Ross Singer Israel Tour Guide

05/05/2026

Yesterday I became certified to guide at the State Musem at Majdanek. If you are looking for a guide of Jewish Poland and Holocaust sites in Poland, please consider me. I have also just completed guiding my third trip in Poland.

05/11/2024

An Anti-Anti-Israel Story: The Jews of Urfa

The Amazing Story of the Jews of Urfa and their place in Israel's story. For a virtual tour of Abraham's cave in Urfa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vz5RGw9H_I For the full interview of Harun Bozo from Centropa's Library of Rescued memories: https://www.centropa.org/en/biography/harun-bozo

22/10/2024

A look at one of the Succot liturgy's prayers and its longing for restoration and redemption of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple.

07/10/2024

One year later, thoughts from an Israeli Jew

09/09/2024

Some intuitions about Israel that I think a very large majority of Jews both here in Israel and in the diaspora hold and that are the anchor that grounds the state of Israel to the earth:

1. Given the history of religious persecution of Jews at the hands of Christians and Moslems over the centuries and the severe rounds of organized violence that Jews sustained in European countries since the 1880’s and since World War I in the Middle East and North Africa, it seems like a really good idea for Jews to have a plot of land, somewhere on this globe, to serve as a haven and from which to organize self-defense, and to take responsibility for our fate.

2. If we are going to do that anywhere, the land of Israel seems to be a logical choice. We mention returning there at the end of every Seder and at the end of our holiest day of the year – Yom Kippur. Those of us a bit more religiously affiliated sing about restoring our sovereignty on Friday nights in Kabbalat Shabbat with the words of the poem Lecha Dodi written in the 16th century in the Galilee by scholars who were obsessed with redemption here in the land and who worked on creating institutions that might herald in just such a restoration. For those even more religiously meticulous among us, we mention this every time we break bread and three times a day at least in the liturgy. The holy books we chant from at our Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s were written largely in or about this land and call upon us to create a great society here. At every wedding, we mention Jerusalem and break a glass to mourn the exile. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how embedded this land and the aspiration for Jewish sovereignty is in our practice and in our spirit.

3. We know that over the centuries of our diaspora, despite the fact that we never gave up on our dream, other people(s) moved into the land. We know that before our mass return over the last hundred years, we were a minority in the land. Because of this and for other reasons, a large majority of us would be open to territorial compromise as a way to mitigate conflicting claims. However, our experience is that our would-be partners in sharing the land, frequently reject our project of national restoration in our ancestral homeland outright. Violence has been a major venue for expressing that rejection and so we are very very wary of acting in practice upon what in theory we are open to. Maybe we are overly cautious. Its hard to judge from the inside but it really really seems to us that if we risk naivety we might also risk our survival. That said, grand overtures like Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem touch us deeply and alleviate many of our concerns.

4. We know that Israel is not perfect. We know that criticism of Israel can be legitimate. But the vehemence and demonization with which so much of that criticism is so often couched makes us skeptical and reticent to accept it from the those who seem to wish us so much ill. Largely, we feel we have enough criticism to spare from our raucous internal debates where those of us who have a stake in the future are the interlocutors (see #5 about our freedom of expression).

5. Despite the fact that we are aware that we have a checkered past, we are proud of what we have created here. We are proud of our internationally recognized contributions to science and technology. We are proud of the strong economy that we have created. We are proud of the rich literature that we produce. We are proud of the steps that have been taken to integrate non-Jewish minorities like the Druze (as just one example) into our society while recognizing that much more work needs to be done. We are proud of our freedom of expression. We are proud of our social welfare system while also expecting more from it. We love the tapestry of Jews from all over the world that the ingathering of our exiles has created. We love the land itself and we tour and trek and hike and drive and walk its breadth and its length. We love the land’s produce and our farms and our dairies and we love our delicious culturally eclectic hybrid cuisine and our fusion pop-music music that integrates Biblical Hebrew lyrics with electronic instrumentation and that oscillates between eastern and western modes. And there is a lot more than this that we love about what we have here.
6. We are sure that if the apparatus of our state falls apart, we will not fair well. We can see this by looking around at the minorities who live in our region. We also know that it is unrealistic to move en masse anywhere else. No one is going to accept 7 million Jews. But besides that, we don’t want to go anywhere for all the reasons mentioned in #4.

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I peek, more often than is healthy for me at the Anti-Israel cyberverse and the ideological Israel of colonialism and Jewish supremacy and racism etc. etc. that I find there strikes me as a phantom. It might be relevant for understanding some members of Knesset but I am fairly certain that most Israel sympathetic Jews of the diaspora and certainly most Israeli Jews are not committed to the state of Israel because of ideology that can be articulated through academic jargon. They are supportive or they are here because of deep intuitions born of experience, historical awareness, loyalty to their people and heritage, religious tenets and commitments and a desire to survive and thrive in a world that can be unfriendly to us.

To the anti-Israel crowd: If I am wrong, and everything I wrote is just a cover for economic superficial, colonial, western interests, then maybe you will succeed in sending us packing like the French left Algeria.

But if I am right, then your sustained global campaign of resistance won’t achieve its goals so easily. I am afraid that things will get awful on levels that will make what is happening now pale in comparison. This is not intended as some sort of threat.. I mean that things will become awful for all of us, including me and my people. On the off chance that I am right and that the project of a Jewish state cannot be captured in the common ideological paradigms in which it is so often framed, I hope you will think about what I wrote here carefully. So much human suffering is at risk. I pray you will consider long and hard. If you conclude that there is something organic and appropriate and reasonable about Jewish sovereignty in at least part of the land of Israel (or Palestine if you prefer), then I invite you to join me in a discourse of mutual understanding in place of heated demonization.

