The Language of Love
By David Dubinsky
It has been just over two decades since I completed my BA in Linguistics at UCLA. I have always had a love for languages and have this fascination for morphology, the study of the root meaning of the words we use. I love words. This has been especially true in Israel, where my Hebrew skills are slightly less sophisticated than those of my six-year-old daughter. I read the Hebrew street signs and can’t help but analyze the root and structure behind the words. For example, what is the meaning behind the meaning of the phrase “Betten Gav,” which literally means “Belly-Back?” It is used to convey “to do nothing all day.” Betten Gav, Belly-Back, implies that doing nothing all day means to be horizontal, moving only when necessary to turn over from lying on one’s stomach to lying on one’s back.
The grocery store has been a most fertile ground for learning new words and making new friends. I have met some of our closest friends and some of the most charming women in Jerusalem trying to locate tomato sauce and decipher product ingredients. Israeli compassion for a man attempting to find low-fat cottage cheese among the hundreds of cheeses produced in the “Land of Milk and Honey” is limitless.
One of our family food staples is frozen vegetarian shnitzel. This is spelled “vegetal” (probably because there are no ingredients in the product that occur in nature). What I find most elusive about the packaging is the tag-line, freely translated into “Nature is Tasty.” Tasty? Yes. Nature? I don’t think so.
Two bottles of “Stop Tush” caught me by surprise in the market. What could this be? Imodium? Diapers? It is air freshener, of course.
A street sign near my ulpan (language school) warns dog owners they will be charged a 660-Shekel fine (equivalent to $195 this week) if they don’t clean up after their dogs. To get people’s attention, the sign exclaims in Hebrew transliteration “SH_T! I stepped in it again!” Who said “borrowing is the most sincere form of flattery?” We Americans can be proud of our influence on Modern Hebrew.
I now know that if I owned an upscale store that sold home products, I could find no better name than “Items.” How perfectly descriptive! The alternatives we’re used to -- like “Bed Bath and Beyond” – are too long to be catchy, and so specific. There’s no need to be locked into a particular market niche. The name “Items” is short, catchy and means you can sell snow tires if the bath towels don’t work out.
This picture says it all…
I consider this to be the best name of a pizza parlor, bar none. Pizza kim-at chinam. (translation: “almost free pizza”). What great marketing! I have never been inside. It would ruin the magic.
This restaurant features hummus in 2 flavors: foul and mashroms. Foul -- pronounced “Fool” in Arabic” -- is a tasty bean dish. There must be a better translation in English than “Foul.”
Is this one a last vestige of the agricultural pioneers of the Kibbutz Movement? Who else would want to wear Traktor Fasihon?
For all the jeu de mots, poor translations and just plain weird labels, I can’t begin to tell you how patient the Israelis have been with my fledgling Hebrew. Gender and tense are thrown to the wind and I just try to put together as many Hebrew words as I can. They could complain that my Hebrew is a desecration of the Holy Tongue, or switch to the fluent English spoken by most Israelis (along with a half dozen other languages). Instead, they encourage me. They call it “Klitah,” which they translate as “Absorption.” No, they don’t mean paper towels. Israeli society is designed to welcome every Jew home to new foods, smells, sights and one very ancient, beautiful language.
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Chevrei:
Last night and today is Rosh Chodesh Adar II, the first of the new month of Adar II. It is a season of gifts, practical jokes, a little too much drinking, and parties every day. Cross-dressing, inebriated Hasidim dance in the streets, grateful to God that we survived Haman’s wicked plan to kill all the Jews. Everyone sings, “Be Happy, It’s Adar !!!!” I can’t wait to teach you the song when I get home.
Yesterday at my Yeshiva, Pardes we gathered early to mark the new month. We devoted the morning to the study of Chesed (Lovingkindness) and then we left the walls of the yeshiva, spread out all over Jerusalem to BE Chesed. We cleaned up the old railroad tracks, visited the sick, served and ate with the poor and elderly and we threw a Purim party for disabled children. It was an almost perfect day – except we were all aware that Adar is, “Piguim season.” Terrorist season. In fact, our Chesed day of learning and doing was dedicated to the memories of two Pardes students killed by a suicide bomber a few years ago.
Numberless pogroms, from Shushan to Kishinev, have taken place in the month of Adar. That is why Israeli’s drily refer to it as Piguim season.
Do they know? Do those who hate Jews go to the trouble to know about Adar and Haman? Do they know our story so well that fresh violence is laced with historical tragedy? And Rav Kook’s Yeshiva… Rav Kook, the first, Chief Rabbi of British Palestine; a mystic and lover of humanity who preached peace between Arab and Jew? How many Jews know the names of Esther, Mordechai and Rav Kook as well as do those who wish to wipe Israel off the map?
The calls started coming late last night. We are fine, thank God.
I woke up this morning and thought I ought to hold a memorial service at the synagogue and then I remembered that I am in Jerusalem. I took the kids to school. The Rosh Chodesh Adar carnival was set up. The children came in costumes. The parents went to work or to the market to get ready for Shabbat. Israelis wisely conserve their tears and grief for funerals. I checked with my neighbor about what is appropriate for today. “Ca-ra-gil” she said, “Business as usual.”
Across town, eight sets of parents and hundreds of mourners accompanied the eight teenage yeshiva students to their graves. I watched a few minutes of the ceremony on TV and recited Psalm 23. David, in an act of extreme sanity, went to Tel Aviv to see more of this beautiful country. And I sit here at my computer torn by the desire to cry like the Psalmist and the reality that the children are picking lemons outside our apartment for Shabbat dinner and that Zachary has forgotten how to say “belly” in English.
