Planning, planning and more planning

I don't understand how other people do it.  I seem to spend so much time planning, there's not much time left for living. But I don't feel like I'm overplanning; there's just so much to manage.

After being away for 10 months, my eldest came home on Tuesday. She is leaving for summer camp on Dec 28 (she is leading it this time) so that gives us just two weeks to sort out everything she needs for uni. 

On top of that, my wife and I have to take holiday between Christmas and New Year's so we wanted to do something with the family, and the kids voted for Tangariro Crossing.  That's normally very crowded during summer so we decided to do it on Christmas day, when it should be quieter.  We normally have a Christmas lunch with family so we moved that to the 24th, because they are on the way to Tongariro.

Last month I booked a cabin at a holiday park, and a shuttle to take us to the start of the crossing/pick us up at the end.  Then the shuttle service emailed to say they were closing for Christmas and refunding my money.  I found another (for 25% more) and booked a 7am shuttle. (It's an 8-10 hour walk, and I wanted an early start so we weren't rushing to catch the shuttle on the other side.) Yesterday they emailed me to say they were moving it to 8am.

We have to come home on the 27th in order for my eldest to fly to summer camp on the 28th, but my wife and I still have 5 more days of forced holiday.  We are trying to save money so so we decided to go camping, but even that is $75/day for a campsite with toilets and showers.  (In New Zealand, it's considered glamping.)  We also have to decide where to go.  (All signs point to Paekakariki, which is where we've gone the past four years.)

Wellington does a nice New Year's eve party (with fireworks and a big band on the lagoon) so we'll go camping on New Year's day, then be home on the 4th as the other two kids leave for camp on the 5th.  I'd like to say I'm looking forward to a house without kids, but the next day we go back to work.

The following weekend, we go to visit the kids.  (We are gluttons for punishment.)  We fly to Auckland Sat morning, have a day to ourselves, then spend Sunday with the kids and fly home Sunday evening.  I planned something fun for that weekend, but it's a surprise. :-)

The kids will trickle home between the 15th and 22nd, depending on how many friends they have in Auckland.  Jan 23 is the eldest's birthday, but we've organised a family dinner on the 24th.  On the 25th we leave two kids home alone and fly to Dunedin, at the very southern end of New Zealand.

On the 27th - while we're in Dunedin - one kid starts school and the other goes to school camp.  We're all home on the 28th and we have four days of normality before we have to attend a wedding in the back of beyond. I've booked a cabin for one night, we'll go rafting on Sunday, then drive four hours home.  (Google maps says 3 hours, but Google maps assumes you're single and have a large bladder, a small stomach and a trunk full of energy drinks.)

We're not done yet, because that Thursday is Waitangi day, a national holiday, so my wife and I are going to Napier, our son is going to Abel Tasman, the middle child has a dragonboating event (she's co-captain of the school team).  After that she is practicing after school for two hours, three times a week, until the Wellington festival in March.

The following weekend my eldest is finished with "summer school" (an intensive 3-week physics catchup) and so my wife is going to fly down and help her move to the halls of residence.  As she is flying out, my middle-child -- who spent three weeks in France last year -- has her exchange student flying in.  She is with us for three weeks, although the school is taking them to the Marlborough Sounds one weekend.

Finally things quiet down for a month...and then hopefully we're off to the UK.  (I still haven't bought plane tickets....)

Parashat Ki Tavo - drasha 21 Sep 2019

Deuteronomy 27:11 - 29:8 (third triennial) 

We’re in the middle of a very long speech which started three weeks ago with, “See, this day I set before you blessing and curse” and concludes next week, in Sage Green’s portion, with “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life.”  In today’s portion, we actually get to the blessing and curse...but I’m not going to talk about that.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the location, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. In Genesis 12:6, parashat Lech-Lecha, we read: “Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem… The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘I will assign this land to your offspring.’”  Shechem was in a valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. Today the town is called Nablus.

