Brushing away the lockdown cobwebs

How refreshing to brush away the lockdown cobwebs with a drive through the wide open desert all the way to the rugged red Eilat mountains that give way to narrow strip of coast.

Infections here have declined drastically and as a result we are no longer confined to within one kilometre of our homes. We decided to take a day off to drive down to Israel's southern tip, the port and resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. We have been missing both the sea and the desert so much during lockdown.

The Red Sea's waters are wonderfully turquoise and clear. There are beaches with corals in the shallows where you can snorkel but even just standing on the jetty over the water you can look down and see schools of fish in a rainbow of colours from matt purples and yellows to iridescent metallics to monochrome rainbow stripes. We even got lucky enough to glimpse a sea turtle.

Normally the bay is full of pleasure craft, but the sea was quiet, a solitary cargo ship docked in the port. In the stillness of lockdown many sea creatures have felt comfortable edging closer to the shoreline with giant manta rays and other larger species sighted by locals.

From Israel's narrow strip of Red Sea coast you can wave over to Eilat's twin, the Jordanian resort and port town of Aqaba. Somewhere out in the desert mountains south of there across the bay you can glimpse the northern tip of Saudi Arabia. Out to the south-west the coast continues over the border in to Egypt's Sinai desert.

It's good to look out at neighbouring countries and feel a little connection to the wider world, even if it is only our small corner of it. To stand at a northern tip of the Red Sea and in my mind's eye see how it continues on south down to Bab Al Mandeb, the Horn of Africa and Yemen. To wonder which of the sea creatures swimming in the bay might have travelled that distance. In these strange times this is the closest we are likely to come to international travel for quite some time.

Once upon a time Eilat sustained itself from copper mining (probably the original King Solomon's Mines) and the port, but in recent decades the town's chief industry is tourism with a skyline of glittering hotels by the waterfront and a cluster of older guesthouses back in the old town centre popular with students and backpackers.

Right now all of them from the fanciest to the most basic are dark, just the odd light on where lone security guards still sit at deserted reception desks. The hotel district is like a ghost town, eerily silent and unlit, like old ships abandoned out to sea. The pleasure yachts and glass bottomed boats rest draped in tarps tied to the moorings of silent quays. My heart aches for all the local residents who's livelihoods depend on tourism.

As always we pray for better days for everyone and look forward to the day when we can once again welcome visitors from around the world.

Israel and the school quandary

It's a mistake comparing countries on this matter. Israel has about double the number of children per capita than other Western countries. Average class sizes are bigger, physical classroom are smaller and more crowded.

Schools being closed is much more disruptive to our economy because simply we have more young kids per capita so more people who have to stay home or try to WFH with little kids under foot. We also just in general have a younger population with more families of childbearing age.

This is part of what makes our country so dynamic and innovative, but in the case of covid it may make our school system something of an Achilles heel.

The parameters are simply very different for Israel than the UK or Sweden or the US or the Netherlands or any other Western country many of us naturally compare Israel to.

Maybe opening schools in the US and UK for example has gone for the most part relatively smoothly, especially primary schools.

That doesn't necessarily mean that having the same policy in Israel will yield the same result. It doesn't mean that enacting the same policies and safeguards will work the same way.

We need to be making our own model based on our own demographics, climate and resources not just saying "but in the US/UK/Sweden/Germany" etc.

Many of the schools here closed in September not because of the lockdown, but well before, due to outbreaks among pupils and staff that left schools logistically unable to function due to large numbers of teachers and kids in quarantine or infected.

Schools can't function normally when infection rates are through the roof. I saw primary schools where hundreds of pupils were in bidud at any one time with dozens of teachers either infected or in bidud.

Lockdown or no lockdown a school can't function like that. Certainly a situation of rolling recurring quarantines and infections will not yield any kind of stable school routine and it will still disrupt the economy and parents ability to work.

More than many other Western countries with colder climates we are in a position to make a lot of use of the outdoors. Yes, even in the rain.

I realise this is not mainstream, but among Israel's homeschoolers and at the margins there is a "forest school" type movement, there are communities where learning happens at least in part outdoors and in most weathers. There is the Shomrei Hagan organisation which has educational programmes running outdoors throughout the year in all but the most foul weather.

