We’ve seen so much and gotten so immersed in the situation here my head is spinning.  I don’t know how to reduce everything to sound bites.

In the past two days we’ve met the leading feminist in Israel to talk about religious pluralism and women’s issues in Judaism, an atypical Palestinian journalist, and an impressive Israeli journalist who tried, admirably, to “sum it all up.”  We had a group discussion of our impressions.

I vowed I would kill the next person on the trip who said, “it’s so complicated,” and then I said it and I won’t kill myself.  So, everyone else is safe now.

There are two senses of “it’s so complicated:”

1. There are so many layers and nuances.  Each time you think you understand something, someone tells you that there is an additional nuance you hadn’t realized like there is an onion with an infinite number of layers.  This form of “it’s so complicated” leads to a sense of futility that there can be any solution to the many problems Israel faces.

2. Israel raises peoples’ passions, which tends to make people take extreme positions on issues.  The good sense of “it’s so complicated” is that nothing is completely black and white.  There is diversity of opinion here and even an Israeli person or group with a very strong position embeds a variety of positions.  This is a much better sense of “it’s so complicated” because it means that there are possibilities for solutions even in the most hardened positions.

Here are just a couple of examples of the second meaning of “it’s so complicated”:

== We spoke to a Russian woman with a PhD. from Moscow who has been in Israel for 20 years and still speaks predominantly Russian.  Someone asked why the Russians in Israel have supported such a conservative party in the recent election (Yisroal Beiteinu).  There really wasn’t an answer.  But, its likely that many Russians (not all) may not align with all of Yisroal Beiteinu’s positions on Arabs, but this party appeared more willing to take on issues that Russians care about in dealing with the Israeli government.

== It would appear that the Orthodox Rabbinate controls all of Judaism in Israel and sets many social policies through the Ministry of Religious Affairs and through parliamentary “extortion” in the ruling coalition in the Knesset.  This is true.  Yet, the Reform and Conservative movements are active in Israel and are attracting more interest.  A remarkable women’s group has been able to encourage some Orthodox congregations to allow women to read the Torah in front of the congregation—even 10 years ago this would have been impossible.

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Somehow I am going to boil down all of the issues into something digestible.  At a minimum, I can make a list and then delve into some impressions of the most important—except they are all important….