Today, the Israelites have come full circle, but it is a different generation and they are doing things differently.  As Dena Freundlich writes, “Gone is the passive experience of the generation that leaves Egypt through God’s miraculous intervention and lives by God’s protection and sustenance in the wilderness. Enter the new generation that will conquer the Land utilizing military ingenuity, and then invest herculean efforts to farm that Land. Similarly, the focus is no longer on the laws themselves, as it is at Mount Sinai, but the consequences for observing or violating the laws. This generation will forge their own destinies.”

Rabbi Uri Sherki of Jerusalem echoes this theme: “The ceremony at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal can be seen as a kind of negative image of the revelation at Sinai. At Mount Sinai, the people who had only recently left Egypt, who now subsist on manna in the wilderness; all that is asked of them is to listen to the voice of God. Upon entering the land, however, their hierarchy of values is turned on its head. In the land of Israel, nature takes the place of miracles; God’s voice does not emanate from within the fire; rather we must broadcast God’s voice on our own. In the land of Israel, the divine word does not come from some mountain that towers above us; quite the opposite, the Levites stand in the valley and call out God’s message.”  Instead of God inscribing the two tablets, Israel is enjoined to “set up large stones. Coat them with plaster and inscribe upon them all the words of this Teaching.” (Deuteronomy 27:2-3)

Rabbi Hillel Lieberman, who was murdered 19 years ago in Nablus, took two triangles, one pointing up to represent Mount Sinai, the other pointing down to represent the valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. When combined, he said, “the two triangles form the basis for the essence of the covenant between the nation of Israel and God. Is it coincidence that this combination of the upright triangle and the inverted triangle was chosen as the symbol of the nation of Israel?”

Dena Freundlich continues: “The covenant to be enacted on Mounts Gerizim and Ebal upon entry to the Land is the second generation’s Matan Torah, the revelation of the Torah, of establishing their unique relationship with God. The message is this: Matan Torah is not an event frozen in time to be pulled off the shelf of our collective memory every so often, dusted off, and remembered wistfully as something that occurred long ago for our ancestors.”

(I would also argue that the differences between revelation at Mount Sinai and revelation at Mounts Gerizim and Ebal is not a typo, nor the faulty memory of a 120-year-old Moses, but the deliberate evolution of interpretation and engagement by the people.  This is a proud progressive tradition that stretches all the way back to Torah.)

Our Matan Torah occurs every week. If we follow the triennial, and attend every shabbat, we should hear it all every three years.  What a far different experience that is from the visceral, awesome experience of our ancestors! The advantage of reading it in small, easily-digested bites is that it lets us dwell on the details, to draw parallels with modern life, to tease out lessons.  The disadvantage is that we forget this is part of an epic tale told to a young nation to inspire, to bind together and to create a foundation for society. We lose the forest for the trees. Torah was not meant as a series of vignettes. And it was meant for every generation to experience again in their own way, on their own terms.

As we head into the high holy days, I invite you to read one book of the Torah, beginning to end. Reconnect with this central tenet that connects us all. You don't have to discuss it with anyone; you don't have to derive any deep meaning; you just have to experience it, one-on-one...as our ancestors did...as they intended us to do.

Shabbat shalom. 

https://www.etzion.org.il/en/parashat-ki-tavo-mount-gerizim-and-mount-ebal

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-real-message-of-mount-gerizim-and-mount-ebal/

https://m.jpost.com/Travel/Around-Israel/Sites-and-Insights-Mount-Ebal-and-Mount-Gerizim

https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Victims/Pages/Hillel%20Lieberman.aspx

Drasha Parashat va'etchanan (17 Aug 2019)

Today’s parashah contains the ten commandments, the sh’ma and V’ahavta -- “You shall love the Lord your G-d with all your heart” -- and many other recognisable passages.  It’s like a greatest hits album: “Now that’s what I call Torah!”

The ten commandments are particularly fascinating.  In the Torah, these are the only laws publicly proclaimed to all Israel; the rest were given only to Moses. Whilst its not clear in Exodus if the people heard G-d’s words or just thunder, in today’s portion Moses recalls, “The LORD spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words but perceived no shape—nothing but a voice.”

