[Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Novem­ber 26, 2011; updat­ed to fix bro­ken links and for­mat­ting Octo­ber 22, 2020.]

dark mornings

As the north­ern hemi­sphere moves deep­er into win­ter with less light for each day, our morn­ings begin near dawn. This is a beau­ti­ful time of begin­nings and promise. While the sounds we hear each morn­ing are not those of birds chirp­ing and chil­dren learn­ing, but the clank­ing of men at work, even these call out for bless­ings. I recall a favorite melody Rab­bi Neil Comess-Daniels, a class­mate, com­posed for the begin­ning of ברוך שאמר (baruch she’a­mar) the first of the פסוקי דזמרא (pesukei dez­im­ra) recit­ed at the begin­ning of the “morn­ing cheers”. I rarely hear any­one sing it, though I believe it express­es the text beautifully.

written or spoken

This came to mind when I learned from Avi­gail that she is involved with a project called “Sha­har­it: A Think-tank for new Israeli Pol­i­tics” and its Eng­lish lan­guage pod­cast “The Promised Pod­cast” …being a pod­cast for any­one who wants to under­stand Israel beyond the head­lines. Or, as they write:

Final­ly, after thou­sands of years and so many desert sojourns, it’s here! Grip­ping dis­cus­sion and per­spec­tives on Israeli pol­i­tics and cul­ture. You’ll won­der how you ever lived with­out it.

‎The Promised Podcast on Apple Podcasts
‎An inside view of how Israel can warm your heart and make your blood boil. It's a show by a journalist, a professor and an NGO professional who live in and love Israel even though it drives them crazy, and who each week discuss the latest in Israeli politics, culture, and society.

Pod­casts are not my medi­um of choice. My BA was in music and I’m rather attuned to sound, but I did not have an iPod until I need­ed a new phone in Feb­ru­ary of 2011. I had my hear­ing checked in late Octo­ber, learn­ing that my hear­ing is quite fine (for my age). While I’m begin­ning to lose those upper reg­is­ters, I’m nowhere near need­ing an “aid”. I rel­ish the “Silence” (which I owned for many years).

I appre­ci­ate Oscar Wilde’s com­ment in “The Crit­ic as Artist”:

Since the intro­duc­tion of print­ing, there has been a ten­den­cy in lit­er­a­ture to appeal more and more to the eye, and less and less to the ear which is real­ly the sense which, from the stand­point of pure art, it should seek to please, and by whose canons of plea­sure it should abide always.

Nonethe­less, I’m a text guy. I don’t lis­ten for my infor­ma­tion, I read. Even though I pre­fer to read, one of the rare plus­es of need­ing to dri­ve while liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia was the time I would spend in the car lis­ten­ing to var­i­ous news and infor­ma­tion pro­grams. Oth­er­wise, when I sit at my desk with my com­put­er in front of me (which is the vast major­i­ty of my time), I read and write. If I’m doing chores in the apart­ment, or cook­ing, and I’m alone, I will some­times turn on my iTunes, set the music library to ran­dom­ly select any­thing from the (cur­rent­ly) 14,771 “songs” amount­ing to 76.7 days, or 75.17 GB of files. I like to start out the selec­tion with some­thing from the 1,347 “songs” amount­ing to 36.4 days that I’ve not yet heard since adding them to the library. [Yes, that’s an odd ratio. And a lot of lis­ten­ing yet to do.]

walking and talking

How­ev­er, there are times when I will go for a walk alone. Most of these walks are with­in a 7‑block radius from the apart­ment: to the library, the cob­bler, the vint­ner, the clean­er, one or anoth­er mar­ket, the post office, (not the butch­er, the bak­er, nor the can­dle­stick-mak­er); the usu­al neigh­bor­hood errands. These jaunts are too short to mer­it plug­ging the ear­buds into the phone and lis­ten­ing to any­thing oth­er than the city’s sounds. Oth­er times I will walk for a mile or more. These longer walks might be for exercise/pleasure or for an errand beyond the imme­di­ate ‘hood. In such a case, I will plug in, and, if the city streets are qui­et enough I can hear some­one talk­ing on a podcast.

It was on such a walk one morn­ing in late Octo­ber when I was final­ly able to sam­ple the “Promised” pod­cast. The ses­sion I hap­pened upon was the one record­ed imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the release of Gilad Shalit. The ini­tial seg­ment had Ger­shon Baskin as it’s guest. Aside from his dis­cus­sion of the role he played in the release of Shalit, I learned that he and the three reg­u­lar dis­cus­sants on the pod­cast are all “grad­u­ates” of Young Judaea. I sud­den­ly felt a spe­cial kin­ship, as I was also deeply touched by my expe­ri­ence in Young Judaea.

some movements end in a whimper, others due to success

Both the inter­na­tion­al­ist Jew­ish left that con­sist­ed of first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­cans (and their chil­dren) and the Zion­ist youth move­ments that helped cre­ate the State of Israel had thou­sands of adher­ents in the ear­ly and mid­dle 20^th cen­tu­ry. They are near­ly non-exis­tent today at the begin­ning of the 21^st cen­tu­ry. Both of these move­ments (though antag­o­nis­tic towards each oth­er) added a vibran­cy to Amer­i­can Jew­ish life. What hap­pened? I am not a his­to­ri­an, but I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that most of the chil­dren of the immi­grant mem­bers of YKUF rose out of the work­ing class, became pro­fes­sion­als and, while they main­tained a fond­ness for Yid­dish, were not able to cre­ate Yid­dish speak­ers and read­ers of their chil­dren (the third-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­cans). Among the Zion­ists on the oth­er hand, they were often so suc­cess­ful in impart­ing their ide­ol­o­gy (as was the case wtih the Habon­im ken (“nest” as in group of young­sters) in Los Ange­les) that the entire lead­er­ship made Aliyah leav­ing those behind to strug­gle, often unable to main­tain the con­ti­nu­ity of the group.