These are resources which MoE could be looking at to apply on a wider scale to facilitate learning through the covid crisis. We have a country blessed with a relatively mild winter with lots of winter sun. We have stunning nature and archaeology sites, many within or close to urban areas, including in more deprived locales and especially, but not only, in the periphery.

Even if we have to in part continue by distance learning it should be possible for classes to have regular weekly socially distanced meet-ups outdoors, with nature and archaeological classes and activities. These are mostly free resources located near to so many of our schools.

Yes, it will mean that academically there is less emphasis on the conventional core curriculum but frankly I don't think that is key during a global pandemic. Facilitating learning lishma and the social connections between kids, class cohesion, contact with their teachers, healthy outdoor time, these are all fundamentally important to the well being of our communities and our kids.

Maybe they will still be zooming maths and English part of the time, but outdoor schooling away from screens at least a couple of times a week could do a great deal to support their physical and mental health.

None of this is to say that MoE has the foggiest idea how to enact any of this. MoE policy makers are unlikely to look to homeschoolers or fringe educational movements for their covid policies (or any others), but in principle the concepts and resources are there for innovative alternatives.

Will the Ministry of Education do any of this? Sadly I think that is doubtful.

I see a lot of innovative teachers and school headteachers who would like to get more creative and more flexible in their response to covid and who see how critical it is to maintain that bond between them and their students, who appreciate that creating an alternative framework for learning together is far more crucial than plugging away at some kind of traditional core curriculum. 

My impression (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the MoE itself is characterised by policy makers who are far more set in their ways and unable to deviate from a more traditional curriculum and teaching methods. I fear that this will mean continued attempts at re-opening schools and doing the same attempt at "regular school" over and over with the same results we had in May and in September. 

Virtual Ushpizin

Here in Israel it is the start of the week long festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles, Festival of Booths). The holiday is celebrated with the construction of huts outdoors, on people's balconies, in yards, even in parking areas and on the pavement in buildings where that is the only open space.

The sukkah, the temporary dwelling we live in for the week of Sukkot, represents the uncertainty and frailty of human existence. It has at least a couple of walls, but the roof must be sparse enough that at night you can see the moon and stars through the cracks, even though it offers shade by day.

It reminds us of our ancient ancestors wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt and later our agricultural ancestors who built temporary huts in the fields this time of year during the autumn harvests, a season focused on the delicate change in weather on the margin between the hot dry summer and the hoped for rainy season.

We need the rains, but if they come too early they may damage the harvest, not to mention rain out our fragile sukkah huts. If they come too late they will damage the coming autumn agricultural seasons. Everything hinges on the rains coming at their appointed time, a seasonal reminder of the fragility of human life.

One of the central themes of Sukkot is hospitality. Traditionally this is a holiday with much inviting and hosting, to the extent that the President of Israel opens his sukkah to the public and citizens from all over the country can come to visit.

This year though Israel sadly has one of the world's highest covid infection rates and the country is under lockdown. No one may host in their sukkot, immediate households only. An especially lonely holiday for those who live alone.

Among the customs related to the sukkah is the symbolic inviting of the Ushpizin, the biblical figures Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and King David. This year these will be our only "guests", representing for us all the family and friends we would usually share this festival with.

From 67 to 73

This Yom Kippur, rather like one 47 years ago, is to a significant degree about humility and shared responsibility.

This spring many Israelis, led by the example of the government, believed בכחי ובעצם ידי, we beat this thing by our own smarts. Too many mistook this to mean that corona was over, we had figured out the magic formula. Like the self-congratulatory high after June '67 this has been followed by a steady war of attrition that now brings us to the gates of Yom Kippur with soaring infection rates, rising critical cases and sadly also higher death rates.

In parallel we have had assorted experts confidently explaining why everything the government was doing was wrong. The virus would burn itself out in 70 days and we'd all have herd immunity. The warm weather would destroy it. It mostly only affects the old, it was no danger to everyone else, the government was just reacting with hysterical fearmongering, or worse, was engineering a covid crisis for its own sinister ends.

Or maybe the virus really is dangerous, but if we just take the right medications, eat the right wonder food, take the right vitamins and supplements, it would pass us by and we would be saved easily and simply.