As Jews, we consider these “the first ten commandments;” Maimonides laid out the other 603.  At the time of the Talmud, the ten commandments were considered part of the sh’ma and read aloud at every service.  However, as Yael Shahar wrote in Haaretz, “The sages of the Talmud argued against giving the Ten Commandments special prominence, so as not to give ammunition to heretics who claimed that only the revealed law was important, and the man-made amendments were not.”  As a result, Jews were encouraged to recite the ten commandments at home, but they were only read out in shul three times per year: two Torah readings and at Shavuot.

The term “ten commandments” is problematic. Exodus 34:28 uses the term, Aseret ha-D'varim, which is more accurately translated as “ten sayings.” Had the Torah meant Ten Commandments, it which have used Aseret ha-Mitzvot.

The Aseret ha-D'varim are thus understood to be classifications, and all other mitzvot -- which are of equal importance -- fit into these ten categories, some more obviously than others.  For example, all mitzvot around holidays fall under “keep the Sabbath holy” because holidays are in some sense a Sabbath. The mitzvah not to stand aside while a person's life is in danger fits under “you shall not murder,” but the mitzvah not to embarrass a person is also characterised as murder, because embarassment causes the blood to drain from your face.

Even the number “ten” is problematic, because there are actually 12 sayings!  We combine the first two -- “I am the LORD your G-d” and “You shall have no other G-ds beside Me.” -- and the last two -- “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” and “You shall not crave anything that is your neighbor’s.” -- to fit into ten.

Judaism teaches us the first five commandments are duties to G-d, while the second five are duties to other people. The fifth commandment, though, is to honour your father and your mother, which would seem to be about people. However, the sages argued that our parents are our creators, and disrespect to our biological creators is an insult to the Creator of the Universe.

We’re also told if one must choose between an obligation to G-d and an obligation to a person, then the obligation to a person should be fulfilled first, because people need our help while G-d does not.  This is drawn from Genesis 18, when Abraham is convening with G-d but rushes out to welcome the three strangers 

Next, consider how the ten commandments are represented, not only in art but at synagogues. The Torah only states “two stone tablets,” but they are usually depicted as semi-round on the top. According to Zvi Brettler in “The Ten Commandments in American Life,” this is a medieval Christian tradition, based on the diptych, and would have been unknown in the ancient Near East.  It is much more likely they would have been rectangular.

No biblical tradition states that the commandments were split evenly, five and five. Moshe Weinfeld, a biblical scholar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argued that ancient Near Eastern treaties were typically copied in duplicate, with each party keeping one copy. Since this was a covenant between G-d and and the Israelites, it seems likely both tablets contained all ten commandments.

These depictions also ignore what is explicitly written in Exodus 32:15: “tablets inscribed on both their surfaces: they were inscribed on the one side and on the other.”  Obviously, if you’re carrying around a stone tablet, you’re not going to leave half of it blank!

As I said, the ten commandments are clearly presented as a covenant between G-d and the Israelites. It starts with, “I the LORD am your G-d who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”  It was directed at male upper-class property owners. It was never presented as a universal system of ethics, applicable to all humanity, like the seven Noahide laws.

In fact, as an ethical system it has some serious flaws.  As religioustolerance.org notes, “You shall have no other G-ds beside Me.” is fine for a personal covenant, but applying it universally would effectively ban freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc  “Visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children” is profoundly immoral, as is requiring children to honour their parents even if their parents abuse or neglect them. The last commandment treats women as chattel and condones slavery!

The King James Bible interprets the 7th commandment as, “Thou shalt not kill” but the Hebrew word, lo’ tirtzach, is more accurately translated as, “murder.”  Killing that is sanctioned, either by law -- capital punishment -- or by the government -- such as war -- is not only okay, it’s enthusiastically promoted throughout Torah.

In early Christianity, Paul argued the new “Jewish Christians” were no longer bound by Mosaic law and, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the Ten Commandments had no particular importance in Christian tradition until the 13th century.”

Between 1265 and 1274 CE, Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica.  In the section on “The moral precepts of the old law,” he identified three types of biblical laws: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He held that moral laws -- such as the ten commandments -- were permanent, while ceremonial laws -- such as kashrut and circumcision -- were not.

