org. My photo and video features can be found here. I shall return to this blog someday soon. Keep it on your RSS readers (get an RSS reader if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Speaking of RSS, you can add this link to get an RSS feed of my daily news stories. Much is from correspondent in the field, but at least one a day has original interviews and material I dug up.

All Shuk Up. Taking You There.

2006-12-11T23:21:00.000+02:00

The ultimate shuk Photo Essay

Settlers, Some Evicted Twice Now, Decide to, Well, Settle

2006-12-02T23:30:00.000+02:00

In An-Nakab. Y'know, the Negev...

Former residents of the Gush Katif towns of Atzmona and Netzarim (some former residents of the Sinai as well) attended a ceremony Monday inaugurating the establishment of two new towns in the middle of the Negev desert they will now settle.

“Well there is sand, just like Gush Katif,” joked one attendee bitterly, “but seems like a much longer walk to the ocean.”

The new communities are located in the Halutza Sands, an area in the southwest Negev that is completely barren and uninhabited. Signs leading to the ceremony begin at the end of the highway running south along the Israeli side of the Gaza border, parallel to the infamous Philadelphi Corridor, through which weapons and explosives have been flowing since the Disengagement.

The signs point down a road bulldozed into the sandy desert. Miles go by and by the time the first “Halutzit A to be Built Here” sign is visible, nothing but sand can be seen in every direction. [...]

Here's the whole thing.

The part of this whole deal that was missed by most is that this land was already offered by Ehud Barak in exchange for the settlement blocs now being included in the borders being drawn by the Partition Wall.

Azra Halwi, reporting from the disputed An-Nakab Desert.

Happy Sigd!

2006-11-23T13:59:00.000+02:00

Happy Sigd!

I am very proud of this photo feature. Much thanks to photographer Josh Shamsi for reminding me that the holiday was just days away.

Unintentional Settlers

2006-11-22T23:58:00.000+02:00

(A concrete bunker in a school yard so children can quickly take cover when the missile warning system sounds)

It was a foggy morning in Sderot. The early-warning system sounded, as it does most days, during the time when children are setting off to school and residents are traveling to work.

The system sounded. "Tzeva adom. Tzeva adom. Tzeva adom…"When first installed, the system sounded the Hebrew words shahar adom, meaning “red dawn,” but parents complained that their children named Shahar were feeling stigmatized at being associated with the dreaded rockets. Now the system broadcasts tzeva adom, meaning “color red.”

The system usually provides the men, women and children of the city with 15 seconds to stop what they are doing and scramble for cover. Shopping carts are left in supermarket aisles, phone conversations interrupted, childrens’ baths abruptly stopped, and prayers are recited alongside the sudden tears of children and adults like.

Bystanders said the alarm only offered about four seconds’ warning Wednesday morning, when the rocket fell straight from the sky. Unlike the arc trajectory of the Katyusha missiles fired at northern Israel this summer, Kassam rockets fall straight down once their fuel propulsion is used up. Northern residents were able to hide from the rockets, behind walls facing Lebanon. For the residents of Sderot, there is nowhere to hide.

Fatima Slutzky, a 57-year-old Muslim woman who immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return with her Jewish husband, was struck by the rocket as she walked toward her job in the city center. She was mutilated by the impact and dead upon arrival at the hospital.

Security guard Maor Peretz, assigned to patrol the neighborhood around Defense Minister Amir Peretz’s home, was lacerated and burned by the explosion and shrapnel. Maor had both his legs amputated, just months ahead of his wedding. [...]

Here's the whole thing, which includes analysis from locals at Sderot's felafel and candy store in central Sderot.

The Road From Elon Moreh to Skali's Farm

2006-11-09T00:15:00.000+02:00

Walking in Abraham's Footsteps.

A photo feature on Elon Moreh, a community of scribes and other interesting folks overlooking Shechem (Nablus).

The second half is about the hilltop community called Skali's Farm.

The Re-Engagement War

2006-08-03T22:28:00.000+03:00

Yes. It was me. I came up with the term "Re-Engagement War" during the first days of the war because it came as direct result of the doctrine of unilateral disengagement, which was just a repackaging of the doctrine of strategic retreat. It has brought Israel missiles and kidnappings wherever is has been implemented, yet the Prime Minister continues to push an encore and is building the Partition Wall at full speed.

I am uncertain how widely the term has spread, though a google search at this time turns up 16,900 results.

During the first days of the two-front war, when Hassan Nasrallah was first threatening to strike Tel Aviv and had already struck Haifa, I went with my photographer to Tel Aviv's Rabin (formerly "Kings of Israel") Square and the Shuk HaCarmel to see whether the famous Tel Avivian men and women on the street were having second thoughts about withdrawals.

Tel Aviv Pedestrians Speak in Shadow of Missile Threat

The next week, I check out the other side of the country - Tiberias (Teveria), which was not only less enthusiastic about withdrawals before the war, but has been pounded with missiles at the height of its tourist season.

Photo Feature: Life With Katyusha Missiles in Tiberias

(This one was from Tzfat - less than 8 hours before it was struck by its first Katyusha. I had never seen the city to bustling and alive.) Photo Essay: Klezmer Festival Fills Kabbalistic City With Song

A Visit With Kidnapped and Murdered 18-Year-Old Eliyahu Asheri's Family

2006-07-06T22:33:00.000+03:00

Photo Feature: The Asheri Family of Itamar Mourns Their Son Eliyahu

(Click here for a photo essay from the funeral - a throwback to the days I was taking my own pictures with my little pocket camera)

The Zionist Jeep - An Aliyah Metaphor

2006-06-28T22:48:00.000+03:00

A zionist jeep? Made in Israel?

Yup.

Tales of Two Threatened Cities

2006-05-10T20:34:00.000+03:00

The community of Maaleh Rechavam, on the edge of the Judean Desert, is one of the six outposts Peace Now aims to see destroyed via a court-order similar to that issued before Amona. The mixed observant/non-observant community is fiercly ideological in their respect for the land and the supreme value they attach to manual labor and agriculture.

Feature: Outpost Residents Faithful Amid Threats of Destruction

Last week I went to Hevron to survey the Beit Shapira compound, which the Jewish community there bought for a very large sum of money, only to be ordered out while allegations of forgery on the part of the fellow they bought it from are sorted out. Maybe the should have gathered all the elders of the city to witness the deal like Abraham did when he bought the Cave of the Patriarchs. Only problem is the elders have laws that selling land to Jews earns you a painful death sentence.

Feature: Twice Evicted in Abraham's Hevron?

Jews Visit Tomb of Joshua in Arab Village in Samaria

2006-04-25T00:56:00.000+03:00

Feature story I wrote on Jewish visit to tombs of Joshua bin Nun, Calev ben Yefuna and, of course, Nun himself - in the Hamas and PFLP dominated village of Kefel Hares in the Shomron

Came out quite nicely. The first in what will be a series of more lengthy feature stories.

Tu B'Shvat Photo Essay

2006-02-19T20:54:00.000+02:00

Click here to see a very special Tu B'Shvat photo essay I compiled of Israel's trees and their stories.

Psst! Got Blue Threads?

2006-02-10T03:10:00.000+02:00

Got an email asking about my Tekhelet 'dealer':

Shalom Ezra,
BG tells me that you are a holy man who knows how to get holy strings. I aspire to obtain techelet and to find someone who can tie that there aforementioned techlet to my beged katan, Rambam-style. Do you know someone who can help me?
Thanks,
D

I responded:

The man you want is Assaf Stein (02 997 2269). He lives at the foot of the mountain of Amona and is the greatest Tekhelet dealer I've known. May I recommend Rambam/Teimani, not only due to the reliability of the mesorah (tradition), but because you will never again spend your days tightening your knots instead of building the Land of Israel or any other redemption hastening endeavor you may be engaged in.

Enjoy your blue threads. May they remind you that our sea and the Creator's throne are the same color as your threads. You wear the team's colors. You are neither a blood nor a cryp, a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan, you ain't even Katom or Kachol (orange or blue, for the color war your people fought instead of a Chanukah-type battle). You are a member of the team.

Welcome. May you enjoy your first recitation of the words our Teacher and Prophet Moshe was told, face to face with the Master of the World:

"Speak to the Children of Israel and tell them to make tzitzit for the corner of their garments, throughout the generations, and they are to place on each of the tzitzit a thread of Tekhelet. And it shall be Tzitzit for you, that you may see it and remember all the mitzvot of HaShem and perform them."

Or you can click here and do it all online.

Aliyah, Post-Amona

2006-02-10T02:50:00.000+02:00

Dear past, present and future olim,

A friend I grew up with in Albany, New York (who happens to have founded K'Cholmim) wrote the following in response to what some have been calling a good old-fashioned 'pogrom' in Amona. He wrote it in the talkback section of an IsraelNN.com article posting live pictures as the battle in Amona raged:

"...After wasting so much time and energy to try and better a state that I thought was "reishit smichat geulatenu" [the beginning of the flowering of our redemption -ed.] I now understand that good and evil can not mix, that this State is truly evil (this is hardly the first example, just one of the more shocking). Though I will continue to identify as a member of the Jewish People, I can no longer side with the "Israelis." This is an evil state and an evil society, and I will not volunteer to continue to be a part of it.

"Goodbye Israel. You broke my heart."

I shed a tear after reading it, and after seeing emails from others, some who have not even finished their Aliyah paperwork, talking about reconsidering, realized that although I have been in news-writing mode for the past few years, I must return to my former writing style to address this issue.

My first emotion was anger. Anger at the Israelis-by-lack-of-Green-Card who have hijacked this mighty nation toward the path of national assimilation, demoralizing and physically beating down good member of the tribe along the way. Then came pain - pain that a good man, who laid it all on the line for the Land of Israel is now saying, "We are grasshoppers in their eyes and are but grasshoppers in our own eyes," - just like ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout out the land before our people first left exile for the Promised Land.

The pain and anger subside quickly though, once I acknowledge the part of the glass that is so full: There is an Aliyah Revolution afoot, like it or not. The rise of Nefesh b'Nefesh, with planeloads of olim-by-choice, are not due to any economic boom or enlightened government here in the Jewish State during these years since the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the launch of the Temple Mount War (merely translating the Arabic 'Al-Aksa Intifada') – but due to a conscious return Home by people who know it is time. This Aliyah does not consist only of activists, nor does it consist largely of settler-types like myself. It contains within it suburbanites, Hassidim, good ol' American Jewish hippies together with PhD students, kids straight out of high school who join the IDF instead of some fraternity, and a whole bunch of hipsters who are just way too cool for the Exile. This Aliyah is not about escaping some outside force (economic hardship, Jew-hatred) that can change at some future point - it is about Israel simply being the place for the Jew who wants to do Jewish in the 5766.

Everybody is on their way home to Zion and everybody is needed here (even if you want to see a reenactment of the Six Day War with an armed Hamas PA and nuclear Iran). For a moment though, I am just going to address my homies - if you will. Those Jews who are tuned-in, but are considering dropping out (of the Jewish Project), due to seemingly insurmountable odds.

I for one, don't see Ehud Olmert, some consistently-wrong polling agencies and a state-controlled press to be 'insurmountable,' but that's just me.

I don't know what the events in Amona looked like to those who were not there, but if they weakened your resolve that this is the place to be, then the bloodied heads of teenage activists and the brutal order-followers with the batons distracted you from the panoramic shot of what went on there. What I saw on the beautiful mountain of Amona, where Abraham stood and was shown all of the Land of Israel by the Most High, was a glimpse of the Land of Israel. It was the glimpse that we American Olim, (we American ascenders, literally) saw for a moment, or longer, that initially brought us to consider staying here and making it our home, leaving perfectly excellent lives in the Exile.

Through the blood and smoke, I saw dedicated youth, some having dragged the adults in their personal sphere of influence along. When I say 'youth' I mean to include post-army grads and entire families - families who expected Amona to be a festival of democratic carry-me-away-gently protest, like back in the days of 'Nam or the Civil Rights Movement. Oh wait - back then people also had to submit to police violence in order to stand up for justice! Every generation has its challenges.

You know who those people were? Those parents who took off from work to risk a broken bone? Those kids who are no longer dazzled by the uniform the order-follower who comes to tell them a Jew has no right to the Land of Israel was wearing? Olim. A majority of the protestors were olim or the children of immigrants - and I was not surprised.

Every Diaspora community brought with it some key ingredient from the Exile to modern day Israel - a spark, if you will - that enriches and drives the Jewish Project being played out in the Land of Israel.

We American olim - immigrants-by-choice from the pinnacle of western civilization, bring with us the willingness to stand up for justice, no matter how impractical 'The Man' tells us that justice is - until justice prevails, and injustice crumbles. We bring with us the knowledge that the statement my friend wrote - that "good and evil cannot mix" - is merely an excuse to sit on the sidelines and allow evil to be perpetrated until good just drops from the sky - which would defeat the entire purpose of our creation.

We bring with us from the fleshpots not only liberal arts educations, imbuing us with the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jewish brother Abbie Hoffman, but the cultural Torah of twin-souls and mass Aliyah-enthusiast Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Meir Kahane, who taught American Jewry, each in his own way, what Love of Israel was all about.

We came to Israel to build and are unfazed by physical destruction. We came from the permanent spiritual destruction be wreaked in the Exile and compared to that the demolition of a concrete structure is not an emotional hardship. Those in Amona left not with the feeling of defeat, but with the sense that they had stood up for justice, breathed the sweet air of revolution and were forced to pay a heavy price. The wounded all say they are ready to continue to pay it on behalf of the Jewish project and the Jewish destiny.

We need more people, though. I am not just talking about more people to stand up to face the police horses and clubs, but more people to be here, to play their role in improving and enriching all aspects of Jewish statehood and the rehabilitation of our nation after an extremely long and difficult journey through Exile. If you are alive in this generation and see something wrong with the State of the Jews, or even have the desire to turn it into the Jewish State – then you are, as Stephen Gaskin once said, "God's eyes on the scene" – and it is your responsibility to get a move on and get fixin'.

The wounds incurred in Amona will heal. The wounded in the hospital told each reporter the same thing: they don’t regret a thing and vow to return the next time. Israelis-by-choice are a growing force on every level, fixing our people's great sin of rejecting the Land the first time around by embracing the good and fixing the not-yet-awesome.

