1.
In his inaugural speech as a member of Knesset, on the Fast of Esther 2009, the late Uri Orbach likened religious Zionism to a sleeping beauty waiting for someone to wake her up.
""The sons and daughters of our movement are a significant part of every aspect of our lives, but we walk around with a constant feeling of low spirits, feeling that we are not recognized for our worth," he said.
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This week I was reminded of Auerbach and that speech. I wonder how he would define the Religious Zionist Party today. The crazy beauty? The filth? The red riding hood?
Okay, let's leave religious Zionism in politics for a moment. True, these are truly difficult and depressing times.
But right in the days when this whole embarrassing saga surrounding the closing of the Knesset lists was taking place, I was privileged to see religious Zionism in all its glory and influence. And more than that: I saw the vision, the direction. I saw where it was capable of going.
2.
Friday between the suns, Dizengoff Square, Tel Aviv. The cafes around the square continue their mundane routine, as if there is no special meaning to 4:27 PM. It was Friday afternoon before, and it is Friday afternoon now too (perhaps there is one difference after all: public transportation is now free). And in the midst of all this mundaneness, like secret agents of holiness, they leave their apartments in central Tel Aviv and walk to Bar Kochba Street.
One and one. And one. And two. They are easy to recognize: they are dressed in festive clothes, their walk is festive too, and they have a light in their eyes. I know that last sentence sounds like an exaggeration or kitsch, but what can I do, I am a journalist. It is my duty to report what I saw, and I saw a light in my eyes.
A few minutes later, the synagogue of 'Rosh Yehudi' is already full to the brim. Unlike in any other synagogue in the world, the rabbi of the community does not sit here in the east but at the entrance. It's a practical matter, Rabbi Assaf Tabachnik simply wants to personally welcome every new worshiper who arrives.
And they come in droves: secular students who got to know the synagogue thanks to the classes that are held there all week, former religious people who moved to Tel Aviv and suddenly miss the synagogue and the community, religious people who are about to, and even one Lior Dayan, who opens the siddur with his sweet boy Arad and shows him, Assi Dayan's grandson, what they are saying now.
This is the longest Shabbat night prayer I've ever seen. They don't skip a single song here. Carlebach-Premium. They also dance during most of the songs. No one is in a hurry to go anywhere. On the contrary, the feeling is that they are trying to postpone leaving the synagogue for the city outside. A temple of a king, a city without a break, get up and get out of the routine.
3.
The next stop after the prayer is the Zeira family home. Israel and Moriah Zeira, the founders of Rosh Yehudi in Tel Aviv, have been active here for about twenty years, but two years ago they took a dramatic step: One bright day they and their eight children left the large house (which they had just finished renovating) on Ma'ale Hever in the southern Hebron Hills and moved across the Green Line, to a ground-floor apartment in the heart of Tel Aviv. Their lives changed, and so did the life of Tel Aviv.
While singing "Shalom Aleichem" I count the chairs around the Zeira family's Shabbat table and reach 40. That's more or less the number of types of salads. The atmosphere is family-like. Not exactly a dining room. Israel makes kiddush, not before he says the Hasidic prayer "Lord of all the worlds," and again everyone stops and sings together "And we are allowed to receive Shabbats with much joy, and with wealth and honor, and with a few sins.".
And then begins one of the longest Shabbat meals I've ever experienced. Torah readings, songs, spontaneous sermons from the guests. There are guys here from all over the country who now live in Tel Aviv. Young men, young women, and also a few couples who got married in the last year.
It's only around 1:00 a.m. - and we're talking about a winter Shabbat, which starts early - that we arrive at the song of praise. And by the way, there are already more than 40 of us. During the meal, more and more guys join in. "This is the stage where we open the second floor," Zeira told me. He laughed, the modest apartment doesn't have a second floor. So we slowly and carefully lift the heavy sofas off the table and take them out of the house, to make room for no less than 20 more guests.
4.
The next morning we are staying with the Tabachnik family. Rabbi Assaf is, as mentioned, the rabbi of the community. His wife Tzvia heads the midrash for the children here. The door is not closed in the Tabachnik family's house either, and here too they observe the custom of taking out the sofas.
How many people are usually here on Shabbat? I ask the owner, and he says the number varies: "There are small meals, only twenty guests, and there are larger ones like Shabbat. In any case, we eat with regular plates for up to forty guests, more than that we switch to disposable dishes.".
After the first course, and after the round of introductions, Rabbi Assaf talks about the incident. He tells of the moment of revelation, "I am Joseph," that one little sentence that Joseph said to his brothers – and it changed everything.
""Each of us," he says, "has a kind of moment like this in life. A moment when the picture becomes clear and you suddenly see clearly what your role is in the world. I would be happy if you would share with us such a moment of clarification, of discovery." And here begins a long cycle. Each one and his "I am Joseph.".
From a discharged soldier who says that this is the first Shabbat in her life that she has observed fully ("I have two and a half hours left to succeed. I hope this doesn't sound primitive. This morning I went into the bathroom and my finger pressed the light switch, out of habit, but heaven was watching over me: the menorah was burned out...") to a film student at Sam Spiegel who tells how only in the last year did he realize that he needed to know the Torah ("I was delving into some script about Nietzsche. His opposition to religion and the New Testament intrigued me, so I started studying the New Testament to see what he was so opposed to. Then I said to myself: Wait, do you already know the Old Testament? So I started studying the Torah, the Genesis section, for the first time in my life, and when I got to the sentence 'I am Joseph', I started crying recently").
The Tabachnik family has lived here for more than a decade, one of six families of 'Jewish Head' who came to live in Tel Aviv. Two years after their wedding and kollel at the Beit El Yeshiva, they moved here. They have six children, four of whom were born in Tel Aviv. "You can't live in Tel Aviv and not be optimistic about the state of the Jewish people," Tzvia tells me.
I wanted to make sure I heard correctly, but the couple sitting next to me, who it turns out got married a week ago, start telling how they met here.
Story after story, and I begin to wonder what is going on here, and where all these delicate voices disappear into the noise of everyday life, elections, politics, the media. Each of them speaks in the most authentic and charming and moving way, and also the funniest and most intelligent way. Each describes in their own language and way a period of hatred and distance and disgust, and then curiosity and interest and discovery and closeness. Each sounds like a short promotional video for a 'Jewish head' (only they don't do a matching for us now).
5.
Holy Shabbat, between the sunsets, Dizengoff Square. We pass by the square on our way from the long meal at the Tabachnik family's house, which has just ended, to the Mincha prayer and a third meal at the Rosh Yehudi synagogue (it's been a long time since we ate and sang). I look at the cafes that continue their routine during the Darwin famine, watch Tabachnik and Zeira running in the rain, with dozens of students who don't want to miss Mincha, and think about all the countless discussions of the last few days, under the title "Where is Religious Zionism Going?".
""How much can we talk about the electoral threshold and argue about the political representation of the sector?" Zeira would later tell me in frustration. "We need to ask ourselves who we are, what the mission is, what it means to be a religious Zionist, what our great mission is. Does being a religious Zionist only mean opposing judicial activism and supporting Netanyahu? We are afraid of being 'missionaries,' God forbid, and think that this is a role only for Chabad emissaries, but that is a mistake.
""We forgot the Torah, we forgot the public that is waiting for it. What would happen if more families took this step? True, living in the heart of Tel Aviv is expensive. Not everyone can afford it. But there are so many other cities, and so many hearts. Such communities can be established all over the country. Everyone, wherever they are, can do something. There are so many young people, and also adults, who are just waiting.".
Will Sleeping Beauty wake up?
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