The Catholic church incorporated the ten commandments into confession, and in the 16th century Protestants incorporated them as a fundamental part of religious training.  (They still rejected the “ceremonial” aspects, such as how to observe the sabbath, or even which day to observe it on.)

Today, Christians embrace the Ten Commandments as their own. In the US, they argue they transcend religion and underpin all of Western culture.  They want to post them in schools, public buildings and courthouses, and believe it is part of the common Judeo-Christian heritage.

The problem is, most Christian denominations consider “I am the LORD your G-d” to be a preface, not a commandment, and exclude it.  Catholics consider coveting property to be separate from coveting a spouse, while Protestants consider the prohibition against idolatry to be separate from the prohibition against worshipping other G-ds.

Thus, by choosing one version, they are elevating one religion over another, and by referring to them as "THE Ten Commandments" (as though they were the only ones) they are teaching a message that Judaism considered and rejected long ago.

So once again our sages were wise and foresaw that something that seems to unite can ultimately divide, and that by minimising the role of the first ten commandments, we can open ourselves to all 613. (Number 12 is, “To learn Torah and to teach it.”)

Shabbat shalom.

335 days to the UK

The working assumption is that our next major holiday will be in the UK, April 11-24, 2020, with kids.

The original impetus was my mother-in-law's 80th birthday in March, but we couldn't take the kids out of school for two weeks, and it didn't seem right to leave them at home. After all, the last time they saw their cousins was 2 years ago, when they came to New Zealand.

Of course, I'm planning to drop the kids with my in-laws and go do something fun. 🙂

I had hoped our next big holiday was California over Christmas, but my mother hasn't been doing well so we decided to go earlier, without the kids, and though I get enough time off (5 weeks vacation per year), I still can't afford two big holidays. So we'll look at doing another 'staycation' like Christchurch. (I have a friend who recommends one of the Pacific Islands; I'll have to ask which one.)

It's been 3 years since my last visit, and that was a work visit so I hardly had time to see anyone. I'm so excited to get back, and it will be a long 11 month wait! 

Hong Kong

I've never been the south-east Asia. I've been to Beijing and Osaka, but those don't count. I almost went to Thailand -- just after I arrived in New Zealand and while I was still waiting for my work visa, a friend was heading to Thailand and I thought about joining him, but my new girlfriend shut that down quickly. :-)

That said, I've never particularly wanted to go to Southeast Asia. As I noted when I moved to Britain, I can only deal with cultural change in small bites; anything more than that and I get overwhelmed and cranky. But Hong Kong -- a British colony for 100 years -- seemed like a good gateway. It wasn't.

We had a 16-hour layover, from 5am to 9pm. The meticulously planned itinerary was simple:

• Buy online tickets for the “360 Lantau Culture and Heritage Insight Tour” before we arrive
• Take a taxi from the airport to Tung Chung station (HK $40)
• Get a round-trip train ticket to Hong Kong central
• Spend 3 hours exploring the city
• Return to Tung Chung by 11am
• Take the 45-minute cable car ride to Ngong Ping
• Have lunch at the Po Lin Monastery
• Join the 1:15pm tour. The 3.5 tour included the Big Buddha and Tai O fishing village
• Take the 45-minte cable car ride back to Tung Chung
• Shop/eat at the Citygate Outlets
• Take a taxi back to the airport by 8pm
• Board the 9pm flight

Now, let’s see how well that worked out:

