Our trip to Israel, and the least-known major Jewish holiday

Eight days touring in Israel were an appropriate segue into a major Jewish holiday--one we counted toward for seven weeks, commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. We'd seen the Holy Land from the zenith of the ski lift on Mt. Hermon, surrounded by patches of snow, and from the barren salt shores of the Dead Sea. Celebrating the Torah in the Northwest extended the spiritual experience of Israel back home.

Israel seemed sanguine while we were there, its citizens carrying on in their normal mid-Eastern rush and brashness, despite the unease here in The States about an enemy media convince us is readying to pounce.  Efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear warheads, we're told, are likely to include US involvement, though apparently our President would prefer if Israel did the dirty work.

All this nervousness and dread wasn't part of the Israeli mentality as we saw it. Living in a "bad neighborhood" has made residents constantly on guard and yet overtly relaxed in their everyday activities.  We, as tourists, observed how they prepare for aggression but at the same time enjoy themselves, leaving the ultimate outcome to God.

My sister-in-law hosted our family for a lavish Shabbat meal, my brother-in-law the magnanimous host with luscious wine and contagious joie-de-vivre. Succulent vegetables and fruits we enjoyed came from within Israel, which is about the size of Vancouver Island off the coast of Washington State (and can fit into France 25 times), so "eating local" is normal. My sister-in-law said the green beans, asparagus and eggplant on her table had been in (or on) the farm just hours before she cooked them.

Sweet tomatoes grown with brackish water in the Negev

Our trip included many unique experiences--visiting with the Circassian Muslim sect in their hamlet of Rehaniya, debating Arab-Jewish harmony at a Women's Center in Akko, discussing the evolution of kibbutzim with a founder of Kfar Blum near the Lebanon border, munching sugary cherry tomatoes grown with brackish water sucked from beneath the Negev desert, with the innovators at Ramat Hanegev Agro Research Center--and so many more.

I would have stayed another two weeks, but had to rush home to prepare for the holiday of Shavuot. The name means "weeks," for the fact we count fifty days--seven complete weeks--from Passover, the growth process leading to the Jews' receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai.  The holiday recalls a national experience--an entire people who had endured Egyptian slavery, witnessed the fury of the Ten Plagues, left for a mysterious land under miraculous circumstances and finally quaked together at the overwhelming sensory manifestation of God's presence. They personally saw, felt, and internalized the Almighty, and it was too much; Moses then ascended Mt. Sinai in their stead for the transmission of a lifestyle that Jews continue today.

Major stuff; the basis of a faith that has endured beyond any of their contemporaries'. And yet Shavuot just doesn't get the publicity of, say, Passover or Chanukah. Yes, Christians have heard of Pentecost, but consider it the time the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles. Similar theme, perhaps: God interfaces with man--but not in the same way.

Veggies at a neighborhood Jerusalem market

Luckily, this year, we didn't have to explain work absences as much. It so happened that Shabbat, our weekly Saturday Sabbath observance, abutted the two-day holiday of Shavuot, Sunday and Monday until dark on Memorial Day. It's a joyous culmination, and I helped decorate our synagogue with flowers and boughs celebrating springtime and the season's first harvest. To honor the Torah, our congregation and many others spent Saturday night studying (midnight til 3 am); in our daytime service we heard the Book of Ruth, a reminder that for all Jews, acceptance of the Torah is a voluntary, daily commitment. Children got ice cream, and a blessing at the reading of the Ten Commandments. Like many Jewish moms, I cooked ahead for a succession of festive, formal meals.

Buskers at 2010 Folklife Festival

This year, I joined my husband and two friends on his annual Shavuot walk (usually about 30 miles round-trip), this time to my favorite Northwest festival, Folklife, which showcases an international array of funky musicians, with a craft fair, drum circles, hula-hoops and jugglers, in the shadow of the Space Needle. I've got blisters on the bottoms of both feet as souvenirs, but hobbling now is a small price to enjoy the happy, hippy confluence at our city's core.

