glutted with ceremony

an activist i was hanging up posters with at Ben Gurion University just now asked if i wanted to join him for a scholarship ceremony, but i just couldn't do it. i'm brimming with formality, poignant moments and intergenerational mixed seating. i'm glutted with ceremony.

last night was a Lag Ba'omer event for all the Diaspora youth in longterm programs in Israel. Lag Ba'omer is the holiday I could never remember what for when I was in Hebrew School. It is the 33rd day in the count of the omer, which is counted for 7 weeks from the last day of Passover. It commemorates the day when the students of Rabbi Akiva were spared from massacre and the day of sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's death, and is celebrated with bonfires all over the place. it was a full day.

We hiked the Burma Road, a route used to penetrate to Jerusalem and win the War of Independence in 1948. Later, Jeff and I went to the VIP reception, because the principal of the Netivot secular high school had been chosen to speak about what it was like to have us as volunteers at the school. Unexpectedly, they passed us the microphone to say a few words, so we stumbled something--embarrassingly, in English-- in front of a cabinet minister, the chairwoman of the Jewish Agency, the Education Director of the Jewish Agency, and a lot of other big names we didn't know.

At the MASA Gala event, they went all out to highlight all the academic and volunteer activities of the 7000 participants. It was over-the-top, with all the Hebrew songs Americans know, speeches by the Minister of Immigration and Absorption, by Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, and the chair of the Jewish Agency, fireworks, food. Basically, this is a joint project of the Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency, and they are spending A LOT of money on it.

But their mission is clear. Olmert said something that I always thought was supposed to remain implicit: "Take your experience, and bring it back to your communities. Stay. Stay for a month, a year, a few years. Then, pack your bags, and come home. We want you here. We need you here..."

The demographic problem seems like it should be on the hush-hush, but it's readily spoken about on the street. It's something strange to me. It's strange that Zionism is such a lofty dream so successfully attained but given so little legitimacy. When the crowd of 7000 young people was standing in the bleachers, singing Adon Olam ("master of the universe") and Am Yisrael Chai ("the people Israel lives") at the tops of their voices, I said to Jeff, "If our non-Jewish friends saw us now, they would think we were part of a cult." He agreed. Why does Zionism, especially as executed by the Jewish Agency, feel cultlike, when in my heart I know that it's a legitimate and just dream--for an oft-persecuted people to have a secure piece of territory to claim citizenship in, to invite their refugees, to form a united people?

I want to feel that solidarity, but not too much. There are communal values and there are personal criticisms, and I want both. So, I will continue to go down in front of the stage to dance like a free person, but the next day I will return to my computer to make my critique.