Other Israelis have single mindedly been yelling that it is just Bibi. This is the answer, get rid of him, and everything will be fixed. To this end a large segment of my friends are out demonstrating in central Jerusalem each and every weekend for months in mass gatherings. Have anyone in charge, just not Bibi, that is the solution. Attending the protests was the patriotic thing to do.

Then there have been those who say there is no alternative but to live life as usual, because we have to simply coexist with covid as best we can, we cannot stop our regular way of life just because of a virus. There was no alternative but to push through for the sake of sanity and the economy, and whoever gets it gets it, but there is no choice but to plough through it.

Others meanwhile knew that the answer was purely spiritual. We just need to keep davening in shul, keep the yeshivot open, continue with mass prayer gatherings and this would protect our communities from the plague.

Still others said that we need to be cautious because this strange new virus is still out there. They watched others go out and resume normal life while they stayed home, out of the way, outside of regular existence, some from fear and some from a sense of duty that reducing crowding in the public sphere was the patriotic thing to do.

Each in his or her own bubble of logic, each in his or her own community with its norms and ideologies. Each with his or her own version of בכחי ובעצם ידי

And in the background that thin still small voice coming from still others, dedicated nurses, doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, rabbis, scientists and lay people alike - we still don't know enough. We are learning, we are hopefully making important leaps in our knowledge, but tachlis we still don't know enough, it is still so early in this pandemic, there is still so much we don't understand to know which ultimately is the right path.

The only thing we do know is that we are all on this dystopian journey together. I would say it is an overused cliche, but apparently too many of us still need to hear it, only by working together can we get through this situation as safely as possible.

There are no clear simple solutions that we can see right now, rather a tightrope of conflicting theories, needs and ideas which we need to collectively attempt to balance on to try to find a safe equilibrium. 

We don't have most of the answers yet, but knowing that we lack answers to so many questions is the first step to finding them.

Ironically this Kol Nidrei night we will (most of us) not be crowded in to synagogue or even any other kind of minyan to hear the phrase אנו מתרין להתפלל עם העבריינים, it is permissible to pray with transgressors.

More than ever this year that is what we need to hear. From the relative safety of our homes. 

On Yom Kippur we together confess a formulated list of sins and transgressions, everything in the book from theft to lying to adultery to corruption. Surely most of us have not actually committed these heinous acts? And yet we list them, aloud, together, with bowed heads, beating our breasts in contrition.

On Yom Kippur we all stand together, those who are guilty of many offences, those who are not, but we collectively take responsibility for what has gone wrong.

We humbly accept that we do not live in bubbles. It isn't "we are fine, all this crisis is because of THEM!" It isn't "we don't need to sacrifice, or inconvenience ourselves, or take responsibility because SOMEONE ELSE is the one at fault."

We take joint responsibility for our communities, or friends, our families. Maybe we didn't do any of these wrongful acts, or maybe unknowingly we did things which contributed to a bad situation, another person going astray, someone's act of desperation or maybe we simply stayed aloof and said "we are OK", while others floundered and even drowned.

We have always been an opinionated, stubborn and argumentative people. This has been an ingrained part of our culture since Abraham challenged the conformist idolatry which was the established norm of the culture he grew up in and then challenged God's plan to punish Soddom and Gemorra. 

This characteristic has both at time been our downfall and our success. 

Our disagreements and refusal to humbly accept that we don't have all the answers cost us our freedom and many lives in the dark days leading up to the destruction of both the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, and centuries later the restored and rebuilt state of Judea. 

Yet that same independence of mind and spirit, ability to discuss everything from a million angles, to ask questions, to think out of the box has made us a nation of innovators, intellectuals, skilled craftspeople, scientists, writers and engineers. Skills that have saved us both in exile and our return to our ancient homeland. 

It is so easy to point the finger at someone else rather than acknowledge the need to come together. 

This year more than any other come together we must in humility and acknowledge that all of us need each other for whichever solution we choose to attempt to work. Maybe in a bitterly divided world that is what covid is here to teach us. 

May we all be inscribed in the book of Life, Blessing and Peace. 

Grilled lamb and madeleines

Ever since my daughter heard from a friend about Crave restaurant in Jerusalem where they make lamb bacon and use it to create kosher versions of all kinds of very non-kosher sounding dishes she has been clamouring for us to try some. 