I am told Ehud Olmert has two sons who refused to serve in the IDF and a daughter who lives in Paris. Meanwhile, I have a brother moving here in less than two years and recognize at least one person every time Nefesh b'Nefesh brings a planeload of American revolutionaries (they call 'em olim) over.

Meanwhile, Israel is now the largest Jewish population center in the world, and will soon be home to the majority of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel where the game is being played and the only place where the Jewish Project can be carried out and implemented, in all its glory. Moreover, if you believe the Master of the World indeed gave us a blueprint for perfecting the world at Mount Sinai, then you must concede that the holy document makes it quite clear where this society must be built. If you don't buy that, but somehow have the secular Jewish urge to implement some sort of massive world-fixing project - forget Honduras, the cameras of the world are focused on Jerusalem, just waiting for someone to do something right here so it can be broadcast as an example to the rest of humanity.

And seriously, between the color-war and the school yard skirmishes (ok, even following the ocassional 'pogrom' called for by an unelected interim Prime Minister), life in the Promised Land remains rich and beautiful. You meet human gems on the streets each day and in the line at the supermarket. Spring has arrived early and everything is in bloom and, all the while, more and more Americans are packing their bags to make the move and American accents are heard in places like Afula, Jaffa and Beit She'an. At my home in Sde Boaz, where a house was demolished less than a month ago, trees are taking root in soil was evidently was not meant for a house, and a community has grown stronger. I planted a Carob tree yesterday before I went to work in Beit El (Home of the original Stairway to Heaven).

So please, as someone who was hit with a baton by an Israeli policeman in Amona, as someone who saw a house built laboriously by Jewish hands crushed under the bulldozers of the Jewish army, let me assure you that not only are the other 45 homes in Amona still standing, the community of Sde Boaz is still planting and growing and building.

The only way we can lose this struggle, or fail to deliver the goods to our children's generation, is by throwing up our hands and choosing the irrelevance of Jewish exile, replete with its struggles against Holocaust-forgetting and gentile-marrying, over the awesome task of moving the Jewish destiny forward using the puzzle pieces each and every one of us holds, which together constitute Jerusalem rebuilt.

With love and blessings from the Holy Land,
And with hopes that Israel does not lose one of its greatest Levites,
Ezra

My Photo Essays From Amona

2006-02-02T14:09:00.000+02:00

´This Time We Fought For What Was Ours´

´Blood Flows in Amona´ (Photos only, not captions)

Through the Eyes of the Rooftop Youth

This one is from before the destruction:
Inside Amona, In the Shadow of Destruction

Oh, and check out SdeBoaz.com

B'nai Noah/Nascent Sanhedrin Article

2006-01-09T23:13:00.000+02:00

A pleasure to document. Great to witness. While we Jews are still discussing the technicalities of reestablishing the Sanhedrin and whether it is even a worthwhile endeavor, these cynicism-free gentiles traveled to Jerusalem at their own expense to seek guidance from the developing Sanhedrin in their effort to bring G-d-consciousness to all of humanity. We Jews are a tribe of priests among the tribal families of mankind, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz told them. He added that we Jews lost our focus on that role during the exile, but we are reassuming it now.

"We have heard that G-d is with you," Jim Long, the Noahide Council's spokesman said.

The link:

Sanhedrin Recognizes Council to Teach Humanity ´Laws of Noah´

The KuMatrix Has Been Released. Free. Your. Minds.

2005-12-29T23:33:00.000+02:00

New Film Calls on N. American Jews to Move to Israel

After more work that you would guess, here it is: www.AliyahRevolution.com

All the respect and admiration in the world is due Gil Ronen, Pinchas Orbach, Ben Sandler, Alex Traimain, Israel National Radio, Mordechai Shenker, Eli Stutz and Yishai & Malkah Fleisher.

If you can guess which two voices are mine in the comments section you get a prize of sorts some time within the period of the implementation of the Jewish Project.

The Jewish Project

2005-12-29T23:09:00.000+02:00

I coined the term "The Jewish Project." I have never wrote about it or explained it in an essay, but I often speak of it to friends. I used it in a photo essay today simply because it was the best term to describe what I am trying to describe - completely free of cliche.

A reader has taken offense:

I’ve noticed the caption the "the Jewish project", what does that mean? It sounds almost offensive. Does it refer to our state? Cultural or religious goals? What? When I, and I’m sure many others, hear the word "project" it seems to refer to something perhaps small,like a planned undertaking, or a scheme that has yet to prove its results. The Jewish state, culture or religion are not accorded the proper respect by being referred to as a "project". What if someone reffered to A7 as a "project". "Nice little journalistsic project you have there", would i´m sure be taken with offense.

I responded: Wikipedia defines project as: "A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. Temporary means that the project has an end date. Unique means that the project's end result is different than the results of other functions of the organization."

We Jews have a unique assignment within the family of man that our forefather Abraham took upon himself and which were all assigned at Sinai after being freed from Egyptian slavery: to perfect the world under a kingdom of the Almighty.

That project's end date and the days leading up to it are a part of who we are and what we yearn for and work for here in the Land of Israel and everywhere where Jews are fixing the broken world as they head Home to Zion.

You write: I, and I’m sure many others, hear the word "project" it seems to refer to something perhaps small, like a planned undertaking, or a scheme that has yet to prove its results. The Jewish state, culture or religion are not accorded the proper respect by being referred to as a "project".

I am sorry if you got that impression from my language, but I deliberately chose, and perhaps coined, the term Jewish project because it is the best way to describe what those willingly leaving the comfort and anesthetizing dependability of the exile for the Promised Land are truly choosing to be a part of.

Arutz Sheva is indeed a project.

Chag Urim Sameach; an illuminating Chanukah to all. May this holiday bring inspiration and strength to all those who fear the project is to big and they are the only ones considering taking a stab at it.

Ezra HaLevi

My A7 Gush Etzion Partition Wall Articles (Yes, It Is a Partition Wall)

2005-12-15T21:47:00.000+02:00

Partition Wall Set to Slice Gush Etzion

Gush Etzion Residents Deciding Whether to Fight Partition Wall
[...]
“Those behind the fence will be offered compensation and expelled from their homes down the road – that’s the plan,” Alon Shvut resident Shimon Yitzchak said. “But those of you who think you are improving the status of Gush Etzion and entering the consensus by agreeing to this fence are in for a surprise. We won’t even be evacuated or be offered compensation – we will just watch the value of our homes plummet and our quality of life melt away as we wait for hours at the new border crossings and sit in traffic while some suspicious bag of garbage is removed from the only road out of Gush Etzion.”

“And you know what?" concluded Yitzchak. "In my opinion, people who would agree to sell out their brothers living in Tekoa and Kiryat Arba, who are currently due to be fenced out, would deserve whatever they get. This is the second stage of the expulsion and just as the expulsion from Gush Katif was misnamed a ‘disengagement,’ this expulsion hides behind the misnamed ‘security fence.’”

[Update] Activists Halt Construction of Gush Etzion Partition Wall - and, one of my favorite photo essays I've ever done: Photo Essay: Nature Preserve on Partition Wall Chopping Block

Related:
MK Avital: A Kinder, Gentler Eviction

My Reports From Gaza

2005-10-23T08:39:00.000+02:00

Tears and Wailing in Gush Katif´s Cemetery
Closer Look: Behind The Scenes at Kfar Maimon
American Anti-Expulsion Protesters Reach Gaza Despite Blockade Life in a Gush Katif Tent City
JEWS EXPEL JEWS
Protesters Take to the Streets and Fields
A Gush Katif Photographic Retrospective
Despite Destruction, American Jews Make Aliyah

My Arutz 7 Reestablished Sanhedrin Series

2005-09-28T08:22:00.000+03:00

Members of Reestablished Sanhedrin Ascend Temple Mount
Sanhedrin Rabbis Discuss Sublime, Procedural Issues
Reestablished Sanhedrin Convenes to Discuss Temple
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz Elected to Head Sanhedrin
Sanhedrin Moves to Establish Council For Noahides
Sanhedrin Project Unveiled With Humility

Avri Ran, Father of the Hilltop Movement

2005-09-23T08:32:00.000+03:00

Avraham (Avri) Ran, the revolutionary father of the hilltop outposts, gave a rare public glimpse into his idealism and hopes for the future as he defended himself in a Jerusalem court last week.

"I was born to live free," Ran told the court Wednesday. "I was born on a Kibbutz. I was injured in the army. I was released. I opened a factory. About twelve years ago, I received agreement from my family to engage in settlement. I took a backpack and settled on a hilltop that I had ascertained was ownerless. A struggle ensued that continued for many years - with Palestinians, with members of the left, and with the Israeli government."

Ran's achievements are impressive. He founded the largest and most elaborate organic farm in Israel using only his personal funds; building it little by little, without any help or protection from the police or IDF. Everything on his hilltops was built using Avoda Ivrit - Jewish labor, an old-time Zionist concept that Ran considers critical in renewing the Jewish connection to the land. There are also no fences surrounding any of Ran’s hilltops. He considers fences to signify defensiveness and a willingness to forgo that which is outside the fence. Many others have now emulated Avri's way of settling the land - leaving the confines of the gated communities for the biblical bounty of the barren hills and valleys of Judea and Samaria and making them blossom.

"In the beginning I was completely alone," Ran said. "Ten or fifteen Arabs would come. Fierce confrontations. They had to bring me a needle and thread to stitch up my wounds. Always alone. Nobody ever heard me scream ‘ay.’ "

"Slowly a group of youngsters formed around me - teenagers who had not found their place. I had to live with the vomit and craziness of some of them, to sign papers at the nuthouse that we would be responsible for others. Everything with the agreement of their parents.

"We went to another hilltop and another. The moment a community was founded, I would move to another hilltop and the confrontations would start anew. I was portrayed as one of the things that I had tried to escape from my whole life - as a leader, a guru. Incorrect claims. I never agreed to be either a politician or a shaliach tzibor, a prayer leader.

"I was apparantly threatening to the neighborhood, though," Avri added. "The phenomenon was difficult for the members of the Yesha Council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza Communities. After years of no communities being founded in the State of Israel through private initiative and means, it was unacceptable to them. They said to me, ‘Avri, because of you we are not receiving budget allocations - get down quickly!’ I answered them, ‘I am not your emissary. I am from the Land of Israel, and me and my sweet nation are doing things.”

"Two frameworks were created," Ran complained to the court. "On the one hand, every government minister that came to northern Samaria would ask to meet with me. Former Shabak chief Avi Dichter, when he was learning the ropes, knew he could come to me to discuss legal matters or stay the night. When the IDF brigade or district commanders had to coordinate positions in the region they would do so with me. On the other hand, there was an organized program of persecution - the hunt for Avri Ran.”

Ran went on to describe those who gathered around his ideology of Jewish self-sacrifice for the Land and Nation of Israel. "Hilltop youth," Ran mused, "hundreds of people, many of them in elite units; family men. Some of them pilots in the IDF, some pilots of settling the land. This youth, to differentiate from how they were portrayed in the fear-sowing media, learned to raise sheep, to love, to help. They are my children, some the husbands of the mothers of my grandchildren. I ask that they be proud - it is alright. The Land of Israel is worthy of suffering on her behalf.”

Avri's Wednesday court appearance marked the end of a five-month episode, which started with Ran's arrest during a provocative left-wing/Arab trespass on his planted farmland, continued with a court order confining him to a house not his own, and concluded with his arrest by the police on August 31st while vacationing with his family on the Jordan River, after being on the run for four months.

In April, Ran was indicted for assaulting an Arab man under aggravated circumstances. Members of the extreme-left International Solidarity Movement, together with local Arabs, had driven a tractor onto one of Ran's agricultural fields, followed by a herd of goats that proceeded to eat his produce. Ran responded to the tractor driver's refusal to move off of his crop by pushing him and tearing the electrical wires out of the tractor. He was almost immediately apprehended by riot police and left-wing activists who had been waiting nearby. "When there is an Arab attack it takes the police sometimes two or three hours to get here," Avri's wife Sharona said, "but Avri pushes a guy off a tractor tresspassing on our property and they arrive, with Yassamnikim, special riot police, within three minutes."

"It was an utter and complete provocation," Ran claims. "There is no basis for doing this kind of thing - taking a herd of goats and a tractor to trample on my crop? I did nothing wrong."

Ran was put under house arrest far from his home and family, at the house of his twin brother, Nir Ran, a senior Shabak agent who took leave from the service three months ago. Ran decided to violate his house arrest, "ten minutes after it was decreed," his brother Nir said - and hopped on his motorcycle in rejection of the court order. For four and a half months he lived in the wild, pursued all the while by the police. He planned to show up, with his head held high, to a court hearing at the beginning of September, but the police pre-empted him by five days, arresting him as he vacationed with his wife, ten kids, five grandchildren and two dogs on the Jordan River.

"When I started the outposts, I took with me a coffee-making kit and a sleeping bag, before climbing a distant mountain and settling there alone," Ran told the court. "The Arabs did not like this. There were nights full of struggles. Violent days. From every instance rumors emerged. The Arab imagination is an active one. Today, if a solar water heater falls off of a roof in some Arab village, they immediately say, ‘Avri was here.’ Ninety-nine percent of the time this is incorrect.

"The Arabs are not afraid of me. They revere me. They are wary of me, yes. Have I set out regulations? Certainly. There is not one Arab in the Shechem region who dares to work contrary to my rules. Every Arab knows this. What does this say? This says that there is a Jew in town, a son of Abraham our father - that the ancient Jews have returned a little to the Land of Israel. A Jew must be respected. An Arab, when he sees a Jew, needs to lower his head a little bit."

Ran, who is 50, was born in Kibbutz Nir Chen, in the Negev - the older of a set of identical twins. His grandfather, Natan Rabinovitch, was a renowned agriculturalist, who grew the most widely consumed melons in Israel. He is the one who changed his family name to Ran. His grandmother, Penny, was an actress at Tel Aviv's HaBima theater. They arrived as part of the founding core-group of Kibbutz Sha’ar HaEmekim. Ran’s father was the first child born on the kibbutz, which his family eventually decided to leave. They then joined the core-group founding the town of Yokne’am.