Lawn hooping while performers on several stages played, 2010

We left for our hike from the synagogue at the conclusion of services, picnicking in a city park where we watched men practicing soccer. The weather was a perfect alternation between cool and comfortably warm, and the city was abloom with rhododendrons and irises to color our strides. Just a week before, we were in Israel's Negev desert, gazing across the Ramon Crater, a Grand Canyon of beiges set among endless sandy waves.  Perhaps the topography was similar when the entire Jewish people gathered at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah. Memories of just a few days ago felt like an appropriate backdrop for this significant holiday, whether the world knows it, or not.

Death of bin Laden; Death of Hitler

 "Hitler Dead!" "Bin Laden Dead!"  Exactly sixty-six years elapsed between the two headlines, both splashed across newspapers on May 2.

Another "coincidence:"  The day Jews around the world mourn and remember the enormous evil of Hitler's genocide, Yom haShoa, was the very same day Osama bin Laden was eliminated.  Eerie how these two clear reminders of evil--and death--occurred together. 

Jews around the world presently have heightened awareness of days, as we're in the midst of a special period that links the Passover exodus from Egypt to its purpose, receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai.  Each day we "count the omer," saying aloud the number of days and weeks in this transition.  As part of this, we're ideally preparing ourselves with attention to specific character traits, in order to emulate our biblical ancestors who in unity and lofty spirit replaced their bondage to Pharoah with voluntary service to God.

I've been reading that some well-meaning, soft-hearted people, while glad the threat Osama bin Laden's continued existence posed is gone, refuse to "celebrate" the fact he's dead.  I find this inappropriate.

Yes, I, too, remember the sickening videos of Muslims whooping and jumping for joy when they heard about the 9-11 attacks.  That was particularly heinous and offensive, because the American civilians killed were just going about their daily lives.  They were indiscriminately murdered for the sole purpose of terrorizing and humiliating our nation.

Osama Bin Laden, on the other hand, considered himself a holy warrior.  He not only planned and facilitated the deaths of those 3,000 innocents on 9-11 but masterminded or enabled attacks dating to 1992. In 1998 he signed a fatwa or commanding decree, which includes the following: "We -- with God’s help -- call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it."

Three reasons were offered in the fatwa, the first two rooted in alleged American crusades against Muslims, with a supposed toll (as of Feb. 1998) of a million dead.  The third justification for the fatwa is decidedly anti-Semitic: "...if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there."

Ironically, a 2009 Pew poll found that Arabs in middle eastern countries hold overwhelmingly negative views of Jews--except those who live in Israel.  Only 35% of Israeli Arabs expressed a negative opinion of Jews, while 56% had a positive response.

What we must consider, given the confluence of Yom ha Shoa and the killing of Osama bin Laden is the similarity of target between the Nazis and militant Islamic jihadists.  It all seems to come back to the Jews, a religious group too tiny in number to effect any real rulership or oppression of Muslims, even if it were permitted or desired.  Yom ha Shoa, the remembrance of the unspeakable annihilation of Jews on no basis except heritage, is whispered in Osama's fatwa, and broadened to include an entire nation, or more accurately, western civilization and culture.

America is not only hospitable to Muslims, but even now, officially tiptoes to assure them they are respected and not held responsible for the faction who would destroy us.  Pres. Obama was careful to say in his announcement that Osama "Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries including our own."

I don't think al Queda was aiming for Muslims when it took down the Twin Towers, but I also don't think killing Muslims who defend America would be seen as more than collateral damage to the jihadists who have such low regard for human life, even their own.

Jewish tradition teaches that certain individuals and groups are imbued with a proclivity toward evil, and we remember these destructive forces ("Amalek") yearly before Passover.  As we offer thanks to the courageous American security and military personnel who sought and destroyed Osama--for eight years under President Bush, and for two more under President Obama--we need to remain vigilant and cautious.  On an individual, spiritual level, the timing is right to pursue personal elevation as a means to replace the world's evil with good.

The headlines are just a reminder that little in this world is truly coincidence.