In general the kids have come across the concept of a full British fry-up breakfast in books and popular culture and it's piqued their curiosity, a style of eating so far removed from our norms. For quite some time now they have been asking to make a kosher version for breakfast, or even better dinner. 

I recently found kosher lamb bacon and impressive looking beef sausages from a local butcher who delivers and so tonight was the night, even if I did forget to buy more potatoes.

My daughter and I got to work slicing and dicing, but it was the aroma of the Lamb bacon and beef sausages sizzling in their pans that brought the younger children running in to the kitchen. 

"What's that yummy smell? What is it? Is it ready? Can I taste it now?"

Such a simple meal really: baked beans, sunnyside up eggs, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, and the meat stars of the show, but all together they were quite a spread for an ordinary Thursday night in August, creating a festive party mood.

Previously kvetchy kids cranky at the end of a long summer day of play gathered excitedly round the table, bright eyes devouring the food from afar before it even touched their plates. Something exotic in smell and sight, ratcheting up the curiosity to try something out of the ordinary. The taste didn't disappoint either, as second and third helpings were gobbled up by our keen carnivores.  

One the most unhealthy meals I have ever made, but it was fun and different and everyone enjoyed and almost everyone agreed to try almost everything.

When I was growing up my Mum made this breakfast/dinner but with lamb chops. Most of those years we lived with my Bubbe and Zayde. My grandparents hated the smell of cooking lamb so this was a rare treat for the two of us when both my grandparents were out of the house.

So great was my grandparents', especially my Zayde's, aversion to the aroma of lamb that even during the years of rationing during and immediately after the Second World War they initially refused the lamb ration that was their right, much to the shock of the neighbourhood butcher. He was not allowed to substitute beef or chicken for the hated lamb, every family's ration was strictly measured out.

My grandmother would stand outside his shop after picking up her portion, lingering she said like some black market criminal. Except that her objective was perfectly legal, if a tad unusual. She waited to see if anyone looked like they could use a bit extra, a pregnant woman, someone with a sickly child, and then present them with the unwanted package of lamb.

Sometimes another customer would offer to exchange this for chicken. Most people considered lamb far superior to poultry, but not my grandparents. 

By the time I was on the scene my Bubbe suffered from arthritis and hammer toes. Walking more than a few steps was agony, the bumpy uneven path and pavements had become almost insurmountable obstacles.

She was too proud to use a wheelchair and for many years would not even use a walking stick. The arm of a family member was her aid to getting from the front door of her home to a waiting car or taxi. 

I remember her fingers digging in to my arm and hand as she steadied herself on this trek. Outwardly she held herself straight and dignified, mind over matter, but in her fingers I could feel her fear of falling. 

Most of the time the outside world came to her with frequent guests for Shabbat and holiday meals and regular visitors to her famous Sunday afternoon teas with fruit fluden, cinnamon rogelakh and crunchy raisin-cinnamon keikhalekh. If only she'd written down the recipes for me, I can taste and smell them in my mind's sense memory, but years later still haven't managed to reconstruct how to make them. 

Bubbe relished her outings beyond her home, but the pain was such that she limited her excursions to doctor's appointments, weddings, bar mitzvas and the occasional special afternoon tea at a friend's house. Most of the time she stayed home and was the queen of her kitchen, cooking and baking up a storm every day. 

My mother loved lamb. I never thought to ask her how she developed a taste for her parents' most hated food, but it was a treat she adored.

We would wait for my grandparents to leave together on one of my grandmother's rare but regular days out and then my mother and I would go back inside the house and two minutes later we had all the windows open to avoid stinking out the house while preparing this illicit feast of grilled lamb chops, tomatoes and mushrooms with a pot of baked beans bubbling away on the hob, hash browns in a pan. So good.

Even in my vegetarian years I loved the smell of the grilling lamb, even if ideologically I was opposed to its consumption. It wasn't the recollection of a childhood flavour or the simple pleasure of a delicious smell, rather a pavlovian response that in my mind bound up the aroma of grilling lamb, mushrooms and tomato with these mother-daughter meals enjoying a special something that we two alone in our family shared in the quiet of a big house usually bustling with the wider family and the otherwise ever present chatter of the radio.