Ran's father grew up and was injured fighting in the War of Independence, during which he met Avri’s mother. They married and founded Kibbutz Nir Chen, which was eventually dissolved, along with their marriage.

Avri’s identical twin brother Nir rose up in the ranks of the security department of the Shabak to become the equivalent of an IDF brigadier general in the agency. Avri’s name came up more than a few times in the Shabak’s Jewish Department, which has somewhat of an obsession with the ‘hilltop youth’ who worked on Avri's farm. The two brothers’ positions on opposite sides of the political barricades never lead to any division between them, though. He chose to be put under house arrest at his brother's home when he was ordered to choose a location outside the Shomron. Nir took leave from the Shabak in order to spend time with his brother during that period.

“The Shabak, I know well,” Avri said. “It is a serious apparatus that carries out its work with much self-sacrifice. There is in the Shabak a fault, however, called the Jewish Department. It is deplorable. I never spoke about this with my brother. He is in a professional position important enough not have to deal with these matters. Matters dealing directly with his work we never spoke about.”

Asked if he thought it created problems for his brother at work that he was related to him, Avri answered: "I assume it created problems for him. To be identified with someone like me in that system, especially during the era of appointments - it creates difficulties. But we don’t talk about that stuff between us. We are good friends - very connected. I love him. We talk all the time. In my opinion, our paths are very similar. He doesn’t have a beard and he goes without a kippa and is not a settler but he is a man who is connected to the Master of the World and to the Nation of Israel. All his life he served the State of Israel. He is also frustrated and sad at the situation."

“Avri was never a violent man,” Nir said of his brother. “Even as a child he was always sticking up for the weaker party. He could see an injured dog or a child who was not accepted by the other kids and he would run to their assistance. It is almost absurd to use the words ‘violent’ and ‘Avri’ in the same sentence."

Nir Ran, despite his years working at the Shabak, refuses to believe the hype fed to the media by members of the agency's Jewish Department. "In my assessment, there is no such thing as the ‘hilltop youth.’ That is not to say that there aren’t youths on the hilltops and in Judea and Samaria. They are there and they are, by and large, wonderful. But when they say ‘hilltop youth,’ it sounds like there is some organization with such a name. It doesn't exist. This originated from the left, from the police and from all sorts of sources with interests in presenting such a thing. Avri is the leader representing what they termed the ‘hilltop youth’ in one respect: That he acts as a role model for them.

"There are, in the territories, left-wing activists - mainly from the Ta’ayush organization. They call themselves 'peace activists,' but basically they are 'war activists.' They have a religion they call ‘peace’ - it is a fundamentalist religion that is very dangerous. They are warmongers that sow the seeds of war in every case where there is a chance for coexistence and peace."

At 16, Avri left the Kibbutz he was living on. He had a girlfriend older than he that the Kibbutz did not approve of so he left and went to Sharm el-Sheikh to work. He eventually joined the IDF, serving first in the elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit before leaving it to join the armored corps. He took an officers training course, finished with honors and became a platoon, and eventually company, commander. Today he is a captain in the reserves.

“The other soldiers admired him very much,” a fellow soldier who served with him in the same battalion told Maariv. “He was the best officer and the best navigator. They look at him like he’s G-d. When they would go out to inspect a roadway in the morning he would go on foot ahead of the armored personnel carrier - he was better than any of the Bedouin trackers. It was important for him to show them that a Jew is also able to do such things."

In the armored corps, Avri met Sharona, who became his wife. She had immigrated to Israel with her parents from the United States at the age of four.

The Rans both grew up in secular homes, deciding to return to religion "by chance,” according to Sharona. When their oldest daughter Batya was old enough to go to school, her mother searched for a private school to send her to, and decided on a religious school run by the American Reform movement. “After that I traveled overseas and when I returned I had a religious longing,” Sharona said. “I signed up for a seminar for those returning to religion and there it clicked. I left there an observant woman.”

“A day later she simply said, ‘I am an observant woman.’ I said ‘OK, what do I need to do?’ ” recalled Ran. “She bought me a big black kippa and I simply put it on.”

“Avri didn’t have any doubts. He is not a man of indecision,” said Sharona. “When you jump in a pool, you jump. He learned and studied, but also with religion he found his own way. With regard to his way of thinking, he retained it fully. We have a rabbi that guides us, Rabbi Auerbach. Every time we moved from one hilltop to another I called him and he would offer his blessing. But the question of whether or not to move to Itamar, to G’vaot Olam (the Ran’s current home) - Avri never asked. The rabbi once said to me, ‘And if I had told him 'No...'? He who needs to run to the hills should go to the hills.’ ”

The idea of founding a community of newly religious Jews connected with Rabbi Auerbach had already been raised - the chosen location was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s community of Mevo Modi’in. The plan never materialized, though.

Ran began to work as a contractor, preserving old protected buildings in Tel Aviv. Then, as today, Ran insisted on only hiring Jewish workers. Former drug addicts in various stages of rehabilitation gathered around him from around the city and he became not only their boss, but a father figure. Ran’s first chicken coop in Itamar was built by them. “This group were prepared to walk through fire and water with him,” said a relative of one of the men. “He hosted them and took care of them and paid their debts. In that respect, it was the beginning of what they call the ‘hilltop youth’ - youths to whom Avri was a role model.”

Avri commuted every day from Moshav Beit Meir, where he bought farmland and set up an organic chicken farm and fruit orchard while working full time as a contractor in Tel Aviv.

The Rans then joined several other families in establishing the community of Bat Ayin, in Gush Etzion. The Rans helped found and build the unique community, which like Avri’s later communities, only uses Jewish labor and has no fence. They lived there for a while, but eventually decided to move due to differences in outlook and philosophy.

Just over ten years ago, the Rans moved to the community of Itamar, in the Shomron. Their conditions for moving there were that the community enable them to settle outside the fence and not invest in them financially. They established their first farm at the edge of the community. Veteran members of Itamar, which was surrounded by a fence and consisted of rows of caravans, thought them insane and would only visit them armed to the teeth.

Ran tries not to attack the mainstream settlement movement, “but,” he said, “it is impossible to settle the land with fences and barbed wire - and with the army watching over you. There is a public here that for years has been slaughtered - and they respond by adding more defense systems and even giving up on being responsible for their own well being. One of the central hallmarks of settlement was guarding your community. How can you just go to sleep in your bed while an entire IDF company watches over you?"

Ran is particularly irked by the practice of reinforcing car-windows and security-fences to protect Jews from stone-throwers and infiltrators. "In Itamar, five children were killed," Ran recalled. "The rabbis said at the funerals, ‘for every victim we will plant a tree, for every victim we will build a new house.’ What can you expect when a person’s response to those who throw stones at him is to build another fence.”

Ran also has harsh words for the acceptance committees in most Yesha communities. “They destroyed settlement,” he said. “They say, ‘We want communal life here, everyone needs to be religious - not just religious, but with the same kippa.’ Where were we during the Aliyah from Russia? Why didn’t we bring one million immigrants to settle here [in Yesha]? By what right does an acceptance committee say to a family that wants to move to a settlement, ‘You aren’t suitable.’ Why? Because the woman is a Freicha[partier, perhaps less concerned with laws of modesty -ed.]? So what, a Freicha is not part of the Nation of Israel?”

Soon after moving to Itamar, Ran built a chicken coop and an egg storage room and left his contracting job in Tel Aviv. He began to slowly develop his organic egg business into a profitable endeavor. Today, it is so successful that even the gigantic Tnuva corporation purchases Ran’s eggs and resells them under their own organic label.

After a year and a half on the outskirts of Itamar, during the heat of the Oslo Accords era, Ran decided to move out to a hilltop simply called “The Point,” a mile away from Itamar. It was the first outpost in a long series of them. His reputation and stories of his self-sacrifice spread. Rumors of the non-conventional settler reached far and wide and youth began to make their way to the outposts to see for themselves that Zionism was alive and well.

Members of the Yesha Council were displeased. They did not understand how someone could just get up and decide that he is going to found a community. Even Ariel Sharon visited Ran and told him, “Enough. What do you need this for? It is preventing the flow of budgetary allocations.”

Sharon Ran described what it was like when her husband left their home to capture his first hilltop. “He took a tent - actually just the lining of one - and just went to the hilltop,” said Sharona. “Our mode of communication was via a taxi radio. I would bring him food and equipment. It was a series of obstacles to get there, despite the not-so-distant location. We would spend the Sabbath there with a small generator. We began to sell our assets because we needed to fund everything on our own. We sold two houses in Jerusalem and the farm in Beit Meir. Within a year there were four families living on ‘The Point.’ "

Ran then moved to the next hilltop, Hill 851, another mile from the previous one along topographically difficult terrain. It could only be reached via tractor. He stayed there for a number of months until others joined him and settled the place. Then he continued forward.

In 1998 Avri founded G’vaot Olam, which means “The Hills of the World,” a name Sharona came up with. “We must connect the mountain communities of Samaria to the Jordan Valley,’ Avri told me,” recalls Sharona, “ ‘this is an indispensable corridor of settlement.’ ”

Now G’vaot Olam is home to animal pens, fields of organic vegetables, olive and apricot groves, a dairy, flour mill and synagogue. An efficient marketing setup brings G’vaot Olam’s goods to every natural foods store in Israel. Almost all of Ran’s children live at G’vaot Olam, including his married daughters, who all met their husbands at the farm.

The houses are well-groomed and the paths are lined with flowers. There are no locks on the doors. Instead of a fence, there is a large watch tower.

Arabs in the neighboring village of Yanoun tell all sorts of stories about Ran, claiming that he burned their generator, that he blocked their road and that he demands that they inform him of any changes in the status quo that they wish to make. Left-wing activists with the Ta’ayush organization, as well as European volunteers, have entered the village and attempted to help the villagers fight Ran's authority using the willing media.

“The left chose Yanoun in order to show the world ‘the Sheriff of the Hilltops,’ ” Sharona said, “the man who terrorizes. How many time have they opened a table in Yanoun and called Avri down to settle their internal disputes? I witnessed many such night-time phone calls. When they didn't have water we brought it for them. What the residents of Yanoun say now can fly from here to Uganda. As long as the leftists were not there, they didn’t say anything. True, there is no wimpiness here. Avri is a man, and he behaves like a man - and one who knows Ishmael and the Arabs knows that this is the language that speaks to them. That is the condition for quiet. They don’t understand how there is a Jew here that is unafraid.”

“I am, as a settler, an anomaly and exception," Ran concedes. "When I have a problem with members of a certain village, I go there and solve it with the Mukhtar, the elder of the village. Once I caught someone who came to steal from me. I brought him to the Mukhtar. They made him an ‘arrangement’ there. Not me. Afterward, he claimed that I beat him. I didn’t touch him."

Supreme Court Justice Esther Hayot is now deliberating on whether to free Ran to house arrest at the ranch of Ariel Sharon's former brother-in-arms war-hero Meir Har-Tzion.

"The story of Avri Ran is one that is indicative of the entire experience our nation is going through right now," Sharona concluded.

On the horizon lingers the reported Israeli promise to the United States that the IDF would be ordered to destroy 'unauthorized settlement outposts.' Avri does not wish to go into detail, but expresses disappointment in how the struggle against the Disengagement Plan was waged and vows that anyone, Jewish or Arab, coming to destroy his patch of the Land of Israel will not be granted a victory.

"I think that this land belongs to me," confesses the grandfather of the biblical/hippy hilltops. "It belongs to me, from where I am now able to be, all the way to where I am currently unable to be. If I could, I would make my next outpost in Jordan. It has nothing to do with the Arabs. I don't hate Arabs. Absolutely not. I am simply indifferent to them. They are not in my field of play at all. I am not G-d’s executioner. I am not a violent man, but if there is a war, I will fight it."

Some of the quotations for this article, which was written for Arutz-7, were translated from a report by NRG-Judaism

For the Love of Israel

2004-10-10T22:04:00.000+02:00

Article originally appeared on Yesha Speaks Out together with photos by Curtis Ackerman

As Israel deliberates the prospect of forcibly uprooting Jews from their homes in Gaza and the northern Shomron (Samaria) a number of citizens living in outlying neighborhoods have already received orders to vacate their homes. These evictions are not tied to Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" but his personal comitment to United States President Bush to remove so called "illegal" outposts.

I decided to visit the neighborhood of Givat HaRoeh ("Hill of the Seer") on the day preceding Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year). Just a few days earlier, Israel's Supreme Court had rejected the final legal petition filed by residents of the tiny village, clearing the way for them to be forcibly expelled from their homes, an expulsion that could come at any moment.

As I climbed the well-paved winding road to the peak of the mountain, I saw that somebody had written a line from one of Israel's most famous folk songs on its side. "Please do not uproot that which has been planted," were the words, written over a decade ago by Israel's beloved composer Naomi Shemer, who died in June.

Driving past a small security booth at the entrance to the "HaRoeh Neighborhood," a smiling security guard sporting a cowboy hat waved me past. Driving down the main street, I passed two rows of concrete foundations, the groundwork for permanent housing.

The community was busy with preparations for the Yom Kippur fast. Delicious smells wafted through the air as residents cooked feasts to be eaten immediately before sundown. In stark contrast to the frenetic hustle of Jerusalem I had left behind less than an hour prior, an air of calm blanketed the place.

What was the source of this serenity? It could have been the sweet mountain air, the lack of noise pollution, or perhaps the view of the rolling hills in the distance - each one seemingly snow-capped with other small Jewish communities heeding Likud Chairman and then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon's 1999 call to "grab the hilltops."

Givat HaRoeh began almost three years ago, when five single men, all students at the nearby Talmudic Academy in Eli, decided to move into the area. With blessings from the IDF Civil Administration and the Defense Ministry, the men lived alone on the hilltop for six months, walking 40 minutes to get to their Academy. One of those five soon got married and brought his wife to join Givat HaRoeh.

Ronen Ruviel, a tanned man who grew up in a Moshav (agricultural cooperative) in southern Israel, discovered the site while scouting out the surrounding areas during his time studying at the Tamudic Academy in Eli. His first choice was the adjacent hill, called Hill 704 (an unsettled hill is typically identified by its elevation). A cellular phone antenna was built there, so the army assigned the young pioneers to the current location.