• Buy online tickets for the “360 Lantau Culture and Heritage Insight Tour” before we arrive The online app (which offered a substantial discount) failed to mention you had to book more than 24 hours in advance.
• Take a taxi from the airport to Tung Chung station (HK $40) It was HK $50
• Get a round-trip train ticket to Hong Kong central The kiosk only offered one-way tickets!  The whole point of taking the taxi was to save money over taking a one-way ticket from the airport and a one-way ticket back to Tung Chung!
• Spend 3 hours exploring the city We took the train to Kowloon station and attempted to walk to the ferry.  I say “attempted” because it took us half an hour just to find our way out of the train station/mall.  Hong Kong city planners are clearly not fond of pedestrians, sending them up to elevated walkways, down to subterranean crosswalks, or just having an exit door that leads straight onto the motorway.  (I’m exaggerating there, but not by much!)  It was an early Saturday morning and I think there were three of us on the ferry across Victoria Harbour.  Once we were in Hong Kong proper, the contrast was remarkable—one street was lined of shopping malls and luxury brands, and two blocks over it was street vendors.  My son had been moaning since we got off the flight about his stomach hurting, so we found a western-looking restaurant and stopped to eat.  (He didn’t eat, and for a 14-year-old boy that is a clear sign there was a real problem.)
• Return to Tung Chung by 11am We were late
• Take the 45-minute cable car ride to Ngong Ping – we did this, and it was great!
• Have lunch at the Po Lin Monastery Since we’d already eaten, we skipped this.  (There was also some confusion about whether you ate the monastery or under the Big Buddha.)  In any case, although it was all vegetarian, it was not gluten-free and I couldn’t see anything my partner could eat and my son was still not eating.
• Join the 1:15pm tour.  The 3.5 tour included the Big Buddha and Tai O fishing village I thought my partner would have trouble being on her feet all day, because she can’t sleep on an airplane, but in reality she was fine and it was my son who was dragging his feet everywhere.  It seemed cruel to extend his misery  so we skipped the tour.  (And no, it’s not because I didn’t want to pay full-price!!)
• Take the 45-minte cable car ride back to Tung Chung They had stopped the cable cars because of a thunderstorm warning.  We were one of the first in the queue for the replacement bus and it still took us two hours to get off the mountain!
• Shop/eat at the Citygate Outlets After waiting two hours, nobody was in the mood to shop, but my son was finally hungry so we tried finding food, and I stress the word “tried.”  We marched across every level of the mall and checked out the menu in every café and restaurant and could not find any gluten-free vegetarian food!  At this point I just wanted to get back to the airport.
• Take a taxi back to the airport by 8pm The last restaurant was part of a hotel attached to the mall.  I asked the front desk where I could find a taxi rank and they told me to take their free shuttle to the airport.  Of course, I could have pointed out I wasn’t a guest, but that’s not my job.  The shuttle dropped us at terminal 1; it turned out the restaurants were all in terminal 2.
• Board the 9pm flight The plane was an hour late.  By then we were all over Hong Kong and just wanted to get home.

Needless to say, my feelings about southeast Asia have not changed (but I still want to go to India).

Israel in a nutshell

In August 2013, I went to Israel to see if I wanted to move there. I didn't and, ironically, events on that trip lead to me moving to New Zealand a year later. Now life had come full-circle, with my eldest going on a gap-year program in Israel and me coming to visit her.

We planned it to coincide with the two-week school holiday, which happened to include Easter Friday, Easter Monday and ANZAC day (all public holidays in NZ) plus Passover*.  At the end of the seder dinner each year, the last thing you say is, "Next year in Jerusalem!" so even though we'd miss our friends, it was pretty cool to be celebrating in Israel.

The itinerary was pretty complicated. We started out as three -- me, my partner and son -- meeting a friend of mine from the UK and staying at her sister's place in Sde Boker, in the Negev, which happened to be near where my daughter was. After a few days, we'd say goodbye to my friend and take my daughter to Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, where my partner's cousin lived.  My mother-in-law from Scotland was meeting us there, and then the five of us were going to Zicchron Yaakov, halfway to Haifa, to see my mother-in-law's cousin.  Finally, we shifted to Jerusalem for three days, but one of those days was taking my mother-in-law to the airport and visiting a friend in Modi'in.  Finally, on the last day, even though the airport was half an hour away we had to drive two hours to drop my daughter then ninety minutes back to the airport, return the car and check in by 11am.  (I knew that would never happen.)

Things got even more complicated when we had a car accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the car had to be towed away. The rental agency gave us a new one which was much smaller, but because it was Passover we didn't have any other option. (Passover is a pilgrim holiday, which means lots of people visiting Jerusalem.)  Cramming five people in the car was bad enough, but there was no room for all of our suitcases!  Fortunately, my partner and I were able to cram our stuff into one large suitcase and leave the other at the kibbutz.  (That suitcase was mostly filled with things for my daughter, so it was fairly empty.  Since we planned to return our daughter to the kibbutz, anyway, it wasn't a big deal, although we later realised she was perfectly comfortable getting around by public transportation so we could have cut out three hours of driving, but now we had to go just to grab the other suitcase!)

