A letter I wrote to the British media...

Sir,

As a Londoner who has made his home in Jerusalem, I write to you with a tear in my eye. Yesterday's dreadful attack on Israeli citizens was not the first, nor will likely be the last, in a long chain.

September draws closer and the possibility of a Palestinian state becomes imminent, it is pertinent for us to ask ourselves whether the Palestinian leadership truly desire to live in peace with their Israeli neighbours. For all the talk of the evil of the occupation, Israelis have no assurances that the Palestinians seek to root out terrorism. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might sound moderate, but scratch the surface and we see that terrorism is still glorified in the Territories. Just last year, Abbas dedicated a town square in the memory of Dalal Al-Mughrabi, a terrorist who hijacked a bus and murdered 37 Israelis in cold blood in 1978. Two summer camps also have the dubious honour of being named after this woman. It is evident that the Palestinian leadership is not interested in peaceful relations with Israel. Peace will only come when the Palestinians demonstrate their commitment to bring to justice and cease raising their children in an atmosphere of hate. Why is the Palestinian government not being pressured more to stop this wicked incitement? And why is Israel expected to allow a state characterised by such evil to arise?

Yours sincerely,

Elan Miller
Jerusalem

Sometimes

Living in Israel, sometimes I find myself in a situation where I just have to laugh, be amazed and be thankful all at once. Other people refer to these moments by the phrase, "Only in Israel", which although I don't like to use myself, is one I really do understand.

One such moment happened to me yesterday. Normally I cycle to and from university, but as I had participated in a ceremony to mark Yom HaShoah, I was dressed in smart clothes yesterday and had taken the bus instead. As I walked home from the bus stop, I took a quick glance at where my bicycle was in the morning. I looked away and then did a double-take; my bike was no longer there. I looked again, more intently this time, and told myself that maybe I had left it somewhere else. I had just bought a hefty, thick new lock and was convinced that there was no way someone could have stolen my wheels. Certainly not during daylight hours, anyway.

Coming closer, I saw another bike, about a meter away from where mine had been, but leaning awkwardly against a post that had not been there in the morning. See the pictures below...





And then I realised what had happened. The parking meter to which I locked my bike every day had, for reasons unknown, been deemed unfit for purposes by the authorities. A new pole had been erected a bit closer to the street and the meter itself lifted from the old pole and attached to the new one. Now this is the part that fills me with pride at my country. Instead of leaving my bike attached to a pole or leaving it on the street so that anybody could have stolen it, the workers evidently lifted it up over the old pole, put it over the new one and then attached the meter, thus keeping my bike safely locked up.

I don't want to slur other countries or say this for certain, but I highly doubt that this would have happened to me if I still lived in England. Sometimes, as I said, life in Israel throws up a situations where I just have to laugh, be amazed and be thankful all at once. I love it :)

Pilgrims

A few years ago, when I had just started learning at Yeshivat Hakotel, I discovered something about the Old City of Jerusalem. Although I was residing there and had a bedroom in the Old City that I could call my own, I soon realised that I didn't quite have the same rights as most people around the world have.

The yeshiva year starts with the Hebrew month of Elul and continues to Tisha'a B'Av, just over eleven months later. Coincidentally, the month of Elul is when Sefardim start observing the Jewish custom saying Slichot, in preparation for the impending Days of Judgment.

And so, when living in Yeshiva, I quickly had to re-adjust to a reality in which my bedroom, that sanctum of calm and relative solitude, was regularly pierced by the sound of dozens of Jews traipsing their way through the Old City's central square, strumming guitars and pounding drums, as they made their way to the Kotel. Yes, this was my bedroom and I hoped to sleep properly, but I quickly came to the realisation that my bedroom was located smack in the middle of one of the world's greatest heritage sites. The right to quiet during the night is a given for most people, but not for residents of the Old City - certainly not during the Slichot period.

