Linda Whittaker
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Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:27:17 AM
To:Linda Olsvig-Whittaker
Hi Everyone,
We are still in the holiday season for Israel; this week it was Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, followed immediately by Independence Day at sunset on 28 April this year. It has always been a hard emotional switch to go from the melancholy of Memorial Day (now including the many people killed by terrorists) to the intense joy of Independence Day, but it seems very appropriate to first honor the people who made and keep our independence possible.
So first the sirens sound and people stand everywhere in the country, as on Holocaust Memorial Day, and remembrance ceremonies are held in the military cemeteries and other such places around the country. We remember our soldiers now kept hostage, as well as those who have died. Torches are lit for them. Parents talk about their fallen sons and daughters on radio broadcasts and there is no entertainment in the country, and only sad music.
Then at sunset, celebrations for Independence begin. It wasn't as wild this year as I remember some years: fireworks, people in the streets bonking each other with plastic squeaking hammers (peculiar to Israel, I think), and spraying each other with foam, and generally having a Purim-style good time. The ultra-Orthodox are noticed by their absence; Independence Day is a secular holiday which they don't recognize; and for them it is a normal working day. But I did see Arabs celebrating too....
My Dutch graduate student was here in Jerusalem to work with me, and I arranged for him to stay at a guesthouse near my home. This was the first time we actually sat and started to tackle the work he will do through the summer during his internship here: part biodiversity analysis, part habitat classification, part remote sensing analysis. We put in a hard day's work and then I took him to our congregation's picnic on Independence Day.
This is one place where we join all Israel in what is now a hallowed custom, the barbecue picnic in the park. All the parks and nature reserves of Israel get full on this day as everyone packs a "mangel" grill, hampers of food, and the family, and out they go. You can tell the picnic grounds by the pillars of smoke over them....
Our group almost always meets in a city park in Denya, a neighborhood of Jerusalem accessible by bus for the members who don't have cars. It was truly packed on this day. We had a group of maybe forty or more people ourselves, set up communal grills, and everyone's food got shared. With a congregation including Koreans, Japanese, Brazilians, Russians, English, and Americans as well as native Israelis, we get quite an interesting mix of what people consider picnic food. There is always more than people can eat, so I took home a hamper that was enough to feed an elderly impoverished neighbor lady for a week.
My work team on the EBONE project is "cooking" now. We finally seem to mesh as a team. Not only that, we are several lengths ahead of the European countries participating in this 4-year project. This surprised us. Israel is a tiny country half the size of the Netherlands, and our team are conservation biologists in practice, not university people. We expected to be the poor relation on this project, humbly learning at the feet of the masters. Well, we are ahead of schedule on every task we are supposed to do, and many others have produced nothing. My guys (I'm the head of the Israel team) are working their bunnies to the bone on this; I don't need to prompt them. All I need to do is keep the group together, balance the books, and keep the long view on where we are headed. Oddly enough, I'm doing that. Must admit my learning curve about management is still vertical. I'm using all the knowledge I ever accumulated in 30 years as a professional ecologist, to keep guessing which way we jump. So far, so good, and the enthusiasm is spreading. We have plenty of work to do this summer, and host an international workshop for the project in autumn, so we are beginning to be noticed.
It is said the ages between 50 and 60 are the "legacy years" in a person's professional career, when we focus on the best contributions we can make, and bring up the next generation in our field before we retire. Well, that seems to be what I am doing. Four years on this project, and then another three getting the monitoring systems and informatics implemented here in Israel, and I'll be ready to hang up my mouse and data stick, and go study archeology, probably get more involved in congregational activity too.
Speaking of which, I had a good lesson over the last three weeks in the difference between religion and faith in practice. A contact on the Internet invited me to join a Christian discussion forum. I applied, was accepted and sampled it. From the start, I made clear I was there to learn what people do, not what they think, and didn't want to get into religious or theological arguments. But sure enough, that was most of what was posted, and sure enough I got sucked in.
Turned out what was presented as Christian was really only for a certain kind of Christian, the born-again, fundamentalist, Calvinist Protestant types (Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, independents, etc.) This excludes most of the world's Christians, of course. Well, I'm in Israel, what the heck do I know? Took a while to catch onto that. Also turned out most of the discussions were about theological points (and not a theologian among them, of course) or American politics viewed in the religious framework, or just plain attacking everything in sight that didn't meet their standards.
If I had an ounce of sense I would have cleared out fast, but I got intrigued and joined some of the posts. There was no way my "non-kosher" views would be considered, and I ended up on the defensive every bloody time. Let me tell you, these fundamentalists can talk as nasty as a street $*%%! too, just without the cussing. Sheesh.
I did a reality check with some leadership in my congregation and was advised to clear out of there fast, which I did. Three weeks did give me a useful education, however. Some take home lessons:
1. There is a big difference between religion and faith. Religion is essentially politics in different clothing, and has all the attributes of party politics. It's not about God, it's about competition and control. Faith is about how you live your life and what you do as a person. People who argue religion may have great faith and live it, but they sure don't talk about what they are doing. They talk about what they think, and that often borders on paranoia.
2. I noticed that nobody in this forum talked about their faith community, their churches. Those I asked didn't have one. This is probably very unhealthy. Religion is strong medicine, and not something one should mess with in isolation and without supervision. We all get rather wacko without reality checks, and the congregation, the face-to-face faith community, is necessary for that. Some religions tend more to extremes than others; the Calvinist-derived fundamentalists are rooted in a tradition that started out extemist, so it is no surprise this continues even more so today. If anybody needs a stabilizing pastoral hand, it's those guys.
I'm not very social myself and could easily drift into isolation. This experience was a wakeup call for the need to keep committed to my own congregation and interact with the people in it. This is faith in practice, and the necessary reality check to keep from becoming too wacko myself. Got nipped by the wringer there, and I'm glad for the experience. It's a small price to pay to learn there are some places I'm better off not going.
shabbat shalom,
Linda
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