As I come to the end of my first week back after two and a half weeks abroad, I am filled with experiences, impressions, and appreciation for our varied departments and areas of activity:

Sunday:  A Call to Action

We experienced a minor miracle this summer when, with the help of our woman's empowerment group we succeeded in blocking the Government's efforts to ram through the Knesset the extension of the Israeli Wisconsin Plan to the entire country, forcing thousands more into the misery that is the Wisconsin Plan.  As Khanukah approaches, we now need a nes gadol, a major miracle to stop a Government more determined than ever to extend the Wisconsin Plan.  This week in Hadera we spoke about what it will take to make a miracle like that happen. 

We have been dealing with the Israeli Wisconsin plan for something like eight years, even before we had a Social/Economic Justice Department.  We first got involved when the Tamir Commission began discussing the possibility of a program like this.  For some eight years we have been warning, admonishing, living with difficult and depressing experiences, extending a hand to the victims, speaking out, testifying, corresponding and shouting and screaming.  Everything we have done – after .all those eight years and all of the successes we have had both in helping individuals and in convincing a major portion of the public that this is a bad program doing bad things  -  it all that comes down to this moment of truth.  It is the endgame.  The coming months will determine the meaning of all of our efforts and all of the participant's tears. 

We will soon be publishing in "Parashat HaShavua" and elsewhere a basic fact sheet, talking points and a sample letter.  Our dedicated staff will give their all over the next few months, just as they have given their all up until now.  However, we need for every one of you to write, to call, to invite us to synagogues and parlor meetings, or anything else you can think of so that the MK's deciding the fate of so many will know just what the public thinks.

Tuesday – I Wanted to Cry

I have become accustomed to witnessing injustice, but not such life threatening uncaring.

We all rejoiced when we learned that ten years after the expulsion of 700 men, women and children from their caves in the South Hebron Hills in November 1999, and after a High Court temporary restraining order send most of them home in March 2000, the scales of justice were finally tipping in favor of those who had not been able to return ten years earlier.  Finally the families of Bir El-Id began returning to their caves a little less then two weeks ago. Finally what was left uneaten of the Kivsat HaRash (poor person's one little ewe lamb in the Biblical story told by the Prophet Nathan to rebuke King David) was being returned to its owner.  True, in the meantime unrecognized outposts had expanded on their lands and settlers began working some of their lands.  We knew that more challenges were to be expected given the fact that the "Mitzpeh Yair" outpost sits on the access road Bir El-Id residents built and paid for twenty years ago.  However, we also knew that the battalion commander for the Hebron area had ordered that they be allowed to use their road.  The State Prosecutor's office wrote to the head of our OT legal staff, advocate Qamar Misharki-Assad,

"As regards the issue of the access road to the area, that you are defining as the main issue and that still had to be clarified when we sent our previous letter (item 5 in your letter.):  The army has informed us that, after consideration, it has been decided that when the appellants return to Bir El-Id the army will them use the access road from the area to route 317."

However, there was a qualifier, "We emphasize that the actual use of the road is subject to periodic reviews of the security situation."  It is not clear what changed Tuesday morning, after the residents had been using their road for a week with no problems.  (Settlers had twice come to Bir El-Id to attack the shepherds and even cause the death of a lamb, but there hadn't been problems on the road.)  We suspect that the change came about because of settler pressure.  We saw how chumminess between the army unit and the settlers, even as these same soldiers refused to exchange a word with us or even to read the letter from the State Prosecutor's office.  Whatever the reason, the result was clear.  One resident was detained for some 5 hours when his only crime was that we wanted to take his children to school in Yatta.  After hours of "looking into it" we were told that they must now use an alternative route.  "Perhaps we should have informed them" said a representative of the Legal Advisor for the Occupied Territories.  "Perhaps"???  "Perhaps there is something wrong with detaining a man taking his children to school for 5 hours when he had no reason think he had done anything wrong?  "Perhaps" there is something wrong when there were at least 24 hours when the residents had no way of getting in or out by vehicle?  "Perhaps" there is something wrong when soldiers pal around with gathering settlers while refusing to speak with us?  "Perhaps" there is something wrong when a soldier angrily tells me to take off my kippah, and the soldiers stand by when one settler shreds the State Prosecutor's letter?  However, I almost burst into tears when just 15 minutes after the DCO showed one of the residents the un-passable "road" now meant to be their way of access,  the soldiers showed up and told the residents that they were not allowed to be on that road.  I try never to raise my voice, and I apologized afterwards, but I just couldn't restrain myself any longer.  Have we really raised here in the Promised Land such a callous generation so unfeeling towards others? 

