Last week in Arad... :'(

I can hardly believe it, but I only have 5 more days until the end of the first half of WUJS. This means only 5 more days of full-time living in Arad! I have quite mixed feelings about it; on one hand, I am VERY excited about moving to Tel Aviv to start my PSJ Internship (this will be the subject of future postings), and to live a little more in the "real world" of Israel. On the other hand, I have grown very attached to my little desert hometown, and the WUJS routine, and there are many things I am going to miss....

Anyway, this week has been yet another busy one. I had two fieldtrip days that I really want to write about:

TUESDAY
This week, a theme of our learning has been "The Holocaust in Israeli Consciousness". Like many people, until now I have always associated Holocaust memorialisation in Israel with Yad Vashem, which I visited in 2001 on Birthright. While I think Yad Vashem is an excellent and important place for all visitors to Israel to see, one can't deny that it is a deeply harrowing experience to spend a day there. This week, with WUJS, we travelled not to Yad Vashem but to a place Massuah up near Netanya. I'd not heard of this place before. As their website explains,

Massuah considers education the most significant way to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Its educational approach raises fundamental questions about the essence of humanity, the people and the state, education, and culture, which lead to issues that are relevant to the world in which today’s young people live.

We had a few discussion workshops with the Massuah educators, and we also visited a couple of exhibitions at their museum, all of which were thought-provoking. The most remarkable event of the day, however, was our session with a Holocaust survivor, Shlomo Perl, whose unbelievable story was turned into a well-known film, Europa, Europa!. To briefly summarise, Shlomo survived the Holocaust by pretending to be an ethnic German, and incredibly found himself enlisted into a prestigious school for the elite Hitler youth! For four years he lived with a bizarre dual identity - Josef the German Hitler Youth, and Shlomo, the hidden Jewish boy that he was, worrying that he could be discovered at any moment. I hadn't seen the film before, so this story was completely new to me. Shlomo told us a little bit about what had happened to him, and then we watched the second half of the film with him. All I can say is, if you haven't seen this film, go and lay your hands on a copy ASAP.

WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday we had a whole-day PSJ seminar about civil rights in Israel. For this, we visited three different organisations in Jerusalem. First, the Israel Religious Action Centre. Next, Open House which is a community centre for gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people in Jerusalem. This was a timely visit, as Open House has been at the centre of a significant controversy in Jerusalem for the last few years. Namely, they are the organisers of the annual Gay Pride parade which has the Orthodox religious leaders of Jerusalem up in arms. We watched a DVD about last year's attempt to have the parade - which was fought bitterly against by some members of the ultra-orthodox community and religious members of the city council, to the point that the police were too worried about security and forced the parade to be cancelled and replaced by a rally in a local stadium. What I saw in the DVD - the intolerant, cold-hearted, cruel way in which the gay and lesbian community was treated by the parade's opponents - the death threats, the inhuman things that were said - convinced me how important it was that this year's parade should go ahead. Some of the most disturbing scenes were of an anti-parade rabbi going into the West Bank to meet with Muslim Clerics, not on a peace-building mission, but to unite together against their (perceived) common enemy - the GLBT community. Sigh. By contrast, the GLBT community itself presented an inspiring model of Israeli society in which Jews, Palestinians, gay and straight people, religious and secular, everyone, whoever they are can coexist peacefully and warmly with one another.

I said our visit was timely - it was in fact the day before the 2007 parade which, I just read online, went ahead in a largely peaceful manner, thank goodness!

The final stop on our tour was to a place called Mavoi Satum. This was also a very very important place to visit. However to explain what they do, I also have to explain a bit about how "marriage" works according to Jewish Law (Halakhah). (Readers who already know, never mind!). But now it's kind of late and this posting is already kind of long, so it's going to have to wait for another time I think.....