Shabbat is coming. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. More than that, google Rav Kook. Take a few minutes to learn about the sage whose teachings inspired those Yeshiva students whose last words were words of Torah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alice Dubinsky
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February 25, 2008
To the moon God said, “Renew yourself like a crown of splendor for those born from the womb.” We are destined to renew ourselves like the moon…
I dance toward you but cannot touch you…
-- From the prayers for blessing the moon, Artscroll Siddur, pp 615
A Blessing for the Moon
 The air in Jerusalem is so heavy with prayer that even the most religious among us must leave the city from time to time to breathe oxygen without an agenda. In Jerusalem , everything is a statement – the size and material of a kippah, a hat over a kippah, no kippah, the length of a skirt, jeans worn under a skirt – every detail of one’s attire is associated with some religious philosophy. Getting dressed in the morning is an affirmation of deeply held beliefs. I tried to pack light for this trip.
At Pardes, the Yeshiva at which I am studying during my sabbatical, we go on a Tiyul once a month. There is no word for Tiyul in English. It means something akin to “field trip,” but Tiyul is a verb, not a noun. The anticipation of discovery is embedded in the word Tiyul. As soon as we get on the bus the heaviness lifts. Everyone gets silly, except for the truly driven. They study Talmud on the bus ride.
 This past Shabbat we went on Tiyul to a mountaintop Kibbutz overlooking the Jezreel Valley . Zachary and Hannah ran around the kibbutz shrieking delight. They left their mother’s fear of speeding taxis and crowded streets in Jerusalem . They played like kids from Maine . Zachary and Hannah brought out the playfulness in all of us; even the students who study Talmud on the bus lightened up.
We were a tired bunch. The flu has hit Pardes with a vengeance this winter. We mustered the energy to dress in our Shabbat whites and welcomed the Sabbath Bride outside. As we sang the six Psalms welcoming her, the sun went down and over the mountains in the distance.
We prayed, ate and studied. We sang love songs to the Sabbath, and drank L’Chaim’s in her honor late into Friday night. There wasn’t much sleeping.
 At the end of the Sabbath we made Havdalah, the ceremony that ends Shabbat and begins the work week. As we prayed for a world that is all Shabbat, all peace, the singing became louder and more impassioned. First the men began to dance, then the women. As the circles moved faster, David put Hannah on his shoulders. One of my classmates, Jonathan, a young man from London , lifted Zachary onto his shoulders. My childrens’ smiles flashed by as the dancers spun. Jonathan’s Tzitzit, the ritual fringes he wore under his shirt to remind him of God’s commandments, also flew. The dancers flew and my heart flew watching my children participate in such uninhibited, frenzied love of the Sabbath; her songs, her dances, her message of peace and the God who gave us the Shabbat.
The dancing moved outside and hanging in the sky was a thick slice of moon. For the first time in my life I blessed the moon, reminder of the Maker of the moon; the Maker of all.
All of us leapt toward the moon, reciting the ancient words, “I dance toward you but cannot touch you…” Then, as is the custom, we turned one by one to face each individual and said:
-Shalom Aleichem
-Aleichem Shalom
-Peace be upon you
-Upon you, may there be peace.
Rabbi Alice Dubinsky
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“Your Torah is my delight.”
-Psalm 119
“Man plans and God laughs.”
- Yiddish Proverb
Chevrei (Dear Friends):
 David and I planned every detail of this sabbatical with care and precision. Then we arrived in Israel.
We had chosen excellent private Israeli Reform Movement schools for our children. Unfortunately, they might as well have been in Bangor, they are so far away from our home.
Plan B.
There are several kinds of schools in Israel, both public and private. Reform and Conservative schools are private. Public schools come in three flavors: Secular, Orthodox and More Orthodox. We went to register our children for the local schools. We were told to go to the Ministry of Education. We did. The man behind the desk had no idea how one registers a child for school. Neither did his supervisor. David and I were envisioning six months of home-schooling Zachary and Hannah in our apartment when The Holy One showed up at the bus stop in the guise of an American Israeli who knew the correct building for registering children for school.
It took all day, but it worked out. It turns out that because of our apartment’s location, Zachary and Hannah are attending two of the best public schools in Jerusalem, which we had been told were full. The only thing is, they are Orthodox schools. Zachary has to wear a kippah and does not want to. Hannah wants to wear a kippah and can’t. We have lots to talk about at the dinner table!
My studies officially start next week, but I have quietly been sitting in on classes at Pardes. The learning is thrilling. I struggled with the decision to study at Pardes, which is a Yeshiva. I thought about attending Hebrew University, which would be more like the graduate schools with which I am familiar. It turns out that the university professors are all on strike. Yeshiva it is.
 Last night I sat in on a class on Hasidic philosophy. I expected the students to be mostly rabbis, teachers, and academics. They were mostly students between the ages of 18 and 22. They were our children - American Jewish kids who grew up in Reform, Conservative, secular and Orthodox households who are searching for a deep, rich Jewish experience. After Hasidut, I sat in on Aviva Zornberg’s lecture on the weekly Torah portion. That class is filled with the rabbis and academics.
I will save for later what it is like being a Reform rabbi here, because it is so complicated. Suffice it to say that so far I am only a Mommy and a student to the people we have met.
David has enrolled in an ulpan – an intensive Hebrew language course. His goal is to keep up with the children.
After we had visited all the government offices, spoken with countless bureaucrats, paid all the fees and filled out reams of paperwork, we walked to the Old City. Hannah and I touched the Western Wall and saw the countless pieces of paper with the prayers of the Jews stuffed in the crevasses of the Wall. Hannah said God doesn’t need paper. She put her hand on the smooth, cool stones and said a prayer for all her friends and teachers back home. Then she suggested that on the next trip to Israel we bring you all with us.
B’Yedidut -- Fondly,
Rabbi Alice R. Dubinsky
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