"Every single step of the way we have coordinated and received approval from the IDF and the government," says Ronen. "We even began building permanent homes with approval, laying six foundations for houses, when the political rumblings started. All of the sudden the civil administration started threatening to confiscate equipment used to continue the building and we were forced to stop."

Since then, Ronen and his neighbors have faced steady barrage of shocking disappointments. "We've received eviction orders, there have been attempts to evacuate us, the Supreme Court has ruled that politics override justice in our case, and, practically speaking, the army could come at any point and throw us out of here," Ronen says, with a crooked smile. But he refuses to give up hope. "We simply don't believe it will happen. There is a blessing upon this place. We will not be thrown out."

31-year-old Yaniv David was one of those first pioneers. He and the three other single men living in Givat HaRoeh since the beginning took a break from their Yom Kippur preparations and gathered in Yaniv's caravan (trailer) to reflect on the challenges that have accompanied their decision to live in a threatened hilltop community.

"Israel is acquired though hardship"

"Israel is acquired though hardship, through striving," Yaniv explains. "When the Jewish people were in the desert for 40 years after leaving Egypt, everything was delivered by God on a silver platter, but we complained and were miserable nonetheless.

This assessment of the Jewish condition accompanied Givat HaRoeh from the beginning. Four caravans were brought to the site originally, but one was smashed when it fell off of the crane as it was being lifted into place.

Yaniv says he gained perspective on what priorities enrich and maximize the potential of Jewish life in the Land of Israel from growing up in the northern town of Afula. His parents immigrated to Israel from Yemen in 1950, at the age of ten. "They stayed in tents, through the rain and snow," said Yaniv, "they suffered a lot to live here, but that is how the Land of Israel is acquired in every generation."

"hilltop youth"

But Yaniv says it is not the logistical difficulties that prove to be the most challenging aspects of living in what the world press calls an "outpost" and what the Hebrew press terms a "me'echaz" (literally: "a foothold"). "The hardest thing is the stigma of being successfully labeled 'hilltop youth' by the media. There are constant insinuations that we are trouble-makers, and that we want to clash with the army. They assume we don't work, all the things the media tries to paint us as."
Each of the residents describes either friends or relatives who are adamantly opposed to their decision to live here. Some cite concerns about security, while others are ideologically opposed to Jews residing in parts of Israel liberated during the Six Day War. What baffles the residents most, though, are the claims that their community is somehow "illegal" or "unauthorized."

All the residents have served in the military, many of them in elite combat units - so one particularly painful accusation in a country with a mandatory universal draft is that they endanger their countrymen's lives by necessitating a constant military guard. "I had a friend from high school," recalled Yaniv, "who said to me: 'What are you doing there? They are just going to throw you out in the end anyway.' Like many others, he has been completely convinced that the most eternal of causes - the re-settlement of the Jewish people in their land - is a lost cause. And, with that assumption firmly implanted in his consciousness, [he] proceeds to parrot what is said about us in the papers on a daily basis: 'So much money is being wasted on you people and so many soldiers are forced to defend you,' he said, wanting to know how many soldiers are assigned to guard us. He was shocked when I told him the truth: that not one single soldier is stationed here. [I told him] that even in Eli, which has 400 families, not one soldier is stationed to guard over it. The residents, all having served in the IDF - away from their homes to guard people living in parts of the country they don't necessarily want to live in - take turns guarding their own homes. To supplement the shifts, private guards are also hired and paid with private funds.

"Anybody who actually comes here is blown away by the vast difference between the reality of this place and how it is described in the media," said Yaniv. "They have no concept that it is a real place full of regular people who simply have ideals and conviction."

Though Givat HaRoeh has Eli's flag flying alongside the Israeli flag, "the physical isolation makes us into our own entity," said Yaniv, adding that people walk to and from both Eli and neighboring Maaleh Levona on Shabbat.

The residents of Givat HaRoeh come from diverse backgrounds. Many are the children of immigrants from nearly every continent.

Yehuda Duchan, now 26, made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from Russia at age 19. Yehuda came from Kursk, near Moscow, and moved to Haifa, a mixed Jewish and Arab city on Israel's northern coast. He decided to study in Jerusalem and soon enlisted in the Nachal Hareidi - a relatively new IDF unit tailored for the religiously observant.

In the IDF, Yehuda met others who shared his passion for the land, and his distaste for politics. "Although I support Jews' rights to live anywhere in the Land of Israel, I chose this place knowing that everything was being done by the book - completely legal. I already left many homes behind and wanted a place where I could put deep roots down permanently."

Although he was upset by the about-face of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, which declared that his home was fair game for the IDF bulldozers, Yehuda says he has never felt so heartened as when thousands of people flocked to Givat HaRoeh from all over the country when the community was threatened with evacuation. "People came all the way from Haifa," recalled Yehuda. "People we never met before came all the way to our homes to stand with us for what is right."

(Yaniv pestered Yehuda, trying to goad him into telling me what was obviously a legendary war story. Yehuda, smiling, declined modestly.)

"It is like a big family here," said Yehuda. "Soldiers in the area come up here every now and then especially to have some coffee or cake at the entrance to the community - even though they are not stationed here, word of our hospitality has spread."

Yehuda says that, although he knows he is doing the right thing, the perceptions of the public and the accusations of the press hurt him in a very deep way. "One of the first things journalists always ask us is: 'Isn't it wrong that you force all these soldiers to endanger their lives so you can live here?' It is absurd! They are here more often for Shabbat meals and prayer services than for security reasons."

Residents say they often see people from the far-left Peace Now organization conducting surveillance on the community, ostensibly to ensure that no building is being done. "I have tried to converse with them," said Yehuda, who lived side-by-side with many Arabs and left-wing ideologues in Haifa. "They have unanimously ignored and shunned our attempts at dialogue and civility. One time a neighbor of mine brought water to a busload of left-wing activists - and they refused to accept anything from the 'settler'. They refuse to forgive us for disagreeing with them in a democratic society."

Alex and Chaya Hyman moved to Givat HaRoeh a year and a half ago. Soon after they arrived, their son Amitzur was born. His was the first brit milah (circumcision) on the yishuv. Alex is the son of American Jews who immigrated to Israel from Teaneck, New Jersey, when he was eight years old. His parents moved to the Tel Aviv region, but after a couple years moved again to the community of Elkana, just over the "green line" (Israel's 1949 armistice line). Chaya Hyman was born and raised in the seaside town of Netanya.

Married and living in Eli, where Alex studied in the Academy for two years, he and Chaya felt that they weren't doing enough to strengthen the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel during this trying time - so they decided to move to a place nearby that would allow them to contribute to the struggle for the land. "We wanted to move to a hilltop in the area to strengthen the places."

I asked Alex what he thought of the pragmatism that had replaced ideology in the mainstream discourse on the future of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. "Maintaining our faith and mission through a 2,000-year-old exile does not make sense. Coming back to this land through a collective awakening after all that time was not pragmatic. Choosing Israel over Uganda as the place for the safe and secure Jewish national home was certainly not pragmatic," he said, alluding to a now-infamous proposal by the British to early Zionist leaders that European Jews be settled temporarily in East Africa. "Herzl did not make logical sense and neither did Ben Gurion - but what they envisioned happened because what causes things to happen is not pragmatic personal will, but something else entirely."

Alex Hyman is a soft-spoken, fatherly man. His words flow out matter-of-factly, bronzed with the solid conviction of one who feels no need to prove his truths to the world.

"The force bringing the people of Israel back to their land and keeping us here no matter how many nations and individuals wish to throw us out is the strongest force in the universe; it moves the entire world," said Alex. "It moves us and it is stronger than any seemingly pragmatic consideration. We will stay here and the people of Israel will stay here. We will not leave this place."

" ...the people of Israel together as one. It doesn't work when we act as individuals ..."

I asked Hyman if, for the sake of national unity, he would heed the results of a national referendum, even if they dictated that he be removed from his home. Prime Minister Sharon, having already lost one such referendum in his own Likud Party, and having trounced an opponent in last election who ran on a platform nearly identical to Sharon's current Disengagement Plan, has assured the country that he will not allow a national referendum to take place.

"The value of the Jewish people being back home in their land must be on a national level," Alex responded carefully, "the people of Israel together as one. It doesn't work when we act as individuals. If I am not here in the name of all of Israel, then it's not worth it."

But Alex doesn't blame those with opposing viewpoints politically for the fracture within his people, but rather those remaining in the Diaspora out of preference. "I believe that the Jews choosing to remain in America are largely responsible for our lack of unity," he said. "Unity of our people doesn't mean we all have to think the same or agree on the issues, but it does mean we all have to return to the Land of Israel to fulfill our destiny. My father, whenever he goes back there to visit, he always tells people, 'if you would come here it would solve so many of the problems, not only metaphysically, but on paper.'"

Although both of their parents are completely supportive of their decision to live in Givat HaRoeh, Alex and Chaya have friends - fully observant and self-identified ardent Zionists - who doubt the importance or prudence of what they are doing. "'What do you need this for?' they ask," says Alex. "They can't understand what we are doing here or why we want our kids to grow up in Givat HaRoeh."

As though drawing on the Jewish lifeblood that flowed through the veins of the millions of Jews who stood up throughout history, telling a blood thirsty world that there is a higher cause, Alex looked at me and echoed the answer of so many of the 'mitnachalim' or 'inheritors' of Jewish history: "Life has meaning. Life does not stand by itself," he says, contrasting his viewpoint with that of John Lennon's 'Imagine,' which pines for a day where the brotherhood of man will have 'nothing to live or die for.'

"A Jew in Israel says, if you have nothing you are willing to fight or die for, then you have nothing," Alex says. "If you have a family, but are not willing to fight to save your family from someone who wants to harm them, then what kind of person are you? If someone is willing to fight to protect his family, they must realize that their extended Jewish family, together with the homeland that they have built, is worth fighting to save as well."

"Our responsibility to our children is not just to keep them safe, but also to give them values ..."

Alex believes that if everybody in Israel had the opportunity to spend a Shabbat at Givat HaRoeh, or any other hilltop community, it would change the discourse entirely. "We have been driven back to a day when the purpose of a State of Israel is purely to increase safety for the Jewish people. Our responsibility to our children is not just to keep them safe, but also to give them values, raising them to be healthy - psychologically, ideologically and spiritually. If you deprive a child of those things then all the security in the world is not worth much. When we come here with our families we give our children means. The people that built this country did the same with their families. If avoiding danger had been their highest priority, this country would not have been built."

"Refusing such an order is true to democratic principles, as long as one accepts the penalty, which may be prison."

The value of democracy is something Alex said was conveyed to him by his American parents. He is increasingly alarmed at what he sees as a "growing trend toward dictatorial tactics" being used by the Sharon government to try to quickly push through a withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria. He is concerned that, as democratic means of resistance are systematically ignored or labeled 'undemocratic,' disaster is brewing. "How can one man ignore a referendum, the platform he was elected upon, voices in his own party, fire cabinet ministers based on a single-issue disagreement and then file charges of incitement when people suggest that his tactics resemble that of a dictator?"

Alex hesitates to discuss what his response would be should the army come to remove him and his family from their home. "Even thinking about such an awful thing gives energy to it. I refuse to believe that such a day will come."

At the same time, he is quite clear that, as a reserve soldier in the IDF, the order to throw Jews out of their homes is one that must be refused. "Refusing such an order is true to democratic principles, as long as one accepts the penalty, which may be prison."

"To send someone to prison, though, for listening to their conscience and their religion is not acceptable," says Alex. "Our neighbor just joined the army and was asked, 'If you are ordered to uproot your neighborhood, would you uproot your parents from their home?' It's crazy to check someone's loyalty by asking them if they would throw their parents out of their home. It's immoral and it doesn't make any sense."

One resident has started a burgeoning olive-oil business near the community, for which he has planted hundreds of olive trees. Other residents work in the growing field of Avoda Ivrit construction (meaning Jewish labor rather than exploitation of cheap Arab or foreign labor). In addition to the return to the early-state labor ideals, many residents maintain a sense of nostalgia for Israel's culture during those periods. "Just before Naomi Shemer passed away," said Yaniv, "there were a bunch of people from the community who were making arrangements to bring her to Givat HaRoeh."

Though the threat looms, the residents continue to smile, to celebrate, and to live the dreams of their forefathers. Last year, the Nechama family, whose children are residents of the hilltop, dedicated a Torah scroll to the community. The festivities attracted a myriad of well-wishers from all over the country who traveled to Givat HaRoeh to show their support.

Some residents went to visit family in other parts of the country for Yom Kippur, but most stayed to pray in their own synagogue. The holiday went by undisturbed, as did the Sukkot festival the following week. Rumors have begun spreading that the IDF has been ordered to destroy three populated communities in one night following Sukkot. Residents shrug, make logistical preparations to oppose their expulsion and pray to the Creator. Meanwhile, plans to build 150 new homes in Givat HaRoeh and on the adjacent hill have not yet gathered all the signatures required. "It will happen, though," Ronen Ruviel promises, "you'll see."

As I left Givat HaRoeh, again noticing Naomi Shemer's eternal plea not to uproot that which has been planted, I remembered the next verse in the song, written as both a prayer to God and a reminder to her countrymen:

"Do not forget the hope; Send me back and I shall return to the good Land."

Im HaShem Lo Yishmor Ir... Ramblings from (near) Ramallah

2003-02-12T19:59:00.000+02:00

To my Brothers and Sisters,

My uniform is lying, folded neatly on the couch across the room. My orange beret sits on the coffee table, identifying me with Pikud HaOref (the Home Front Command). The shoulder tag on my shirt is that if the Chilutz v'Hatzala unit (Search and Rescue).

I am a chayal now. All those images of our holy soldiers that I have seen in all my travels in this holy land are now on the other side of the looking glass as I travel home to Jerusalem for Shabbat each week. My bags are no longer checked. I ride the buses for free. I ask suspicious looking people for their identity papers myself rather then pointing them out to border police. I get special discounts at falafel stands. I am issued an M16-A1 assault rifle with which to defend the Jewish people from the murderous Jihad that is being waged against us.