While I had grown up in a Yiddishist/Internationalist home, my par­ents intro­duced me to Zion­ism in my ear­ly teens (I think for the sake of using the local Habon­im sum­mer camp). I con­tin­ued my involve­ment dur­ing the year, accept­ing the nation­al­ist argu­ment. It was in the Habon­im Make­lah (cho­rus) that I met Bonia Shur. But, when the reign­ing hadracha (lead­er­ship) made aliyah and the social fab­ric of our ken dis­solved, I looked for anoth­er group. Our fam­i­ly friends in the Bay Area had long been involved in Young Judaea, but its non-polit­i­cal nature had not been attrac­tive. Nonethe­less, I con­tact­ed the local group and attend­ed some gath­er­ings. The Young Judaea group in Los Ange­les in the ear­ly ’60s was much more intel­lec­tu­al­ly involved than was Habon­im. I don’t remem­ber ever par­tic­i­pat­ing in a dis­cus­sion of Jew­ish thought in Habon­im. But at reg­u­lar meet­ings at the home of our Young Judaea madrich (he must have been in his ear­ly 30s, with a young fam­i­ly; he lived in a duplex on 6^th St. between Fair­fax and La Ciene­ga) we enjoyed dis­cus­sions of the work of Mar­tin Buber and A. J. Hes­chel.

In the process of becom­ing more active in Young Judaea, I learned of it’s Israel Year Course pro­gram. Our fam­i­ly friends’ daugh­ter would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in it the year she grad­u­at­ed high school, 1964–65, the same year that I would grad­u­ate. This seemed like an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty not to pass up. While now Year Course is mar­ket­ed as a gap year pro­gram, in the mid ’60s (and prob­a­bly for many years lat­er), only some­one who had been active in the move­ment could par­tic­i­pate. Because I was a new­com­er (I’d nev­er been to any Young Judaea sum­mer camp, and had been involved in the local group only a year), I need­ed to “prove” my accept­abil­i­ty by attend­ing the “advanced” pro­gram of the nation­al camp Tel Yehu­dah in Bar­ryville, NY along the Delaware River.

Though I was born in Spring­field, MA, and spent a cou­ple of years in Akron, OH, I don’t think I had been east of San Bernardi­no, CA since the age of four. I flew east on my own. I don’t remem­ber if I was met at JFK by some­one from Young Judaea or by my uncle who lived on Long Island. Be that as it may, I spent a great time at camp “Machaneh Avo­dah” (work camp), where aside from study­ing Zion­ist thought and inter­na­tion­al work­ers’ songs such as Bandiera Rossa I learned how to milk a goat.

The Year Course itself was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. Though while many of the oth­er par­tic­i­pants were thrilled by the South­ern-Cal­i­for­nia-like appear­ance of Israel, I (hav­ing grown up in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia) won­dered why any­one would (should) feel any spe­cial con­nec­tion to the land if it were not for the Zion­ist idea (which was one of our text­books). Through­out the autumn and win­ter we lived in what was then the qui­et and small city of “divid­ed” Jerusalem. After break­fast at our “dorm” the San Remo hotel on the cor­ner of Strauss and HaNevi’im, we walked every morn­ing, up King George Street to what was then the Hil­lel build­ing on Bal­four Street for four hours of Hebrew study. The after­noons were filled with cours­es in Jew­ish his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, and Zion­ist thought, the phys­i­cal geog­ra­phy of Israel and more. The remain­der of the year includ­ed a month liv­ing with a fam­i­ly and work­ing on a moshav (Kfar Yehoshua), three months on var­i­ous kib­butz­im (Hul­da), and oth­er adventures.

On our return, I remem­ber a woman from Hadas­sah, at the time, one of the adult spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions of Young Judaea, remark­ing that they often see grad­u­ates of the Year Course return­ing to the States and becom­ing involved in Jew­ish com­mu­nal life on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el… some­times as rab­bis. The Jerusalem cam­pus of HUC-JIR had opened the year before my Year Course. I had walked past it many times. Lit­tle did I know then that in eight years I would be back, study­ing at that cam­pus. I know of oth­er col­leagues who also “came through” Young Judaea.

listen to the promise

Since that Octo­ber walk I have had oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to lis­ten to this “Promised” pod­cast. While I am not sure what it is that is promised, nor who it is that does the promis­ing, I know that each time I have lis­tened I have gained through the inter­ac­tion of the three pri­ma­ry participants:

• Dr. Eilon Schwartz, found­ing Direc­tor of Sha­har­it as well as the Hes­chel Cen­ter for Envi­ron­men­tal Learn­ing and Lead­er­ship and Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty professor
• Don Fut­ter­man, fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to Haaretz, blog­ger for +972, and Israel Pro­gram Direc­tor of the Mori­ah Fund
• Dr. Noah Efron, Sr. Fel­low at Sha­har­it, HUff­Po blog­ger and lec­tur­er at Bar Ilan Univesity.

The whole first third of the Octo­ber 28^th pod­cast is all about the state of high­er ed in Israel.

I encour­age you to give it a listen.

listen to the dawn

Many orga­ni­za­tions, espe­cial­ly youth move­ments have pro­duced lapel but­tons. I have a num­ber of these made by Young Judaea. For some rea­son, Young Judaea has also been known as “Hashachar” (the dawn). This but­ton dates from the mid 1970s the peri­od when the pod­cast pro­duc­ers were active in the move­ment. I won­der if they ever wore it.

Date:	1970s
Size:	5.2
Pin Form:	straight
Print Method:	cel­lo
Text:	HashachaR

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.