Journey to Israel
Cantor Michal Gray-Schaffer of B'nai Abraham Synagogue, 519 N. Main St., enjoyed her trip to Israel last fall, despite enduring pushing, shoving and yelling during a visit to the Wailing Wall.
“I believe it was my fifth time in Israel,” said Gray-Schaffer, who was in the country from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1.
“I did travel alone, but I was meeting a group of rabbis from Western Pennsylvania, along with a number of other rabbis,” she said. She flew from Pittsburgh to Toronto and then took an 11-hour flight to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
“I wanted to make sure I got there before shabbat (Jewish sabbath) which runs from 2 p.m. Friday to after sundown Saturday. I wanted to be in a place where I could get a Muslim Arab cab driver,” she said.
“One time because of shabbat, I couldn't get transportation and I almost got stranded. I would have had to walk 10 miles,” she said. “Israel really does shut down during that time even though most Israelis consider themselves secular.”
Her trip (all but $500 of a $2,000 round-trip ticket) was paid for by the World Zionist Organization, she said.
“They want rabbis to engage in Israel and then go back and make people excited about where Israel is now,” said Gray-Schaffer.
The group started in Jerusalem but ranged across the country.
“We did so much you would not believe it. Some days were packed all day,” she said.
For example, one of the stops for the American rabbi group was the Knesset, the 120-member national assembly of Israel. The group was briefed by a Knesset member and one past member on women's issues, politics and a project to get jobs for Haredi men. Gray-Schaffer said Haredi Jews reject modern secular society.
“The young men who are studying in the Orthodox seminaries, a lot of them don't do work to support their families.” she said. “It is considered an honor to be studying in that community. This is a plan to connect them with jobs so they can better support their families, which are usually very large”
A school for autistic children outside of Jerusalem was also one of the stops.
“We went to a campus that was started by a woman, a teacher, who was given an (autistic) student. There was nothing in the literature. There weren't any guidelines for teaching autistic children. She just saw what worked,” she said.“Different teachers started sending her their autistic students,” she said, and the school grew.Gray-Schaffer said today the school uses different means to reach its students. Some respond to equine therapy. Other students train dogs to be service animals.She also visited a farm where she said she picked enough kohlrabi to feed 200 families.“I loved getting my hands in the dirt. It was black and rich and loamy. The Israelis had worked that soil to make it that way,” she said.Her group made a more hazardous trip to the Gaza Strip, where they met with an Israeli Army colonel in charge of security. The strip is the self-governing Palestinian territory on the east coast of the Mediterranean.“We were in the part of the Gaza Strip where you could actually see the Egyptian border,” said Gray-Schaffer. “And we saw soldiers, we talked to the soldiers. “But they had to be on guard because of the possibility of infiltrators building tunnels to get into Israel.“One soldier sleeps with his M-16 strapped to himself because he is always on call in that part of the country. They have no idea where a tunnel could emerge.”She said the most famous case of a tunnel attack was that of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was captured in 2006 by militants in a cross-border raid. He was held captive for more than five years until his release in 2011 as part of a prisoner-exchange.“These tunnels are 50 feet deep. It's hard to fathom. There is presently no equipment that can sense a tunnel that far down. So, the soldiers are always on alert,” she said.Gray-Schaffer also visited an Arab village, Kfar Manda, whose sheik was an Arab Israeli.The village was small enough that a man called a muezzin still calls people to worship. In the larger cities the call to prayer is on a tape.“I saw a service in a mosque from the women's balcony,” Gray-Schaffer said. “And I met a mosque muezzin and also a dynamite 23-year-old Arab Israeli woman who graduated from university and was the head of an agency for underprivileged women and girls.” Gray-Schaffer said the graduate was an example of a modern Arab Israeli woman, a Muslim who didn't want to marry or have a lot of children.She said the weather during her trip was perfect, with highs in the 60s and plenty of sunshine.Strangely, the one day the weather turned and it rained for half a day was the day her group has scheduled for a picnic.She visited the Western, or Wailing, Wall in Jerusalem. It is considered the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, and it's where Gray-Schaffer took part in some mild civil disobedience.Men and women are segregated into different areas when praying at the wall.She said there is a group in Israel called Women of the Wall, women want to pray with a Torah.“The Orthodox object to that as a move for an equalization of a section of the Wall,” she said.Gray-Schaffer said she was there when “they tried to sneak Torahs into the women's prayers.”“The men yelled at us, a woman spat at me because I was a woman trying to worship in a modern way,” she said. “There were 14 Torahs and we were trying to protect them. It was a 15-minute tug of war, pushing and shoving. I got a bruise in the shape of a footprint on my foot. ““Every other movement believes in egalitarianism and have for many years. The Orthodox are a small minority but (with) an overlarge presence because they grabbed power over religious matters ” She said she was proud to have been a part of the disturbance.She also was able to realize a long-held hope.“I always wanted to sit on the terrace of the King David Hotel like (actors) Eva Marie Saint and Paul Newman in that scene from 'Exodus.'”
“I just sat and watched the sunset from the terrace with a glass of wine and a bowl of olives with a beautiful view of the old city,” said Gray-Schaffer.The group also saw a vineyard and an archaeologist's dig where soil taken from the Temple Mount is examined. The sifting project is dedicated to recovering artifacts from 400 truckloads of topsoil removed during the construction of the underground El-Marwani Mosque from 1996 to 1999.She also visited the Israel Museum where she took in the “Pharaoh in Canaan” exhibit.“The discoveries are really, really new. There are letters from the governor to the Pharaoh which are amazing. There's beautiful Egyptian jewelry,” said Gray-Schaffer.Speaking of her trips to Israel, she added, “I've done all the things that people want to do. There is something holy about the Holy Land, you just feel it.”