I have been a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces for about a month and a half now and have been undergoing training in several different bases across our Holy Land. My Tironut (Boot Camp/Basic Training) was at a base in between Ashdod and Ashkelon, nestled between the sand dunes. We slept in tents under the huge star-filled sky that our forefather Avraham gazed up at - awakening his God consciousness and pushing him to become a lone revolutionary among a galaxy of nay-sayers.

We learned at an intensive pace. From shooting, to gun assembly and disassembly to wilderness survival to tying a tourniquet to handling potential Bio-Chemical-Nuclear threats - our unit (completely comprised of olim chadashim) studied and practiced, growing into a cooperative entity by the end of the training despite some major language barriers between those speaking Russian, Amharit, French, Spanish and English. There is an incredible rule in the IDF that no officer of the IDF can address troops in any language other than Hebrew. This ensured that Hebrew was a unifying force among our diverse group, many of whom had not previously weaned themselves from their mother tongues.

After Tironut, we split up into smaller groups to be sent to a number of different units. I was sent to Chilutz v'Hatzala - Search and Rescue. This unit that has been sent overseas, to Turkey after an earthquake, to South America to help with disaster relief and saving people from collapsed buildings and rubble. We were given a week-long course after which we received tractor driving licenses. Then the group split and my half has been working in a weapons and supply arsenal near Ramallah (the base also houses an outdoor terrorist prison) which allows us Jerusalemites to return home every day after work, which is great. Next week, we will be returning to the beaches of Netanya to continue our training as we learn to drive gigantic scoopers, back-hoes, bulldozers, hydraulic chainsaws and much much more....(if that doesn't get any elementary school aged boy to dream of one day joining the IDF then I suppose a description of the weaponry in the arsenal might do the trick - I am certain that from a security perspective I am better off keeping that to myself though - those interested can just rent the movie "The Matrix" and take note of the scene with the weapons arsenal - it's the same deal).

It really feels almost mystical walking around, dressed in the garb of so many holy Jewish soldiers who have liberated our Holy Land and put their lives on the line for the freedom of the Nation of Israel wherever they may dwell.

It was an unadulterated taste of God's ultimate plan He handed us at Sinai when - after hearing our General read from the Book of Joshua at our induction ceremony ("Every place your feet tread, I have given to you, No man shall be able to stand against you… Be strong and of great courage, to observe the entire Torah…") - we were handed our rifles and a Tanach (bible) as we pledged to defend the Jewish people with our lives.

And make no mistake about it, that is our job description - laying our lives on the line for every Jew worldwide, not just defending the Holy Land so the Kotel is safe for bar mitzva's and solidarity missions, but to be an unwavering shield defending our people from the global Jihad we are now facing.

Things are moving at a very rapid pace and certainly the scope, complexity and nature of this very large war we are on the brink of is something that can not truly be predicted for lack of any precedent in our past. I merely beg all of you to have each and every one of us in your prayers and to be especially vigilant against the very sinister brand of Jew-hatred and very devious desensitization to the killing of our brethren that is being peddled in Universities and salons all across the US and Europe these days. The revolting attempts to legitimize the murder of "settlers" or "soldiers" as legitimate targets is a devious attempt to play on the worlds ignorance and perpetrate a dangerous blood libel of Goebbel's proportion. People who live in towns and cities over an artificial green line on a map drawn up by politicians and other people who put on green uniforms because they are a citizen of the State of Israel - are no more legitimate a target than you and your family - the crime for which they are being hunted is that of being a Jew in Israel.

We are a sleepy nation, and the segment of us still pressing our 'snooze' buttons in America are being shaken awake and will no doubt face a great deal more shaking. We have it under control over here, we have a Father in Heaven who brought us here and has great plans for us. Now is the time for solidarity missions - real ones. Take off a semester, take a sabbatical if you can - I don't believe that American Jewry will wait until its too late this time (like almost every other mass Aliya to Israel in recent history) - I believe that the circumstances are setting the stage for more and more Jews of the US to realize that they hold THE KEYS to the victory and success of the Jewish people and our fulfillment of our destiny. The hour is late.
Willing to use up my precious days off to meet you at the airport when you realize you want to come Home, With the wailing of the muezzin reminding me that Allahu Akhbar (that God is great), And with a tear for Ilan Ramon, our brother who blasted off into the heavens, said "Shema Yisrael" over Jerusalem and united every Jew in the Land with joy and then, so suddenly with sorrow,

Hazorim b'dima b'rina yiktzoru,
Ezra HaLevi

Tie a Blue and White Ribbon 'round the Old Palm Tree

2002-12-26T19:56:00.000+02:00

Dear Hebrews and Israelites,
As you know, the official starting bell for world war three is scheduled to sound roundabout February. So as not to take the World Jihad being waged against our people sitting down, I have moved back to Jerusalem from Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu and am enlisting in the IDF this Sunday morning at 7:30.

As I sit here in my new apartment (rent paid for by the IDF because I am a "chayal boded" - a "lone[ly] soldier" without any close relatives living here in Israel) amongst padlocks, gun cleaning supplies, duct tape and a sewing kit I am faced with that feeling that I had the night before I got on the plane to come Home to the Promised Land. I know that I am about to take a step that will fulfill the dreams of so many millions of my ancestors who were not blessed to be able to guard God's Holy People and sanctify His Holy Name through a Jewish army. I know that the army in which I am enlisting this Sunday is saving Jewish lives daily. After weeping, screaming, petitioning and protesting as a callous world nudges us toward a genocidal fate once again - I am honored to pick up a weapon and fulfill the God given commandment of "al taamod al dam reyecha - do not stand idly by your brothers blood."

I have very little idea what the future will bring. The army has not informed me what unit I will be in or what my task will be. I am prepared to relinquish most of my personal sovereignty to the IDF, but in the event that I am called upon to remove Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel, I cannot pretend that "just following orders" would expunge the shameful blemish that such a task would leave on my soul and in my ability to look my future children in the eye.

It is an honor to take part in the climax of the ideological and theological crisis caused by the six-day-miracle thrust upon our people in 1967 upon which we have still not yet decided whether to say a blessing or to return to Sender with a little note that says: "Thanks God, but Europe (remember Europe?) says our retaining that Land is interfering with their ability to create an Amalekite kingdom - we will let You know when we are accepted as a full member of the UN (tower of Bavel?) and then perhaps we can get back to 'Perfecting the World through a Kingdom of the Almighty {l'taken olam b'malchut Shadai}'.

We stand at a crossroads at which the settlements have been placed in center stage. They exemplify a potent concentrate of the unashamed elevation of the banner of a Living God fluttering atop our little country for all the nations of the world to see. From a purely secular perspective, they are the last surviving testament to the honest assertion that Jewish blood is not cheap and that attempting to wipe us out has a price. On a more mystical level, they represent the tradition of the Macabbees, Pinchas, The Rambam, Rav Kook, Reb Shlomo Carlebach and so many more of the diamonds of our history - spat upon, with their books burned during their lifetimes on this earth only to be appreciated in hindsight as ones who saw clearly through pure love for our people and humanity, what needed to be fixed. Those who ignore the din and war drums of a world who does not want a United Nations based in Jerusalem and housed in our Holy Temple, but trust rather a cynical substitute made up of dastardly dictators hoping to exploit the naiveté of a generation untouched by war to turn out all the lights.

I sat next to an Israeli official from the Defense Ministry on my flight back from the US a few weeks ago. He claimed, without a glimmer of doubt, that Israel is unable to choose its own destiny any longer because of the intense financial and political pressure from Europe and the rest of the world. He sat there cool calm and collected, speaking about who I should vote for if I really wanted peace and what would please the 'Quartet' thereby insuring our security through the protection of the EU, UN, Russian and the US. He lost his cool when I told him I was a mitnachel (settler). He started berating me, telling me I was putting the entire country in danger by making the creation of a viable (viable? like, able to import anthrax and nukes in without interference from the IDF?) Palestinian State an impossibility. He agreed that it would constitute the greatest threat to the Jewish people since the thirties but he simply shrugged and said "ein breira" (we have no choice).

I left the flight with an incredible sense of awe at where we now stand. A couple hundred thousand Jews, just like you and I, have built their houses squarely in front of the bulldozer which the nations of the world send to annihilate our people every fifty years or so. I am in awe of these people's bravery, dedication, and true faith in the God of Israel and in the blueprint He gave us at Sinai with which to fix the world.

Hey, and if you disagree with me - rather than donating money to some organization dedicated to throwing me out of my home or that pays soldiers to refuse to serve in the Territories, if you believe that the way to peace is through bulldozing Jewish towns in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and setting up a state for a nation at least 65% of whom admit supporting genocide bombings, then MOVE HERE AND DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN because if you know the secret recipe for peace and are just keeping it in your pocket - it's killing us over here.

The hour is late and another glorious rain-filled day is drawing to a close here on the 'seam line'. I ask you for your prayers and your blessings as I join those who are defending our freedom. If you doubt this, you need only print this letter out and read it again in twenty years. Please do not forget, during all your highest joy and deepest sorrow, that we are here, fighting so that our people will one day sing a new song.

From the city of joy and hope,
Ezra HaLevi

After the Rain: Dispatches From Aliya Heaven

2002-10-17T23:50:00.000+02:00

The heavens opened up last night and showered us with torrential rains. I had just returned from an assembly of all the Ulpans in Israel and although everyone was extremely tired, spontaneous singing and dancing burst forth all across this side of Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu.

Amidst the thunder, lightning and torrential rains, young Jews from all over the world danced with joy, barefoot in the muddy soil - OUR muddy soil - thanking God for answering our prayers and bringing us, upright and proud, to this Land of our soul.

When I filled out the psychological evaluation at the draft office, there was a question which asked, "Do you ever feel joy for days at a time"? It was amidst all sorts of other very serious psychological disorders. I answered yes, and it does indeed happen quite often here.

In Ulpan the other day we read a ridiculous essay on the "three stages" of absorption. Stage one: Euphoria, Stage two: Depression, and Stage three:(I forgot what word it used but the basic gist of it was the ability to happily hide ones head in the sand and say) "Ein ma laasot (Nothing you can do, accompanied by an exilic shrug and a break of eye contact)." All that is utter rubbish. I imagine that the Jewish Agency as well as certain elements in the Army assign that particular essay and the question on the evaluation as part of their "fall into line and take a number" attitude toward the citizens of this country, but it is so utterly irrelevant in the environment in which we here at Ulpan Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu find ourselves.

Depression and hopelessness are the key ingredients for the disease of passivity that us Jews are infected with so easily. When we are convinced that all of our glorious unprecedented victories, accomplishments and miracles in the past are over and done with we are willing to follow pied pipers off of cliffs in Oslo, or to fence ourselves into a cage while our enemies rattle their sabers against the bars. Rabbi Nachman wasn't kidding around when he said "Ein shum yeush l'olam klal" - 'There is no place for surrender/sadness/hopelessness in this world.'

Here, on the Jordanian border, 10 km from Beit Shean and a couple km from the Shomron, we know full well the irrelevance of passivity. We came from four corners of the world. Argentina, Mexico, America, South Africa, England, Canary Islands (yes, there are Jews there), Brazil, Uruguay, France, Russia, Sweden and Denmark. The foreign cultures we have all absorbed over our long multi-generational journey through the exile are no match for the common future that we are focused on building here in the Promised Land. There is no depression here. We see the ingathering of the exiles going on right under our noses and we are in an environment that does not allow the nay-sayers and cup-half-empty folk to have their way with us. Our exposure to the tough, righteous, joyful Jews that take us into their homes as adoptive families, lifts us far away from the death-cult of passivity and self-centeredness.
We wake up with the dawn, go from Tefilla to breakfast to work. Some pick dates, others pomegranates. Some people work in the fish pools, a handful work in the kitchen, the chicken coops and the dairy. Still others work in the spice factory, the organic gardens, or with the bees. I myself have mostly been working in the greenhouses, planting Fava Beans, Wheat grass and Sunflowers, infesting them with harmful bugs, collecting the bugs to feed to the good bugs, which the kibbutz then sells as a natural effective alternative to pesticide usage for farmers all over the world.

Ulpan is five days a week, alternating between mornings and afternoons. We took a trip together to Yerushalayim a couple weeks ago and over and over again ran into people who had taken the ulpan 10, 20, 25 years ago and had gone strait from there onto their particular fixing of the Land of Israel. In my experience and research I have not witnessed a more effective way to ensure that Aliya is not a lonely or overwhelming process than here on kibbutz. Laundry, food, health, and everything else are taken care of for the five month duration of Ulpan, allowing olim to effectively learn Hebrew while preparing to go to the army, find a job or continue their education. There is an all encompassing arrangement to take care of soldiers who wish to stay on the kibbutz as well.

All this with the key component of Jewish labor. When one arrives here, and immerses completely in a whole country that used to exist mostly in conversations, on the internet news sites, and in their photo albums - the realization that this vast Jewish project has been going on without them for a long time and can seemingly continue without them is often a bit overwhelming and disempowering. But to pick up a shovel and build this magical land together with someone who has been here since the beginning transmits and energizes the oleh chadash with the holy insanity that drives us Jews to continue building despite an unrepentant world shouting at us to tear it all down. The manual labor of the oleh chadash remind him or her that there is a promise we received from the Boss. It reminds us that perhaps our parents and community were wrong to somehow discard manual labor from the ranks of our people with a snobbish distaste. As we work the land underneath the scorching sun and dance through the fields under the gentle rains we are cradled by God. We step a little closer to the career of so many of our great Jewish leaders (no, not UJA president, or even shul president): Shepherding. I neglected to mention that there are goats, sheep, cows, horses, donkeys, rabbits, ducks and lizards here.

Life is very good here, even by the standards of the Metropolitan Jew (I am living in the literal Upper East Side of this country after all). Listening to all the stories from those who have come Home to Israel as their countries become less and less Jew-friendly, I often wonder what will be the fate of North American Jewry. What is the fate of a people that in the spirit of 'Berlin is our Jerusalem' have come to believe that 'Jerusalem is our Disneyland'? What is the fate of people who so often utter the words "Israel NEEDS a strong diaspora"? Are we really gonna wait for you guys to wake up until the train exits the station? Not everybody left Egypt. By the time God removes the clouds of doubt that maintain our free choice its always too late.