That scent meant quiet time together over our unique meal, playing the music we wanted to which didn't usually meet with the approval of the senior generation. 

Amazing how much memory can be condensed in to a smell and a taste, Proust was 100% right about the madeleines.

Which coincidentally also take me back to my Mum, she loved them, reminded her of being a student in Paris and reading Proust in the original French. From time to time she'd see imported French madeleines in a local shop and buy them on a nostalgic whim.

We'd share them on a picnic in the park or an outing in the countryside, or every so often with tea at home when she felt like surprising me out of the blue, just because, on a random afternoon when I came home from school. 

All this is not to deride the enjoyment we derive from our familiar everyday foods and the comfort of routine. Just that a change is good for the soul too. 

Take Comfort My People

Yesterday we marked Tisha B'Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar marking the destruction of the ancient Jewish Temples in Jerusalem and the enormous suffering of our ancestors through horrific sieges, starvation, slavery and exile.

This Shabbat is the first of the seven Shabbatot of consolation, on each of which we read a comforting chapter from the Biblical Prophet Isaiah on the subject of redemption and a brighter future.

Even in the dark days of the first destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonian king Nebukhadnetzer, described in harrowing detail by the prophet Jeremiah in the biblical book of Eikhah (Lamentations), he finds words of hope in the middle of one of the greatest calamities to ever befall the Jewish people.

Centuries later Rabbi Akiva viewing the Roman destruction of the rebuilt and restored second Jerusalem Temple sees a fox scampering through the ruined Holy of Holies, a sign of the complete desolation of the the city, it's civilisation crushed, wild foxes and jackals encroaching on the holy site as the wilderness claims the remnants of what was once a bustling religious and civic centre.

All around him the surviving Jews are mourning the terrible disaster, weeping for the thousands of dead, their city, the crushing of Jewish sovereignty and the obliteration of their ancient religious centre. Every aspect of Jewish life in their ancient holy city and political capital has been decimated by the legions of Rome.

But Rabbi Akiva doesn't cry and doesn't mourn. He sees that the worst has happened, the nation has reached rock bottom and he is already looking to the future, to redemption, to the Jewish people with God's help regrouping and rebuilding, to Jerusalem's eventual restoration and rise from its ruins.

My mother's Yahrzeit (anniversary of her death), as well as the births of three of my sons and my own birthday and that of my grandmother fall within these seven weeks of Nehama, consolation. My mother always felt a deep connection to these seven readings of comfort and redemption, they were some of her favourite biblical verses and she knew them all by heart, quoting them often.

She was also a great lover of music and found great joy, solace and inspiration in songs which she felt expressed these positive messages of hope and restoration. She loved Neshama Carlebach's beautiful rendition to her father, R' Shlomo Carlebach's melody, of this week's haftara reading from Isaiah 40 "Nehamu, nahamu ami" - Take comfort my people.

Where the jackals howl

We went out for the first time in over two weeks last night to try to see the comet.

Turns out it was probably too close to the horizon, despite the amazing vantage point we found overlooking the lowlands and coast.

Still it's always great to get out to even semi-wilderness and be the only people around. Plus it was perfect timing to watch a nice slow pass directly overhead by the International Space Station.

We noticed abundant gazelle droppings along a path, but did not catch sight of any actual gazelle.

We listened to jackals yelping and cackling all around us and had fun howling back at them.

We heard owls screeching, bats and crickets clicking and chirping in the silence between the spookily loud jackal calls.

We heard the distinct rustle of a porcupine's quills moving through the bushes below but could not make out its shape in the inky darkness.

In the twilight we saw several braces of chukar partridges doing their comical chicken like run along paths and rocky hillsides, visible for an instant then melting back in to the thickets and undergrowth.

We saw a swift fox dart across the road in a blur of bushy fur.

We heard nocturnal bird calls which even I didn't recognise.

We watched the lights of the coast, picking out power stations, towns and roads, their glow illuminating the distant horizon even as full darkness settled on the wooded hillsides above.

We watched planes overhead and in the distance (so long since we've seen that many) and a helicopter circling several times.

Most of all though we enjoyed being out in a wide open space that allowed such a clear view of the wonderful vast canopy of stars, along with Jupiter and Saturn. Plus the odd stray meteor.

How wondrous is Your Creation. מה רבו מעשיך