On Sunday morning Rosh Chodesh Adar I made my way down to the Kotel to attend the Bar Mitzvah of Donny Kilimnick, the son of Drs. Joseph and Susie Kilimnick and the oldest grandson of Rabbi Shaya and Nechie Kilimnick. I generally do not go to the Kotel to pray but having been invited to attend I wanted to honor the family and participate in their simcha.
The minyan was set up next to the mechitza wall (the separation between the men and women's sections for prayer) with a small reader's table and a number of plastic chairs. One very nice part of the occasion was that I was able to see a number of people who had been Rochester residents in the past and were now residing in Israel after making aliyah. I saw Karen and Bruce Zivan and family and Reuven and Idit Shapira. In addition to the Kilimnick clan and friends, Aharon Baruch and Kathy Simon were also in Israel with their children.
The simcha was lovely but the usual drawbacks of worshiping at the Kotel were present for me. There were a constant flow of individuals coming over to everyone with their own “pushkes” or hands held out asking for money even while people were praying. To me this is distracting and an interruption when one is trying to concentrate. After some thought I also see that if prayer is supposed to lead to good deeds, what better deed is there than tzedakah. Yet I still wonder where this money ends up and if people are simply not trying to avoid working a regular job and simply choose to do this to make their meager living? The second drawback from my perspective is not only the gender separation but the complete inequality in participation. Neither mother nor grandmother could be near the Bar Mitzvah boy. The mechitza is also so high that at first a hand was raised above it holding a camera to take pictures. Later a few chairs were brought over and a few of the women were able to stand on them to get a glimpse of the proceedings. I hope this atmosphere is meaningful to the family but it something to which I have great difficulty relating.
This celebration occurred at a time when in the news there is reporting of the debate over the many segregated bus lines not only in the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) neighborhoods but even between cities. Women are relegated to the back of the bus. In many cases if one wants to go between certain cities on non-segregated buses, for example Ashdod to Tzefat, it can be more expensive and take longer with less convenient connections. Add to that the ongoing prejudices against the “Women of the Wall” with the arrest of a woman for wearing tefillin and the police questioning of the director of the Israeli Religious Action Center (IRAC) and you have a disturbing religious inequality against those who express their Judaism in a non-Orhtodox manner.
On a more upbeat note I made 2 new discoveries in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The first was a new wine store in the Cardo. I was told that the proprietor goes to many small limited production wineries and acquires wines that are not distributed in the US and often not widespread in Israel. They carry many top end kosher wines and I tasted an unusual blend of sangiovese and barbera grapes grown in Israel.
The second place was a small museum/exhibition describing the fall of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem in the War of Independence. There were photographs from an American photo journalist John Phillips who dressed as an Arab Legionnaire and accompanied them as they defeated the Jewish defenders. There was also a short film with a few of the original defenders who fought when they were in their late teens or early 20's reminiscing about the events. I enjoyed this exhibit as that is a period of history in which I have a great deal of interest. In fact I am in the midst of reading the Israeli historian Benny Morris's book 1948.
On Monday after I returned to Modi'in my good friends David and Rabbi Miri invited me to join them, and his father, his father's partner, his sister and brother-in-law for dinner in Jaffa. In the section of Jaffa that had been the old market center many new restaurants have opened. We went to one called Chacouterie which has smoked meats produced by the owner. David, his brother-in-law and I shared a few dishes accompanied by a bottle of Flam Classico wine. It only had an 83 point Wine Spectator rating but was a fine accompaniment to the meal. Due to what they are calling the longest February heat wave we were able to sit outside in shirt sleeves without the benefit or need of heating lamps. Sometimes it is easy to know why I love Israel.
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