National Bicycling Day aka Yom Kippur

The main reason why I like to stay in Israel during the High Holidays is Yom Kippur. When we got back to Israel after spending many years in the US, I was delighted to discover that Yom Kippur was no longer the dreary holiday of my childhood, it has totally changed and gained a uniquely Israeli interpretation as a  national bicycling day.

That year, about two weeks before the High Holidays, our daughters informed us that they absolutely had to have bicycles for Yom Kippur, all their friends had them. That is how we first learnt about the new tradition.

Imagine a big city where on a regular day the streets are packed with noisy cars and buses, and then all of a sudden, as though by magic -- everything comes to a halt and there is silence.

Earlier today I checked and saw  that on this year Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv starts  shortly before 6 pm. When I got on my bike around that time there were still some cars. But few minutes later everything stopped. While riding I saw families in white walking toward the synagogue, and some very well dressed young children with their parents on tricycles, and scooters.

When I rode back the busy Hatayasim highway was totally empty of cars and filled with older children on their bicycles. Later tonight I expect to see the streets become even fuller with people, this is the night when everybody goes outside.

Tomorrow, like most Tel Avivians,  we will ride our bicycles, in previous years we headed to the sea and rode along the shore before finally arriving to Hayarkon river and then back home. It is literally a once in a year experience. For me this is also the only day that I feel confident enough to ride on the roads and don’t have to worry about being run over by a car.

I don’t know who invented Bicycling Day and whether  s/he works in the bicycling business, but she is clearly a genius. Naturally every year before Yom Kippur the sales of bicycles increase tremendously.

Probably for many Orthodox Jews the practice of observing the holiest day of the year has not changed much throughout the years, but for me as a secular Jew the holiday has become meaningful once it stopped belonging only to Orthodox Jews. As a child every Yom Kippur we hid at home and I remember my mother asking us to eat quietly and not to make noise because the neighbors were passing by our kitchen window on their way back from Shul.

Bicycling has changed all that, Yom Kippur stopped being a holiday that had nothing to do with me or my life style and became a favorite holiday, one which I could enjoy as an Israeli, if not as an observant Jew.

On that same Yom Kippur when we returned to Israel we were walking  at night behind our two cycling daughters. Dizengof street was quiet and there were no cars. All of a sudden an old and noisy Volkswagen beetle came toward us with all its windows open. We saw that the driver of that car was the poet David Avidan.

It never occurred to me before, but perhaps Avidan did not realize that Yom Kippur has changed and wanted to protest. As one of the greatest  poets of secularization I believe that he would have loved the new Israeli holiday of Bicycling Day.

The essay appeared at the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/national-bicycling-day-aka-yom-kippur/

A Young Girl on Bicycle: Anwar Burqan vs Two Border Police officers

With everything else that’s going on in our part of the world, the incident in Hebron, at the end of July, with the two Border Police officers and the young girl on bicycle, seems like ages ago.

To refresh the reader's memory, here is the story as it appeared in Haaretz on August 2nd: “Two Border Police officers were filmed driving a Palestinian girl, who was riding a bicycle in Hebron, away and then, once she fled, one of the two picked up her bike and threw it into the bushes”

Obviously this incident has serious implications, how is it possible that two adults in their official capacity would scare a little girl to death and chase her away? Focusing on the story one important detail comes to mind: Anwar Burqan was not just another little girl, she was riding a bicycle.

The bicycle has been a feminist symbol, and an icon, of self reliance and freedom since the last part of the 19th century. The development of the safety bicycles, in the late 19th century, was especially crucial to women as they were also produced in a special form for skirted women.

Some feminist writers consider this point a revolution and a beginning of a new order.  Ever since the late 1880s women have started riding bicycles and it has given them a certain degree of independence. All of a sudden, quietly, women and girls gained freedom of movement and were able to come and go as they pleased and on their own.

For a long time, and in most part of the world, bicycling has ceased to be a symbol and became an integral part of life for everyone.

But in more traditional societies girls/women and bicycle just don’t mix. The Saudi Arabian film Wadjda which tells the story of  a bright girl who is determined to win money to buy a bicycle she’s forbidden to ride. She hopes to accomplish this feat by winning a prize in a Koran competition and for that dream she is willing to memorize endless verses of Koran. But when she finally wins the competition honestly and naively admits that she intends to get a bicycle with her money, she is denied the prize.

Apparently, Hebron is not different than Wadjda's world, here too the   bicycle is regarded as a dangerous symbol of independence which threatens the world order. Young Anwar Burqan was not allowed to exercise her right to freedom of movement when she rode by herself around her home town on her bicycle.

I would like to end with a quote about bicycling from the Feminist and leader Susan B Anthony: "Yes, I'll tell you what I think of bicycling, I think it has done more to emancipate woman than any one in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on wheel. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat and away she goes.”

Keep riding Anwar Burqan, away you go!

The post a[[eared in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-young-girl-on-bicycle-anwar-burqan-vs-two-border-police-officer/

The National Bicycle Day: Yom Kippur in Israel

Going back to Israel after spending many years in the US, we were quite surprised to discover many new customs in a country which we had thought we knew really well. Recently I wrote  a post about the secular ritual of the Friday night dinner ("TGIF ISraeli Style"), and the new practice of observing  Yom Kippur is another one.

