Next Year in Jerusalem

Just realized I never published this. A little belated – the theme, after all, was Passover – but here are some thoughts I shared with my home synagogue while I was back for the holiday in April. I still can’t believe people pay me to talk!

My speech at Temple Emunah, Passover 2012:

I’d like to thank Rabbi Lerner and everyone here at Temple Emunah for hosting me here. It’s an honor to be able to address the congregation where I grew up, though right now I have a serious inner conflict going where I’m fighting my innate urge to leave the sanctuary during the sermon.

I’d like to talk today about Jerusalem. I am the Jerusalem reporter at the Jerusalem Post, so that’s also what I do for a living. Even after two and a half years, it still hasn’t sunk in that I live in Jerusalem. Every time I hear the word “Yerushalayim” in a prayer or a Shabbat song, I get a little chill. It’s like when I was young and I used to hear Lexington mentioned on the traffic report on the radio. Hey – I think to myself – I LIVE there!

Growing up in a Zionist home outside of Israel, you tend to put the city on a pedestal. Jerusalem is – well, it’s Jerusalem! It’s mentioned in the Torah 632 times, it’s part of Hatikvah, it’s the place Jews have dreamed about for 2,000 years. In the Old City the stones ooze with holiness and you’re so close to the heavens you can practically tweet with God directly. Jerusalem of Gold, Jerusalem of our dreams, Jerusalem of our soul.

And then there’s the Jerusalem that I see as a reporter: a city government overrun with corruption. An ultra-Orthodox community getting more and more extreme, more women wearing burkas, or their Jewish equivalent, every time I go to Mea Shearim. Young Arab boys, with no resources or afterschool programs, throwing rocks in order to attract attention from the international media, and then becoming more and more antagonistic towards the State as they are jailed in ever-increasing numbers. Crushing poverty among both Jews and Arabs, growing homelessness. Rampant racism against Ethiopians, sexism, homophobia. A total disarray in the education system,

Don’t forget that in addition to all of Jerusalem’s political problems, she is the largest and poorest city in Israel. The city has all of the regular urban problems of any poor metropolis – murders, gangs, drugs, you name it. Then there’s the political dimension, through which every local problem – like a shortage of housing and decision to build a few hundred apartments in Gilo, located over the 1967 Green Line – becomes an international story with condemnations from the European Union. There’s also the religious dimension, where Jews are fighting with Muslims, and, with even more vehemence, Jews are fighting with other Jews.

I’m not the only one shocked by the disparity between the Jerusalem of the Torah and the Jerusalem of reality. About fifteen people each year are diagnosed with “Jerusalem Syndrome,” a recognized mental disorder when people are so overwhelmed by the intensity of the city, and often how different the noisy, dirty city is from the holy Jerusalem they imagined – that they experience a severe psychotic break with reality and believe they are the Moshiach. There’s a mental hospital in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem dedicated to dealing with these people, which happens, surprisingly, more than once a month.

I haven’t had a severe psychotic break with reality yet, at least that I know of. But in order to survive my daily job as a reporter, I just keep my head down and not think too hard, plowing through as many stories as I can on a given day. Sometimes, when I try to take a step back and see Jerusalem’s situation as part of a bigger picture, I just get discouraged. Everything seems so hopeless. The conflict with the Arabs is so complicated and violent that peace is impossible. The religious strife is growing each year as extremism becomes more prevalent. And as many of my friends flee for Tel Aviv because they can’t find jobs in Jerusalem – and can’t take the pressure of such a heavy city – the economic situation shows little chance of improving.

Which is why Passover is hard for me. Last year, Passover was deeply personal – having come out of a dangerous experience in Egypt myself, I was just grateful to be surrounded by Jews, I didn’t much care where. But now that I’ve been the beat reporter for a year and a half, I’ve come to know Jerusalem on a much deeper level. As a reporter, I probe the city for her faults. I seek out her cracks and whack away with my pen. I like to think that my articles make a positive difference, but there’s a possibility I’m just inflicting even more damage.