As I speak with the head of security and dates here at Sde Eliyahu, a fellow Oleh from New Jersey, I worry that we are simply a different breed of Jew. I worry that he and I are Israelis who happened to be born in America and that our message is no match for the siren song of the American fleshpots and the new suburban Jerusalems who compete for the souls of our brothers and sisters in the Old country. Is that just the way it works? Do we always just have to wait for God to turn up the heat or can we inspire our people to arise and return, upright, to our Land?

Am I just a guy in Times Square with a sandwich board reading "The End is Nigh"? I am specifically asking the Jew who reads this article and believes sincerely that I am simply a different kind of person than he - are you so sure that you are right? Are you so certain of the irrelevance of history, your Torah and current events? Do you think you are more self-aware than the Jews of Germany in the thirties?

The sun rises over the Gilad mountains and the sets over the Gilboa mountains. These mountains have seen it all before. Jews coming Home, the Land welcoming us with greenery, and ten out of twelve spies returning to the US with the narcotic of negativity to share with all their friends and neighbors to get rid of the aching guilt of a Jewish soul whose yearning is stifled by none other than the comfortable body within which it resides.

My brothers and sisters, the Jewish people are under attack again. Please take a moment and think about coming Home and pitching in. There are many empty rooms here waiting to be inhabited by Jews who want to get their hands dirty. The next session of Ulpan begins in February. Email ulpan@seliyahu.org.il for more information.

Gal Einai v'Abita Niflaot m'Toratecha
B'ahavat Yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi
Kumah.

Beauty in Yafo and the Need to Speak Hebrew

2002-09-10T22:43:00.000+03:00

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Long time no mass emails.

What can I say - sharing my life with every human being in the world possessing an internet connection and a search engine is sometimes daunting.

Last Sunday I loaded all my possessions into a van and vacated my apartment in Nahlaot. We drove through the beautiful Jordan Valley, past Jericho and through the Beit She'an valley to a heavenly little Kibbutz called Sde Eliyahu. I figured I had been in an MBA program for two months, living in the most intense, incredible city in all the world - it was time for a change: Socialism and shepherding!

Actually, I will be in the Ulpan at Sde Eliyahu and picking dates as well. I am sick of not being fluent in the Language of my people. The walls that are erected between me and the rest of the Jewish nation due to my exilic language are intolerable and must be torn down. The manual labor will also be good for my soul.

Last Monday I had to go to Tel Aviv to receive one of my benefits as an Oleh Chadash - a voucher from the student authority paying for my Masters Degree. After I finished there I walked through Tel Aviv toward Yaffo. I had never been there but heard it was beautiful and wanted to get a look at it. I walked through a beautiful sea-side neighborhood that looked a lot like Nahlaot - the old construction style from the pre-state settlement of Eretz Yisrael. After passing through a district of carpenters and metal shops I arrived in Yaffo.

I walked past a church and a middle-aged man in a wheel chair called me over. He had the circular metal-rimmed glasses of a Tel Avivian bohemian and at first I thought he was going to berate me for walking toward an Arab neighborhood or as a representative of the entire settler movement, but he did neither.

"Excuse me," he asked in Hebrew, "why did you come here to visit this place?"

"I have never been here and I heard it was a beautiful place and wanted to see it," said I.

He smiled a warm smile and apologized for accosting me. "It is good to see a Jew like you with a beautiful kippa and tzitzit hanging proudly come to visit Yaffo ... nobody comes here any more, we need you."

I told him it was no problem, blushed a little, and asked him what his name was.
"Chaim Cohen," he said. "Do you have a little time? I have something very important to talk to you about."

I said that I did and he began speaking with an open heart:
"I am speaking with you like this because I see you have a beautiful kippa on your head and you look like someone who cares. I don't have my head covered but if it would be up to me I would have my daughter marry someone like you. I am talking to you because you are the only real Zionist today. I want you to know, though, that while you and your friends are busy settling in Gaza and the West Bank, in your own backyard you are losing the battle. We need you to come here, to come to Yaffo with your kippot and tzitziyot and your Israeli flags. We need you to pray in the old synagogues here that lie empty because the Arabs have convinced us this is an Arab city. They buy the corner houses. They buy up all the properties and blare their music out their windows so passersby will know to whom it belongs. I grew up side by side and in the same houses with them and now I have gotten spat upon in the streets to jeers of 'al-yahud'. Our girls are afraid to walk the streets as the streets are full of Arab youth smoking nargilas and harassing them constantly with lewd comments and threats. We need you here! "

'NOCHACHUT' is the word he used. He tried to explain what it meant and I got the impression it meant some sort of permanence. Facts in the ground, if you will. He was crying over the loss of his particular part of the Land of Israel.

I promised him that we would have a Kumah Shabbat in Yaffo and that he would see the day when Jewish children once again danced through the streets and dove from the piers into the sparkling sea alongside his beautiful old birthplace.

I then returned to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, where biblical prophecies are fulfilled daily and punctually as the efficiency and punctuality of the German Jews who emigrated there generations ago continues to run a vibrant old-school kibbutz that has not forgotten that us Jews can and should roll up our sleeves and fix the world with our own two hands.

It is unbelievable to be studying Hebrew and working side by side with Olim Chadashim from Argentina, Mexico, France, New Jersey, London, Australia and even the Canary Islands. It makes me think of those American Jews who think our people's redemption and the ingathering of the exiles is going to wait around the station until they are ready to board the train.

Over here in the Beit Shean Valley, between Har Gilboa and Har Gilad the exiles are being gathered speedily, taught Hebrew, given incredible food (organic farming is huge here, and most of the vegetables consumed each day by all the members in the communal dining hall are pesticide-free) and put to work picking dates, milking cows, harvesting pomegranates and grapes, planting vegetables, in the spice factory, or at Bio-Bee .

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I will finally be eligible to be tried for war crimes by a jury of international Jew haters from Europe and elsewhere: I got my draft date moved up to December 27th!! So if any of you know Saddam or Muhammar Q. let them know they better watch out come wintertime.

I want to send this out now before some of my fellow immigrants come and usurp the internet connection. Please feel free to come visit me up here in paradise.
Blessing us all with a year of fulfilled dreams and the formation of new ones, Looking toward the dawn and seeing more and more light coming faster and faster,

Kim'a, Kim'a...
Kumah.
B'ahavat Yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi

Har HaBayit B'Yadeinu?

2002-07-13T10:52:00.000+03:00

"Sha'alu Sh'lom Yerushalayim, Inquire after the peace of Jerusalem," wrote King David in Tehillim. He never doubted the legality of such inquiries and had no reason to. It would not have occurred to me either, had I not had the following experience with the Israeli police on Thursday, July 11th - one month after my Aliya to the Land of Israel.

I woke up a bit late on Thursday and headed toward a meeting I had in the Old City, planning to pray at the Kotel before the meeting. Upon arrival I ran into an old friend and a discussion ensued which took me right up to the time the meeting was scheduled. The meeting, about student activism on US campuses and the continuation of our Exodus Shabbat Programs, went great.

The moment we finished I went strait toward the Kotel plaza and as I had done upon every visit to the Wall since 1998, but made a slight detour on my way to the wall to "inquire after the peace" of the Jewish people's holiest site.

I walked over to the soldiers guarding the path leading up to the Mughrabi Gate leading to Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount). "Efshar l'hitpalel b'Har HaBayit hayom, Is it possible to pray on the Temple Mount today?" I asked. Usually, the response is a smile and an "od lo, not yet," but not this particular summer day in the City of mundane miracles. A policeman who was speaking with one of the soldiers asked me what I wanted and I repeated my request. He told me to come with him "to see if it was possible."

Now, of course, from past experience and the knowledge of the history of our Holy Mountain ever since Moshe Dayan handed the keys back to the Wakf in 1967, I knew I would not be allowed to pray and that since Ariel Sharon paid his little visit I would not even be granted entrance. My reason for asking the question every time I visit is to let those Jews guarding the entrance, and hopefully those higher up, know that there are still Jews who have not forgotten that it is our holiest site; that there are still Jews who care that our holiest site is being systematically gutted and archaeologically transformed into one of the world's largest mosque's.

Most of all, I always thought it extremely important to call attention to the bizarre Orwellian status quo where on the rare occasion that non-Muslims are allowed to ascend the Mount - it is forbidden for them to pray. Members of the wakf and the Israeli police follow them around and watch their lips for fear that they might desecrate this sacred site of Islam by uttering a prayer to God.

So I went with the officer, whose name was Aharon Richman (badge #1000017). He brought me to the police station at the rear of the Kotel plaza where he proceeded to go through my belongings, removing my journal, tapes, CDs, Cell phone and stickers with a picture of Arafat and the caption "terrorist" on them. He seemed extremely suspicious that a Jew would be so interested in the Temple Mount. He asked me what interest I had in it and I told him it was the nine days leading up to the 9th of Av and the destruction of our temple is on the mind of many Jews.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and asked me who this "Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach" that I had tapes of in my bag was.

He wanted to know why I had a CD called "HaLeviim," "The Levites," with a picture of the Temple on it.
He wanted to know who sent me.
He wanted to know if I had family here in Israel.
He wanted to know who knew I was here.
He wanted to know what this Kumah thing was.

He read through my journal (he knew English because he had made Aliya from Philadelphia). The commander came in and leafed through it with him.

"Why does it say 'ki Atah Imadi' - what do you mean by that? You think God is with you?"
"Who is this 'Kli Yakar?'"
"What is this 'Clarity' you are always writing about?"
"What is this 'Amalek = safek = self-doubt?"
"Why do you write so many p'sukim (verses)?"
"Why are you interested in Har HaBayit?"

The situation was beyond absurd. I had arrived in the Jewish State, asked a policeman whether Jews were allowed to pray on the Temple Mount and was now stripped of all civil liberties, had my passport, Teudat Oleh and personal belongings taken away simply because I expressed interest in the Temple Mount. When I began speaking about my studying law they began to get a bit nervous. They had me sign a piece of paper they said simply stated that my possessions had not been returned to me. Officer Richman kept promising that we were almost done - it would only be a couple more minutes. He spoke on the phone and described me in Hebrew as a young Oleh Chadash who looked like a chozer b'tshuva who "tried to ascend the Temple Mount." I objected to his description as it was false and in English he assured me that everything would be OK.

Finally the other officers came and brought me in a police van up to Jaffa Gate to the large compound called the "Kishle." Officer Richman had promised me it would only take about ten minutes, but after waiting for forty-five minutes while they inspected, detected, selected and neglected various possessions of mine, I decided to put on my tefillin right there in the police officer station. They were already operating under the assumption that I was the leader of some new Jewish Underground after finding several Kumah "On our way Home to Zion" pins on my person so I figured donning my phylacteries couldn't make matters any worse and might even please my Creator enough to bring about a happy ending to the whole sorry episode. As I prayed, I thought of Abraham, who nearly sacrificed Yitzchak on that mountain and Jacob who slept over there one night only to dream of angels ascending and descending the spiritual ladder connecting heaven and earth at that spot. I remembered the first Temple and its destruction, the Jews returning to the Land only to see their second temple destroyed as well - thrown back into exile with many of their brethren who had chosen not to return in the first place.

My praying in the police station spurred a whole new line of questioning as to what I was praying for, why I prayed in the station during an investigation, and could I please give them a list of all my friends and family in Israel.

Finally the real interrogator came in. He wore a kippa and said his name was Ofir. He had a gentle smile and calmly asked me for my life story. I told him it would be easier if he would ask me specific questions and he proceeded to do so. At one point he asked me if I was upset that they brought me in for all this time.

I said "No, I'm not upset, I just think its incredibly absurd that there is a nation of a billion people who are trying to wipe us off the face of the Earth, Imam's who preach our destruction from atop our Holy Mountain every Friday, members of our own government who endanger the existence of the Jewish State in their last-ditch efforts to get rid of Judea and Samaria - and I, a new oleh who came willingly from the US, am sitting in a police station being interrogated because I inquired as to the status quo of the holiest site of my religion and happen to have a beard."

He laughed and said, "It was very interesting talking with you. I learned a lot. We need more people like you here." We shook hands and he left. One of the less friendly officers from earlier came in and gave me back my things after having me sign a piece of paper which he was suddenly unable to translate. I asked him for some sort of notice to prove that I was detained for five hours and he suddenly knew even less English and dismissed me with a wave of the hand.

Now, I know from conversations with activists here in Israel that there do not exist much in the way of civil liberties in the Jewish State, but five hours in detention complete with every possible violation of privacy and person is a little ridiculous. I am forced to conclude that there are orders from higher up designed to send a very clear message to Jews like myself: Give it up. Har HaBayit is not a Jewish Holy site, it is a sensitive Islamic shrine. Stay away from it and do not even ask questions about it or you will be dealt with.

I broke no laws. I did not even come anywhere near breaking any law by any stretch of the imagination. So I have but one request of you, my brothers and sisters. I ask that you, this Tisha B'av, mourn not only for the destruction of our Holy Temple, but for the systematic eradication of our connection to the heart of the Land of Israel and the focal point between heaven and Earth. The Arabs have no problem calling their murderous war the "Al-Aqsa Intifada." We would not dream of fighting for our holy sites. Joseph's tomb has been made into a Mosque, the Temple Mount has two mosques on it, the Maarat haMachpela in Hebron is 1/3 Mosque and the State of Israel has just detained a 22 year old oleh chadash for daring to remind a fellow Jew that the Temple Mount is ours. In 1967, when the paratroopers captured it, they uttered those famous words: "Har HaBayit b'yadeinu - The Temple Mount is in our hands." Now, two years after a Prime Minister of the Jewish State attempted to undo the miraculous results of those six days, the sad truth on this Tisha b'Av is that Har HaBayit LO b'yadeinu - the Temple Mount is NOT in our hands.

There exists one place in the whole world where Jews are forbidden to utter a prayer and that place is the site of our Holy Temple.