Interestingly, I happened to visit the Old City the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, as I was invited out to eat there. While I was there, somebody told all present that at midnight that night, the last night before Yom Kippur, there would be a mass Slichot at the Kotel. He explained that the last night of Slichot before Yom Kippur is typically the "Sefardi Slichot;" and that Rav Ovadia Yosef (Israel's Sefardi Chief Rabbi) would be taking part, and claimed that literally thousands of people would be there. I knew that he wasn't kidding, but the claim didn't really excite me all that much, as I'd been at the Kotel in previous years during Slichot and witnessed thousands of people filling the plaza.

I ended up going back to my home in Nachlaot; I had to get up in the morning and I didn't really want to be up till 2am. I took my normal route home, passing through the centre of town on my way. There were lots of people around, which was fairly normal. What wasn't normal was that as I got closer to home and walked down the street that mine branches off, Rechov Agrippas, I noticed lots and lots of people walking in the opposite direction to me.

There were all different types of people, and I was trying to figure out whether there was some big event going on in town that I didn't know about... and then it hit me. These people were all Sefardim and were headed in the Kotel's direction. It was the biggest, best night of Slichot and to many of these people, there was no question that they would be taking part.

Some of the people were religious, some not. Some men wore kippot on their head, some were bare-headed. Others elected to use a hooded top as a makeshift head-covering, and still more walked while clutching a Kippa which they would later don. The ladies were not exactly homogeneous, either. While some dressed in the Haredi way, covering up flesh and obscuring curves, many were wearing clothes that would be deemed entirely inappropriate and incongruous with the Haredim who frequent the Kotel on a regular basis.

By their dress alone, I would never have guessed that these people feel a connection to their religion at all. I pictured these people standing at the Kotel, wanting to make a link to their religion, and striving to forge a connection with God. It makes me happy to know that this country, secular as it is, maintains such a strong link to religion. People talk of the increasing Haredi demographic in an almost bitter way, but it gives me hope to know that the average "secular" Sefardi Jew connects so strongly to his roots.

A cause for hope

Although I blog fairly regularly, I don't think I've ever posted an entry of a personal nature here. Last week, I attended the Nefesh b'Nefesh International Jewish Bloggers Convention in Jerusalem (read my report for the Jerusalem Post here) and one of the speakers mentioned that while blogs often have specific topics, it's still nice to write those "slice of life" entries and share your experiences with others. The speaker went on to explain that for a person living in Efrat, for example, it might not seem all too interesting at first to describe one's daily commute, but to someone living on the other side of the world the idea of waking up and facing the Judaean hills, driving through biblical landscape on the way to work in the knowledge that the only traffic jam one might encounter would be from a wayward flock of sheep - well, that might be almost exotic to some. With this in mind, I've decided that it's high time that I share some of my experiences.

The first thing I want to relate is an event that occured last Monday. I had locked my bike outside the Shuk and after retrieving it, noticed that somebody had touched my gears, as they had been reset from 21st gear (3 and 7) to something like 8, as the numbers were lower around 2 and 4. I was a little bit annoyed, but I soon became genuinely irritated when I saw that the gear chain had been knocked off, too. For those readers who haven't had to put a bike's chain back on the gears, I should explain that you get your hands dirty and oily from touching the greasy chain. After realising that I had no option, I set about fixing the bike.

Just as I was about to get started, an elderly man stopped to ask me if I could help him by taking his heavy bags as he walked to the bus stop on the other side of the road. I told him that I needed to fix my bike, but that I would be with him in a second. The man was rather insistent, but I explained that I would need a little time first.

Putting a bicycle chain back in place (illustrative)

After fidgeting with the bike's chain for a few seconds to no avail, an Arab teenager, almost certainly one of the many Arab workers in the Shuk, strode towards my bike, took it from me gently and in a split-second had the chain back on. Hugely impressed and appreciative of his kindness, I thanked him and shook his hand. It was truly heartening to see that despite what the media makes out to be total disharmony between Jews and Arabs, there's still co-operation between the two groups and away from the media spotlight, there are still instances like this that give you hope. But the boy, unaware of my goofy smile, then turned round to the old man, took his bags and walked him across the road. If there's one thing I can take from this it is that while we can never work with extremists, there will definitely be people "on the other side" who are not extreme and who want peace too. It is up to us to find a way of working with them and alienating terrorists and those who incite hatred and violence against us.