Reading Texts Together: Service Year In Merhavim
It’s almost the end of the service year, and I haven’t written enough about one of our group’s most important activities: the Sunday meeting, held on the day we return from home to our service placement.
Every Sunday, the Merhavim group meets with our group leaders (two volunteers like us—one an alumnus of the program from last year—and a social worker). First, we share a meal and catch up. Then we have a group activity, such as a short presentation, a testimony or a lecture. Sometimes we have a field trip, but often we participate in a study session led by a moderator from outside the group. Together we read a text and then discuss it in small groups.
This kind of learning is traditional and typical of the Jewish practices of Beit Midrash and Havruta. It is also part of Elul, the umbrella organization of our Service Year. Elul itself is a Beit Midrash that aims to bring together secular Israelis and Orthodox Jews in a spirit of pluralism.
During the last part of the year, we met with a young academic who is also a rabbi, and we discussed various issues related to our service year as they connected to Jewish halacha and oral tradition. Since my main interest in my “regular” life is text analysis, I found these lessons fascinating.
Over the course of four sessions, our teacher addressed four related topics. The first, for example, focused on the passage from Zechariah, “For who has despised the day of small things?” and its relevance to our attitude to our work in the south. In the final lesson, we discussed the complex and loaded issue of volunteering and how to approach it.
These lessons reminded me how much I miss the close reading of texts, and last Sunday I had an opportunity to experience it again in a different setting. My roommate from the service year and I joined a Beit Midrash Kshatot, organized by the kibbutzim of the Western Negev, for an event devoted to learning about how a community confronts a crisis. (The Hebrew term used in the discussion was שבר breakage.)
The session was led by the educator and writer Liora Eilon from Kfar Aza, the kibbutz that lost 64 of its members in the October 7 massacre. Liora survived the attack, but her son, Tal, was killed that day while defending the kibbutz. After October 7, she began writing midrashim from the perspective of someone in dialogue with traditional Talmudic texts.
It was a fascinating evening. My friend and I felt at home in the small-group discussions and throughout the event, even though it was our first time participating with this particular group.
On the way back to Merhavim, just thirty minutes away, we learned that this seemingly endless war had resumed. I can’t help thinking that reading texts together is an effective way not only to get to know one another, but also to cope with crises such as the one Israeli society is facing right now.