In two weeks we saw Avdat (a Nabatean City), Ein Avdat (a canyon with a spectacular waterfall), Masada (a Roman palace that became the last stand of the Zealots), the Dead Sea (lowest place on earth), Shuq haCaramel (a large market in Tel Aviv), Stella Maris monastery in Haifa (unfortunately we arrived on a Bahá’í holiday, so the Bahá’í Gardens were closed), Cesearea (a Roman town that became a Crusader fortress), Zicchron Yaakov (which we were only using as a base, but the city was one of our favourite experiences), and Modi'in (a city between the original Balfour line and the 1949 armistice line, in no man's land).  In Jerusalem we explored the Western Wall, the Old City, Mahane Yahuda market, Mamilla mall  and (accidentally) the Muslim quarter and the West Bank.

The most amazing experience, by far, was Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Centre.  I've been to Holocaust memorials around the world, but there is nothing that prepares you for this.  The detail, the faces, the stories are all recounted, until you feel you know these people, and then suddenly you're faced with a pile of silver menorah looted from synagogues, or a pile of shoes, and it is unbearable. We all cried, and we could have spent days there.  The Children's Memorial, in particular, was incredibly touching: In a dark cave, one-way mirrors turned five candles into a million points of light, while disembodied voices read off the list of the 1.5 million children who died.  That's unfathomable.

By the numbers, we  met 16 family members, three friends and two people we knew from New Zealand (it's a small world); we moved five times; and we drove entirely too much.  To be fair, Israel is a very small country (New Zealand is seven times as big) so the issue wasn't the distance, but just how aggressive Israeli drivers were.  I was overtaken in a roundabout! Driving was stressful and exhausting, and left me very irritable.  I'm sure I took it out on everyone at one point or another.

We'd promised our daughter we'd take her grocery shopping, as options on the kibbutz were quite limited, especially gluten-free.  What we didn't consider was that we left on the last day of Passover, which is a day of rest, and because it fell on a Friday that meant all shops would be shut for two days in a row.  As a result, when we got to the supermarket it had been ravaged, and they closed early as well!  We were driving back from Modi'in and I decided to take us through the West Bank because, of course, the Muslim shops would not be celebrating Passover!  It was an interesting experience, with lots of barbed wire and a checkpoint or two, but the supermarket was actually nicer than the one we'd been at.

I have to note that Google Maps is a nightmare in Israel.  It seems to insist on taking the most inappropriate routes.  When trying to get to the Western Wall, it took me on a half-hour excursion through some of the poorest sections, with the narrowest streets. In getting the supermarket, it took me down a back alley and through a flooded ditch.  I later discovered there was a main road we could have taken.  Everyone recommended I switch to Waze, which was created by Israelis, but it would only display the street names in Hebrew, which was not much use to me.

Another interesting discovery: "Kosher for Passover rolls."  One of the fundamental points of Passover is that you are supposed to get rid of all "leavened bread" products: Bread, cake, pizza, etc.  Some groups take it to extreme and avoid a raft of other things (oats, legumes) but in Israel the restaurants just switch over to gluten-free bread and carry on as usual!  For my partner, who is coeliac, it was like manna from heaven, but for me it just felt like cheating.

Another oddity is that it's very hard to find falafel in Israel that don't contain wheat.  I don't know why this is -- they shouldn't contain wheat -- but we asked everywhere and only found one place, in Zicchron, that said their falafel didn't contain any wheat.  We eagerly ordered two, chose our fillings and took them down to a little park to eat.  It was then we discovered there were no falafel in our falafel sandwiches.  (But the bread was gluten-free, go figure.)

Enough talk, here's some photos:

* The Last Supper appears to be a Passover celebration, so you'd think the two would be linked, but Passover is celebrated on the 5th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, and Easter is the first Sunday at least 13 days after the first new moon after the vernal equinox, so while the two are usually in spring, they rarely coincide.