There is an old song by Arlo Guthrie called "Alice's Restaurant" and this situation reminded me of it. As I walked out of the interrogation room I asked, "So, we have established that I broke no law - is there any problem with me going right back down there and asking whether Jews can pray there yet?" The less-friedly officer just scowled. I therefore propose that each and every one of you, upon visiting the Kotel, take a slight detour to your right and "Sha'alo Shalom Yerushalayim - Inquire as to the well-being of our holiest site, at the heart of Jerusalem." All it takes is about 30 seconds and with everyone's participation the effect will be immeasurable. Just saunter up to the bored Border Police sitting at the entrance to the path leading up to Mughrabi gate and ask, "Efshar l'hitapalel b'Har HaBayit hayom," wait for an answer and then go about your business.

When one person did it. One person. They interrogate him and detain him for five hours, hoping hill spread the word that its a bad idea.

When five people do it. Five people, walkin' up to the border police officer askin' him if'n they can utter a prayer to God on the site of their Holy Temple - then they might 'round em up, take color-flash photographs of them and call it a new Jewish underground.

But when 500 people a day, can you imagine it - 500 people a day - walk up there and aks to ascend the Holy Mount - then they will know it's a movement.

And that is what it is.

B'ahavat yisrael, from the City of Light and Song,
Ezra HaLevi

Plant Jews. Let THEM plant the Trees.

2002-06-18T23:55:00.000+03:00

Dear sisters and brothers,

So much to write. The bigger the emails, though, the more get returned to me by the MAELER-DAEMON informing me you guys don't have enough room in your inboxes to absorb my emails from the Holy Land. The Holy Land, however, has plenty of wide open space (Eretz Tova U'Rechava...) and rolling hilltops to absorb each and every one of you whenever the FBI's oil-tanker bomb warnings start getting you nervous. A special offer: Anyone who decides to pick up and come Home before the 4th of July can stay at my apartment here, overlooking the city whose Guardian "neither slumbers nor sleeps".

So I changed my name to Ezra HaLevi officially at the Interior Ministry and will be receiving my ID card in two weeks. I don't know if I am just the luckiest man alive or if I inadvertently cut the line, but the wait was very, very short and, as has been my experience since I arrived, my status as a smiling "oleh chadash" (new immigrant, literally "newly arisen") elicited enthusiastic congratulations and patience from the bureaucrats.

That was last week - before the streets once again flowed with our blood. After my last email I got on bus number 6 to Shaarei Tzedek hospital with my mandolin, which I can barely play. I arrived, anger still fresh from the morning's bloodbath, only to be disgusted at the sight of a new checkpoint I had never seen before. This one was situated at the entrance to the hospital. I flushed with anger, knowing full well that this hospital was full of Arab patients as well as Jews hurt in terror attacks - and yet remained a prime target for the genocidal suicide bombers. In fact, I heard on the news that a few Magen David Edom ambulances had been stolen so we are being forced to inspect our own ambulances on their way into the hospitals to make sure they are not laden with explosives. I entered the hospital and joined some high school students who were giving out presents and sweets to patients and then wandered over to the waiting areas where relatives of those injured in the days attack were waiting. All I could do was offer a few hugs, some tearful smiles and a couple blessings - none of us can imagine what it is like to have you life shattered by terrorism and to have the wound reopened daily when your government refuses to eradicate the killers and their human buffers.

There was a mobile blood donor unit set up at Kikar Tzion, and my O- blood was gladly received. It was heartening to see the steady stream of every strain of Jew as they came through the door and waited patiently for their turn to be pricked with a thick needle for the sake of their brethren.

The next day I attended the funeral of a 16 year old girl. When we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur it is reminiscent of a human crying out - wailing and sobbing to our father in heaven. I have never heard crying like that until that funeral. Busloads of students burying their friend, classmate, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, crush, person who is no different than any one of them. They cry out to God and to the adult world that is supposed to be looking out for their fragile lives. Reporters stand on a Jewish gravestone as they snap pictures of our tears and zip off to Jenin to snap some photos of the celebration at the genocide bomber's house.

There are no leftists left. There is no Oslo. All that is left is strategies that once again give shot-in-the-dark diplomacy priority over the preservation of our precious lives. There is a proposal for a fence that is the icing on the blood soaked anti-democratic cake, which was foisted upon our people by a secular-messianist cult at Oslo. There are signs up everywhere saying "Poshei Oslo LaDin" - "Oslo criminals to justice." I agree wholeheartedly. Golda resigned after the Yom Kipper War, Begin did the same when there was the perception of his mismanagement of the state - yet our nation is still riddled with leaders who stay in power and insist that there is no alternative solution to national physician-assisted suicide. They lead us toward the crematoria from their private Volvo limousines as their families move abroad until things blow over (or perhaps they have always been abroad, making their financial support of Israel conditional on its choosing the path that will garner them a European Union passport at the end of the day). Today, there is only one man whose safety is guaranteed by the State of Israel and the United States of America: Yassir Arafat.

From the funeral I went to the another attempted funeral; that of the Zionist dream. It was called the 34th Zionist Congress, but the following anecdote will illustrate the immense misnomer of that particular temporary ingathering of Diaspora Jewry. I arrived to attend the one session that was of interest to me - that on Aliya.

The first resolution was a lukewarm call upon the Zionist Congress to "encourage immigration to Israel." A lady from Hadassa proposed that the word "Jewish" be added to the call for immigration - after all, that has always been at the core of Zionism and Israel's existence. There were some arguments from the Meretz delegates and as the amendment was put to vote, the moderator phrased it the following way: "All those against Jewish immigration," at which a majority raised their voting ballots. And thus, the Aliyah committee of the 34th Zionist Congress finally put to bed that "ingathering of the exiles" thing that our archaic forefathers have been begging the Lord for since our Temple was destroyed. Luckily, it is of no consequence as it is in each one of OUR hands to keep it going.

There is much excitement in the air for the nefesh b'nefesh flight of 450 North American Jews making Aliya together on July 10th. It is taking on a mythical status as last night, at a wedding, the woman next to me insisted that she had heard that 5000 were coming on July 10th. Maybe she knows something I don't. In any event, this flight will really open the floodgates in terms of the American Jewish community, from the big fat Federations all the way down to each little synagogue - there will hopefully begin to be "Aliya funds" to help congregates and members make the move.

Plant JEWS in Israel -- Let THEM plant the trees.

This past Shabbat I returned to a place very close to my heart - the yishuv of Bat Ayin. Bat Ayin means the "apple of the eye" and Shabbat there is like no other place in the world. I would not be surprised if the next generation of prophets and prophetesses came from there.

Yesterday, I went on my first real shopping expedition, trying out all sorts of scary Israeli foodstuffs and wondering how I ever lived without Umeboshi Plum Vinegar. Today is the first day of my Master's program at Bar Ilan University and I am excited for the commute - nothing beats a different Israeli every day to interrogate for forty minutes as thousands of sunflowers and lush cornfields rush past our windows.

Pray that our army is not ordered to devalue the lives of our soldiers this time around - all the good PR in the world is not worth the death of one Jew. We know that good PR only comes at the cost of our blood and we refuse to pay that price any longer.

Shouting at the world from my rooftop, from the city of tears, faith and hope,

With Love for the People and Land of Israel,
Ezra HaLevi

...Because You are with me

2002-06-18T09:23:00.000+03:00

Gam ki Eileich B'gei Tzalmavet, Lo Irah Ra ki Ata Imadi
"Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because You are with me."

Dear brothers and sisters,

Yes, by the mercy of the Almighty I am physically unharmed. You have all heard the news. Our vicious enemies have once again targeted our children. To those of you who still "envision, or "recognize the inevitability of" a Palestinian state, I have one request (pass this on to friends who feel this was as well):

Unless you are prepared to come here and ride the buses during rush-hour, travel to a settlement in Gaza built on Land YOUR great-grandparents purchased and your brothers settled, serve in an Israeli Defense Forces that has its hands tied, and make this Land a Home and not a just a theoretical social experiment - then silence and shame are the only two appropriate responses to an event like today's. We have no problem looking back at American Jewry during the Holocaust and shaking our heads in judgment of them - I shudder to think of the words that will describe North American Jewry in the history books of a couple decades from now.

Those who still speak of a Palestinian state must have their euphemisms snatched away from them, exposing the sinister, callous nature of their proposition. The term "dismantling settlements" no longer acts as a large enough fig leaf to hide the dastardly deed of a Jewish State being the first entity since the Holocaust to ethnically cleanse a piece of land of its Jewish inhabitants. The amoral nature of the Christian values that prevent the State from using large-scale collective punishment on an Arab population that overwhelmingly and unabashedly supports any and every act of terror no matter how incomprehensibly obscene, is starkly revealed.

Yesterday I was interviewed by Arutz-7. Tamar Yonah, who has a show in English, called me up and asked for an interview, saying we could even do it over the phone. I have always wanted to see how the Arutz-7 studio runs and, wondering whether we would be going out on a boat (it IS a "pirate" radio station) I told her I would come down to the studio. You can hear the broadcast at IsraelNationalRadio.com.

Seeing the Arutz-7 office was exciting, but paled in comparison to the bus ride to Beit-El. Those rolling hills are indescribable and the intensity of seeing the Land in its raw beauty brings me back to the times of our foremothers and forefathers and is at once liberating and invigorating. On my bus were many soldiers, including two who were on their way to give condolences to the family of their friend who was murdered in Gaza two days ago. I sat next to a kind woman who invited me for Shabbat within ten minutes of our departure from the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem.

When I got back from the interview, my roommate was on his way out to a wedding of someone from Nahlaot. He assured me that it was a community event and that it made no difference that I knew nobody involved. So rather than attending the opening of the "Zionist" conference - kicking off the grand event where Jewish Agency money is doled out to slovenly American Jewish organizations - I attended a celebration of the focal point of Zionism and the Jewish project: The joining of two soul mates planning to raise Jewish children in the Land of Israel with a love and desire to continue where our forefathers left off. The grandest Zionist statement of them all. The dancing and singing were so high; intensified by the daily sorrows, our joys reach new heights.

I urge all of you to show strength on behalf of your people. Do not be afraid to stand up in your synagogue and shout the truth if watered down apologetics are being injected into your congregation from the podium. Do not be afraid, while walking down the streets of your city - to demand an explanation from the naive brat wearing a kaffia around their neck, as to how solidarity with the mass killing of your people is somehow chic.

"Im Eshhachaich Yerushalayim Tishkach Yemini", "If I forget Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning." To me, our write hand represents our power and our strength as a Nation of prophets and princes to truly shift the current of history with persistence and awareness of the One Above. I am afraid, though, that in our generation we are witnessing the fulfillment of that prayer - our people have forgot Jerusalem and everything she stands for, and therefore, upon our own request, we are forgetting the divine strength and power represented by our right hand. Remember Jerusalem constantly.

I will return to documenting the incredible process of Aliya next dispatch.

Sitting, wrapped in his tefillin, overlooking a city of tears and anger (yes, King Solomon was a Jew, not a Christian - and he reminds us that there IS a time for anger [see Kohelet, you know, "lakol zman v'eit']) and praying to our Creator for days of joy,

Ezra HaLevi

utzu eitza v'tufar, dabru davar v'lo yakum - Ki Imanu El (Yeshayahu 8:10)
"Plot against us and nothing will come of it, say your vicious slander and we will watch you fall flat - for God is with us."

Returned to the Land of my Soul

2002-06-12T03:00:00.000+03:00

Dear self-exiling Brothers and Sisters of the dispersed Great Nation of Israel ....

Nope, too strong... (remember to erase before sending out)

Dear brothers and sisters,
I AM HOME! I HAVE BECOME AN ISRAELI! I suppose I should start chronologically and update you on the past couple days.

Last Shabbat was Parshat Shelach in the Exile. It recounts the incredible story of the twelve spies sent to Israel to report back to the rest of the Jewish people their findings. Ten of the spies return and shout all sorts of alarming reports about a Land that swallows its inhabitants. They speak of giants who occupy the land and in whose eyes "we are like grasshopper." They speak about the bureaucratic nightmares of the Aliyah process and the horrendous customer service. They go on and on leading the people to such panic that they demand to go back to Egypt. Two of the spies, though, simply said: The Land is very, very good! They were no match for a people who never fails to mistake Democratic ideals for the word of God (kind of a mass self-worship) and most of the Jewish People did not want to go into Eretz Yisrael, resulting in forty years in the desert and the death of the entire generation.

The Rabbi at my parents shul reminded everyone of this monumental misjudgment of our people that has been repeated several times and again today as he bid me farewell from the pulpit Shabbat morning. Several people I had never before spoken to approached me. They shared with me their memories of the time in their life where they teetered toward soaring to the Land of Israel but put it off, some for as little as two months or a couple hundred dollars, only to see that window of opportunity slammed shut. Just like last week's Parsha - at the last second, after being admonished by God - after having their eyes opened to the falsehood inherent in their decision - they desperately wanted a second chance at Aliya - and they were refused it, condemned to wander in a desert for forty years (engaging in investment banking and day-trading, all the while building excellent day schools that teach their kids everything except the Hebrew language) until their kids were old enough not to repeat their mistakes.

Saturday night I cleaned out my beloved Chevy Nova of all the flyers, signs and old bottles of Arizona Green Tea accumulated over thousands of miles and a whole slew of Exodus Shabbats at Universities across the east coast. I found some old signs protesting Barak's demand that various despots in the Middle East accept his gift of various chunks of my eternal homeland, from the Golan to Jerusalem in exchange for a prize from some Jew-haters in Norway. It struck me how bizarre it was that Jews in America expect the right to exist to be granted to them for free, but until a year or so ago, nearly the entire Jewish community thought it made sense for Israel to have to beg to be granted that (Land for Peace: You just facilitate your own destruction, and we will try and get rid of our desire to do so by then, ok?)

I could not imagine going to sleep so I didn't even try. I went to the mikva at about 5:30 AM after waking my friend Tzvi (of Sushi Metzuyan fame) and his entire family to get the key. It was just what I needed, and I recommend it to anyone about to get on that plane Homeward bound. It gave me a sense of readiness to enter a Land that really does look daunting when you are not actually standing on its soil. Daunting in the sense of always wondering if it is really as incredible as you remember it to be, always struggling with the imposition of the Israel of Jpost.com and Arutz Sheva (not to mention Haaretz (al-ard)) onto the actual place that you remember the last time you were there. You worry whether living there is going to be different than visiting; so drastically different as to render your previous motivations null and void -- until you realize that Israel operates like life, Godliness and the entire Jewish project: It is new every day, while constantly recalling the affirmed truths you have accumulated on your journey you to move forward and gather more sparks for that inner fire.

