Friday, January 21st

Breakfast with host families
Gather to return to Jerusalem
Yad Vashem: Holocaust Memorial and Museum 3
Mt. Herzl – The Holy of Holies of Israel’s Civil Religion
Qabbalat Shabbat with with Kol Haneshama and other local Congregations
Home hospitality for Shabbat dinner

I'm not quite sure how to process this roller-coaster of a day.  I woke many hours ago to the hospitality of our Palestinian host family, who presented my roommate and I with a wonderful breakfast of small breads, hummus, fruit, eggs, and other assorted delicacies before driving us back to the meeting point.  (Najla says she'll e-mail me the recipe for those little spice-filled pita bites, as well as Thursday night's stuffed cabbage leaves with lemon.)  We got back on the bus and headed for the checkpoint, where we were actually checked on our way through.  Going into Palestine, we had passed by without much more than a wave; this time, machine gun-wielding Israeli soldiers boarded the bus and walked down the aisle, making eye contact with each of us.  I was surprised by how disturbing this was; possibly because unlike the many other soldiers and machine guns we have seen, these were in "our" personal space and were blessing us with their direct attention.  They stepped off the bus and we drove through the opening in the great grey behemoth of wall.  As we passed, I noticed the long line of pedestrians to our left, waiting for a similar exit.

We drove over to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and took a slow walk through the trees planted in honor of the righteous among the nations.  It is a beautifully designed museum campus with highly evocative artwork surrounded by a wealth of trees and bushes, giving it a European forest look which belies its Middle East reality.  I spotted Corrie Ten Boom's tree, and our guide pointed out the general direction of the tree planted in honor of Oskar Schindler before we stepped into the museum proper.  There is an installation of a railroad box car - the kind used to transport Jews to the death camps - suspended over the walkway leading up to the buildings, and I was startled by the almost claustrophobic emotional weight which descended on me as I stepped under it.

Once in the museum, we walked by exhibits of piled up shoes, mementos and documents singed by fire, videos and photographs of victims, and scale models of the crematoriums with little tiny figures shown piled up against the walls.  Large images of the skeletal dead and dying were displayed in some areas, maps and ghetto artifacts in others.  At the end, an art installation paired "before" photos of dozens of victims mounted in a cone-shaped ceiling above our heads with a reflecting well and surrounded it with binders containing every known name of a holocaust victim.  (About 1 in 3 remain unknown; when an entire village was wiped out, sometimes no record was left to provide the names.  In the worst cases, they don't even know exactly how many Jews from a particular location were killed.)

Down a tree-lined path, we stepped into the children's memorial.  Nazis especially targeted the children in an attempt to destroy future generations of Jews, and there are thousands of heart-rending and gristly stories which bear witness to this.  The memorial, however, was designed in brilliant simplicity; one simply walked down a dark path clutching a rail for guidance and stepped into a room where small lights and mirrors created the illusion of a universe of stars.  (Thinking back, it reminds me of the lights which are lit in a synagogue to mark the anniversary of a death.)  These lights shone out of the dark, appearing near and far in the different reflections while a series of recorded voices read the name and age of one doomed child after another.  Many of us stepped back out into the sunshine with tear-streaked faces.

We walked up to the cemetery on Mount Herzl and tried to make sense of all this while we ate our picnic lunch.  The Palestinian situation - the horrors of the Shoah (or Holocaust), with one image and exhibit after another reigning down on me like a beating - the peace of the cemetery and the emotional turmoil of my fellow travelers - I found it all too much to process.  We think of the Shoah and promise ourselves "never again," but then sit by during a Rwanda, or give speeches about non-interference as lives are systematically destroyed.   Are we our brother's keeper?  Is it arrogant to step in, or irresponsible not to do so?  Can there ever be an answer?

I stood up in the sunshine, assumed a mountain pose for a few breaths in each direction, and did my best to rediscover peace and let the turmoil disperse until it could be examined properly.  I needed to find some inner peace and space, to let go a bit with my heart so that I could use my head.  Still, I doubt there are any real answers to these questions.  Like some of the Palestinians which I met on Thursday, I am fencing with despair.

To close out the evening, we cleaned ourselves up at the hotel and then headed out to Friday night services with a local congregation.  The liturgy was in Hebrew but printed translations allowed us to join in the celebration of the sabbath, who arrives as a queen of peace.  Afterwards, my companion and I walked a few blocks deeper into the city (striking out intrepidly on our own, with the help of a map and some written directions) before arriving at the apartment of our dinner hosts. Ilan and Yael had prepared a vegetarian feast for us, and we ended up talking well into the night about religion, politics, ambitions, concerns . . . and a shared love of the television show Glee.  They haven't seen much of season two here yet, but have been reading about it online.  (We all really like the Brittany Spears episode.)

Looking back now, I am perhaps desensitized to some degree to the horrors of the holocaust.  Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place had a deep impact on me as a young adult, and I've watched everything on the subject from Au Revoir, Les Enfants to Europa! Europa! to Sophie's Choice and Playing for Time.  I've read books and articles with morbid fascination, visited other exhibits, and generally learned as much as a gentile woman born decades after the fact can probably absorb without a specific plan or curriculum.  I get it, as best I can.  The scar left on the collective Jewish psyche is unimaginable, and clearly continues to the present generation.  On the other hand, does that deep wound justify their heavy-handed approach to their own neighbors?  Moreover, who am I to judge?

I just don't know.