Conserving Judaism

I spent this week's shabbat at Kibbutz Hannaton, the only Conservative (Masorti) kibbutz in Israel. It was my first experience in conservative prayers and community.

As is typical of Israel both for Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism there is a stronger adherence to traditional practice here than in Chul. But still some things were different. Men and women prayed together in shul with both of them reading from the Torah and being the shaliach tzibbur. Women were also included in the minyan of 10 people. Comfortingly however, the prayers were all in Hebrew and the service was otherwise identical to an Orthodox one.

I'd have to say that I felt really comfortable in the Conservative world. It always seemed obvious to me that women are people too and hence should be included in Jewish practice. I suppose that the only reason why I'm not Conservative is because I really value tradition and slow change. So even though I'd like Orthodoxy to move in the direction of Conservative Judaism, I'll be ok to wait another generation or two just to make sure they we don't change too fast and lose the really important bits of Judaism, for example our thousand year old practices that I reckon are worth preserving.

Other than that it was great to get out of Jerusalem and away from the intensity and hatred and stress and pressure that fills this holy city.

As a side note - the Frenchman is really not ready for religious dating. People are very vulnerable when undergoing conversion and I'd prefer not to get involved in that stuff.

However, I have another date with another American tomorrow night. We'll see how it goes.

Shavua tov

engagement against one's will

In 2007 I spent 3 weeks on a Kibbutz which shall remain nameless. Most of my time on this kibbutz I spent sitting on bench tops in the kitchen entertaining the old men with my wit and charm while they chopped enough carrots to feed the entire world rabbit population.

In the kitchen I met Itamar. He was the son of the manager of the kibbutz. He was 19 years old and back from yeshiva for pesach. After work finished at 3 Itamar and I would go for walks around the very green and lush kibbutz. We'd talk about lots of things like rabbis, food, zionism and socialism. When the group of chutznik volunteers had a game of basketball against the kibbutz kids Itamar played and he was awesome.

He was tall(ish for a jewboy), had blonde hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately he also had a shortish beard (ever heard of pash-rash?) and longish peyot (errr... sidelocks?). He was also SUPER into G-d and majorly into singing and praying and crying. I know this from many sources one of which being that he wore a GIANT kippa. The thing was like a knitted salad bowl. Just HUGE. Enormous. I totally could have bathed our first born child in it.

But moving on.

So I moved on out of that kibbutz and returned to my seminary in Jtown. He keeps calling me and that was ok, no big deal really. Like once a week, no biggie. This lasts for about a month. But then one friday afternoon he's in jlem and we are at the Tachana Hamerkazit. We are chatting, very chilled.

And then he drops a bomb (figuratively speaking for clarification b/c I know people get nervous when bombs are mentioned in the context of the middle-east).

He casually says "so I spoke to my rabbi and to my father and to the vaad (committee) of the kibbutz and they all say we can get married and have an apartment on the kibbutz, so if you could please give me your parents number I'll call them and we can discuss details for the wedding."

WHAT THE F$%K ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU PSYCHO!? (says the voice in my head)

"um, Itamar, I don't understand, since when are we getting married?" (says my real voice)

Long story short we have a rather large and public fight about whether or not we are getting married. It went something like this. For the purpose of this conversation we will call him Psycho Kibbutznik or PK for short.

Me -" but I don't know you well enough"

PK - "we will get to know each other through our many happy years of marriage"

Me - "but I don't think I love you"

PK - "but we will come to love each other through our many happy years of marriage"

Me - "but I don't know if I want to live on a Kibbutz or even in Israel"

PK - "but we can decide on where we live later on in our blissful marriage"

PSYCHO!

In the end it was a Friday afternoon and I had a bus to catch so we walked to the bus together, still fighting. He waited with me in line while we were still fighting.

I climb to get on the bus and say "I don't have time to deal with this now, we'll talk about it motzash (saturday night)."

"Fine, but until then we are ENGAGED!" screams PK.

Then my bus pulls away robbing me of my right of reply.

Thus began my 25 hour long engagement against my will.

Saturday night I called him and lost the fight again. But after a 10 minute break I called him again and won. Hence I am no longer engaged to PK.

Now you may think that having won my freedom the story ends here. But there is a post-script to these eventful events.

A couple of months later the woman who organizes the overseas volunteers on the kibbutz invited my group back from a shabbat. But she told my madricha "everyone should come except for that red-head girl, she's not welcome."

I guess that's what I get for messing around the son of the kibbutz's manager.

Serves me right for being such a red-headed Lilith.