Travelog of the Spirit

So how do two middleAmerican kids, from Skokie and Westfield NewJersey, end up (or, depending how you look at it, start up) in the turbulent territory of Shilo?
One by way of the heart, one by way of the head.

Chaia's Story

I finished college and worked for a Hillel house, where I had been promised little typing. After 6 months in front of a typewriter, going slightly nuts, I went into my boss and threatened to do wild and unnatural things unless she could find me something else to do. Boss-Lady offered a couple of weeks in Israel working in a depressed neighborhood. I jumped. Two points for the Boss-Lady.

Several weeks in the homes of Sephardim, who have more than a little to teach about taking guests into their homes and hearts, I felt more at home than anywhere I'd ever been. I went back home, searched and packed. Searched for a program (WUJS, in Arad, on the edge of the Negev desert) and packed up old dreams. I came on a one year combined learn-Hebrew/ experience-Israel program, and stayed and stayed and stayed. At least until now, and the odds look good for the future.

Just for kicks, you can take a look at my Bat Mitzva speech, and see that in fact the seeds were there long time ago.

Ncoom's Story

Somewhere along the line of my dubious college career, I came to understand two things:
  1. Ontology recapitulates Phylogeny, in the social sphere as well as the physical. I could trace many roots of my thought to developments in Western Civ, but there were some that did not seem to come from there.
  2. The only place I was reasonably sure I could trace myself back to, were I to fly through the generations, I'd end up at Adam, but if I went a little forward, I thought I go through Avraham, the original #1 Jew.
This created a certain problem. For at some point I realized that I had spent 5 years studying Western Civilization, but knew next to nothing about Judaism. Did the root of my thought lie there? Or was I a marvellously independant thinker who had developed all by my lonesome?

I spent a year at a special yeshiva called Pardes, where I started learning Hebrew seriously, and for the first time entered the texts of Judaism that I had so long only heard of (Mishna, Talmud, Rambam, for example), much the same way that I had delved into texts in college. Pardes is an interesting place. Men and women learn together, very inappropriate to a general yeshiva atmosphere, where the idea is dedication to study, without distractions. Somehow they pull it off. While lots of people are wound up in their 'issues', most focus them in a way that fuels their fire for discovering what lies in the depths of understanding the world as a Jew. Most spectatular was the range of teachers. Different backgrounds, different approaches. Not all pushing from one direction. Fundamental idea of the Jews: if something is true, (by which I mean the biggies, like God and Tora), then inquiry isn't really a problem. There is no fear, for the deeper, the more honest the questions, can only bring more light, bring one closer.

Believe it or not, especially for those who secretly believe that traditional Judaism oppresses women, it was while studying the topic of How Men & Women Relate to Each Other in Judaism that I discovered that the radical ideas I had developed at the most radical of colleges, were in fact written in the Talmud. I think at that point I realized that though I had many of the trappings of a typical-american-boy from a typical-american-town, in the things closest to my soul, I was a Jew.

From that moment, it was pretty clear to me that the only place for me to live would be in the Jewish State which was trying to recover and redevelop the meaning of being a Jew. I'm told that not all people take their beliefs as imperatives. Some day someone will succeed in explaining that to me. I think I'm a little slow sometimes.

Our Story

So the stage is set. Chaia and Ncoom are floating around Jerusalem, studying, working, and frankly, both more than a little interested in finding someone to share the twixt and start a family with. For the romantics amongst you, that story is to be had too.

We were both somewhat politically naive when we arrived here. The more we learned, the less believable the Jewish Agency's History of the State became. There was a very powerful Jewish renewal taking place, often despite the establishment, rather than as a part of it. We lived in Jerusalem where we had an open house. We had friends, but we didn't have real community. In our visits to several different yishuvim, those dastardly settlements we'd heard so much about, we felt a sense of a pioneer spirit, of people living more honestly, of a struggle for meaning. We decided to check it out.

We lived for two years in a moshav shitufi, second cousin to a kibbutz. Work was communal, but family life was based on the individual home (back to square one, we still have to cook and do laundry for ourselves. Maybe we should reconsidder kibbutz?). Community we found, but a little too tight for us. As outsiders, we never really felt totally at home. Most everyone there came from the same background, and while they enjoyed our different outlook, it was always as outsiders. We'd lived in America as Jews, we already knew what alienation felt like. So we moved on.

We began considering Shilo seriously first as a result of visits to Dov Berkovits, one of our teachers at Pardes, who was also the son of my father's guru and teacher, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits zt"l. What we found was a diverse community, open to ilks of a different color. (Lets face it, ballet dancers have not exactly been the mainstay of traditional jewish society.) We moved here 8 years ago, have taken part in the struggle against the abandonment of the most vital part of Israeli society, both from a security standpoint, and perhaps a spiritual. If you want to really get your elbows dirty, I'll tell you about The Arabs & The Jews. But that's another story. This story was how we got to Shilo.

I think we're there.

The only thing worth adding here is that Shilo answered a long unfulfilled need. We arrived at college at the end of the VietNam debacle. People still wore long hair and flouted drugs, but the real reason, the revolt against a war and a society, were gone. I felt a desire to take part in something important, to be involved with the shaping of society, to create. When I arrived in Israel, again, I had an overwhelming sense that I had just missed the boat. A mere 30 years ago (and historically, what's 30 years in the lifeline of the world?) people had formed a state here. Recreated an entity dormant for thousands of years. And then I come traipsing in afterwards and buy an apartment in Jerusalem like it's San Diego or something.

But as I came to understand more what was going on in Israel, I came to see that while the Body of the Jewish State was established, and running strong, the soul was still up for grabs. Something new was aborning, and it would be shaped by my generation. And where was the center of this spiritual revival, this rethinking of what it would mean to be a Jew in the world, after the Holocaust, as a member of an independant state? In the settlements. Here people were recreating, not the diaspora Jewish communities, which the Haredi world still idealize, but a new kind of community, where Judaism is not a religion, and does not allow you to exist in a foreign environment, but a way of life that puts you in touch with holiness, with appreciation for life and the earth and family and .... And I moved to Shilo, and offer my family, my children, as the first evidence that I am a part of this creative process, and that it holds wonderful things in store.

At this odd juncture, when it looks like our neighbors are again on the verge of attempting to murder us to remove us from our land, I find myself called to take a gun to protect my family and all that I believe in. Shades of American Revolution, Judah Maccabee, and more. As a person who shuns the vicarious, and has enjoyed doing for myself many of the unique experiences that life has to offer (birthing my children, brit, for example), the possibility that I will actually take life to preserve life is an ultimate statement. One I would willingly pass up, if possible, but if I am left with no other legitimate choice, than I will stand for life, in the name of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Master of the Universe, who has brought me to this point.

It's a wild and wonderful life. Come see for yourself. Or, read a little more.

Want more? That's all you're going to get here. But you can write and say to any of the characters found herein.