Coming up on the end of a lovely Shabbat with my friends in
Hanaton. Hanaton is basically heaven.
It’s a pluralistic, egalitarian Conservative kibbutz set a bit southwest
of Haifa. Avi picked me up sometime before Shabbat—Nurit was at a birthday
party with kids. The kibbutz is set in
the country—smell of cows included, but not bad. Lots of new and very nice houses. Nurit and
Avi’s is on a hill—as is the whole place, and has three levels. All made of
stone and tile. Kids are below, Nurit
and Avi are above, and the main living space is between—along with Nurit’s
office, which is also the guest room.
Nurit and her family went to the US for a couple of years,
which is where I met her, at Berkeley. Her family speaks English and is
Conservative in practice; her husband is a Conservative rabbi. Which is a rare thing in Israel. The community, though, is exceptional.
I have long envied the strong community and values of the
Orthodox—as when I go to Detroit and see my cousins’ families. The way family, community, and Judaism as a
way of life are valued is simply lovely.
But there’s a price to pay for that: the conformity to a Judaism to
which I don’t subscribe. I am
egalitarian in practice. Period. I can appreciate a non-egalitarian
Judaism—but a lot less after this weekend.
Because these people have managed to have their cake and eat it too.
First of all, this is an intentional community. People choose to live here and choose to be part
of the kibbutz. How are you part of the
kibbutz? You buy property on it, which
is held in common is some way or other.
It’s not a place for anyone who isn’t willing to negotiate community
values sort of constantly. And, like
many communities, some people care more and do more than others. I got enough of the politics to understand
that this is hardly perfect—after all, it is an organization run by people.
But every place has problems. My sense is that those problems are
over-ridden by some powerful commitments and values—which I can best describe
through telling about Shabbat services.
Which were your basic liberal services.
They were Conservative, not Reform, in content, but I don’t care about
that—traditional or not, mostly I look for active engagement in egalitarian
practice. So Friday night, Avi and I
started off for the service (Nurit came
later). On the way, Avi and I ran into a
couple with about five kids, one in a stroller. Not clear how many of the kids
were theirs, but the kids had an air of being well-loved and completely
comfortable in the environment. After a
conversation I couldn’t follow, but which apparently was about kibbutz
politics, we continued up the hill to the lawn where mats were still being laid
on the lawn for an outdoors “Israeli” service.
This was a place for young families.
There were a few gray (or dyed) heads like mine, but not many. There
were kids from two months to fifteen years (the fifteen year old had that
lovely sullen air they get…). There were
kids running around the service area, sitting for a few minutes and getting up
again, and generally being part of things without being expected to sit through
this adult activity.
A couple of highlights: the two year old in a fancy dress
with gold shoes and no underpants. The two toddler boys who both removed their
pants and had a pissing contest. The
three boys who ran in circles around and through the service, tussling like
bear cubs. The six-month old who was crawling all over me, trying to get my
siddur. I just picked him up (oh did it feel good to hold a baby!) and held him
while we prayed. His mom was fine with it—all these kids went to one adult or
another without any qualms (most wouldn’t have come to me—this one was just
young), but the culture was that kids played and adults let them do so, and the
nearest adult intervened as necessary.
Nurit told me later that most families have about four kids. I don’t
think that’s easy—parents work outside the kibbutz and there is childcare,
although in many cases, one parent stays home—but there’s clearly a strong
commitment to family and children and mutual support for both.
It’s also a mixed community in other ways: LGBT families are
welcome. So are intermarried families. So are interracial families. And there
is respect for different levels of religious observance, with there being
negotiation within families and in the community space. In other words, Jewish observance is taken
seriously and individually.
So…the service was in two parts. The first welcomed Shabbat with seven songs
and was led by two young adults, one with a guitar. As that concluded, there
was a brief drash given by the resident sociologist of religion (later had
dinner with him and his family) on the difference between the practice of
religion as a symphony, with a score and carefully scripted parts, and as jazz,
where the practice is suggested, but then there are riffs. There’s a tension between the two with regard
to memory, because it is easier to preserve the memory of the carefully
choreographed symphony, while that is more difficult to do with jazz. I think
that’s more complicated—both have problems—but it would be interesting and
productive to play with the narrative a bit more. The service continued with a
fairly straightforward Friday evening service.
No rush for any of it. But it was
long—the service began at 6:45 and ended around 8:15. My sense is that the songs, which were an
experiment, went longer than intended, but no one complained—pretty much a
sense of being in the moment. And if a
kid needed to eat, there was food.
We continued with Shabbat dinner back at Nurit and
Avi’s. A meal that began with lots of
little Israeli salads, was followed with two kinds of soup (lentil and corn),
and continued with fish and lasagna and I can’t even remember what else—but it
was good. The kids of various ages jumped about, more or less
participating. The two five-year-old
boys had spilikes until they were released from the table, upon which they
vanished from sight and sound. The
teenagers of the visiting family participated in the conversation
appropriately. Adam described his experiences working with the kibbutz cows,
Rachel talked about her experiences as a tri-athlete as an example of how
competition works. And somewhere in
there, we had an education and sociology academic discussion. We didn’t finish
dinner until 10:30—and were all relaxed and exhausted.
This morning, I headed back to services with Avi, who was
leading (this isn’t his congregation—he goes there every other week). The pattern of arrival was typical: at 9 AM,
but for the presence of 20 or 30 USY teens, there would not have been a
minyan. As it was, Avi led the service
using Sim Shalom, with which I’m quite familiar (although on Friday we used the
Conservative Israeli Siddur and I’m a fan). It felt completely familiar, but
for the Hebrew. There was a break for
study before the Torah service—and I followed almost none of it (I started to
go with the teens, but really—that just didn’t work). By the beginning of the Torah
service, the place was full and there was a buzz of children’s voices from
outside.
During the discussion, I got into a conversation with the
man next to me, who turned out to be Yitzhak Santis, an advocate for Zionism in
the Bay Area (here’s a link to an article on him from when he moved to Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/change-of-scenery-from-san-francisco-to-northern-israel/). But the really funny thing is that his wife
and I knew each other. We looked at each
other and looked at each other and finally realized that we had both taught at
Beth Torah the same year.
So then they came over for lunch, which was plentiful and
pleasant. And the rest of the day
continued with relaxation until the sun went down and Nurit drove me home…
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