Our legal team is of course not giving up, and it still isn't too late to join us for the Bir El-Id work day on Friday

Tuesday – A Redeeming Experience

Every year I say that it is not fun as a Jew, as a rabbi, as an Israeli and as a Zionist to deal every day with the darkest corners of the country that I love, but that the students in our educational programs are a ray of light.  I really needed that ray of light when I arrived at the year's opening of our Human Rights Beit Midrash at Hebrew University (One of two this year).  As usual, I wished the students a difficult year – one in which they will need to struggle with difficult human rights issues and the relevance of our Jewish tradition to those issues.  As I looked at the student's faces and that of our facilitator Natalie Lustiger, and as I heard the students relate what had brought them to the Beit Midrash, the opening remarks of our Education Department director Rabbi Nava Hefetz and the words of those of our rabbis who came to participate, I knew that these students would meet the challenge.  They will need to wrestle, as did Jacob and Esau in Rivka's womb in this week's Torah portion, but just as Jacob and Esau made their peace with each other after years of both struggle and introspection, these students will find their spiritual paths bringing together Judaism and human rights, and empowering them to be God's partners in Tikun Olam. 

Wednesday – Home Demolitions

What can I say?  Fourteen human beings from Isawiyah now without a roof over their heads.  Women in Wadi Hilweh without a center.  Three partially built structures near El-Bustan, each representing hope for the future for a family.  I haven't seen such an outbreak of fury at demolitions for quite a while.  It was a fury different then the sullen and helpless anger burning in downcast eyes I have seen in recent years.   When I made my annual rounds of villages in September before the olive harvest I also experienced surging anger, frustration, and cynicism among people who had given up hope that their could be peace and reconciliation.  This fury foretells the coming of a third intifada.

Thursday – Back to the Olive Groves

I have been telling our OT staff that I don't want to hear of one single farmer on any out of the way place or hilltop that didn't get to "Every single olive."  Today we accompanied a farmer to a place he had not reached for five years next to an army outpost.  Last year they tried, but were shot at.  After a few words with the army the day before, it was actually fairly simple.  But when you don't know who to turn to….  However, we haven't finished yet.  There is at least one more harvest, and it will be very interesting.

Friday – Back to Bir El-Id

As I have already written – Friday is a work day.  We also need to try out the new "access road" that the army opened.  From the reports we have received, it is a road for jeeps only.  Wagons will tip over.  Regular cars won't be able to pass, and there will be "lakes" after rains.  The road apparently passes through cultivated fields of other families.  However, after Justice has taken so long to arrive for the residents of Bir El-Id, we certainly must stand with shoulder to shoulder with them through whatever is to come.

There is so much more that happened this week.  After years of preparation we sent a letter to the responsible authorities demanding explanation and redress for the intentional manipulation of building and zoning laws leading to home demolitions.  Both in "Parashat HaShavua" and in Friday's Hebrew HaAretz you can see the advertisement we prepared regarding ongoing damage to trees.  We spoke and spoke out, conveying our message.

Former members of the Etzel and their descendents call themselves the "Fighting Family."    Making it clear a thousand times over how different we are from the Etzel, and with 1,000 apologies  for using military imagery, my feeling this week after having the opportunity to spend time with almost all of our amazing staff and with some of our incredible volunteers, was that I was proud to be part of such a fighting family.  We are a family fighting for justice and for our humanistic understanding of Torah, and of what is common to the "culture of religions" (HaMeiri)  A good feeling is far from enough in a world still crying for so much repair, but it is a good feeling nonetheless.  Abroad I enjoy the fact that I don't have to explain or make apologies for my understanding of Judaism, an understanding shared by so few here.  But here, among that "so few" is where I feel that I belong. 

Finally, injustices like the injustices of this week raise very difficult theological questions.  However in the olive groves today incredibly beautiful flowers were already blooming.  For those flowers and for my fighting family I recite the blessing, Borukh Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Malkhut HaOlam, ShKakha Lo B'Olamo. Blessed are You, Adonai, the Sovereignty of all existence, for having such as these in Your universe.

Shabbat Shalom,

Arik