Seeing Jerusalem and Finding a Roommate

I finally feel as if I'm in Israel!

Touring the Temple Tunnels and some other sites in the Old City last Friday was such a nice change from my routine of the last several months and companionship improved my mood and outlook. Then on Shabbos, I came close to catching up on my Hebrew (I'd missed two days a couple of weeks ago because of a bad cold).

Last week, I'd had to once again move into an expensive hotel because the Post Hostel was fully booked. That's when I met Sam. She was making a short stop here on the way back to New Zealand after spending some time in England helping her mother move. I told her that she could visit a class at Ulpan Morasha on Sunday. She loved it and impulsively decided to stay in Israel for another six months.

We've been apartment hunting-- and she's very good at it! We've viewed dozens of nice places this week. (How in the world has she found them?!) She seems committed to staying in Israel and has registered at Ulpan Milah.

Aaron unexpectedly offered to come with us tonight to look at an apartment on the corner of King George and Agron. It's very nice and, since the former tenants were with the US Embassy, I'm guessing everything works and there won't be any surprises. It's large and clean; it's furnished, the kitchen is good, and the balcony wraps around half the building. The building is known as "the ugliest building in Jerusalem," but who cares when the inside is so nice? The price isn't too high; most of the apartments Sam found were very expensive. Aaron and Doron were wild about it and I'm ready to get a copy of the contract and have an attorney look at it. (This time I'm hiring an attorney!) However, Sam isn't sure and needs a night to sleep on it.

Edit: Sam didn't want that particular apartment and eventually she left the country. The landlord agreed that I could rent the apartment by myself and add a roommate to the contract when I found one. Instead, I took a job at a hotel, a room in exchange for 40 hours a week working in the lobby.

Character

I dreamed of Alan and Bonnie last night. Bonnie was explaining to me how Alan cares the way he does. Many times, I've wished I could apprentice with Alan, learning his skill and compassion in comforting mourners and respecting the departed. However, I've always know that these abilities come from within him and cannot be taught. It's a matter of character and perhaps also of upbringing. Bonnie's heart and brain work together, too. I know no one else like them and I wish I could be like them.

No Revelation Without Interpretation

I knew that I couldn't have been the first to notice! And, in fact, not only modern feminists, but also the Rabbis recognized that Moses interpreted God's words and, in doing so, seems to have changed their meaning. (Maybe that's the point.)

And HaShem said to Moses, "Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day; for on the third day HaShem will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai. You shall set bounds for the people round about... When the ram's horn sounds a long blast, they may go up on the mountain."

Moses came down from the mountain to the people and warned the people to stay pure... And he said to the people, "Be ready for the third day: you should not go near a woman."

The Rabbis wanted to clarify that both men and women were participants in theophany and they interpreted the phrases, "Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the children of Israel," to refer respectively to the men and the women."

Rashi interpreted Moses's instructions as way to ensure that women could be present. Since semen loses its purported ritual impurity after three days, if men stayed away from women, then women could be ritually pure during revelation.

What should we think of Moses changing the words of the divine command?

Judith Plaskow writes,

"Several lessons can be drawn from this. One is the inseparability of revelation and interpretation. There is no revelation without interpretation; the foundational experience of revelation also involves a crucial act of interpretation. Second, we learn that the process of interpretation is ongoing. What Moses does, the Rabbis in this case seek to undo. While they reiterate and reinforce the exclusion of women in many contexts, they mitigate it in others. Third, insofar as the task of interpretation is continuing, it now lies with us. If women's absence from Sinai is unthinkable to the Rabbis-- despite the fact that they repeatedly reenact that absence in their own work-- how much more must it be unthinkable to women and men today who function in communities in which women are full Jews? We have the privilege and the burden of recovering the divine words reverberating behind the silences in the text, recreating women's understandings of revelation throughout Jewish history." (The Torah, A Women's Commentary)

It's our privilege and responsibility to interpret Torah and we do so within a 4,000 year old tradition.