(No doubt that lots of this is inspired by my encounter with the work of Yossi Klein Halevy and Haviv Rettig Gur but I think there is no small piece of me here too. It is so hard to find the precise formula to articulate what I am feeling and thinking… I think this is a decent go at it. Feel free to take me to task)

29/08/2024

As long as Alex Stein keeps writing super important articles about our conflict, I am going to keep sharing. This one is about the Jews of Arab lands and the factors behind their exodus to Israel.

Here is his latest:

How the departure of Jews from Islamic lands has been misunderstood

19/08/2024

The neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah has become a symbol of territorial strife between Jews and Palestinians -- strife that has led to belligerence and violence.
As strange as it may sound, once upon a time, Jewish dreams for liberation of this piece of real estate led to an outpouring of interfaith prayer and a sense of shared concern that crossed ethnic, cultural, and national boundaries.

One evening in late nineteenth century Jerusalem, Chaim and Chava Hirshensohn were speaking of “the need of a land movement” and of an expedition “to explore the possibility of land-buying on the road to Shekhem.”

Little did they know that their young daughter had heard their conversation from her bed and had picked out in her mind the perfect plot of land for her parents’ endeavor. Little Nechamah (later Nima Adlerblum) was transfixed and smitten by her family’s visits to the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik in the area known by Arabs as Sheikh Jarrah.

The next afternoon, after lunch at her cousin’s home, Nechamah returned to an empty house. She assumed that her parents had gone off on their expedition to find appropriate real estate to purchase on the road to Shekhem and she was terribly concerned that they might not purchase her dream plot. Flustered, the little girl ran off to try and catch up to them to share her plan with them.

She got as far as Shimon HaTzadik but couldn’t find them anywhere. It was getting dark, and she began to get scared. She knocked on the door of a hut and introduced herself as the granddaughter of the famous Sara Bayla. The homeowner of course knew of Sara Bayla and her courtyard and proceeded to accompany the girl back home.

In the meanwhile, Nechamah’s family and a large cross-section of Jerusalem had become overcome with worry for the lost girl. As Nechamah later recalled years later:
“My disappearance from the home naturally caused consternation. A thorough search was made through town, particularly at places where I was apt to wander. The house of Reb Shemuel Salant was animated. I would sometimes crawl under the table and silently listen to the bearded men of the Bet Din… The large house of the Brisker Rov Disken also attracted me… The house of my uncle, the pharmacist, was another place where they looked for me… My uncle suggested that since his house was on the way to the Kotel Ma’aravi, I might have gone there in spite of the dark alley that leads to it. It was not easy to tear me away from the Wall whenever I was taken there.

“Our devoted Arab friend Leah suggested that I might have gone to the Mosque of Omar to figure out how to replace it with the Temple of Solomon. She insisted that her father look for me there… Our friend Abdallah urged his grandfather, the Pasha, to send out gendarmes on horses, which he did… People were running from one corner to another, and no supper was eaten anywhere.

“When the search began to look futile, Reb Shemuel Salant ordered the beadle to knock at every door and gather the people to the Hurvah and other nearby synagogues. Hakham Bashi Elyashar and the Hassidic rabbis issued a similar call. The Hassidim of our courtyard joined our porushic Bet ha-Midrash so that all prayers should reach Heaven jointly… The sheiks in their turbans and imposing costumes ascended the circular stairs to the minarets of their mosques… The Arabs aware of what had happened, gathered in their mosques for prayers. Sweet Leah was divided between joining the prayers at our courtyard or going to the nearby mosque…

“Approaching the courtyard… I was bewildered to see from afar so many people coming and going. A Hassid who espied us pushed himself through the crowd, ran in front, snatched me and put me on his shoulders. Out of excitement he tossed me into Avi’s (my father’s) arms. ‘Have you already bought the land?’ ‘What land?’ asked Avi, unaware that I had overheard their planning. I heaved a sigh of relief when he said that they had not yet come to a decision. ‘Since you want to organize a new settlement on the road to Shekhem, the first one ought to be adjoining Shimeon ha-Tzakkid’s grave. It will be a kind of reward to him. Should the people feel lonesome far away from town, they will draw strength and courage from his being among them.’ The children, still in the dark of what it was all about, but confident that it was a worthy cause, echoed in unison. ‘Yes, yes, buy the land there.’ Eventually a lot was bought in the vicinity of Shimeon ha-Tzaddik, but restrictions on immigration issued by the Sultan, diverted the building project.”

Coming across this passage in the midst of this war, whose previous round was tied by Hamas to the controversy in Sheikh Jarrakh, was strange, and sad, and hopeful. In a bizarre, ironic way, a symbol of what tears us apart now, then, brought us together for a beautiful moment. Today, Jewish dreams of reclamation of this plot are associated with war, but somehow, in the not-so-distant past, the same dream of reclamation (albeit unintentionally) was intertwined with a moment of unity, coexistence, humanity, and brotherhood.

May we merit to live in a world where national parochial aspirations and concern for all those created in the image of God intermingle and reinforce one another.

15/08/2024

Looking for a host from the Otef Gaza Kibbutzim Community to host an American Reform Rabbi making a personal solidarity visit.

I am guiding him in the Otef next week. It is only appropriate to visit the kibbutzim with a local host. I am looking for just such a host. Please let me know if you think you can assist me in arranging this.

09/08/2024

The Temple is rebuilt but Jews are still fasting? What for? How is it relevent to present day political polemics?

Looking at Palestine from Zion