What makes a city Jewish?

Visions & Voices, the trip that serves as an introduction to Kesher Hadash, lays the groundwork for the questions we are exploring throughout the semester in Israel. Towards the end of Visions and Voices, we spent some time exploring Tel Aviv in order to gain an understanding of the "New Jew" and what a secular Jewish city looks like. A really interesting question that someone in my group raised continues to come up throughout my Kesher Hadash experience. What makes a city Jewish?

At first, I thought that maybe it was a city based on Jewish values. After rethinking that, I realized that the majority of Jewish values are universal values. My next thought was that a place living by the rhythm of the Jewish calendar was a Jewish city. On the surface, this makes sense to me. When I dig a little deeper, the idea of something like Shabbat becomes problematic. What does it mean when an entire city (or a country) observes Shabbat? When I think about Shabbat, I think about going to a Progressive egalitarian shul, complete with lots of prayerful singing and guitar. I also think of communal meals, reading, and catching up on sleep. Israel defines Shabbat in very specific, traditional ways. Most public transportation, restaurants and shops are shut down for Shabbat, because in the eyes of the Israeli government, activities associated with these things don't fit into its definition of Shabbat. My last idea of something that makes Israel distinctively Jewish is the Hebrew language. In Israel, Hebrew is a national language. It is taught in schools, spoken on the streets and seen on billboards.

Since Kesher Hadash has started, I've been thinking more and more about the centrality of Hebrew. I have always found Hebrew to be a big obstacle for me. It denies me access to texts, to my Jewish tradition. While most Jewish texts can be found in translation, all translations are someone else's interpretations. I don't want others telling me what to think. I want to interpret the texts for myself and come to my own conclusions. It has been extremely exciting to be learning Hebrew in a place where the language is alive. Twice a week, I get to take Ulpan, building my foundation of grammar and expanding my vocabulary. I then get to live my life in Jerusalem and hear and see Hebrew wherever I go. I get to learn my numbers in Hebrew, and then figure out how much I owe the cashier at a store when he tells me the price in Hebrew. When I'm going to meet a friend on a Saturday night and get lost, I use the directional words I learned in Ulpan to ask somebody for directions.

I don't know if the Hebrew language makes something Jewish, especially after knowing so many secular Israelis who just think of Hebrew as their native language. When proposing the idea of Hebrew as a defining feature of a Jewish country, the concept didn't make any sense to my Israeli friends..

I'm still left wondering, what makes a city Jewish?