Tammy Paynter , Washington DC Mini-School
June 06 Israel Seminar
In the museum world, where I worked for many years we used the word “provenance” in reference to objects in the collection. In this context the word means “background information or point of origin”. For those of you who watch Antique Roadshow or have an interest in collecting you’ll understand immediately that an object with provenance is often immensely more valuable than an object without.
For example, one of the items in the Smithsonian collections is a 19th century men’s top-hat. Without provenance this hat is an example of 19th century men’s formal wear but has no great monetary value or interest to most people. With provenance, we know that this hat, this particular hat and no other was worn by President Lincoln on the night of his assassination.
With provenance this hat is an important relic of American History – to some an object almost of veneration and to others a bloody reminder of the war of Northern Aggression.
There are other uses of the word “Provenance”. In the Princeton WorldNet dictionary it is defined as a noun meaning: where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence; such as the birthplace of civilization.
When Rabbi Lehman asked Joyce and me to speak to the congregation about The Melton Program and our Summer Israel Graduate Seminar, Joyce, who is immensely modest about her own abilities and intelligence, immediately understood that that what we ought to share with you was related to the enduring triangle of Jews, God and Israel and the Melton message that in order to explore these connections Jew’s have to study, think, remember – and struggle with our history. Or, put another way, in order to live “jewishly” in the modern world – we need to know our provenance – we need to understand where we originated and where we were nurtured in our early existence. We need to know about the birthplace of our civilization. We need to understand our history in Israel. Without provenance, Palestine is just a hot, mostly dry and sandy spit of land. Without provenance, we would be hard put to refute the charge of European colonialism. Without provenance, Uganda would have done just as well as a place to escape Anti-Semitism, perhaps better. Without provenance, the hat is just a hat.
On the other hand, with provenance, we know that Israel is the Jewish Homeland. With provenance, we know that our roots in the land go back millennia. With provenance we are “indigenous” people. With provenance we know that the land of Israel birthed the Jews and it is not mere geography – It is, to quote our Melton teacher Zohar Raviv - a theography – a magic land, the Rock of our Foundation.
During the latter half of our Israel seminar we were sent out in small groups to talk with “the man or woman” on the street and to ask them a number of questions mostly about how they felt about Israel. At one point during the exercise I engaged in conversation with some Modern Orthodox young women at a bus stop. One of them related a midrash to me. She said that God watches over the entire world. But… outside of Israel, God’s angels do the heavy lifting. In Israel, and only in Israel, God is directly present. In Israel, there is no separation between God, Jews and Land. She told me the story as a story – an allegory about what makes Israel so precious to her, but she was also quite serious. For her, to be a Jew in Israel was to be in a Holy land – a theography.
Our time in Israel was spent in many places and in each place we studied, explored and struggled. I’d like to share some of those places and explorations with you:
- In Jerusalem - the implications inherent in the physical location of the city of Jerusalem halfway between the Temple Mount and the Valley of Gehenom. Half way between heaven and hell.
- At the Dead Sea - the apocalyptic messianic beliefs of the people of Qumran and the paths those beliefs took in Judaism and Christianity.
- In Tel Aviv – the vision of the founding fathers and mothers of Tel Aviv and the uniquely Jewish memorial at Kirkar Rabin, where the name of the murderer is obliterated and the name of the martyr honored and commemorated.
- In Jerusalem again – encounters with Jews of all stripes and persuasions, the wonderful experience of a Jerusalem Sabbath.
- In Caesarea – How did Jews come to terms with survival and real Jewish growth under non-Jewish rule; in non-Jewish cities?
- In Tsafat – Jewish “rational” mysticism and Judaism without Jerusalem.
- In the Golan Heights and the Gallilee – Where did Jews live between the fall of Jerusalem and today? And where in Palestine do Jews belong today?
- Back in Jerusalem – Anti-Semitism and the implications of its Christian origins.
- In Erfat, in the Territories – should we give land for peace?
In this weeks parshat ha shavua there was the following statement: Take a look at the issues that demand the attention of the Torah: how to live in harmony with the Land, how to establish standards of justice for the stranger and the citizen alike, how to establish seasons and festivals of holiness, how to live in the presence of God, how to educate ourselves and our children to the responsibilities and the grandeur of being a Jew.
Joyce and I had the opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah of Talmud Torah in the most direct way possible, by using the land of Israel and accompanied by extraordinary teachers, as text for our Torah study.
In the illumination of our study and in conclusion, I would like to show you this pebble. Without provenance – it’s a rock. I’m sure that there are geologists among us who could tell us a lot by looking at it. I cannot. But I can tell you that on the last day of our seminar, during a visit to Mt. Herzl and the National Military Cemetery our teacher picked up a bunch of pebbles and he gave each of us one of them. After we had our rocks, he told us to take them as symbols of our connection to Israel so that we would have a piece to take with us and an object to help us remember. I am not a sentimental person and I considered quietly dropping it. For some reason, I hung on and carried it in my bag all the way home and here it is. Without provenance, its just extra, unneeded weight in my luggage. With provenance it’s magic. It’s a part of Jerusalem. It’s a part of Israel. It’s a piece of theography, a piece of the Jewish Homeland.