I had breakfast with my family and we were off to Newark Airport four hours in advance, in anticipation of teary good-byes and full body searches by El Al security. We were not disappointed. The security questions this time around were incredibly thorough. (I just described their methods in detail but decided to erase it due to the fact that someone reading this is bound to want to destroy the Jewish State and I'll be darned if I'm gonna have anything to do with your nefarious plot!) My carry-on was the wrong size so we had to re-pack a bunch of things and stick it under the plane.

There were many people I knew at the airport but I stuck with my family. No matter how supportive your family is of your Aliyah - no matter what incredible, loving parents, who share your vision, who admire you for it and who are the ones responsible for planting the seeds that sprouted into the move - it is very painful to see your child move across the globe. I waved good-bye to my holy parents who gave me the gift of an upbringing that led me to this point, and with a few tears, waved good-bye to my two youngest siblings, Aaron and Sara. They are 14 and 11 respectively, and between now and when they each make it here on a summer program and I convince them to stay on for the rest of high school (joke) I will be missing the formative years of their lives. And so it was with final moments of sadness that I boarded the plane - like a wedding in which we break a glass and shed a tear for that which is missing from our joyous occasions. A friend of my parents' from Albany sent them an email with the words "Hazorim b'dima b'rina yiktzoru" - that the seeds we plant with tears in our eyes will be reaped in joy. The words are from Tehillim 126, the biblical Zionist folk song of King David we read before Birkat Hamazon.

I was seated in 40K, a window seat. To my left was a Russian couple. I told them I was making Aliya and the man gave me a hug as his wife said incredulously, "it is a very difficult time right now, you know." "Im lo achshav, eimatai?" I asked (if not now, when?). The man gave me a knowing look and a smile as I drifted off into dreamland before the plane could even take off. I woke up and wrote a little bit before the meal arrived and then drifted off again until my neighbor nudged me awake excitedly to show me Genoa, Italy out the window. I took out my notebook again as slogan and t-shirt ideas pop into my head, reminding me of my friend Yishai, who always has a new batch waiting each time we see each other:

"The Ten Spies are Still Lying to the Jewish People"

"End the Occupation...of the Exile. Jews, come Home"

"Ten Out of Twelve Have Always Said Aliyah Wasn't Possible"

The lights came on in the plane as we prepared for landing. I thought about my situation: I was being flown, all expenses paid, on the wings of an eagle made of steel (way better than the feathered kind because not only are there kosher meals and bathrooms, but there are "special kosher" meals and those really hot, moist washcloths they give out right before landing). There was an intense heat wave and the cloud cover was so thick that I could not see that we were over land until seconds before we landed. As the wheels touched down I felt a relief wash over me. I had been certain that some insane circumstance in the US (like a dirty nuke suitcase bomb, for example) would keep me from arriving Home and shut down the airports or force us to land in Uganda. I had waited for this moment for so long. I started belting out Hatikvah before they could put on the canned "best of Israeli folk songs" album (which used to be awesome, but perhaps, in the flight crews quest for variety, has become a smattering of obscure Israeli pop music). Others joined in and together we sang about our Jewish souls yearning to return to the Land we had just touched down in. It was an incredible feeling.

Upon exiting the plane I kissed the ground as one kisses their grandparents. I then got up and took out the shofar I had brought with me. Teka b'Shofar Gadol L'Cheruteinu, v'sa neis l'kabeitz galuyoteinu! Blow the great shofar for our freedom, and raise the banner to gather the exiles! We say that every day. So I blew the shofar with all my strength and people just stopped. When I was done and I got on the little bus they taxi you from the plane to the terminal in, everyone just nodded in agreement. Wherever I looked, people responded to the call of the shofar with the sentiment: We agree, its time to wake up, its time to come Home.

The flight arrived an hour early but a gentleman from AACI (Association for Americans and Canadians in Israel), holding a sign with my name on it, was already waiting for me. His name was Stanley and he whisked me past the lines into the secret part of Ben Gurion that only Israelis and new Olim know about. The process was painless and took about twenty minutes, at the end of which I was holding a document that looked much like my US Passport, but which had a picture of the Menorah from our Holy Temple embossed on the outside, with the name God gave our forefather Yaakov written underneath. It is my Teudat Oleh and I have been told several times already that if I lose it - it is IRREPLACEABLE. Unfortunately, my name is spelled wrong, but tomorrow when I go to the interior ministry for my Teudat Zehut, we will iron it all out.

When I joined the rest of the flight back at the baggage carousel, I received a pleasant surprise. All six of my bags came out quicker than any single bag I have ever taken to the Holy Land. I zipped past customs without making eye contact and arrived at my free cab (new olim get free transportation to anywhere in Israel located to the west of the Jordan River) before the scheduled time my flight was supposed to land.

My cab driver was impressed with my Aliyah for about four seconds, then we listened to the news and talk shows nonstop - interrupted only by my incessant questions: Ma Hamila Hazot, "kenufiya"?, "Eich korim et hashchuna hazot?" I was so relieved to see the land right there where I left it. I don't know if I half expected it to be gloomier and to see actual scorched earth alongside the roads or what - but it was a very beautiful drive from Lod to Jerusalem.

Lions greeted my as I entered the city. Some Jerusalemites poke fun at them, but whether they are a sneaky advertisement gimmick from Peugot, or an inspirational reminder of our strength as a people - they add something to the city. The heat was incredible. The Earth and Sun teamed up and sandwiched us all like a pile-on in elementary school soccer (look how poetic being a Jerusalemite has made me). I put down my bags, met my new roommate, and went with my brother (who is here for another month studying in Maaleh Adumim) to the Old City.

I asked the soldiers on guard what time they were opening the Temple Mount for Jews to pray on. He sent me to the Holy Wall instead. Never hurts to ask, though - it IS what this whole Al-Aqsa Intifada is about, isn't it? If our holiest site is closed to Jews because an Islamic shrine was built on it - perhaps we will get all-Jewish hours at the Kaba'a in Mecca when we build a Beit Knesset there.

On my way back to Nahlaot (I live on a street overlooking Gan Sachar and a stone's throw from the supreme court building, not that I have measured it using that particular method yet) I walked through shuk machane yehuda. Many people have begun to shop during not-so-crowded hours. The only problem is that with all those people shopping during the off-hours, a crowd has been assembled, thereby replicating the original conditions. I bought a whole bunch of fruit to feed to my blender, which is the one appliance I brought with me from America. Instead of unpacking I just stood out on my mirpesset (balcony) overlooking the city of Jerusalem and sang a song into the night.

Shir Hamaalot Bshuv Adonai Et Shivat Tzion Hayinu K'cholmim.
When God returns us to Zion everything will have been like a dream.

B'ahavat Yisrael,
From the city of inner light and mundane miracles,
Unable to sleep because being awake is so incredible,
Ezra HaLevi

Final Thoughts from the Exile

2002-06-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

Shalom. I (Ezra HaLevi) will be sending out regular updates to my friends and family documenting my own Aliya and the developments of Kumah in the Holy Land. Below is the first installment. It is in journal form and pretty much flows with my stream of consciousness. I hope, in honor of this weeks Torah portion, that these emails will be a source of strength. That my words will be like those of Yehoshua and Calev who combated the negativity of the ten other spies by allowing those with whom they spoke to view our Eternal Homeland with the eyes of Eretz Yisrael and not those of exile.

Enjoy. Much more to come.

b'ahavat yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi for Kumah - Americans Return to Zion

********************************************************

Dear brothers and sisters,

At 2:15 PM this Sunday, June 9th I will be returning to the Land of Israel for good. I will arrive in Ben-Gurion airport on Rosh Chodesh [the first day of the Hebrew month of] Tammuz and summarily kiss the holy ground which has waited so long for the return of its people.

I intended to begin sending these emails ever since the beaureucratic beginnings of the Aliya processes, which took place in lovely Midtown Manhattan. In hindsight, documenting such a process only makes the amusing memories vulnerable to their being used as anecdotal fodder for our internal Aliya-excuse producers. Also, who knows how much longer midtown Manhattan will be around, should we really dwell on it? (No pun intended, but not regretted either.) In any event, let me know if you don't want to receive these emails and I will cheerfully remove you from the list.

I am writing to you from Teaneck, New Jersey. After weeks of sifting through old tangible memories stored in the attic and at the bottoms of drawers, life has completed its reorientation toward the Holy Land. I had a seudat Aliya where many friends shared a meal in honor of my ascent and offered blessings for me to take with me. I had a second seudat Aliya with my extended family, where I was given tearful blessings as well. A week ago I said a reluctant goodbye (not a big fan of goodbyes - always thought it better to hold off until deathbeds and the like) to the source of my strength and the sharer of my future as she returned to Montreal in preperation for her own Aliya at the end of the summer. I have been packing my possessions into duffle bags and boxes, sending some of them with a friend who is going to be on the July 8th flight of 400 JEWS ALL MAKING ALIYA TOGETHER (more on this to come).

Amidst all the packing, the tearful good-byes, and the debates with those who have lost hope in our God and the Land He promised us repeatedly, there is an unwavering excitement that makes it difficult to sit still. On my desk lies a ticket paid for by the Jewish Agency and I marvel at the fulfillment of a prayer I have mumbled so often - rarely grasping the depth of our request. In the Birkat HaMazon - arguably the most oft-recited prayer - we implore upon our Creator:

"Yolicheinu Komemiyut L'Artzeinu" May You bring us, upright to our land.

And that is what God has given me and what is lying on the table in front of each and every one of us. Just a few generations ago, making Aliya meant crawling across deserts and dodging British bullets as you navigated a boat toward the Holy Land in the dead of night. Today I stand with my head held high as I stand upright and board a Jewish airplane for the Jewish State - more afraid of my plane being shot out of the air over Newark than I am of landing amidst a Land protected by a Jewish army. Sorry if I didn't fully develop this point - please think about it whenever you come upon those words in the Birkat HaMazon.

Right now, the words of King David fill my room here in Teaneck:

"Gam ki Eileich b'gei tzalmavet lo ira ra ki Ata Imadi" Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because You are with me, God.

The question I am most often asked is: Aren't you afraid? I used to be a bit embarrassed about my lack of fear - afraid that it bespoke my own lack of depth in understanding. I, too, am victim of a society whose assumptions bludgeon us daily into confining God to the synagogue, kitchen and bedroom. We are told in deafening, unspoken assertions and through the assumptions of subtle op-eds that those who base decisions on God's will and who place their security in the hands of the Creator come from the same fundamentalist cloth as those who are trying to wipe us out. If belief in God and in a sublime difference between good and evil makes me a fundamentalist in the minds of those who believe themselves to be gods - so be it.

I suppose I should let you all know that I am a settler. The fact is that we are all settlers. We are all being shot at daily. Our children are having their schoolbuses targeted. Our grandparents are being hunted and killed as they play chess in city parks. The commute home from work includes such things as sniper fire and roadside bombs in addition to the usual traffic. We are all settlers (or inheritors, as is the literal translation of the Hebrew: Mitnachlim) and the tragedy is that we still have yet to fully realize it. I am happy to address individual questions including the top ten suggestions for playing Russian Roulette with Israel's existence that the American Jewish Community has absorbed from a combination of our own ignorant media and a Foreign Ministry run by Shimon Peres, ("Why don't we just uproot those really isolated settlements in Gaza - What are we doing in Gaza!") but for the time being I just ask that from now on, as you read the news - know that your friend Ezra is one of those "settlers" that are always being spoken about. Know that I am creating facts on the ground by my returning to a Land that we have prayed for so hard that we have become "k'cholmim" - like dreamers - at its miraculous accessibility. We are slowly waking from our slumber but we need more people running from house to house screaming KUMAH! ARISE! WAKE UP!

On Sunday I will board the wings of an eagle. I am ready to pick up where our people left off two thousand years ago. I yearn to continue the project for which we were given our Torah. Our task as Jews is not to create perfectly comfortable societies, but a PERFECT society. Being a light unto the nations does not happen at our office water coolers and Federation "tikkun-olam" missions to South America - it happens when we lead by example. The world knows we are supposed to be doing something big. Jew hatred is on the rise (who wouldn't hate the guy who is supposed to be fixing the world and heralding the redemption but is instead building better and tastier kosher restaurants, fancier synagogues and addition after addition onto his McMansion) and though it is clothed in every possible cloak of evil - there is a strong message from God in all of it, if only we open our ears and our hearts.

The "cycle of violence" will continue just as the "cycle of Jewish forgetfulness" has continued unimpeded by any jolt of clarity (be it a split sea, Sinai, a holocaust, a six day war). The storm clouds that are encompassing the exile as well will continue and grow until we remember the project for which our people's blood has flown through the alleys and streets of history.

The world is watching us. Jerusalem has thousands of cameras pointed at her daily. The demands for our State to implement insane Christian ideals reach new levels of absurdity each day even though "turn the other cheek" came not from the lips of a counter-terrorism expert, but from a Jewish carpenter on an ego trip. The world is waiting for us to re-assert our only indisputable claim on the Land of Israel - Our Torah. As we see with the Shaba'a Farms in the North - all is takes is one press-release from some blood drenched terrorists to make parts of our eternal homeland into "disputed territory" just months after a retreat or withdrawal. It is time for us to take out our deed and if not slam it down on the desk of the world - then to at least read it ourselves. The Arabs know the power of our forgotten secret weapons - and they have been attempting to remove all remnants of our presence from the Temple Mount, Shechem, Hevron and other areas where our pact with the Creator was marked indelibly.

I bless us all to be able to view the world through the eyes of the Land of Israel and to liberate ourselves from the transient nervous eyes of the exile. Desperation for a man made peace has always been a prelude for unspeakable annihilation of our people - let us look toward our God and toward our brothers and sisters and lock arms as we move toward the Great Shabbat, when all will be made right and when swords, after having rid the world of evil, will be made into plowshares and used to make the Land blossom as our suntanned children frolic in our Land and sing songs of joy in the Holy tongue.

Thinking of all those who I love as I avoid your good-byes, and already waiting to greet each one of you at the airport when we rejoin the in Promised Land,

b'ahavat yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi