Israel feels like home to Oregonians on mission
By Deborah Moon Seldner
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"Being a soft American, I will never make Aliyah," said Stan Marcus, co-chair of the 2006 Portland Community Mission to Israel. "But when I'm here, I'm home."
On the final evening of the 10-day mission, Marcus was not the only one of the 33 mission participants who said they felt at home in Israel.
Victor Richenstein, of Eugene, said that each time he comes to Israel he's heard that it's a homeland for Jews. Now on his third trip he said, "It did sink in this time."
In Israel for the first time, Michael Dorson said, "It didn't feel like home when I got off of the airplane, but I left feeling that it was home." He added that in America he often feels like a second-rate Jew since he doesn't speak Hebrew and has a hard time following services. But in Israel, he said, "I feel just as close to Abraham as they (Israelis) do."
In addition to security sites and social service programs reported on in earlier issues of the Jewish Review, the Portland mission also visited historic sites from a 3,900 B.C.E. gate from the Canaanite period discovered next to the City of Dan, dating to 900 B.C.E., to Independence Hall, where the state of modern Israel was declared 58 years ago.
Throughout the mission, guide and Jewish educator Zvi Levran read Biblical passages relating to wherever the group was at the moment. He read the story of David and Goliath as the group looked across the valley where the famous fight occurred and he read passages about Jerusalem from a variety of stops overlooking the city.
"This text is our guidebook," said Levran. "It is our story."
"When we connect to our roots, and maintain a connection to history, our presence here is a message," he said.
At Masada, which Levran called the most misunderstood tourist site in Israel, the educator asked the group to really consider what the slogan "Masada will never fall again" means for modern Israel. Until about 20 years ago, the Israel Defense Forces swore in soldiers at Masada.
Masada was the site where the last group of Zealots was defeated by the Romans in 70 C.E., three years after the second Temple was destroyed.
Levran noted that the only written record of the battle was recorded six years later by Flavius Josephus, a Jew who had defected and became a Roman historian. Levran challenged his account of group suicide and proposed several alternate lessons to learn from the Zealots battle against Rome.
Levran recruited one participant to read the Zealot leader Elazar Ben Yair's final oration calling for suicide ATJ (according to Josephus). Then Levran leapt into the fray dressed as Yonhanan Ben Zachai and appealed to the group to see the route of the Zealots as a dead end. Ben Zachai actually argued with Ben Yair in Jerusalem at the beginning of the revolt saying that accommodation, not assimilation or revolt, was the path to Jewish survival.
"The revolt ends in destruction," said Levran. "Judaism continues because the Pharisees survived. So who are the heroes? The Masada Zealots are extremists. The Pharisees said accommodate, not assimilate."
Portlander Karen McAllister said she now sees the story of Masada as a generic picture meaning, "We will always fight for what we believe in."
Liz Lippoff, also of Portland, added, "If the story is zealots versus accommodation, clearly we have zealots today. ? If you take the route of extremism, you are putting yourself against a wall."
After much discussion on the meaning of the Masada story, Levran said he believes that the true reason for Jews to visit Masada is to look at the Roman camps that surround the mountain and realize, "The Roman camps are empty and we are here. We will never let our connection to the land of Israel and Jewish history fall again."