In the first year in Tel Aviv our daughters told us that they had to have bicycles for Yom Kippur, all their friends had them. That  is how we first found out that Yom Kippur has become the National Bicycle Day

Imagine a big city where on a regular day the streets are packed with noisy cars and buses, and then all of a sudden, as though by magic -- everything stops and there is silence.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-national-bicycle-day-yom-kippur-in-israel/

Please Forgive Me: The National Bicycle Day

September 14, 2013
When I was a young mother I wanted to attend exercise classes, but since I had two children, it was hard to get away.  My resourceful husband suggested that we’d  find an exercise program on television that I  could  do at home. As much as I hated this idea I had to admit that it was a reasonable solution. To make matters easier he fixed a wooden board to save my knees from jumping on the concrete floor.

That is how I began my romance with the legendary television instructor Charlene Pricket. Charlene taught aerobics, but she also loved to talk and to give advice. As she was jumping about she dispensed her views about the importance of leading a balanced life, and the latest information on exercise and nutrition. Exercising with Charlene became a significant part of my day, and I felt that with her common sense and knowledge she taught me much more than exercise.  

I hadn’t thought about her for many years but today, Yom Kippur, all of a sudden I remembered one particular piece of Charlene’s advice.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish faith. It is the day of atonement when God supposedly makes the decision whether we will be “signed in his book” for yet another year.

But over the last twenty years, the practice of observing the day in Israel has changed drastically. Since there are no cars driving on the road, Yom Kippur has become an unofficial National Bicycle Day. Imagine a big city where on a regular day the streets are packed with noisy cars and buses, and  then all of a sudden, as though by magic --silence.  Gradually the streets are filled with happy children on bikes, scooters, or skateboards riding with their parents or their friends.

This morning Johnny and I rode our bicycle for over four hours in totally silent and peaceful streets: we headed to the sea and rode along the shore before finally arriving to the river and then back home. It was a wonderful experience. 

Still, using this day for exercise could seem irreverent; shouldn’t this day of fasting be observed in prayer or quiet meditation?

This is when I thought of Charlene. Once when asked about her position on fasting in order to cleanse one’s system, she answered that as she washed her body and watched her diet, she felt clean enough. 

I like her answer; although fasting in Yom Kippur is spiritual and is not done for health reasons, I choose not to fast as my way of atonement. Actually, I have never fasted in my life; my formerly- religious father was adamant against it. When as a child I wanted to fast, he asked me if I intended to follow any other religious precept. When I answered that I didn’t, he said that he felt it was hypocritical to fast and suggested that instead I should try to be “good” all year around. I have tried to follow his footsteps.

However, by making our cities peaceful and quiet for one day on the holiest day of the year, I feel that we ask for forgiveness by giving Mother Earth a day of rest -- a Sabbath.  We could see it as a variation on another significant precept in Jewish law which is called shmita(translated literally as release).  According to Jewish law, every seven years the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity, including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting, is forbidden.

So whether we fast, ride our bike or just enjoy the quiet day, in a time of pollution and the rising greenhouse effect, letting the earth rest for one day of Yom Kippur could be considered a small and necessary act of atonement. Gmar Hatima Tova 

Lot’s Wife And The Danger Of Curiosity

At a conference devoted to the influences of the Old Testament on Hebrew literature, a speaker discussed Lot’s wife (Genesis 19, 26) as a source of poetic inspiration. In Hebrew that dramatic story is summed up in 6 short words: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

I have been so used to these words that their actual meaning was almost lost. But re-examining the sentence I thought about the danger of curiosity and the high price of the desire to learn.

We learnt  in school that Lot’s wife was punished because she disobeyed God. Yet, in Genesis 19, 17 God says to Lot: “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee.” There is nothing in the text about Lot's  responsibility to warn his family not to ldo so as well. Moreover, although God talks only to Lot, he is not held accountable for the actions of his wife, and she is the only one who is punished.

It is intriguing that the Bible states that the wife (who remains nameless) looks "behind him,” and not behind her. It seems that Lot is very much part of the action.

Curious, eager to learn, and independent: those have always been the qualities of women in pursuit of knowledge and education. They fought to advance themselves in their societies and strived to contribute to their communities. But those were also the exact reasons why Paternalistic societies have regarded education as dangerous.

Only yesterday I suddenly saw the source of and the justification for the zeal and conviction of those men who made sure that education would not be available to women. From the account of the Fall we understand that knowledge is synonymous with disobedience. But in the case of Adam and Eve they were both punished. I never before had traced the beginning of male oppression to the unjust act of God, who punished a woman for a non-sin, in Genesis 19.

Until fairly recently women  in Europe and in the US were denied education, in the introduction to Equality for Some: The Story of Girls’ Education, Barry Turner states: “The female intellect is a recent educational discovery. Traditionally Western civilization has distrusted and discouraged clever women, initially because they were regarded as a threat to the spiritual well-being of the community” 

It wasn’t thank to God of Genesis 19 that Western women won their battle for education, they did it all on their own.

But in other parts of the world, women and girls are not so fortunate, a good example is the  Saudi Arabian film Wadjda. It tells the story of  a bright girl who is determined to win money to buy a bicycle she’s forbidden to ride. She hopes to accomplish this feat by winning a Koran competition. Learning, she trusts, would bring about independence and freedom of mobility. But when she honestly and naively admits that she intends to do with the money, she doesn't get the prize.

Riding a bicycle has been a feminist symbol of self reliance since Victorian time: at that time the safety bicycle became available for skirted women. While bicycle gave them physical independence, education had given them some measure of mental independence and self control.

Wadjda is not different from the hundreds of school girls who were kidnapped on April 14th from the Girls Secondary School in Nigeria. In the name of God, His male executors on earth have taken upon themselves the mission to eradicate education from their country.

In the Biblical story Lot moved on leaving his wife behind, we could no longer afford to do so.

PS  And of course I should not forget Malala Yusafzai.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-m-blaustein/malala-yousafzai-girls-e...