So what does it mean to say “Next year in Jerusalem” when I know Jerusalem is far from perfect?

I feel a bit like the scouts that Moses sent to the land of Israel in the parsha Shlach L’cha, the ones that came back and said “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers…” What happened to them? They were killed by worms that went through their tongue and out their belly, warned my very Zionistic friend who was worried about me saying bad things about Jerusalem.

Even the name Jerusalem, is difficult for me to swallow. There are many variations on what the name means, but the most generally accepted one is a combination of “Yeru” – and he, God, saw – and “Shalem,” meaning “perfect” or “whole.” If God looked at Jerusalem and saw it was perfect, well, he definitely wasn’t looking at the city where I live.

But what I’ve learned in the past two and a half years of living in Jerusalem is that while the city is definitely not perfect, there are moments of indescribable beauty that will simply take your breath away. Every day, about fifteen minutes after the sun slips below the horizon, there’s a brief minute where the white Jerusalem stone captures the orange glow of the sky and the buildings sing with color. On Fridays about 40 minutes before Shabbat, the city seems to sink down in her easy chair and let out an audible sigh of relief, that after six days of being incredibly intense, she finally has some time to rest. I had one of those moments of beauty hiking in the Jerusalem forest with the survivor of a terrorist attack a year after the attack in the same place, as she explained where she had found the strength to continue living. I had another moment training for the marathon early on a Friday morning and flying over the cobblestones of the Old City up to the Mount of Olives, where the early sunlight glints off of the Dome of the Rock. Hearing the stories of my friend’s grandmother’s courage and creativity as she created a life for herself in Israel after leaving Yemen, or the stories of veterans who fought in the Six Day War and still cry when they walk to the top.

It’s seeing the momentos piled high on my friend Michael Levin’s grave from thousands of American visitors who are moved by his story. The little Hassidic kids on bicycles, their tzitzit dangerously close to the spokes. Or getting an email from the mayor’s spokesman assuring me that the city’s public hametz had been sold before Passover.

Jerusalem in Hebrew has a plural ending “Yerushalayim” – the only city in the world in Hebrew to have a plural name. Tradition teaches us that there are two Jerusalems – lower Jerusalem, the day-to-day Jerusalem with the ugly parts that I see. And there’s upper Jerusalem, the Jerusalem we aspire to, the holy Jerusalem of our dreams. By doing acts of loving kindness, we bring the two Jerusalems closer together.

Yeru – shalem. It’s not up to God to see the whole picture and deem it perfect. It’s up to each one of us to seek out and see the moments of beauty hidden inside all of the heartbreak and difficulties. It’s up to us to celebrate those moments with even more passion because they are surrounded by pain.

At the end of the day, Moses didn’t listen to the majority of the scouts who warned of the perils of the land of Israel. He listened to the two who said it was a land flowing with milk and honey. That is the story of the Jewish people – to listen to the ones who say it is possible. The ones that say that not only can we make the desert bloom, but that Jews can even grow fish in the desert.

So don’t listen to me – I’m just a cynical, jaded journalist. Listen to the words of the Torah, the songs of our history, and listen to the Haggadah: Next year in Jerusalem!

I’d like to thank my family for allowing me to live so far away. Though I know that the distance isn’t easy for any of us, I am so grateful you are allowing me to pursue my dreams. Don’t worry, dad, only 59 more days till you get your wife back. I’d like to thank my brother, Ben, who has to put up with a lot of the crap I conveniently escape from by being on the other side of the world. I’d like to thank my grandparents who came all the way up here to celebrate, and the Bernays-Heiger clan, who are like my extended family.

Most of all I’d like to thank Temple Emunah. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and Temple Emunah has certainly been the village for me. It is because of this community that I am where I am today. So I bless you all, and I hope you bless me back – for a springtime filled with brightness and happiness, and a kosher and happy Passover. And may we all say with renewed strength – Next Year in Jerusalem!